A friend sent pics of an fantastic A&N double in a fairly rare caliber (for a double) .577-450. I don't have any specifications, but here are a few photos.
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Army and Navy .577-450 bpe
Gents:
A friend sent pics of an fantastic A&N double in a fairly rare caliber (for a double) .577-450. I don't have any specifications, but here are a few photos.
A friend sent pics of an fantastic A&N double in a fairly rare caliber (for a double) .577-450. I don't have any specifications, but here are a few photos.
2 comments/questions:
Cal,
This little Rifle is a sweetheart and it fires the extremely rare 577-450 BPE which is the long chamber version of the famous short camber round you find in the military Martini Henry.
A picture of the 577-450 BPE was mistakenly shown and can be seen in the military section of the 8th edition of Barnes Cartridges of the world.
A chamber cast will show a medium tapered .577 case with a pronounced neck about 3/4" back from the case mouth at cal. 45. The Case is a full 2-3/4" long thus earning it the title of Express.
I will dig out my copy of the 8th edition of COTW, the only one in which this switch-a-roo appears, and post some specs... I think it also appears in the British Sporting section in this edition if memory serves.
I enjoy the posts you send along very much, thanks.
JT Coyoté
Cal,
An addendum to my post above:
The 577/450-BPE cartridge in the COTW picture looks very much like a 577/500 2 3/4" BPE only the business end is just a tad slimmer. Both were examples of the drawn Bottle-Neck craze that took hold in England in the early 1870's.
A lot of interesting stuff was going on in the years following the introduction by Westley Richards of the drawn bottle necked 500/450 #2 to augment and then supersede the coiled 500/450 #1... quickly entering the drawn bottleneck race came Alexander Henry's scale up of the 500/450 #2 to a whopping 20/577 BPE... and others even larger, 16ga and 12ga bottle neck offerings were tested. All were challenging the Big "Bore" Gun's dominance of the Dark Continent...
http://britishmilitariaforums.yuku.com/sreply/12685/Have-I-seen-it-all
If your friend is planing to fire this gem a chamber cast is in order and a list of the discovered dimensions published here would be fantastic.
Thanks again.
JT
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