Smith Refresher

[whitneyrifle]

Hello Everyone!
I need a bit of a Smith carbine refresher. I picked up an artillery smith this past weekend, and have some questions. First, the bore is about .519. I did not percisely mic the bore, but I ran a Romano .519 maynard bullet and a Rapine .520 and both grabbed the lands and grooves. Just looking for opinions, any ideas which might be the better bullet and powder charge suggestions?
Secondly, I plan on putting in a new front sight, any ball park ideas on approx. how tall the front sight should be?
Lastly, the trigger is rather robust at about 10 lbs. to pull. All the mechanics are fine, but is there a lighter spring I could put in and who would I contact for that?
Thanks for any help or suggestions that may come!
Bryan Davis
149th Pa. Inf.

[Lou Lou Lou]

Either bullet will do. Remember the explosion obdurates the lead into the rifling. Start w 25 gr FFFg.
If the orig main spring is too strong try to find a Yeck repro spring.

[Gary B]

Logdewood mfg. sells a very nice coil seer spring that replaces the strong leaf original, should help reduce that trigger pull.
Good luck
Gary B.

[FlinchJerk]

A consideration: If the Smith is original with a slow twist barrel, a shorter bullet will probably work better. Years ago fooling around with different molds for an original Smith, I tried a Lyman .50-70 bulllet mold. Its diameter was fine, but the bullet was too long for the slow twist rifling and maybe 1 of 3 bullets in test shooting either key-holed or wobbled enough to leave oval holes at 50 yards.
The Lyman 519xxx (don't recall the last digits at this typing)) is fairly short and never keyed or wobbeled and was consistent. With 34 grs. FFg Goex in plastic (?) cases they are all in the black off a bench.....off hand not so much...

Never shot a Romano .50 Maynard bullet in the Smith, but did in an original 2nd Model Maynard. The original Maynard slow twist is pretty close to the orginal Smith slow twist, and the Romano ball (designed I believe to work best in repro Maynards with a faster rifling twist than originals), because of its greater length, would wobble or key once in a while. I experimented with a bunch of molds, original, expensive custom, & adapted, but the Romano prevailed by ease of casting, deep lube ring, perfect relation to full capacity brass cases requiring no reforming (lucky with the chamber size) and ease of loading/seating ball in the cases with the 2-part steel hand punch dies. The occaisional key/wobble was acceptable given the Romano's overall utility.

I've got or could reconstruct all the 1,000ths of an inch stuff with bores or bullets or sizers if need be, but that might be beyond the scope of the query at hand.

Dean Nelson
1st Maryland Infantry CSA, N-SSA

[William H. Shuey]

"The Lyman 519xxx (don't recall the last digits at this typing"

Would that be 519141??

Bill Shuey

[whitneyrifle]

Thank you for all the information so far. I believe I will be trying the Romano bullet at first, since I have no light peeking out around the grooves when I look down the barrel and have the round swaged down into the bore.
I also will be at some point purchasing a lighter spring either from Yeck or Osburne. Any opinions if one is better than the other?
Once again, thank you for all the info. given to me so far!

Bryan Davis
149th PVI