Trapdoor Mud test

[Drydock]

Some of you may want to avert your eyes.




Seems folks have been asking for this. (not me!)

[DeaconKC]

Whimper...

[Silver Creek Slim]

He needed to do a good cleaning anyway. 

Slim

[Trailrider]

Looked like he was using smokeless rounds. Wonder how that would do with BP and (not available nowadays) copper cased ammo! At least the infantry had a ramrod!

[smoke]

One more reason not to like that guy.

[Major 2]

One more reason not to like that guy.

I don't dislike the guy, though I prefer the Gun Jesus's videos far more.
Here he is answering a question, most sane enthusiasts did not ask, 
unless they were talking AK-47s, AR's, SKS's , FN Fals, Colt C7 or the like.

[Drydock]

It's a field test of a combat arm.  It reveals a weakness of the design that would not have occurred to me, though I suspect the Army knew and accepted it.  Army acceptance trials were far worse. 

Karl has done a number of combat trials of Indian War era weapons,  I can see his audience asking for this.  Those were BP cartridges BTW.

[Major 2]

Understood, I just meant from (our) perspective of a 149-year-old treasure.

[Trailrider]

It wasn't mud that caused problems with the Indian Wars small arms. It was the ammo! Copper-cased BP .45-70 or .45-55 after a number of shots would expand, but not spring back. Combined with BP fouling, and no cleaning/ramrod for the carbines, which is why the cavalry troops had problems with the Trapdoor Springfields! At least the doughfaces had a ramrod to clear stuck cases! Even when Winchester and Remington came out with brass cased ammo, the Army continued producing the copper-cased stuff until well into the 1880's! Sound familiar? Same thing with early 5.56mm in the AR15/M16's, except it had to do with ball powder instead of IMR that the rifles were designed for. 

[Drydock]

While the copper cases did cause some problems, it was wildly overblown, mostly by the Army itself wanting to blame a technical feature instead of admitting that poor tactics and worse command decisions caused them to get their butts kicked a number of times.  And whoo boy does history repeat itself!

[Trailrider]

While the copper cases did cause some problems, it was wildly overblown, mostly by the Army itself wanting to blame a technical feature instead of admitting that poor tactics and worse command decisions caused them to get their butts kicked a number of times.  And whoo boy does history repeat itself!

I, of course, had no access to the original ammo, but one time I ran a test firing 60 rounds of BP cartridges in an original Trapdoor carbine, firing as fast as I could. Fired brass cases got kicked out just as easily after the last shot as the first.

No question that disrespect for your enemy will lead to bad decisions and tactics. Not just Custer. If Crook had not had twice as many troops and auxilliaries, including Crow and Snake scouts, and a bit of luck, Custer would have been a footnote.  As it was, although Crook claimed victory at the Rosebud because he held the battlefield, his troops had expended around 50,000 rounds of ammo, and he had wounded to care for. His subsequent tail chase of the Sioux wound up with little to show for it. 

I have found no reports of jammed rifles due to the copper-cased ammo in Crook's command, however.

[Pitspitr]

The ejector failure wasn't surprising to me. Part of the ejector is exposed outside the breech block and mud would have gotten into it. As far as his concern about the breechblock not closing completely, my experience has been that if it didn't fully close it just wouldn't go off, but wasn't unsafe as the thumb latch blocks the hammer from contacting the firing pin.