Brown Bess Vent Liner?

Went shooting with an acquaintance with a Brown Bess he wants to sell.
Issue with it is a vent that was drilled out because someone told him it would help with the ignition issue he was having. (His real issue was synthetic power) So he drilled it out, with what appears to be close to 3/16".
Big enough so the 2f powder runs out of the hole when he tries to load it.
He has offered the gun to me at a price that is hard to say no to, SO......
Has anyone installed a vent liner in a Brown Bess (India replica)
From the measurements,
Bore is .75" Exactly (at the muzzle)
OD at the muzzle is .845
OD at the breech (across the vent location) is 1.165"
So subtracting the bore and divide by 2 means wall thickness at the breech is ~.2075"
Is this enough material to safely drill and install a vent liner?
The Pedersoli vent (8 x 1.25mm) I have for my Frontier measures .310" thick, so one would need to shave it down a bit. Is that going to be safe?

Hi,
You have plenty of wall thickness. I install Chambers stainless steel White lightning vent liners on all of the Brown Besses I've built and when I rework Pedersolis. The liner helps assure much more reliable ignition, which I consider a safety feature. That is particularly true on guns for re-enactors because they often have misfires and sometimes don't know it during events. Anyway, a 5/16" WL liner is perfect for a Bess. It has 5/16-32 threads, which will give you about 6 full threads engaged based on your thickness calculation. Install the liner and then drill out the hole to 5/64". That will give you excellent ignition both in reliability and speed. The liner virtually disappears on a bright barrel but as the barrel tarnishes the liner will show a little. In the photo below you can just barely see the touch hole, which has a liner.

This is a Ferguson rifle with a liner. You can see that it blends in with the barrel pretty well.

dave

Excellent! A great explanation and I really appreciate the pictures. They are truly worth a thousand words!
Thank you Dave.
I will get the liner(s) ordered this afternoon. I already have drill and tap in that pitch so this will be an easy one.
I will call the guy and go pick up the gun this afternoon as well.
The gun is an India replica with less than 20-30 shots out of it. He just got really frustrated and gave up.
For a C note and a 10 spot for parts, I think it's a pretty good deal, not that I need another Bess, just could not pass this up.
Think I will order 2 liners and put one in my current Bess although it is pretty reliable as is.

I would get the liner from Chambers, theirs are better than TOW. You can buy the oddball tap and drill off ebay for a fraction of what what Chambers charges for them.

Eric Krewson said:

I would get the liner from Chambers, theirs are better than TOW. You can buy the oddball tap and drill off ebay for a fraction of what what Chambers charges for them.

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I've seen that stated before. What is the difference between the two?
TOW also carries the odd tap.

The Chambers White Lightning vent has 32 thread per inch threads and comes with 1/4, 5/16 and 3/8 diameter threads.
It has a formed cavity on the inside of the bore end of the liner which is much larger than the actual vent hole. That cavity leaves a short distance to the outside for a rapid ignition. The shape of the cavity was developed by Chambers to aid in getting the black powder as close to the vent hole as possible. 1/4-32, 5/16-32 and 3/8-32 taps can be difficult to find.
Track of the Wolf sells Chambers White Lightning liners but you have to read the description to get one.


The regular vent liners sold by Track of the Wolf come in standard, national fine pitch thread sizes.
They also have a formed cavity on the bore end of the liner but it is not shaped quite like the White Lightning liners cavity.

IMO, when all is said and done, the regular TOTW liners work just about as good as the WL liner. Using one of these regular liners also gives you the option of using a nipple drum with a standard thread on it if you want to build a convertible rifle that can be changed from flint to percussion or percussion to flint. (I've built several of these.)

Hi Zonie,
Who wants to put a drum on a Brown Bess and I disagree about the performance of the standard liners versus the White Lightning. Moreover, the other liners will stick out like a sore thumb on a Brown Bess barrel whereas the WL liner is almost invisible.

dave

I was really thinking more about going with a 8-1.25mm liner as that is what both of my Pedersoli rifles use.
Fitting that to the $100 Bess I picked up this afternoon and probably the Bess I already have would really simplify the issue of spare parts. I have picked up spares already for the Frontier and picked up a 4 flute tap to clean the threads up on the used 45 I got off gunbreaker. As long as there is no safety issue, I plan to keep them all the same.

I checked eBay for 5/16 32 taps and they are around $5 shipped free.

Griz44Mag said:

I was really thinking more about going with a 8-1.25mm liner as that is what both of my Pedersoli rifles use.

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I'm sure you are aware, but the Pedersoli liner does have a hard shoulder which ideally it should be cut on a milling machine.

A lot of cheap taps are awful, and don't really have great thread engagement. Good ones will come in several thread tolerance choices. Might be worth a talk with Jim Chambers- I wouldn't be surprised he is selling a tap which matches better than a hardware store tap. a 32 T.P.I. thread has very little thread height. Personally I can't see going cheap on any tap.