Elric
Well-Known Member
Folks, I have put a little thought into posting relevant period articles. First, I'm adding "Period Article" in the title for ease of search, and settling on using General Discussions to drop them. Trying to choose from the different forums is a bit fiddly...
Also, I cannot find a search term that drops you onto the correct page for this excerpt, the Google Book link brings up the cover of the edition... So when you try to bring this up, scroll down in Acrobat to page 239... Note the discrepancy between the physical page (239) and the printed page (330).
High Power Rifles And Lubrication., excerpt by D. L. F. Chase
The following excerpt was from an address delivered by President D. L. F. Chase to the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Rifle Association.
Shooting And Fishing, vol 39, No. 16, Jan 25, 1906 page 330
https://books.google.com/books?id=Z...YAhVF9mMKHeOaDG4Q6AEIRTAG#v=onepage&q&f=false
As already hinted, I have hardly fired a shot the past year except with the .30 caliber, and .while the experience has by no means been with out interest and pleasure, I mu'st say that from the first the mechanical Conditions of this kind of shooting have gone against my grain. One of the first things that an apprentice learns in a machine shop is that unlubricated metallic surfaces rubbing together under pressure are soon damaged. My mechanical soul has always been vexed at the thought of sending hard ‘jacketed bullets rasping' through a finely finished barrel without lubrication. We procure a barrel which has been bored and rifled and polished to the very limit of mechanical nicety and perfection, and calibrated within a very few .01 of an inch of a certain standard, and then we proceed to insult and outrage the beautiful instrument by driving hard, dry, unlubricated projectiles through it at the rate of 2000 feet a second! It is like using a fine razor to open oysters, or a silver soup ladle to stir the fire!
Now the chemical experts tell us that no greasy lubricant will do any good on account of excessive velocity and heat, and also because the burnt grease and nitro residue together form a malignant compound especially hard to remove. While accepting the dictum about grease without much question, I asked myself why graphite might not be the thing desired. Graphite is a natural mineral substance having remarkable lubricating properties, even when; used dry, as also the quality of adhering to very smooth surfaces so as to form a slight coating of beautifully smooth glazing when rubbed against them under pressure.
Moreover, and what is Quite as important as its lubricating properties, graphite is practically unaffected by heat, and will stand even white heat without disintegration, as is shown by using it to make crucibles for melting steel Probably not many of you know the feeling of pulverized graphite. Dip your fingers in it and rub them together 'without looking, and you will hardly believe that they are not smeared with heavy oil.
Here then seemed to be the Very ideal thing which nature’s laboratory turned out, for the express purpose of lubricating high velocity jacketed bullets. So I tried it, first rather crudely, by putting a narrow band of the powdered graphite around the bullet just ahead of the shell. The results were unsatisfactory, but I did not regard them as conclusive, because I learned long ago that even with black powder a long, smooth lead bullet without grooves cannot be successfully lubricated with grease. I could hardly believe this when I first began to shoot a rifle twenty years ago, knowing as I did something about lubrication under ordinary conditions. Everybody was using paper patches then, but it seemed to me that, by cleaning and oiling the barrel thoroughly with heavy oil after each shot, I might use a smooth, ungrooved, unpatched bullet, fitting on top of the lands like the patched bullets. But a very few shots took that conceit out of me, when I found my rifle so full of lead that I could not see any grooves. Grooves in the bullets are necessary to confine the lubricant, so that it cannot escape while being held to its duty between the two rubbing surfaces under tremendous pressure; other wise, it will be squeezed out and pushed ahead of the bullet without getting between the surfaces at all.
So I next grooved some of the jacketed bullets. The grooves were cut in the jacket, ten or twelve of them, small, sharp, and close together, and perhaps .01 or .005 of an inch in depth. The jackets are .02 of an inch thick, and were not materially weakened, by the grooving, fine grooves, slightly moistened with oil, were then filled with dry graphite. The shooting tests seemed to show that there was real lubrication; that is, the rubbing surfaces were actually separated by a film of graphite. One interesting proof of this appeared in the fact that my rifle, cleaned up in the usual way on a Saturday, would show up on the next Saturday with a bore as clean as any black powder rifle; while without the graphite there would always be a coating of rusty fuzz, due to nickel fouling and other residue very hard to remove.
So far I am sure that my tale is pleasant for you to hear, as it is also pleasant for 'me to tell, and I only wish that I could add that they lived happily ever afterward. But alas, that I am obliged to admit that good lubrication does not necessarily mean improved accuracy. With absurd perversity those jacketed bullets emphasized their natural depravity by shooting worse with lubrication than without it. Not that the shooting was entirely bad in the sense of generally missing the target, for I made a good many bullseyes with the lubricated bullets, but there were generally sandwiched in with them enough bad shots to spoil the scores, and I was kept on the ragged edge of uncertainty all the time. The rifle and bullets seemed to resent kind treatment, and repel all efforts to make things easier for them, like some naughty children who behave worse and worse the more you try to help them.
Now since accuracy, and forever accuracy, is the alpha and omega of the rifleman’s creed, I must for the present continue to send those infernal, hard, unlubricated bullets scouring through my beautiful barrel until some wiser head than mine finds out a better system.
Also, I cannot find a search term that drops you onto the correct page for this excerpt, the Google Book link brings up the cover of the edition... So when you try to bring this up, scroll down in Acrobat to page 239... Note the discrepancy between the physical page (239) and the printed page (330).
High Power Rifles And Lubrication., excerpt by D. L. F. Chase
The following excerpt was from an address delivered by President D. L. F. Chase to the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Rifle Association.
Shooting And Fishing, vol 39, No. 16, Jan 25, 1906 page 330
https://books.google.com/books?id=Z...YAhVF9mMKHeOaDG4Q6AEIRTAG#v=onepage&q&f=false
As already hinted, I have hardly fired a shot the past year except with the .30 caliber, and .while the experience has by no means been with out interest and pleasure, I mu'st say that from the first the mechanical Conditions of this kind of shooting have gone against my grain. One of the first things that an apprentice learns in a machine shop is that unlubricated metallic surfaces rubbing together under pressure are soon damaged. My mechanical soul has always been vexed at the thought of sending hard ‘jacketed bullets rasping' through a finely finished barrel without lubrication. We procure a barrel which has been bored and rifled and polished to the very limit of mechanical nicety and perfection, and calibrated within a very few .01 of an inch of a certain standard, and then we proceed to insult and outrage the beautiful instrument by driving hard, dry, unlubricated projectiles through it at the rate of 2000 feet a second! It is like using a fine razor to open oysters, or a silver soup ladle to stir the fire!
Now the chemical experts tell us that no greasy lubricant will do any good on account of excessive velocity and heat, and also because the burnt grease and nitro residue together form a malignant compound especially hard to remove. While accepting the dictum about grease without much question, I asked myself why graphite might not be the thing desired. Graphite is a natural mineral substance having remarkable lubricating properties, even when; used dry, as also the quality of adhering to very smooth surfaces so as to form a slight coating of beautifully smooth glazing when rubbed against them under pressure.
Moreover, and what is Quite as important as its lubricating properties, graphite is practically unaffected by heat, and will stand even white heat without disintegration, as is shown by using it to make crucibles for melting steel Probably not many of you know the feeling of pulverized graphite. Dip your fingers in it and rub them together 'without looking, and you will hardly believe that they are not smeared with heavy oil.
Here then seemed to be the Very ideal thing which nature’s laboratory turned out, for the express purpose of lubricating high velocity jacketed bullets. So I tried it, first rather crudely, by putting a narrow band of the powdered graphite around the bullet just ahead of the shell. The results were unsatisfactory, but I did not regard them as conclusive, because I learned long ago that even with black powder a long, smooth lead bullet without grooves cannot be successfully lubricated with grease. I could hardly believe this when I first began to shoot a rifle twenty years ago, knowing as I did something about lubrication under ordinary conditions. Everybody was using paper patches then, but it seemed to me that, by cleaning and oiling the barrel thoroughly with heavy oil after each shot, I might use a smooth, ungrooved, unpatched bullet, fitting on top of the lands like the patched bullets. But a very few shots took that conceit out of me, when I found my rifle so full of lead that I could not see any grooves. Grooves in the bullets are necessary to confine the lubricant, so that it cannot escape while being held to its duty between the two rubbing surfaces under tremendous pressure; other wise, it will be squeezed out and pushed ahead of the bullet without getting between the surfaces at all.
So I next grooved some of the jacketed bullets. The grooves were cut in the jacket, ten or twelve of them, small, sharp, and close together, and perhaps .01 or .005 of an inch in depth. The jackets are .02 of an inch thick, and were not materially weakened, by the grooving, fine grooves, slightly moistened with oil, were then filled with dry graphite. The shooting tests seemed to show that there was real lubrication; that is, the rubbing surfaces were actually separated by a film of graphite. One interesting proof of this appeared in the fact that my rifle, cleaned up in the usual way on a Saturday, would show up on the next Saturday with a bore as clean as any black powder rifle; while without the graphite there would always be a coating of rusty fuzz, due to nickel fouling and other residue very hard to remove.
So far I am sure that my tale is pleasant for you to hear, as it is also pleasant for 'me to tell, and I only wish that I could add that they lived happily ever afterward. But alas, that I am obliged to admit that good lubrication does not necessarily mean improved accuracy. With absurd perversity those jacketed bullets emphasized their natural depravity by shooting worse with lubrication than without it. Not that the shooting was entirely bad in the sense of generally missing the target, for I made a good many bullseyes with the lubricated bullets, but there were generally sandwiched in with them enough bad shots to spoil the scores, and I was kept on the ragged edge of uncertainty all the time. The rifle and bullets seemed to resent kind treatment, and repel all efforts to make things easier for them, like some naughty children who behave worse and worse the more you try to help them.
Now since accuracy, and forever accuracy, is the alpha and omega of the rifleman’s creed, I must for the present continue to send those infernal, hard, unlubricated bullets scouring through my beautiful barrel until some wiser head than mine finds out a better system.
