Author Topic: 1864 Snider rifle project (Read 10297 times)

bkoenig · « **on:** March 01, 2011, 05:27:10 PM »

I just received the 1864 Snider I ordered from http://www.ima-usa.com/. For those who aren't familiar with obsolete, short-lived British military rifles from the 19th century, the Snider was an adaptation of the 1853 Enfield muzzleloading rifle that was issued to British troops and used in large numbers by both sides in the American Civil War. With the invention of cartridge ammunition a flip-open breech was added to the Enfield and the Snider rifle was born. It only saw a few years of service before being replaced by the Martini-Henry.

It uses a straight wall case and fires a .577 caliber bullet. Like the later .577/450 bottlenecked Martini Henry round that was its descendant, the original cases were made of hand rolled foil by orphans of British soldiers. It provided employment for the little urchins and kept Tommy well supplied with ammo, but obviously the quality was nothing like our modern ammunition. Assuming everything checks out I'll be making my cases out of resized 24ga brass shotgun shells. That's a lot cheaper than buying ready made cases at about $75 per 20. And yes, you can buy .577 Snider dies.

One of the variants of the Snider was the Nepal Snider. These were made under license in Nepal to British standards and are generally considered to be of nearly as good quality as a British made Snider. A few years back IMA found a huge cache of old rifles in Nepal and brought them to the U.S. for our enjoyment. My rifle is from what is known amongst collectors as the Nepal Cache.

The rifle arrived very well packed and missing no parts, as far as I can tell. It's covered in what appears to be either prehistoric tar or yak grease. The wood has very few dings or dents - the few it does have appear to be modern, probably from piling them into crates for the trip to America. You'll notice the lock has a bright area where the yakoline was scraped away. That's because a few genuine British Sniders were found mixed in, so the dealer obviously is checking to make sure those don't slip out.

Here it is out of the box, with bayonet. It's so long that with the bayonet fixed I couldn't fit the whole thing in the camera.

bkoenig · « **Reply #1 on:** March 01, 2011, 05:31:18 PM »

Another picture, showing the trapdoor breech:

bkoenig · « **Reply #2 on:** March 01, 2011, 05:31:57 PM »

And one more showing the lock. I have a lot of cleanup work to do, but the reports I'm reading of these mostly say they clean up very nice, and the bores tend to be like new under all the yeti sludge. I'll post more pictures as I make progress on it, and hopefully this summer the old Snider will be ready to roar again.

justsomeguy · « **Reply #3 on:** March 01, 2011, 05:39:54 PM »

Does it have any moving parts? It looks like it's frozen solid!

bkoenig · « **Reply #4 on:** March 01, 2011, 05:58:34 PM »

The hammer moves but doesn't lock back. From what I've read that's typical until you get the lock off and clean all the gunk out of it. The breech is gummed shut too. The good news is that all that grease and crud should have done a good job of protecting the gun from rust and rot. I'm going to start disassembling it tonight and we'll see what it looks like.

justsomeguy · « **Reply #5 on:** March 01, 2011, 06:03:40 PM »

How do you even clean something like that? Steel wool? I'd be afraid of damaging the screws trying to remove them. They are probably not available as replacement parts and would need to be custom made.

bkoenig · « **Reply #6 on:** March 01, 2011, 08:16:15 PM »

Very fine steel wool and solvent. I plan to strip the gunk off but leave the natural patina on the metal. From the little bit I did tonight it looks like it will have a nice brown speckled color.

Got it disassembled, the bore looks like it's almost new. The breech came open after a soak in PB penetrating oil. There are a couple small screws missing so I'll have to scrounge those up. The rest of the screws actually came out fairly easily, the trick is to use the correct size of screwdriver and go very slowly.

I found out why the lock won't hold at half or full cock. It's completely gummed up with ear wax from the Abominable Snowman, so the trigger bar doesn't engage the sear. It does hold just fine if I push it up and force it to engage.

justsomeguy · « **Reply #7 on:** March 01, 2011, 09:17:53 PM »

Were those rifles originally blued?

Are the springs still springy?

~~Where are you going to come up with a .577 cal. ball?~~
Will you cast your own? Not many moulds available. (a quick search only turned up one miniball mould at .578 dia.)

bkoenig · « **Reply #8 on:** March 01, 2011, 10:03:52 PM »

I'm not sure if they were originally blued. There appears to be some finish below the wood line, but that may be just gunk. The springs all seem to have held up well. One nice thing about this rifle is that other than the breech block it's the same as an 1853 Enfield. There are still parts being made to this day for that rifle. It's very popular with Civil War reenactors.

I plan to cast my own bullets for it. I already cast for my 45-70 so this will be nothing new. I've found a few moulds here and there, Dixie Gunworks has a few. I need to slug the bore and find out the exact size since they apparently can vary somewhat. Some people have reported good results with a .60 round ball, also. Another option if I can't find a mould that's quite big enough would be to paper patch the bullet.

justsomeguy · « **Reply #9 on:** March 02, 2011, 09:04:58 AM »

Quote

Another option if I can't find a mould that's quite big enough would be to paper patch the bullet.

Can you do that in a loaded cartridge?

RobertH · « **Reply #10 on:** March 02, 2011, 10:14:32 AM »

dude that looks awesome!! i can't wait to see how it turns out.

bkoenig · « **Reply #11 on:** March 02, 2011, 11:41:14 AM »

Quote from: justsomeguy on March 02, 2011, 09:04:58 AM

Can you do that in a loaded cartridge?

Yes, it's actually quite common among competitive BPCR shooters. You wrap a layer of paper around the bullet befor seating it in the case.

bkoenig · « **Reply #12 on:** March 02, 2011, 09:02:42 PM »

Here's an interesting part. I started cleaning the trigger guard and it has some Nepalese lettering on it. I'd like to think it says something cool like "Property of 5th Ghurka Regiment", but it probably says something like "Raju's momma is so fat her yak can't carry her."

A-FIXER · « **Reply #13 on:** March 03, 2011, 04:03:32 PM »

outstanding, great job....

ComputerCowboy · « **Reply #14 on:** March 03, 2011, 04:34:39 PM »

That is a pretty thing you have there. I have restored and preserved swords and would love to talk to you about bringing the beauty out of this weapon but also making sure to preserve it. Doing damage to something like this is like kicking out a 12th century stained glass window. I would even help but if you are like me you would rather do it yourself. Please dont use steel wool.

bkoenig · « **Reply #15 on:** March 03, 2011, 06:28:33 PM »

Thanks CC, if you have suggestions I'd love to hear them. I have worked on a couple old clunker guns before and it's a lot of fun. I've found very fine steel wool (#0000) actually does a good job of removing dirt and corrosion without removing any of the patina on the metal, as long as you don't get too aggressive with it. The last thing I want is to end up with shiney steel. The brass parts are actually already quite shiney underneath the dirt. An old toothbrush should do a good job of getting into any nooks and crannies like around the breech block and rear sight.

The stock has had some sort of hard black protective coating covering it. It's all over the wood, brass buttplate, screws, etc. Almost like it was dipped in something. Maybe it was. Once that's off I'll need to repair a couple minor splits in the stock. Nothing structural, but there are a few places such as one side of the barrel channel and in front of the lock that will need to be glued. Then, the wood is going to need as much oil as I can feed to it. It's extremely dry after being in storage for so long. I have a half gallon of tung oil waiting to be rubbed in. I've found actually using bare hands to rub the oil in helps the wood absorb more oil and results in a very smooth finish.

I gave the bore a good scrubbing and from what I can see it's basically in brand new condition. I wouldn't be surprised if this gun was never fired. At first I thought there was a little pitting, but it turned out to just be dirt. A 28ga shotgun brush and some patches cleaned it right up, and now it's very shiny with sharp lands and grooves. Now that the bore is clean I need to slug it and find out what size of bullet mould I need to order.

Wildgoose · « **Reply #16 on:** March 05, 2011, 12:05:37 PM »

I have got to be there when you fire that thing for the first time! There can not be anything else like the smell of burning black powder and yak grease in the morning! :tool:

NE Bull · « **Reply #17 on:** March 05, 2011, 02:07:45 PM »

Quote from: Wildgoose on March 05, 2011, 12:05:37 PM

I have got to be there when you fire that thing for the first time! There can not be anything else like the smell of burning black powder and yak grease in the morning! :tool:

Yeah, Ditto that!

bkoenig · « **Reply #18 on:** March 09, 2011, 05:33:17 PM »

I'll be sure to bring it to one of the vintage rifle matches so you guys can see it. I'll stick the bayonet on it and if I can't hit the target I'll run down range and stab it.

I have most of the gunk stripped off the metal parts. It seems like the entire assembled rifle was dipped in tar before putting it in storage. Mineral spirits wouldn't even touch the stuff, and it took several applications of paint stripper to soften it up enough that I could scrape it off. It turned out the rifle was actually unblued, in the white. This was fairly common for military arms of that time. I guess all the polishing required to keep them pretty gave the soldiers something to do and kept them out of trouble. The finish has aged to a grayish silver color. The barrel is actually pattern welded, and has a neat grain to it. Underneath the wood line there is some very minor pitting but nothing that would cause any problems.

Now the bad part. I found out the real reason the hammer wouldn't lock back was because the sear spring is broken and the sear itself is buggered up. I was able to bend the sear back into shape so it would hold, but I wouldn't trust it to be safe to shoot. Luckily, replacement sears and springs are readily available since it shares the same lock as the 1853 Enfield. Dixie Gun Works carries new production parts for this lock. I'll order those parts along with a bullet mould after I get around to slugging my bore. I'm not entirely sure how to measure a slug from a 3-groove barrel. Each land will have a groove directly opposite from it, so I don't think I'll be able to use calipers.

I found a used but like new set of .577 Snider dies on evilbay. They're 1 1/4" thread, so now I need to buy a press that will accept that size. Lee makes one that has a removable insert so you can use large bodied dies like .50 BMG and .577 Snider. If anyone sees a Classic Cast press for sale somewhere cheap let me know.

bkoenig · « **Reply #19 on:** March 14, 2011, 09:10:23 PM »

Ok, the metal parts are all cleaned, oiled, and ready for reassembly. The original bare metal finish has darkened considerably over the last 150 or so years, so it has a kind of mottled patina to it. The barrel has a kind of swirled look to it since it's pattern welded. I still have to order a new sear and sear spring, and the keeper screw for the breech block pin is missing. Not a big deal, but I'll have to track down something that will work as a suitable replacement. I'm sure it will require a lot of hand fitting, as will the sear & spring.

Here's a before cleaning picture of the back side of the lock. I don't have a mainspring vice, so I cleaned things up as best I could without disassembling it. Luckily it wasn't really dirty, just coated in grease.

The lock after cleaning:

Author Topic: 1864 Snider rifle project (Read 10297 times)

A-FIXER