Old musket barrel for ID

kronckew · 11th August 2015, 06:42 PM

sadly, they look cool, but had a nasty habit of corroding preferentially at the welds due to corrosive primers and powder, resulting in somewhat spectacular failure when they UN-spiraled, which inevitably happened with long use. or when someone tried converting them to more modern propellants.

those pretty english spiral wound breech loading doubles generally come with a warning NOT to fire them with anything approaching a modern cartridge, and probably should not be fired at all. the only saving grace was that when they failed they tended to not spray shrapnel all over the place and unless you had your hand in a wrong place, you might survive wondering why your multi-kilobuck purdy now looked like a spring.

11th August 2015, 06:42 PM	#16
kronckew Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Room 101, Glos. UK Posts: 4,215	sadly, they look cool, but had a nasty habit of corroding preferentially at the welds due to corrosive primers and powder, resulting in somewhat spectacular failure when they UN-spiraled, which inevitably happened with long use. or when someone tried converting them to more modern propellants. those pretty english spiral wound breech loading doubles generally come with a warning NOT to fire them with anything approaching a modern cartridge, and probably should not be fired at all. the only saving grace was that when they failed they tended to not spray shrapnel all over the place and unless you had your hand in a wrong place, you might survive wondering why your multi-kilobuck purdy now looked like a spring.