Gain Twist rifling...does it work

[Artificer]

Remington also used gain twist in their percussion revolvers. The advantage of a black powder revolver was the ball was slightly oversized when it hit the forcing cone and a slower twist at first, helped the ball fill the rifling and then as the twist got faster near the muzzle, helped the accuracy. This is not easy to do when loading from the muzzle of course with long guns.

A bore that tapers toward the muzzle is better even with modern barrels and often when only a couple or few Ten Thousandths of an Inch smaller at the muzzle, but you don't get quite as much of a gain from muzzle loading barrels.

Gus

An expanding Minie' style ML barrel would be interesting to test with gain twist, though.

 

[pamtnman]

They also used to stand shoulder to shoulder and wear bright red clothing, making them easy targets.

You are talking about one hundred years before the period we are discussing here. 1770s versus 1870s. The period of the 1840s to the 1890s in Britain saw an explosion (no pun, really) of creative firearms development, more than any other place or time. The sporting arms were mixed up with the military arms, made by the same firms, and the experimentation was wild. Tremendous developments in what was known about ballistics, explosives, metallurgy, etc. Huge technological time, very exciting. Gain twist was developed and experimented with at that time. The best gun makers used it up until the early 1900s, and a very few American specialists have made barrels with gain twist ever since, for both black powder and smokeless. Black powder is obviously different than smokeless, and so a great deal of refinement went into black powder rifling systems that is mostly mooted by today's smokeless powders and resulting super high velocities.

 

[pamtnman]

Remington also used gain twist in their percussion revolvers. The advantage of a black powder revolver was the ball was slightly oversized when it hit the forcing cone and a slower twist at first, helped the ball fill the rifling and then as the twist got faster near the muzzle, helped the accuracy. This is not easy to do when loading from the muzzle of course with long guns.

A bore that tapers toward the muzzle is better even with modern barrels and often when only a couple or few Ten Thousandths of an Inch smaller at the muzzle, but you don't get quite as much of a gain from muzzle loading barrels.

Gus

An expanding Minie' style ML barrel would be interesting to test with gain twist, though.

Gus - ask Scott at Colerain to make you a barrel just like this. They are not expensive, and you could get a lot of experimenting done out of one barrel. I think my son's child-size .45 flintlock has gain twist, and it is really accurate. We just don't have enough time to do more than get five or ten practice shots in with it at any given sit-down in preparation for hunting season.

 

[pamtnman]

Useless as udders on a boar hog!!

Gain twist? Why do you think so?

 

[TFoley]

I'll just add that the British with their bright red uniforms and smooth-bored muskets at one time ruled a quarter of the known world. Not too shabby for a tiny island off the coast of Europe, less than half the size of Texas.

 

[pamtnman]

I'll just add that the British with their bright red uniforms and smooth-bored muskets at one time ruled a quarter of the known world. Not too shabby for a tiny island off the coast of Europe, less than half the size of Texas.

And what mostly led to the decline of the British Empire was sappy sentimentalism and emotional decision making. In many places, the British presence greatly improved the lives of the people living there before the British arrival. Reminds me of the "What have the Romans done for us?" scene in the Life of Brian movie. Some places the British overplayed their hand, like in America. Tough luck!
Related to our topic of gain twist rifling, it was precisely Britain's manly culture that led to their immense technological developments, not only in sporting arms with gain twist barrels, but in every other field, too. If you visit Britain today, you will see that the culture there is only just now beginning to really relinquish their small town way of life with their single lane roads. Britain was a truly great nation...once. Their sporting arms of the 1850s-1890s capture that greatness in every detail.

 

[Roach Holder]

F.W. Mann's book 'The Bullets Flight from Powder to Target' 1909 can be downloaded at https://duienforcers.wildapricot.org/Re ... o_1909.pdf

Thank you very much for this totally delightful historical reference.