Sunday, April 6, 2025

Range Report 6APR2025: Trapdoor Gallery Cartridges and .45-70-500

 Today I shot the course of fire with gallery cartirdges recommended by Stanhope Blunt in his 1889 Firing Regulations for the U.S. Army.  In addition, I shot three tables of fire with historically correct recreations of the M-1881 .45-79-500 cartridge used in the last iteration of the Springfield Trapdoor Rifle.

Gallery cartridge design after Pitman's Notes vol. 3 p. 98.
Gallery Shooting
Gallery cartridges are made by adding 7 grains of rifle powder (in this case, Swiss 2F) under a .454 round ball weighing 141 grains that had been coated in bullet grease.  As the drawing above shows, the bullet is pressed down onto the powder.  In my case, I put a card under the ball to prevent the grease from contaminating the powder during storage (you can see where some of the cards hit the target in the photo below).

In Blunt's book, after soldiers had gone through musketry instruction they would be taken to a gallery range where they would get practice using their sight settings while shooting at short range (17 yards).  They would fire three sets of five shots at a target like the one below.  The first five were shot standing offhand using the 200-yard sight setting (the lowest on the 1884 et seq. rifles) aiming at the bull using a 6:00 hold; then they would fire five more kneeling or sitting using the 300-yard setting and aiming 6 in. below the bull; and 5 more prone using the 500-yard setting while aiming at a spot 10.25 in. below the bull. The targets should be 7 in. tall and 6 in. wide, with a bull of one inch surrounded by rings at 3 and 5 inches around it.  Scoring was 5 points for a bullseye; 4 points for a center; 3 points for an inner; and 2 points for an outer (which is anywhere in the black rectangle of the target).

Gallery target setup.
I recreated this exercise in full today as exactly as I could as shown in the photo below.  Note that all fifteen rounds pretty much made one giant hole, making scoring almost impossible, but there are no bullseyes and all the hits are either in the center or inner.  What look like hits below it were made by the cards hitting the paper.

Table One: Gallery fire.

Closeup of the Gallery target.

I think it is safe to say that this is a far better than "passing" score (although Blunt does not give a minimum), and that my recreation of the gallery cartirdges worked very well.

.45-70-500 Practice
After shooting the Gallery evolution, I next turned to shooting M-1881 cartridges.  These are exact reproductions of the last military version used with the Springfield Trapdoor Rifle.  They have .45-caliber 500-grain flat-based, round-nosed bullets over 70 grains of rifle powder (Swiss 2F in my case).  I have achieved a muzzle velocity with these bullets that is within 1/100th of a percent of the originals as recorded by the Ordnance Department reports of the period.  To see how I make them, go HERE.

My recreation of the M-1881 cartridge.
For scoring, I used the String Test system commonly used in the 19th century.  Regular readers of this blog will be sick of this by now, but for anyone who isn't, you can learn more about this system HERE.

Table Two
In Table Two, I shot 10 rounds at 50 yards from a rest.  Note the blue diamond below the black bullseye--this was my aiming point.  As the photo below makes clear, most of the rounds went through the same hole, indicating marvelous precision in this excellent rifle.

Table Two.
Closeup of Table Two; note that most of the bullets went through the same hole.
10 rounds
String: 24.5 in.
String Test: 2.4 in./round

Table Three
In Table Three, I shot at 100 yards, but the target had no mark on it to use in aiming off, which resulted in "stringing" of the rounds up and down the target due to the fact that I had to aim at a blank spot below the bull by estimation, and had no mark to allow me to do so precisely.  I shot this table from a sitting unsupported position, so obviously accuracy suffered from my shaking hands and bad eyesight.

Table Three.
9 rounds (one would not feed)
String: 33.0 in.
String Test: 3.7 in./round.

Table Four
In Table Four I shot 15 rounds at my recreation of a British Snider 3rd-class target (I haven't printed up any of the ones Blunt depicted yet) which helped somewhat with aiming off.  This was also shot at 100 yards from a seated unsupported position.  I was very pleased with this table of fire as getting a String Test below 3 inches at 100 yards is something I have not achieved before with any black-powder rifle.

Table Four.

15 rounds
String: 41 in.
String Test: 2.7 in./round

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Historical Shooting with the Springfield Trapdoor Rifle


I am excited to announce that I have just published the next book in my Historical Shooting series, entitled Historical Shooting with the Springfield Trapdoor Rifle.  As with the other books in the series, this is not about the history of the Trapdoor (although I do cover the subject at a high level for context) nor a military history of the period, but is, rather, a book about shooting these rifles as historically as possible.

The hobby of historical shooting helps us learn about the past in a different way, by collecting and shooting antique or re-production firearms in a manner as close as possible to the way they were used in their days of glory. The book starts with a brief history of the rifle and its ammunition and an overview of some of the uniforms and equipment associated with it, then dives deep into making historically correct ammunition and the packaging for it, the musketry theory of the period, ballistics, training, the use of the sights, and gives a detailed explanation of how to shoot the rifle the way it was used in period.

The book is perfect-bound soft cover in an 8.5x11 inch format.  It is 196 pages in length and has many full-color photographs along with dozens of charts and diagrams.  It has been published through Lulu.com, an on-demand publisher, but will shortly also be available from many online retailers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and others after it has had time to work through their procurement process, but that will be several weeks after the date of this announcement.

The book can be purchased immediately from Lulu.com (my preferred vendor since I make a bit more from them) by clicking on the following link:
https://www.lulu.com/shop/hugh-knight/historical-shooting-with-the-springfield-trapdoor-rifle/paperback/product-e75nqpz.html?page=1&pageSize=4

As an independent author not affiliated with any of the major publishing houses, I would really appreciate it if anyone who reads and finds value in this book would please leave a review about it, that really helps with books like this.

Here is a preview of some of the pages from the book to give a sense of what it’s like.



Thursday, October 24, 2024

Where to buy Hugh Knight's Books


It occurred to me that it would be useful to have a single linked page that I can give people to show them where to get all of my books.  I can provide a link for each book individually, but there's no single location that shows links for all of them because of the way they're sold.  They can, of course, be purchased from major online retailers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble and can be found by simply searching for the name of the book, but that requires someone to know the book exists before looking for it.  In addition, it helps me out for people to buy the books from Lulu.com, the publisher, so I wanted to be able to give all the links to purchase the books there, as well.  To that end, I will post links here to each of my books individually on Lulu.com and Amazon so that potential purchasers can link directly to them.

Historical Shooting with Civil War Cavalry Arms

To purchase from Lulu.com, click HERE.

To Purchase from Amazon.com click HERE.

Historical Shooting with the Snider-Enfield Rifle

To purchase from Lulu.com click HERE.

To Purchase from Amazon.com click HERE.

Historical Shooting with the P-53 Enfield Rifle

To purchase from Lulu.com click HERE.

To Purchase from Amazon.com click HERE.

Making Combustible Revolver Cartridges

To purchase from Lulu.com click HERE.

To Purchase from Amazon.com click HERE.

Historical Shooting with the Springfield Trapdoor Rifle


To Purchase from Lulu.com click HERE.

To purchase from Amazon click HERE.

Friday, September 27, 2024

Making Combustible Revolver Cartridges, by Hugh T. Knight, Jr.

I am excited to announce that I have just published a new book entitled Making Combustible Revolver Cartridges.  The book is not a historical survey of revolver cartridges—for that Roundball to Rimfire remains the critical work—but rather a “how to” guide showing how to make ammunition for cap and ball revolvers and the packaging for it.  In it, I demonstrate how to recreate five different kinds of historically accurate combustible cartridges for cap and ball revolvers, including nitrated paper cartridges, skin cartridges, and compressed powder cartridges.  I also show how to make a variety of different kinds of cartridge packets for carrying those cartridges, just as it was done during the nineteenth century.  In addition, the book explores casting bullets, black powder choices and measurement, bullet grease, and more!  Lavishly illustrated with almost 200 pictures and with highly detailed, step-by-step directions, this book is a must for any reenactor or black powder enthusiast.

The book is perfect bound soft cover in an 8.5x11 inch format.  It is 146 pages in length and has many full-color photographs.  It has been published through Lulu.com, an on-demand publisher, but will shortly also be available from many online retailers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and others after it has had time to work through their procurement process, but that will be several weeks after the date of this announcement.

The book can be purchased immediately from Lulu.com (my preferred vendor since I make a bit more from them) by clicking on the following link:
https://www.lulu.com/shop/hugh-knight/making-combustible-revolver-cartridges/paperback/product-w4evg2r.html?page=1&pageSize=4

As an independent author not affiliated with any of the major publishing houses, I would really appreciate it if anyone who reads and finds value in this book would please leave a review about it, that really helps with books like this.

Here is a preview of some of the pages from the book to give a sense of what it’s like.

Saturday, September 21, 2024

Range Report 21SEP2024: Testing Hazard-Style Compressed Powder Cartridges

I took my shiny new Hazard compressed-powder cartridges to the range today intending to do a deep-dive analysis of their ballistics.  Unfortunately, a strong gust of wind lifted my chronograph off the ground and broke the tripod, so I couldn’t do much muzzle velocity testing.  I got five good readings before the tripod died, as shown below.  These are Hazard compressed-powder charges with .44-caliber Johnston & Dow bullets and varnished with two heavy coats of a 2:1 mixture of acetone and nitrocellulose glue.  They were made with 25 grains of Swiss 3F powder.  Compare this to my previous results with paper cartridges using a comparable load, which had an average MV of over 800 fps.

1. 499
2. 429
3. 440
4. 313
5. 477
Average: 2,158/5= 432 fps with a spread of 186 fps.

My current thinking is that the heavy layer of varnish may have slowed the combustion and thus reduced the MV, or else the compression of the powder means that the individual grains can’t deflagrate as fast as loose powder, again, thus reducing the MV.  I also made a batch using precisely the same load but varnished with two thinner layers of clear nail polish, which isn’t as thick as the nitrocellulose mixture, and had hoped to see if that made any difference in MV, but obviously the equipment prevented me from being able to determine that.  I shot those in Table of Fire Two.

Next time, I will take three sets, one with the nitrocellulose varnish, one with the clear nail polish, and one with no varnish at all.  By comparing them with a fresh batch of paper cartridges the answer should be clear.

Both batches shot fairly well given that the revolver is an Uberti Colt New Model Army, which is significantly less accurate than my Pietta Remington NMA, but I usually get a string test of around 2 to 2.5 in./rd. with a similar load in paper cartridges.  All rounds were shot standing offhand at 15 yards using a 6:00 hold.  There are only five shots in Table of Fire Two because one of the cartridges was damaged.  Note:  Ubertis suck.

The cartridges were a joy to load since they don’t put any material on the heel of the bullet and thus fit better into the chambers than paper cartridges which have a layer of paper on the heel.

Table of Fire One: Nitrocellulose Varnish
String: 13.25 in.
Rounds: 6
String Test: 2.21 in./rd.
(The blue tape marks hits from a range neighbor who wasn’t paying attention.)

Table of Fire Two: Clear Nail Polish
String: 15.5 in.
Rounds: 5
String Test: 3.1 in./rd.
(Note the red X—that was a burn mark from an unknown source, not a bullet hole.)

I also tested both .44- and .36-caliber skin cartridges, but honestly, they performed no differently from paper cartridges. I will write more about them when I can include MV results, but suffice it to say they are also very easy to load and fire.


Thursday, September 19, 2024

Using a Stadiometer to Estimate Distance

Introduction
The most important factors in military long-distance marksmanship, after learning to load and fire a rifle, were aiming and judging distance.  If a soldier didn’t know how to use and adjust his sights he would never hit his target, but as or more importantly, if he didn’t know how to judge the distance to his target he wouldn’t be able to set his sights correctly no matter how well he understood the mechanics of doing so, and at any range past 200 yards he was very likely to miss no matter how perfect his sight picture.

Soldiers spent a great deal of time training in distance estimation using techniques based on the appearance of targets at various distances, but in this article we will discuss a tool used in period for estimating distance using trigonometric principles called, among other things, a “stadium range finder,” or a “stadiometer.”

Trajectory
 In order to shoot well it is necessary to understand what bullets do. The slow speed of black powder rifle bullets and their heavy weights produced large, rainbow-like trajectories. With modern firearms we expect nearly flat trajectories, but black powder weapons had much more extreme parabolas. This means it is necessary to understand the bullet’s path and to judge the distance well in order to make a good hit.

The line of fire is a straight line extending through the centre of the barrel, indefinitely produced.  The line of sight is a straight line passing through the middle of the notch of the rear-sight and the top of the front-sight. A ball describes a curved line in its flight, which line is called the trajectory. When fired from a gun, the ball crosses above the line of sight after going a certain distance,—according to the arm used,—it crosses below the line of sight: this point is called the point-blank. Suppose the point-blank of your carbine to be one hundred yards: to hit an object at that distance, aim at it; if the object is closer, aim below it; if farther off, aim above it. (Congdon 1864 pp. 34-35.)

Every weapon, and every load used with that weapon, will have a different trajectory, so it is important to understand the specific trajectory of one’s own rifle and ammunition in order to learn to use the weapon well.


Point Blank
The idea of the point blank is important for good black powder shooting but is often misunderstood today; people mistakenly think “point blank” means “so close you can’t miss.”  As Congdon said, the bullet trajectory crosses the line of sight twice, once when it first leaves the muzzle and a second time when it drops down to cross the line of sight again at a farther point, and it is this second point that is the point blank.

Thus, when using adjustable sights, every sight setting will have a different point blank; “by the use of the hausse or raised sight, the number of points-blank are increased” (Heth 1862 p. 18), so when using the rear sight with the back sight folded down the point blank of many mid-nineteenth-century rifles is 100 yards, but if the slider on the back sight is set for, for example, 500 yards, then the point blank is 500 yards (assuming the use of government ammunition—changing the bullet or load will throw this off).  Understanding the point blank when shooting modern rifles is less important because of their flat trajectories, but it is far more so when shooting black-powder firearms with their highly curved trajectories. 

The Dangerous Space
The dangerous space (called the “margin” in British sources) is the area from “first catch” to “first graze” at any particular sight setting.  First catch is the range at which a bullet fired at a given sight setting will hit a standing man at the top of his head, and first graze is the range at which that same bullet would hit a man on his foot.  Thus, the dangerous space is the range over which a bullet would hit an enemy somewhere from the top of his head to his foot when aiming at his waist (which is where soldiers were taught to aim) with the back sight set to the correct range.

At normal rifle ranges the trajectory will pass over an average soldier’s head for quite some distance (e.g., when shooting the Pattern 1853 Enfield the apex of the trajectory when shooting at 600 yards was more than 25 feet from the ground), so knowing the dangerous space is quite important.  With black powder rifles dangerous spaces start very wide, but at longer ranges the space shrinks dramatically because of the parabolic nature of the bullet trajectories.  As this demonstrates, the ability to estimate range is critical for achieving hits at longer ranges.

With the Enfield musket’s back sight set for 600 yards and the weapon fired at a target 565 yards away the target would be hit in the head, whereas if the target was at 600 yards he would be hit at the waist (the point blank), while if the target was at 635 yards he would be hit on the feet.  If the target was closer than 565 yards or if he was farther than 635 yards, he would not be hit at all.  Thus, if the back sight on a P-53 Enfield is set for 600 yards, a target would be hit somewhere from his head to his feet within a 70-yard space; this is the “dangerous space” for that sight setting with that weapon.  At 300 yards the dangerous space for the P-53 was 145 yards, but at 600 yards it shrank to a mere 70 yards, meaning that to have any chance of hitting an enemy at that range the soldier had to be able to estimate the range to within 70 yards (Walker 1864 p. 131).  This demonstrates how critical was the need to be able to judge distance accurately.

After Walker 1864 p. 131.

Using a Stadiometer
The stadiometer or “stadium rangefinder” is a device used for estimating distances based upon the principle of similar triangles. This means that, for a triangle with a given angle, the ratio of opposite side length to adjacent side length (tangent) is constant. Thus, if you know the height of an object you can estimate the range to that object because the ratio of its height to the distance at which it lies (which form the horizontal and vertical legs of a right triangle) will be a constant.

After Walker 1864 p. 147.

Several texts of the period give detailed instructions for using stadiometers, including Busk, Heth, and Walker, among others.  In general, few individual soldiers probably would have had them (although Heth suggested giving silver ones as prizes in company shooting contests), so they would more than likely have belonged primarily to officers.

To use a stadiometer, put the attached string in your mouth (or at the eye, or on the tip of the nose, depending upon the source) and extend the device to the fullest extent of the string.  Busk said the string should be 25 inches long (p. 97), but you actually need to calibrate it by checking a partner at a known distance.  Look through the opening to see the target and hold the unit so that the upper edge of the opening is at the top of the target’s head, then move the slide (on models that have one) up until it is at the target’s feet; if the device doesn’t have a slider, you just find where the target fits in the gap. The approximate distance to the target can then be read from the scale engraved on the side of the stadiometer.

An extremely crude representation of a stadiometer.  This should not be taken as accurate, nor to scale, and is only intended to show how to use such devices.  Look through the opening and move the slider (when available, not all had them) until it just contains the target figure and read the range in yards from the sale.  In this case, the range is 100 yards.

After Walker 1864 p. 148.

Note that most original devices had two scales, one for infantry and one for cavalry. They were calibrated to assume that infantrymen are six feet in height while mounted cavalrymen are eight feet. Naturally, in real life the target may be taller or shorter than exactly this height, so this is only an approximation.

This example was taken from Busk (p. 97) and represents a fairly crude device which simply has a triangle cut into the plate with a scale engraved on it.

After Busk 1860 p. 97.

The next device is also pictured in Busk and shows a more sophisticated device with a slider for getting a more precise estimate.  It was manufactured by Holtzappfel & Co. in London and was also sold to the Frankford Arsenal in the U. S. for use in our Civil War (Huggett 2023 p. 163).

Drawing after Busk 1860 p. 97.
Photograph courtesy Jon Huggett; used by permission.

This next unit was manufactured by Geo. W. Simmons & Bro. of Philadelphia, PA. and is very similar to the drawing below it from Heth.


After Heth 1862 pl. 7.

The final device was made by Chadburn & Co., an optical maker in Liverpool, England and was patented in 1860.  It is different in having cut outs for each range and not having a slider.  Note that it has two holes; a right-handed person would put the string into the hole on the right, and vice-versa.

After Huggett 2023 p. 162; used by permission of the author.

Modern Reproductions
Stadiometers were ingenious tools, and we are very fortunate to have several good reproductions available today that shooters can experiment with in order to get a better feel for historical shooting.  There are three modern reproductions of which I am aware, although period texts showed more designs than this.

My Holztapffel-style stadiometer (see below) is a crude copy of the style shown in Busk and others sold by Cash Manufacturing (q.v.), but this one does not include a scale for cavalry.


The next reproduction is a copy of the style used during the Civil War as pictured by Heth and was purchased from Capandball.com (q.v.).  The chain and toggle was intended for attaching to the user’s button hole for carrying.

Finally, my Chadburn-style stadiometer is a faithful copy of the original shown above and was manufactured by Jon Huggett (q.v.).


Works Cited
Busk, Hans. Hand-Book for Hythe: Comprising a Familiar Explanation of the Laws of Projectiles, and an Introduction to the System of Musketry, now Adopted by all Military Powers. London: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1860.

Congdon, James A. Congdon’s Cavalry Compendium. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1864.

Heth, Henry. A System of Target Practice for the Use of Troops When Armed with the Musket, Rifle-Musket, Rifle, or Carbine. New York: D. Van Norstrand, 1862.

Huggett, Jon.  Knowing The Enfield – Pattern 1853 to 1865. Volume 1.  United Kingdom, Privately Published, 2023.

Walker, Arthur. The Rifle; its Theory and Practice. Westminster: J. B. Nichols and Sons, 1864.

Sources
Ted Cash Mfg.: www.tdcmfg.com/product-page/range-finder

Capandball.com: www.etsy.com/listing/815854052/us-arsenal-stadia-19th-century-range

John Huggett stadiometer: www.curiouscasper.co.uk/product/chadburns-rifle-distance-gauge/

Range Report 6APR2025: Trapdoor Gallery Cartridges and .45-70-500

 Today I shot the course of fire with gallery cartirdges recommended by Stanhope Blunt in his 1889 Firing Regulations for the U.S. Army .  I...