Author Topic: Baker Rifle (Read 13874 times)

chuckpa · « **Reply #45 on:** May 16, 2006, 04:46:37 PM »

I have heard that the black powder changed over the years and I was wondering how that might effect the twists and accuracy? Sir Michael has pointed out that to get accuracy from a reproduction Baker Rifle you have to use a different twist. Any thoughts on this?

chuckpa · « **Reply #46 on:** May 25, 2006, 05:16:12 PM »

Well I got my Baker Rifle today from Dixon's. It has a few dings in the stock and some gaps where the tennons come out and I think I can fix them. I'm sending it to Mr.Rayl tomorrow to get a new barrel. He is putting a 1:72 twist in it. He said that they fire the rifle and send a target when they return the Rifle. He said he should have it ready by the end of June.
Thanks for your help and sharing your project and resources.

Uncle Russ · « **Reply #47 on:** May 25, 2006, 07:09:27 PM »

Chuck.....Are you fellers with them Baker Rifles out to start a new trend in Muzzleloading? :rt th

That Puffer guy has me all hyped up, and I know little to nothing about the Baker, with the exception of the little bit of information you guys have exchanged here on the forum.

This is a bit off topic, but there was mention in an earlier post about powder being different, and currently available powders may require a different twist, by caliber, to perform as well as many of the older rifles did..........well, that little remark got me old gray matter working.... again.
For whatever reason, over the years, I have many times thought, "now if I just had some of that powder from way back when, then I might see a little different picture with all the front stuffers I have gone through".

Would you elaborate just a bit on what you know, or suspect, about the older powders? I feel quite sure their powders changed as much, or often, as ours have over the past 40 years, so let's pick a time frame of around 1820.
What properties do you think powder may have had from....say, 1820 to 1860 that we don't have today....or vice versa.

Good Luck with yer new Riflegun....(New guns are always fun.)

Russ...

Puffer · « **Reply #48 on:** May 25, 2006, 07:35:07 PM »

Quote from: "chuckpa"

Well I got my Baker Rifle today from Dixon's. It has a few dings in the stock and some gaps where the tennons come out and I think I can fix them. I'm sending it to Mr.Rayl tomorrow to get a new barrel. He is putting a 1:72 twist in it. He said that they fire the rifle and send a target when they return the Rifle. He said he should have it ready by the end of June.
Thanks for your help and sharing your project and resources.

:rofl
Ed Rayl will send you a target. ( I posted mine a while back.) He does GREAT work Do you have to replace the breech plug, sights etc ??

Did you take any pics

If so, please post

If I or anyone else can be of asst. just ask.

Puffer

Puffer · « **Reply #49 on:** May 25, 2006, 07:42:46 PM »

Quote from: "RussB"

Chuck.....Are you fellers with them Baker Rifles out to start a new trend in Muzzleloading? :rt th

That Puffer guy has me all hyped up, and I know little to nothing about the Baker, with the exception of the little bit of information you guys have exchanged here on the forum.[/i]".

Russ, if you ever SHOW up @ a shoot ( the next one I will be @ is Pacific Prim.) I will let you shoot mine Then you'll want one of your own. :lol sign

Puffer

Uncle Russ · « **Reply #50 on:** May 25, 2006, 08:14:19 PM »

Quote

Russ, if you ever SHOW up @ a shoot ( the next one I will be @ is Pacific Prim.) I will let you shoot mine Then you'll want one of your own.

Why ya ol' Goat! I've only missed one where I told ya I was going to try to be there, and then I couldn't make it.....and I let you know ahead of time that I couldn't make it......Uncle Russ ain't going to let ya down, not intentionally.
Get on yer mule and ride over and shoot with me some...exact same distance!........ I know, cause I measured it both ways! :lol: :rofl

Russ...

Puffer · « **Reply #51 on:** May 25, 2006, 08:26:00 PM »

Quote from: "RussB"

Quote
Russ, if you ever SHOW up @ a shoot ( the next one I will be @ is Pacific Prim.) I will let you shoot mine Then you'll want one of your own.

Why ya ol' Goat! I've only missed one where I told ya I was going to try to be there, and then I couldn't make it.....and I let you know ahead of time that I couldn't make it......Uncle Russ ain't going to let ya down, not intentionally.
Get on yer mule and ride over and shoot with me some...exact same distance!........ I know, cause I measured it both ways! :lol: :rofl

Russ...

Hey, that's not fair. Sir Michael won't be back until PPR ( if then. BUT If I show up @ your door step can I see it

Puffer

chuckpa · « **Reply #52 on:** May 25, 2006, 09:14:34 PM »

Russ
I was asking the question to find out if there was anybody out there that new about the old types of black powder. I was talking to Chuck Dixon of Dixons muzzleloading and we were talking about the lenght of barrels and he said well back then ( long barreled buccaner guns) they had mealed powder and they needed a long barrel to burn that type of powder to get velocity. I also read that the powder charges were reduced in our muskets after the Rev. War when the powder improved but I don't know how it improved. It is said that Mr. Dupont started making powder when he came over from France and was upset about the lack of consitent quality powder. I will try to do some research on the subject and see what I can come up with. In the meantime we may have someone on the forum that is knowledgeible in this area.

Uncle Russ · « **Reply #53 on:** May 25, 2006, 10:11:39 PM »

Puffer.... I made a little sumpin fer ya, actually a couple of weeks ago, as a matter of fact..... I'll try to get it to the Post Office this week.
(Mama Bear has been working my old butt off redoing the lanscape again. All work and no play makes ol' Uncle Russ a dull boy, dontcha know.)

Chuckpa I didn't mean to put ya out bud, I just thought maybe you knew something you could share with us.
Something tells me we have never had as good of quality of Black Powder as we have right now.....something else keeps asking. "are ya sure about tha?"... :rotf

Somehow, I just can't imagine stuffing 200gr Swiss, or Goex FFg. or FFFg down the bore of one of my .54, or .58cal. rifles today....It would not be a very efficient load IMHO.
Still yet, I have read where it was not all that uncommon in the old days, especially with the Buffalo Hunters.
Also, The rifles looked at as being the real Buffalo rifles, the 45-70, 45-90, 45-110, 50-70, etc......Is not a fact.
Truth of the matter is, the Buffalo were practically all gone by the time these rifles came on the scene. Taken by the outdated Rocklock, and Caplock that loaded from the front with powder available at the time.......see where I'm going with this?

Russ...

Puffer · « **Reply #54 on:** May 25, 2006, 10:35:17 PM »

Quote from: "RussB"

Puffer.... I made a little sumpin fer ya, actually a couple of weeks ago, as a matter of fact..... I'll try to get it to the Post Office this week.
(Mama Bear has been working my old butt off redoing the lanscape again. All work and no play makes ol' Uncle Russ a dull boy, dontcha know.)

Russ...

AWWW, youdn't have. On 2nd thought, is it Pink & are you shipping it in a "plain brown wrapper" ?? :rofl

Your friend, Puffer

Uncle Russ · « **Reply #55 on:** May 26, 2006, 11:00:52 AM »

Quote

On 2nd thought, is it Pink & are you shipping it in a "plain brown wrapper" ??

It ain't Pink!.....but it is in a "plain brown wrapper", and it ain't sumpin fer yer fashion show, it's fer one of yer rifleguns.

And, I ain't saying nuttin about the Paul Bunyan, not one single word! But that would be a good place to sell a bunch of rifles. :shock:

If I see ya, I see ya... Take care, ya ol' goat!

Uncle Russ...

chuckpa · « **Reply #56 on:** May 26, 2006, 08:45:53 PM »

Russ
I'm not put out at all, sorry if it sounded that way. You might want to check out the dates of the Buffalo Harvest. The Cartridge Rifles were in full swing and if you get a copy of " The Buffalo Harvest" Frank Mayer and Charles Roth you could check on page 41 where Mr. Mayer discusses the reason that he used English powder instead of American. Maybe this isn't the place for a Buffalo discussion but it does point out that various types of powder was around. I'm going to see if there is more information out there on the subject. I suspect that the rifle twists were predicated on the type of powder that was used at the time. It may explain why a different twist rate has to be used today in the Baker to get it to shoot accurately.

Quote from: "RussB"

Puffer.... I made a little sumpin fer ya, actually a couple of weeks ago, as a matter of fact..... I'll try to get it to the Post Office this week.
(Mama Bear has been working my old butt off redoing the lanscape again. All work and no play makes ol' Uncle Russ a dull boy, dontcha know.)

Chuckpa I didn't mean to put ya out bud, I just thought maybe you knew something you could share with us.
Something tells me we have never had as good of quality of Black Powder as we have right now.....something else keeps asking. "are ya sure about tha?"...

Somehow, I just can't imagine stuffing 200gr Swiss, or Goex FFg. or FFFg down the bore of one of my .54, or .58cal. rifles today....It would not be a very efficient load IMHO.
Still yet, I have read where it was not all that uncommon in the old days, especially with the Buffalo Hunters.
Also, The rifles looked at as being the real Buffalo rifles, the 45-70, 45-90, 45-110, 50-70, etc......Is not a fact.
Truth of the matter is, the Buffalo were practically all gone by the time these rifles came on the scene. Taken by the outdated Rocklock, and Caplock that loaded from the front with powder available at the time.......see where I'm going with this?

Russ...

Bigsmoke · « **Reply #57 on:** May 27, 2006, 12:44:02 PM »

Quote

Somehow, I just can't imagine stuffing 200gr Swiss, or Goex FFg. or FFFg down the bore of one of my .54, or .58cal. rifles today....It would not be a very efficient load IMHO.
Still yet, I have read where it was not all that uncommon in the old days, especially with the Buffalo Hunters.

Russ,
It would seem to me that you are totally correct on that regard. Your .54 or .58 more than likely is rifled to shoot a PRB with a 70-100 grain load accurately, probably 1:66 or 1:72. With the 200 grain charge of anything in there, your ball would come bouncing out of there like a BB in a sewer pipe. Now, if you were to slow your rifling waaaaaaaaaaaay down, sure you could shoot those charges with relative accuracy. Of course, the next question is, would you want to. About the only American designed rifle that you could comfortably shoot charges like that is the JJ Henry trade rifle or maybe some of the PA schools. Nice design. But a Hawken or a Leman. Good grief, I hate to think of it and I shudder and flinch when I do.

Regarding the ability of the Baker Rifle to shoot accurately with the different rates of twist, I am not sure where to go with that. The only thing I can think of is that the Brits possibly chose to think that the rifle should shoot with a particular powder charge. Period! Well, maybe it needed more or less powder, but they were too inflexible to experiment? Or the wrong ball/patch combo was being used. I don't know, but it sure doesn't make sense to me. Or did the test rifle have a flawed barrel? Or...

?

Big Smoke

Uncle Russ · « **Reply #58 on:** May 27, 2006, 01:49:01 PM »

Big Smoke....it seems we are on the same train of thought here.

And, It seems all this provides great exercise in my thought processes, while at the same time, I don't seem to get anywhere with it.... :shock:

There are so many "unanswered" questions....things that are not in print, things that were simply overlooked because at the time it was "a self understandable point"....everybody knew it, so why bother to remark on it....I mean, gun powder was simpy gun powder, what else was there to say about it? All twist for roundball were "slow", some just slower than others, why remark on "why" we chose this, or that twist?

Who's to say the maker of the old rifles knew, or even cared, about something to be known as the "Greenhill formula" for establishing twist rates?.....
Why not just put as slow a twist as possible, that provided the best possible accuracy, with the largest reasonable charge, and call it anything you want to?.....
Did they even dream that 200 years later a group would come along and try to emulate that very same thing?.....
Was the twist of 1:48 actually used by Sam & Jake because it was the best? Was it really the only rifling machine available West of the Mississippi River? Or, was it understood by the "in-crowd" of that shooting era that 1:48 was truly the best, and the machine was actually "ordered" by the Hawken Brothers?...

Do ya see where I'm going here?
We don't really know all these things, but we would like to know, so in the meantime we speculate until we end up with something that appears to be the "most" correct answer.

It is my understanding that Swiss is the closest thing we have to a "Sporting Grade" powder today. And I certainly would not want to shoot 200grs. Swiss in a .58 cal barrel made from the technology available 150 years ago....No matter what the twist!
Is that from the lack of knowledge of the technology available then? .....Probably so.

I apologize to the Baker boys for a couple of these posts, as they are not really in line with the main subject matter. However, it is so easy to tie these thoughts in that comes almost naturally.

Russ...

Joel/Calgary · « **Reply #59 on:** May 28, 2006, 01:47:50 AM »

Quote from: "bigsmoke"

First, Forsythe used a unit of measurement for powder charges called a drachm. That is defined as: Noun 1. drachm - a unit of apothecary weight equal to an eighth of an ounce or to 60 grains

. . .

Description Gauge Twist Charge Point blank Extreme range
Plain sphere 14 8'8" 3 1/2 70 yards 250 yards
Plain sphere 14 12' 0" 5 95 yards 200 yards

So, 14 gauge we would call .69 caliber, his first charge would be 210 grains and his 2nd charge would be 300 grains.

Ahhh... but if he was actually using the avourdupois dram of 1/16 of an avoirdupois ounce, or 27.34 grains, the charges would be only the much more reasonable 96 grains and 137 grains. Given the inconsistent spelling usage of the time, this is reasonable, especially as it is this "dram" in which most powder charges were specified in the sources that I've read.

On another matter, the only major systematic improvement I have heard about in powder making after the Revolution was an improvement in pressing the "cake" to form denser grains. IIRC, this happened somewhere in the first quarter of the 19th century. You might find this interesting reading:

http://www.thunder-ridge-muzzleloading. ... Knight.htm

Joel

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