lookin' for howdah info

[1911nutjob]

New here, and just like the title says. I just finished building my pedersoli howdah kit (20x20), and I'm looking for loading suggestions. Do fellow howdah owners here bother with shot cups, or do you just pour the shot in? I'm not new to front stuffers, but my past experience is limited to cap n' ball sixguns. If you use the cups, does the wad go into it, or is it rammed in after the cup is inserted? Any comments and suggestions are welcome, so feel free to chime in. I'll be using pyrodex p, as I haven't found a local source of real blackpowder yet. One final question, did any guns of this type see the battlefield, north or south, during the civil war? Sorry for the long post, but I'm getting back into bp in a big way.

 

[LeMat1856]

.
. june 10 / 4:30pm

howdy and welcome,

i personally don't own a howdah (yet) but have followed some posts here on the forum.. start with this:

(video 1) tiger jumping into howdah
(video 2) guy test firing his howdah
two videos you should see

(previous posts) i asked the same question back in october 2008 and got many many good responses.. see the one with test shots of both solid .615 rb and birdshot for actual results:

forum discussion about howdah

(very useful) this post is good for info only.. looks like he removed all the pictures.. they were excellent.

*pictures gone but the load and distance info is still useful*

in general, the best response was from a member that posted pictures of his tests.. he used 30g ff, 615" ball, 010" patch, with an o/p wad at 5 yards; his second tests were 3 yards, #6 birdshot, but didn't mention which cards and powder.

if you search "howdah" you will see *lots* of hits, some more relevant than others.

good hunting,
~d~
ps. the tiger video is absolutely incredible - it jumps up and onto the elephant.

 

[Jumpshot]

(very useful) this post is good for info only.. looks like he removed all the pictures.. they were excellent.

*pictures gone but the load and distance info is still useful*

I didn't realize my pictures were gone from that thread, I'm not sure what happened. They're still in my photobucket account as far as I know. I can't edit that post now to restore the pictures. I'll see if I can dig them up and post them again here.

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

I've never seen any documentation for their use in the Civil War but I suppose a privately owned gun might have seen service. The low rate of fire and short range compared to a revolver would seem to make it an unlikely choice.

I have a 20 bore single shot pistol with a 12" barrel and it, like the howdah pistols, is a close range weapon. With shot it's a 15 yard rabbit gun at best. With ball it's a weapon of last resort. The howdah pistol was used to shoot the tiger just a split second before he landed in the howdah with you. My pistol is like that. You just can't burn enough powder in these short barrels to get a 300+ grain ball or an ounce of shot moving very fast. It's fun to shoot, but it is really just an accessory to my .62 caliber long guns.

 

[1911nutjob]

Much obliged to all for the answers. I figured with so many soldiers fielding privately purchased sidearms, at least one of these had to be toted around by someone. Do you use the shot cups with the 20 gauge at all. If so, how is the wad seated afterwards?

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

I don't bother with shot cups. Lately I've been using 40 grains of FFFg GOEX which is about all the barrel can burn and a couple of overshot wads--trying to save space in the barrel-- and 7/8 ounce of shot with another wad over the shot. At 40 feet the pattern is good--no holes a rabbit or squirrel could slip through. Might take a grouse at that range too. Maybe a little farther if I got lucky. Recoil isn't a problem and the pistol only weighs about 2 pounds.

 

[Jumpshot]

Well, I looked through my pictures. I have a few photobucket accounts. Looks like I deleted the pictures from that account thinking it wasn't the one being used in that thread. And somehow, most of the pictures were deleted from my computer. Not sure how that happened, I don't recall deleting those. Anyway, there are only a few left, not enough to reconstruct that post.

I never tried shot cups. To be honest, I'm not much into shotgunning. I prefer to shoot patched roundballs, whether in a rifled bore or smooth bore. So I never took the time to try cups. But with the patched ball, I was getting much tighter groups with 3F GOEX than with 2F.

Sorry I couldn't retrieve those pictures.

 

[Claude Mathis]

(very useful) this post is good for info only.. looks like he removed all the pictures.. they were excellent.

*pictures gone but the load and distance info is still useful*

I didn't realize my pictures were gone from that thread, I'm not sure what happened. They're still in my photobucket account as far as I know.

Here is the URL to the first photo in that post. Check this against what the URL is now, and you'll see why the link is broken.

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg51/mike53787/IMG_1880.jpg

 

[Jumpshot]

It's not the link; the pictures in the photobucket account are gone. I deleted them a couple of months ago to use that account for some vacation pictures, not realizing I had used that account to host the pictures in that thread. I thought I had used a different account for that, but I had a brain fart and I blew it.

But there are some great pictures in there of a bunch of sea lions sleeping in a big pile.

What I can't understand is what happened to the pictures on my computer. A few are still there, but most are gone, and I didn't delete them.

 

[Zonie]

Perhaps you moved them to a "special folder" so they wouldn't get lost?
I've been known to do that and then forget where the special folder is. :rotf:

To avoid that and to keep the photos I've reduced in size and quality so they transfer rapidly on the web, I created a special folder in "My Pictures" called "WEB". That's where all of the pictures were located when I uploaded them to my Photobucket account.

I bet their still on your computer, probably as a sub folder in the "Aunt Minnie's Birthday Pictures" folder. :rotf:

 

[1911nutjob]

I wasn't going to bother with the cups either, but I stopped at cabela's for supplies. The pickin's were slim, and I ended up with a kit containing cards, wad, and cups just to get the first two-the reloading supply shortages seem to be trickling over into bp out my way (maybe another topic for this forum). I'm planning on busting my cherry with this thing using 00, cause I have plenty of it on hand. I weighed out the pellets to reach an appropriate number, but it looks like I'll lose a few to space constraint with the cup. I'm thinking I'll try it both ways, and gauge the results, no pun intended.

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

There's no harm in experimenting. I've used #4s and #6 and 7 shot and found the small shot best mostly because there's more of it in a load. And it's best used as a small game gun anyway.

Carrying this pistol and a .50 caliber or bigger rifle or a fowler covers all the bases on a trek. Throw in some fishing line and I can eat well on a long walk.