Hm.
Living over here the -59/-63 is the only permit exempt version available to us so i opted to take a little different,more scenic,route.
Now. Mind you. I keep a basically complete workshop since my racing days why lathes,bridgeports,TIG welders and what not isn´t an issue.
Ditto for high end materials.
Anyways. Leakage. Yep. Check...
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That thing there..wut? Well..
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I made cartridges out of shrink sleeve in short. "end caps" out of curling paper glued to the shrink sleeve.
Have pulled this stunt for a French made Chassepot previously,where the sealed chamber of that rifle basically leaves the chamber clean after firing,while with the Sharps due to the breech leaking...well,not so much.
Idea works it´s just that you have to clean the chamber out by hand for each shot,removing the remaining shrink sleeve.
So. That idea hit the bin.
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So. To hell with it. That there is 28ga shotshell brass. Trimmed that and in turn made a tool to crimp the entries of them.
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These rifles carry a chamber insert. In some these inserts are floating,in others they´re not. In the case of this approx 30" barrel rifle..not. So barrel tossed into the lathe and a short while later..insert gone gone gone..to be replaced by that there in the pic. Insert is made out of SIS 2541 Swedish tool room steel. In short it´ll take ANYTHING you toss at it.
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Right. New insert in place,and with the formed 28ga brass inserted. Note the small cutout high left,which is the "extractor point". To keep at least some with the original idea i just use a small screwdriver to yank the fired cartridges out of there.
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Indeed the bullets used since is more or less all so called ringtails. Got this mold produced by LEE off of e-Bay,some enthusiast marketing the thing. Casts rather true to the original slugs alright.
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So? What gives here? Turning an insert like this is simple enough and i´ve glued mine in place. Loctite´s cylindrical fastening. Works great! What can i say? Fitting is imperative though,and comes down to having your numbers in order. Leakage has been stopped dead in its tracks,and the original Conant seal (the floating piece of the breech block) still does service seeing that i use it as a percussion cap rifle still. Ie;the primer pockets of them 28ga shells are left open and thus the rifle is still legal,albeit sporting brass cartridges.
What this has brought is basically a very powerful 54-120 cartridge rifle,and one that´s rather accurate to boot.
To the point where i´ve fabbed an optics rail for it even,which can be equipped with whatever glass wanted really.
Main point being that the rifle´s accurate at distances my 54yr old eyes are not. So...
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Here the tool to "crimp" the cartridges. Have started working on a "regular" set of loading dies to make the whole thing happen on my progressive eventually,but that there suffice for now at least.
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Here fellow club member and friend,Stefan,putting the thing through its paces. Looks a bit awkward with that compact upon there but..whatever makes me see the target.
Now.
That brought forward a different issue,cause that there optics sufficed for let´s say 300 meters and the issue is that the rifle will make that and then some with ease. So..it being up the wall or not i´ve opted to,for now,hand it a tube that hands me 16x,which suffice at 600.
Down the road i´ll find me a 10x or 12x Unertl or Litschert to toss ontop of it.
