Teach/others you ever fire your Martini Henry

Big Chief

.45/.577 "Zulu" rifle? One of my projects down the road is to reload for mine. The one above it is a Snider Conversion from percussion to metallic cartridge, .577 caliber. I also have a percussion cap n ball carbine. The pistol is 69 caliber (?) I thunk. In fact, I have two. That one is a Tower and I picked up another one (an Enfield) just like it, my last trip to Afghanistan. Both from the 1850s. Sigh.... one day I'll get around to shooting them all, probably after I retire again, O/A 4 more years from now give or take a few months (after I'm 62 years old).



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robert38-55

Nice looking guns ya got there Bigchief!!!!!!!!!!!!! I bet those will be "A blast from the past" to shoot!

Jayhawker

I recently fired a long lever Martini...incredibly cool. The history surrounding the rifle made it even cooler...Rourkes Drift, Isandlwana ...awesome!

Teach

I've got the 3-band Pattern 53 Enfield, the muzzleloader that was the parent action for the Snyder. Mine came from one of those bazaar vendors in Kabul, courtesy of a friend who was there for a year with the Tennessee Army National Guard. It's an original Enfield, with Birmingham England proofmarks from 1860, and an 1870-dated lock that appears to be a Snyder item with a modified hammer. It's definitely not a Khyber Pass knock-off. After a thorough ckeckout which revealed that the barrel was in exceptionally good shape, I fired it a few times with some home-cast 500 grain .577" Minie' bullets. 60 grains of ffG powder seems to be the load it likes. Heavier loads try to blow the skirt off the Minie', and sent the bullet off to parts unknown. It might work better with a patched round ball and more powder, but I don't intend to stress the old barrel with a heavy charge.

I was tempted to buy one of the Martini-Henry rifles that Atlanta Cutlery was selling awhile back, but the original stocks were not included and their repro stocks were just too pricey! That one looks good, and the pistol is really icing on the cake!
Jerry

TSchub

Beautiful old guns. Those should be a joy to shoot someday.

Big Chief

From what I can tell all the proof marks/Vitoria Regina's Crown/dates and lettering are correct on mine too. They do make some good knock-offs that will pass a casual look-see, but closer inspection and a a good reference with pics/descriptions I printed out helped me greatly.

I once passed up on a Steyr made Martini for Romania Hungary after they got their independence from the Ottoman Empire for $250 and worth about $2500-3000 because of its rarity my first trip. I found another the last trip, but it didn't look or feel right. had the "Roma" whatever it was on on side and Steyr logo on the other, but took it back to the Bazaar vendor and traded it toward another pistol like the one in the photo. I may have passed on the real McCoy the more I thunk about it...I dunno.

http://www.militaryrifles.com/romania/RomPeab-Martini.htm



I've seen some Antiques on Guns America/others that are obviously fake, wrong crown, wrong dates & serifs on letters, letters backwards, misspelled Enfield and looked like the trigger guards/barrel and bands were badly hammered out on a rock, not British factory work.