Still have it still shoot it.Ībsent the X-ray and hardness test, I would never shoot your gun. Donaldson's Wasp for Varmint Hunter and that was the gun.
In the early 90's I wrote an article about Mr. That gun is the most accurate gun, I have ever made. 219 Donaldson Wasp Single shot-yes it will feed and shoot. I can't fault your action to much, 30 years ago, I built and sold a number of sporters in 30-06 and 22-250 on Chinese 98 Mauser actions. But his later Models made as small cadets and the larger models made for Westley Richards for the ZAR are the best Martini's ever made. I don't know if Francotte ever made any of these guns in this pattern.
It is a shame they did not have better understanding of the technology to make these guns. It shows the Nepalese were thinking and in some ways were leaps and bound ahead of the game. This gun is one of those guns that is just better left alone and kept in your collection as a representative type. Is there any evidence of that on your gun? Look for metal peening or a gap at the top of the receiver where the top of the trigger frame meets the top rear of the receiver. Have you had the breech block you have x-rayed for inclusions and tested to determine if it is hardened all the way through or just surface/case hardened? If it has no inclusions and is surface harden it should be fine. I know it won't fit as is but it can be machined to fit.Quite a bit of difference there and I have my doubt it can be done. The rifle shoots to the right so I may see if I can make a temporary front site to correct the windage.Īll in all it's a fun rifle to shoot and the recoil is easy to handle. I suspect the group might close up a bit if I ever get used to the trigger pull but for a 130 year old rifle firing a home made load it didn't do too bad. I could have aimed at the center of the target after I saw where the first one hit but for consistency I used the same point of aim in all of them. This was fired supported at 50 yards, I figured it would shoot high considering how it shot the first time so I aimed low. I only made up 5 rounds to test this load but the results looked pretty good.
#Francotte 14 black powder Patch#
I don't have the right size bullets to paper patch but I do have hollow base 405 grain 45-70 bullets the right size for my bore so I used that. The diagram showed the powder charge to be topped by 2 card wads, a beeswax plug and two more card wads followed by a hollow base paper patched bullet.
I loaded 50 grains of Pyrodex R-S and about half of a regular cotton ball to fill the airspace. I used a rolled strip of index card about an 1 3/8th inches wide and 5 inches long which reduces the volume as well as the inside diameter of the case down to something like a 45-70 case. The diagram I have of the original round shows a paper sleeve in the case, presumably to reduce the case volume so I thought I'd try to duplicate the original round as closely as I could except for the powder load. I should have let well enough alone but I wasn't sure I was compressing the Pyrodex enough so I added more filler.Īll in all I was very pleased with the way it performed. I'm going to take it to the range again next weekend weather permitting and load the rest of the brass like I did the test loads and the first 4 rounds. The next 3 rounds at 50 yards however did a vertical string on me because I used too much filler. I still need to work on the load/filler combination, the first 3 rounds at 25 yards grouped at about 1.5 inches and I think it will group better once I get used to that trigger. The only issues that I found were a smooth but brutally heavy trigger pull that's going to take some getting used to and the rifle shoots high (which I expected) and a little to the right. The rifle survived a 3 round sandbag/lanyard test followed by 7 rounds fired from the shoulder, I only loaded 10 rounds since I wasn't sure it would survive the test firing, the rifle functioned fine and the recoil was surprisingly light. Well, I carried that rifle a lot of people told me I'm not supposed to shoot to the range yesterday and shot it.Ĥ05 grain hollow base 45-70 bullet, card disk/lubed felt wad, cotton filler, and 50 grains by volumn of Pyrodex R-S manually handloaded.
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