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Arrove at the range yesterday just in time to see my pal John putting away his latest acquisition - a George Gibbs double rifle in .577 BPE. This beautiful old rifle shoots a 550 - 690gr bullet, usually of chilled nose hardened lead, over 150 - 190gr of Fine rifle powder, what we would now call 3Fg. The gun is rifled with Metford's Patent rifling, the same as used in the long-range Gibbs Creedmoor target rifles of the 1860-70's era.

There were two different case lengths for this calibre, hence the vastly differing bullet weights and powder charges, but even the lesser load would be something that would do the biz on anything in the Americas as well as Africa and Asia.

Here are some pics for those of you interested in this kind of firearm to drool over -

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Here in yUK anybody over the age of 18 with the necessary funds could walk into the dealers and buy this gun, just to have and to drool over, but not to shoot. To shoot it, you'd need to -

1. Be a full member of a gun club where they have the facilities and range limitations to ebable you to safely shoot it.

2. Have it registered on your Firearm Certificate [FAC] as a .577cal double rifle.

3. Have a Black powder license and home storage box of the Home Office approved type.

4. Axiomatic in all this is that you have secure home accommodations - all this goes tentacle in tentacle with having an FAC in the fust place.

More information, if required, can be obtained by writing your request on a piece of paper attached to a $100 bill to my home address.











Just kidding.;)

tac
 
Takes me back to those 1959 issues of Outdoor Life or Field & Stream when I was a kid, where people like Jack O'Connor wrote about actually using these rifles in Africa. It's sad what passes for an outdoors magazine these days.
 
Wow! As always, tac, you bring us some FINE arms to drool over! Some day I'm a gonna finish my .500 Jeffries replica and go out and take one more big coastal brownie efor i go on to the happy hunting grounds beyond!
 
Wow! That's a beautiful rifle.
Pardon my ignorance, but does BPE mean Black Powder Express?

Yessir, it does. What they did to make it an 'Express' rifle cartridge was basically compress the jebabers out of the load, chill-harden the lead bullet by dropping it nose-first into water. This thing puts out almost 7000 ft lbs M/E. Quite considerable, you might agree.

Please read - some of the input here, BTW, has come from my own fair tentacles...

The name originates with a rifle built by James Purdey in 1856 (based on a pattern established a year earlier by William Greener) and named the Express Train, a marketing phrase intended to denote the considerable velocity of the bullet it fired. It was not the first rifle or cartridge of this type but it was Purdey's name express that stuck.
To understand the context of the express cartridge, it is necessary to go back to the weapons that preceded them. Early hunting firearms were typically smoothbore, usually firing a spherical projectile. This meant that a given bore size must fire a given weight of projectile, which put significant limits on the external and terminal ballistics of the gun. The significant arc of the slow round ball limited the maximum point-blank to very short distances, and the spherical nature of the ball required a large bore diameter to carry a ball large and heavy enough to provide a quick kill on large game. These early smoothbore guns were typically measured by gauge, as most modern shotguns still are, rather than by calibre. Typical gauges used ranged from 12 to 4; the 4 gauge, used for large game, fired a massive ball of 1500 grains weight (97 g).

In the 19th century, rifled firearms increasingly gained popularity, and the cylindrical (conical) bullet was introduced. This allowed a wide range of bullet weights to be used with a single bore size; the .450 Black Powder, [as can be seen in one of videos with me shooting it] for example, was loaded with bullets ranging from a 270 grain hollow point bullet for small game such as deer, to a 360 grain solid bullet for use on dangerous game, to even heavier hardened bullets for use on elephant. The early black powder express cartridges used paper patched lead bullets, to prevent lead buildup in the bore at the high velocities. These bullets were made of soft lead, and even in solid form they expanded readily and provided great killing power.
Typically the trajectory height would not be greater than 4.5 inches at 150 yards (140 m) and the rifle would have a muzzle velocity of at least 1,750 feet per second (533 m/s). While 1,750 ft/s (533 m/s) is not fast by modern standards, it was in the era of black powder and spherical balls. As nitro powders were introduced and became the standard, bores grew smaller, and velocities grew ever larger, until the term express grew to mean something other than just high velocity. William Greener, for example, splits British sporting rifles at the turn of the 20th century into four classes:

  • Large bore smoothbores, or Elephant guns
  • Medium bore high velocity rifles, the express rifle
  • Small bore, higher velocity rifles, the long range express rifle
  • Miniature, short range rifles, or Rook rifle [a small crow and a perennial pest here in Yoorup]
Since then, express has gradually changed to denote a large bore diameter combined with high velocity. The 1911 Encylcopaedia Britannica, for example, lists express cartridges ranging from .360 to .577 caliber. The traditional express rifles were break action designs, either single- or double-barrel designs, and express rifles are still made in this form today. With the advent of repeating actions, many bolt-action rifles were chambered in express cartridges, and often the same cartridge will be found in "flanged" and "rimless" form, the flanged for break-open actions, and the rimless for easier feed from a bolt-action rifle's magazine.

Many modern rifle cartridges fire large-caliber, heavy bullets at velocities of well over 2,000 feet per second (600 m/s), and the designation express applies solely to British calibres whereas the word magnum applies to American calibres. With a few exceptions, such the .242 Rimless Nitro Express from the 1920s, and a brief period around 1980 when Remington renamed their .280 Remington cartridge the 7mm Express Remington, the label express is today used for short range, big game rifles pushing large, fast bullets.

Another item to bear the name express is the iron sight combination, used by William Greener and still found on express rifles today, consisting of a bead front sight and shallow "V" rear sight. The large, usually white bead is easily seen in low light and the shallow "V" notch provides an unobstructed view of the surrounding area.

You can see this type of backsight on the pic I showed you above, graduated up to an optimistic 250 yards - VERY unusual, BTW. Sight graduations are more often made in whole hundreds.

I'm glad that you find my odd ravings useful, and I hope to be able to continue them for some time yet.

Enjoy.

tac
 

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