Narain Jagannath Sikligar 12ga Double???

[Goshawk]

Attached is a few pic’s of a smoothbore a picked a few weeks ago. I cannot find any info on it and was hoping someone on here would be able to help me out.

From the pic’s, it looks like its in pretty bad shape but I cleaned the rust off, pinned the cracks, cleaned it, re-tapped to accept 5/16X24 musket and #11 nipples. It looks much better now”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦LOL

I took it to my buddy’s place and began proofing it. We secured the gun with a couple of B-chord’s to a few tires and started shooting. (I was able to shoot the **** out of an old garbage can while it was tied to the tires”¦”¦.fun) I only went to 90grs ff BP with .690RB and 1 ¼ shot. At 90grs I found another crack open in the stock that I missed when I was repairing the others ”¦..so I stopped. On the bottom of the bbls they are stamped ”“Proofed to 89grs of BP””you can see it in the pics.

I started with 60grs and was able to shoot 3 shots into a little under 2” @32yds.
The group was about 2”low and 2” left of center. The rt bbl shot just as good, but was a about 7” low and 4” rt.

There is just a single gold bead on the front for now but I will be changing that soon.

One thing I noticed as I increased the powder charge the groups started to move lower??? I went up to 75grs in 5gr increments. Accuracy was still good.
Once we knew where the gun was shooting, we started to shoot pc’s wood and some 8”X8” pressured treated blocks. We shot a few balls into a dirt bank to see what kind of penetration we would get”¦..just for fun. What we did notice is that a few balls seemed to go a little deeper at 60grs that with 75grs”¦??? With the 75grain loads, the balls were flattened out more, more frontal area, so I guess it lead to less penetration. Noting serious here it was just for fun. I will eventually shoot into wet newspaper when time permits but from what have seen, I would have no problem busting a deer or even a black bear with one of those balls. It blew the hell out of the blocks of wood and my buddy’s just could not believe it.
My friends and I are avid shooters/hunters/reloaders/bullet casters etc. and I swage bonded core bullets for my .430-dia wildcats. The point here is that this gun was just plain fun shooting. We were loading one bbl. with shot the other with a ball. Busting wooden blocks and shooting flying water bottle’s”¦”¦”¦”¦..FUN.

My loads were put together as follows”¦”¦”¦.powder, card wad, ½” fiber wad w/wonder lube, .010 patch w/wonder lube,.690 PLRB.

The bores mic at .718 each even though the pics show .719 and .710. The barrels must have been shortened.

The balls were not very snug and could be started just by pushing them down with your finger. I picked up some thicker patch mat. .018 that I will try next time out.

I read some info. by Sam Fadala in one of his recent books about filing the muzzles to move the groups around/regulating the bbls”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦.???? I have to try and locate it again.

Take care
.690RB

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

Sikligar has been making guns for some time now, most of dubious quality. Be careful.

 

[MSW]

wow- talk about a blast from the past!!

i bought one of those when i was in college, probably in 1973 or 1974. it was through a catalogue, and when it came i was impressed with the stock- the species of which i've never been able to identify. some years later i was able to actually fire it, which turned out to be something of a dissapointment, inasmuch as it claimed to be 12 guage but wqs really much closer to 14, and when fired it produced some leakage, aparently from between the barrels.

the stock was so pretty i never had the heart to sell it, and since it's unsafe to shoot, i probably wouldn't get much for it anyway, but it's still cool to look at.

glad to year that yours is a shooter- good luck with it!!

msw

 

[Goshawk]

Russ,
I definitely am not going to push this one! I am perfectly happy shooting 60 to 70grs of ffg bp. It seemed to be a safe range in my gun. With that being said, 60grs will be charge for my RB’s. It was impressive how the RB’s destroyed the wooden blocks at 32yds.

MSW,
The stock and metal are quit fancy”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦”¦..LOL. It did clean up quit a bit and the pics I posted were before I did any cleanup & work to it.


Thanks for the input.
690RB

 

[paulvallandigham]

I suggest you use light shot loads in that gun rather than the RBs. Stick to 1 oz. loads and 2-2 1/2 drams of powder( 55-70 grains grains). You will find that the patterns are good for the range you can shoot a cylinder bore gun.

The stock is the question mark, but I suspect its old Asian wood- possibly teak, and it might be worth the expense to have someone cut you a new stock using the existing one as a template or model, on a pattern lathe. Some of those woods, as happens with wood from S. America, often, dry out in the colder, dryer N.American Continent, and begin to fall apart after a few years. If its 20 years old or more, it should be no wonder that it is developing cracks with normal usage. As long as you are fairly nice to the gun and don't try to turn it into a magnum elephant gun, you can get good service out of it for rabbits, squirrels, pheasants, and even doves.

Dick Greensides at Pecatonica River does that kind of thing. There are other stockers who do it, also. Look for someone close to you if you want to deal with them in person.