Historic .404 Nitro Express Cartridges

[Scrumbag]

Hello folks,

Piece of interest here.

Historic 404 Jeff Ammo picked up at local Auction

(PC Southams Auctioneers)

Back of box:

Interesting "Split Bullet" with the bullet jacket with 4 cuts in it at 90 deg. Guess must be for faster expansion on thinner skinned game.

Any ideas on date of manufacture?

Anyway, thought might be interesting to somebody.

Best wishes,

Scrummy

 

[Scrumbag]

Close up (A bad one) of the split in the jacket

Scrummy

 

[Witold Krzyżanowski]

Very interesting.

 

[HWL]

It's not a bug, it's a feature.....



HWL

 

[Patrik D]

Quantity 5 cute!

 

[Scrumbag]

Well folks, today I pulled the 15 cartridges apart. Reading indicated that the propellant might well have been cordite.

Turns out it was merely "pasta" or extruded nitrocellulose.

(That's 15 rds of Kynnoch 404J worth)

Decided to pull the rounds as only had 15 of them, unsure about the propellant and thought it would be a shame to shoot them off. (Also to get rid the propellent I tried burning it, only with very limited success and erratic burn rates - went from Whoosh to barely smoulder so probably would not have shot well)

So, if I can get the primers out I shall replace with an "India" red rubber plug and have some classy snap caps / dummy rounds.

Just a little concerned as a dual flash hole might indicate a Berdan Primer:

Might be tricky to deprime

Scrummy

 

[spike.t]

Shame you didnt keep best box and 5 rounds intact. .....

 

[Scrumbag]

Shame you didnt keep best box and 5 rounds intact. .....

Still got all the boxes, the original inserts and the bullets were "pulled" with a kinetic hammer to not marred and in theory reloadable and shootable.

(UK law is a bit of a pain as you can only hold as many live rounds as are written on your Firearms Certificate. I've only got 50 so it seemed a bit of a waste to have 30% of my allowance as collectors items. Stoopid UK laws!)

 

[WAB]

Well folks, today I pulled the 15 cartridges apart. Reading indicated that the propellant might well have been cordite.

Turns out it was merely "pasta" or extruded nitrocellulose.

(That's 15 rds of Kynnoch 404J worth)

Decided to pull the rounds as only had 15 of them, unsure about the propellant and thought it would be a shame to shoot them off. (Also to get rid the propellent I tried burning it, only with very limited success and erratic burn rates - went from Whoosh to barely smoulder so probably would not have shot well)

So, if I can get the primers out I shall replace with an "India" red rubber plug and have some classy snap caps / dummy rounds.

Just a little concerned as a dual flash hole might indicate a Berdan Primer:

Might be tricky to deprime

Scrummy

How about shooting them before you deprive them? I’d be nervous depriving them live!

 

[spike.t]

Still got all the boxes, the original inserts and the bullets were "pulled" with a kinetic hammer to not marred and in theory reloadable and shootable.

(UK law is a bit of a pain as you can only hold as many live rounds as are written on your Firearms Certificate. I've only got 50 so it seemed a bit of a waste to have 30% of my allowance as collectors items. Stoopid UK laws!)

Ok . You can get on licence in Jersey allowance of 5 rounds in any calibre up to .5 for collection purposes..

 

[WAB]

Deprime, spellcheck got me again!

 

[Hoss Delgado]

The split bullets date back to the 1950s ( at least ) .
Donald Anderson makes a reference to them being used in Bangalore in his book " India's last Colonial Shikari "

 

[nztimb]

Chamber the cases and fire the primer. Then you are depriming a case in the normal fashion. A friend deprimes the berdan primers with the single pin deprimer like the Lee hand set. You can do it hydrolicly but it can be messy and not worth it for a few cases.