Questions on the British Whitworth Rifle

[TFoley]

In that case, Sir, it's not a made in England Parker-Hale Whitworth. It's made in Iddly EuroArms Whitworth.

No name - no provenance.

 

[Cpt Flint]

The barrel on this rifle has the exact markings as yours. It is a 2nd gen Parker Hale made in 1997 and is NOS. It is finely polished and blued and well made. It is an extremely accurate rifle without expensive trick molds and tea and crumpets. Cheers.

 

[TFoley]

The barrel on this rifle has the exact markings as yours. It is a 2nd gen Parker Hale made in 1997 and is NOS. It is finely polished and blued and well made. It is an extremely accurate rifle without expensive trick molds and tea and crumpets. Cheers.

But YOU wrote - ' Matter of fact, it astonished me with the way it shoots and it wasn’t even made in England.'

In that case, the BARREL is probably a made in England P-H barrel - IF it has a serial number less than ~9000 and fully fitted with breech-plug and bolster. This means that it was proofed in England, Birmingham to be precise and will show stamps like this -

Note that breech-plugs are made on a separate production line, and therefore had different assembly numbers, but only breeched barrels can be proofed in England. The Crown over BP stands for Birmingham Proof - the FB over 3 is the date, in this case, 1980. The date stamp format changed a few years later to a three-section 'pie'.

If your rifle stamps look different to this and are Italian proof, then it will have had the breech-plug an bolster fitted and then proofed in Gardone Val Trompia, location of the Italian national proof house.

You might also have this on your barrel -

Nevertheless, if it has Parker-Hale on it, then you have a made-in-England Parker-Hale barrel, and I'm very happy to hear that it shoots well for you. Perhaps if you have time you could tell us about your load and bullets and so on.

I'm uncertain what 'trick moulds' you are referring to, and equally at a loss about the 'tea and crumpets'. None of these things have been mentioned so far in this thread.

 

[Cpt Flint]

The serial number of this rifle is slightly over 32000. I can find no English proof marks under the barrel. It has all the proper Parker Hale markings on top of the barrel as well as the Whitworth .451 markings in the proper place. I appears to be a second gen PH rifle. I fully believe all the reports of the Whitworth accuracy. After bedding it properly it delivered cloverleaf groups at 50 yards and 2 minute groups at 100 yards on the first try with very inadequate sights. I fully believe that once I install proper sights that it will continue to amaze and delight us with a sterling performance. It delivered this accuracy with the first load tried; 70.0 grs of 1FG Goex with a .060 fiber wad under a 550 grain Brooks custom mold bullet cast 20-1. The bullet is .458 diameter with the two bottom bands sized 451 in a Star lube sizer using SPG lube.
This allows me to start the bullet straight using a conventional bullet starter. It requires a moderate degree of effort to fully seat it. I use RWS caps. All groups are from a bench rest. The data from Research Press has been invaluable. Any help from those more experienced that I will be welcome.

 

[TFoley]

Yup, a Parker-Hale barrel sold off unfinished. Great shooting from a great barrel. Anybody here, including me, who has beaten that? Hold up your hand. MY hand is firmly still in my pocket. You really can't call it a second generation P-H, though, as that implies that P-H themselves made a first and second generation. Of course, they did not do so.

In a note to me from Signore Pedersoli Jnr, he stated that a few similar barrels found their way to his factory, where they confounded nosey-parkers like me when a poster on another forum talked about his Pedersoli Whitworth marked up by Parker-Hale on top, but with Italian proofs underneath. Having admitted to that, there must be a few of the early Pedersoli 'mongrels' around that will continue to confuse us for the foreseeable future.

 

[Cpt Flint]

I would be interested in knowing the rifling process used on English made Parker Hale barrels. My good groups mentioned earlier with this rifle of mine are not an average but enough to convince me that this is a very accurate rifle. Before I declare it a 2 MOA rifle at the longer ranges further testing is necessary. At any rate, this is one fine barrel and I accept your opinion as to it being English made which is all the better. Any information on the manufacturing process would be gratefully received.

 

[Whitworth]

The serial number of this rifle is slightly over 32000. I can find no English proof marks under the barrel. It has all the proper Parker Hale markings on top of the barrel as well as the Whitworth .451 markings in the proper place. I appears to be a second gen PH rifle. I fully believe all the reports of the Whitworth accuracy. After bedding it properly it delivered cloverleaf groups at 50 yards and 2 minute groups at 100 yards on the first try with very inadequate sights. I fully believe that once I install proper sights that it will continue to amaze and delight us with a sterling performance. It delivered this accuracy with the first load tried; 70.0 grs of 1FG Goex with a .060 fiber wad under a 550 grain Brooks custom mold bullet cast 20-1. The bullet is .458 diameter with the two bottom bands sized 451 in a Star lube sizer using SPG lube.
This allows me to start the bullet straight using a conventional bullet starter. It requires a moderate degree of effort to fully seat it. I use RWS caps. All groups are from a bench rest. The data from Research Press has been invaluable. Any help from those more experienced that I will be welcome.

I have one like yours, my Frankenworth is SN 35xxx. There is a very small "Made in Italy" marking on the trigger guard, easily polished if one desired. No EuroArms marks anywhere, only Italian proofs from 1999. The bridle bears a faint P-H. The finish isn't quite as nice as my real English Parker-Hales but still quite nice. Seems the rifles were made by Armi San Palo using some English parts (before becoming Euroarms) and marketed as Parker-Hales. Your groups are better than mine, my old eyes need optics but I still like punching those 6 sided holes in targets. YMMV

 

[Cpt Flint]

 

[Cpt Flint]

I sent the above photo without a caption which should have read 50 yards with this Whitworth
rifle that I am working with.

 

[Cpt Flint]

 

[TFoley]

I recall reading somewhere that P-H barrels were cold-hammer forged - perhaps Mr Minshall can put me right on that.

It's interesting to see that Parker-Hale, in their instructions, recommend the use of 1Fg grade powder, or, the coarsest available. I must hie me to the powderie the morn's morning and purchase some.

This is my first 100m group shot with 70gr of 2Fg - all I have about my person right now.

The 'hexagonality' of some holes is clear to discern - obviously, there is much to do...

And in better days than I'm having right now, this was the results of a fine morning shooting with my first Whitworth - 80gr of 2Fg @ TWO hundred metres. Again, the clearly visible hexagonal edges are easily seen ..

 

[Whitworth]

That's some dang good shooting fellows.

 

[DuncNZ]

I have owned a PH Whitworth , and it shot very well at 100 and 200 meters , I used a grease grooved .45 Lyman cylindrical bullet run through a Lyman sizer-luber and sized down to 451 . I have also owned and shot the PH Volunteer rifles , both Rigby and Henry and out of the 3 the Henry was the most consistently accurate .
A mate also had a Whitworth and purchased a very expensive mold for it , the first bullet is still in the mold , it just would not come out .
These rifles when shot with heavy loads develop high breach pressures which cause some nipples to burn out very quickly ( less than 5 shots ), which causes the shots to string vertically as pressures change .
An other friend has both a PH Whitworth and an original New Zealand Issue one which is in the same number range as the CSA ones . These rifles were found in an Army store where they had been since they had been decommissioned . Some made it onto the market before the head brass found out and stopped the flow , all that were left were decommissioned by welding the muzzle . They were used as film props , that is the sad tail where my mate got his one .

 

[ResearchPress]

... an original New Zealand Issue one which is in the same number range as the CSA ones . ...

We have a batch of these recorded in the Whitworth Research Project database - almost exclusively dating from the period late 1861 - mid 1862.

David