Civil War ammo manufacture

[Tamaroa]

Do not claim to be the end all and be all here Blue, but my guess is that All rifling is curved. The whole point of the CURVED grooves is to spin the bullet. It will give the projectile greater range and accuracy. Straight would not spin the bullet. There are different degrees of rifling as well. Some are much tighter than others. For example the Whitworth sharp shooters rifle is grooved differently than a regular rifled musket.

Murph I have a 69 caliber smooth bore Austrian musket that was cut down and made into a horse pistol. I fired it once and almost broke my wrist. It'sfun to look at though.



Bill

[colmurph]

Believe it or not, the original purpose of rifling in barrels was to collect powder fouling. The first guns so made had straight rifling. Somewhere along the line, a gunsmith accidently put a turn in the grooving and improved the accuracy.

Tamaroa..I can relate to the horse pistol. I've been firing an 1842 Mod. manufactured by Henry Aston. It's 54 cal. and the first time I shot it I used the standard 70 grains. WOW! Just about spun me around! Now I use 30 grains.

[BLUEHAWK]

Bill and Murph -

Is it correct to think that the accuracy is improved by the spinning of the projectile caused by it coming out from a tube in a circular manner (poor wordsmanship here )? Sorta like putting some "English" on a cue ball?

[Desdichado]

Exactly. It's that old inertia law of Newton's, the same law that makes gyroscopes and children's tops so fascinating.

All motion is relative though - that's why a machine gun firing from the left side of a helicopter has different ballistic characteristics than one firing from the right, which I guess is about as far away from the original topic as I'm willing to take THIS one.

[BLUEHAWK]

Des -
Whoa there... the same type machine gun coming from right and left sides have DIFFERENT ballistics?

How's that?

[Desdichado]

Assuming level, steady flight, a shot from the right side firing forward will bend down and to the right. A shot from the left will bend UP and to the right.

Don't ask me to explain why. All I can tell you with certainty is basically the bend to the right is caused by the rotor and the bend up or down is caused by the rounds passing through the air differently.

I'm sure some genius will come up with dedicated left-side and right-side systems to compensate, if they haven't already.

[82Rigger]

The direction of bullet rotation of two machine guns placed OPPOSITE each other will be OPPOSITE.

If the rifling in the barrel is clockwise, then the bullets from the gun in the RIGHT door will be spinning toward the REAR of the helicopter (and its forward motion).

The bullets from the gun in the LEFT door will spin toward the FRONT of the helicopter (and its forward motion).

The wind stream from the helicopter's forward motion will affect the bullets from each gun differently.

[BLUEHAWK]

Des & Rigger - never thought about it that way... amazing, absolutely amazing... was thinking about myself being the gunner, I'd best not be dyslexic about right and left

How, then, does the gunner compensate, or is the "spray" of rounds in the general vicinity sufficient for an "aimed" burst? or does it actually matter with a machine weapon? What if one were to be firing a single shot (more or less) shoulder arm from the two positions... would THAT be governed by the same ballistics? As much or the same?

[Desdichado]

Best solution is use lots of tracer and spend a lot of time cleaning your weapon and loading belts later.

[82Rigger]

...you seem to enjoy learning new facts about some of this stuff.

Here's one for ya, but I'll give you a chance to figure it out first for yourself.

You know that the rifling in a barrel imparts a spin to the bullet, which stabilizes the bullet like a gyroscope.

So...how FAST do bullets spin? Say, a bullet fired from an M16A1 like we used in the "Nam?

I'll give you a couple of hints:

1. the rifling in the barrel makes one complete revolution every 12 inches.

2. the muzzle velocity of the bullet is approx. 3100 feet per second.

See if you can figure it out!