My MkII** Snider-Enfield Carbine(19" barrel) that I bought arrived today. It's 1864 vintage and came with a parts gun(I'll take what I need from this one)

The chamber and barrel are actually a bit better than my 1871 vintage MKIII sporter.(33" barrel)

I sure love these old .577's!!!!!!

I have parted out most of the trashed carbine(parts gun).

I am keeping the barreled action(even though it's in nasty shape) and will eventually reline the barrel and chamber for the 45 Colt. That will make a nice little black powder plinker and I can just swap barrels around on the 1864 Carbine between the 577 and the 45 as it suits quite easily!!

good idea, no?

Trying to remember the extractor system of the Snider...but if memeory is right, can be made to work with the small .45 Colt case with a bit of modification....but it wouldn't be dual use, no .577's after that modification.

correct. both the 577 Snider and 45 Colt would have their own barrel and reciever with a modified extractor for the 45 Colt barrel.

The entire barrel and reciever/action will be swapped around for each calibre.

The lined barrel with modified extractor will never be able to use the 577 Snider round again, but it's not good enough to as is anyway.

thanks ribbonstone, if you were not around I'm not sure I would have many guys to talk to! At least not about Sniders! :)

Relining the Snider to .45Colt would be good. Not going to stress the action with high pressure loads, most of the work at getting the hole large enough for the liner is already done, and a lined barrel will stand the pressure the action should be asked to take. Sound's like a "go". Are other choices in caliber, but believe if you intend shooting BP, the .45colt would be the best choice.

Same guy who had the .577 hand a 450/577 Martin. That one he had an insert made that looked like a 450/577 case, but waqs machined to take a .45colt round. So long as he used BP it worked pretty well; bore was larger than bullet diameter and BP seemed to be the best and getting that bullet to slug up to size. His insert was abit too small (or the chamber a bit too large) so he machined a race arround the body and added an O-ring to keep from getting the occasional blast of gas jetting out of the breech block...worked.

I have heard of using those adapters in the 577/450 Martini-Henry rifle. Most of those have bores closer to .470 and the little 45 slug skips on down the barrel.

Presures will be well within tollerences for the old Sniders. I have loaded them up with as much as 100 grains of FFg black powder. How much can a 45 Colt take? 40 grains or so? That's why I called it a nice little plinker :)

Any how, my BPCR collection continues to grow....

More like 36-37gr. in modern cases, the old baloon heads would take 40.

Yep...but if you used the factrory swaged .255gr. RNL in that 450/577 (which is more correctly the 577/450...but that's bassackwards of the US system) the slight hollow base would actually grab rifling and spin....at least until BP fouling clogged the works.

I actually like the old US system of black powder cartridge naming. It gives you an instant idea of the size and capability of the rifle. Like .50-70, .45-110, .70-150 etc. It is also helpful to have the bullet weight included at the end.

The British stuff is quite interesting though, I like it.