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moosette
08-30-2012, 06:43 AM
Morning Fellow Skirmishers -

Does anyone have any historical information that could be shared regarding the history of the Wilkinson bullet? I'm reaching out on behalf of a customer from Sydney, Australia that purchased a Wilks mould, and requested some background information regarding the "design of this projectile covering when they were originally designed and used as being a flat based design" His governing body thinks "all minies were made with a cavity in the base" ....

I remember those of you that stopped by our booth at the Spring Nationals had quite a bit of knowledge on this topic and although my memory is still pretty good (ha-ha), I wouldn't want to mis-quote anyone!

Thanks so much for your help with this, I really do appreciate any tid-bits of knowledge you could post on here!

As always, have a great day!

Moosette

Don Dixon
08-30-2012, 10:19 PM
Starting with Greg Edington's bullet design efforts, the "Wilkinson" bullet has been misnamed in the U.S. in recent times.

Mr. Wilkinson of Wilkinson Sword and Superintendant Josef Ritter von Lorenz of the Austro-Hungarian Army Arsenal in Vienna began independent design on a “compression” as opposed to an “expansion” bullet in the late 1840s. Wilkinson submitted his design to the British trials which resulted in the adoption of the 1853 Enfield rifle in .577 caliber. Wilkinson’s concept was rejected by the British Army due to flawed design. Since the trials records were in English, Wilkinson has been generally accorded credit for “compression” bullet design in the English speaking world

Von Lorenz’s design was better, and was adopted by the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1852 for Muster 1842 and 1849 Kammerbuchse rifles (incorrectly called “Garibaldi” rifles in the U.S.), and for the Muster 1854 System Lorenz rifles in 1854. The Austrians adopted a Bavarian expansion bullet design in 1862, and gradually replaced Lorenz’s compression design in their service.

Edington’s and your “Wilkinson” bullet is, in fact, based upon Lorenz’s design rather than Wilkinson’s.

In addition to the Austrians, the Saxons, Anhalt-Dessau, Bernburg, Hanover, Sweden, and the Swiss, among others, adopted variations of the compression bullet design for use in their military firearms. All of these variations had a flat rather than a hollow base, and functioned based upon compression rather than expansion. It is unfortunate that the Austrialians your client is dealing with apparently haven’t studied firearms design in the German speaking world during the 1850s-60s.

One contemporary citation is:
Rüstow, Caesar, Major, Prussian Army, Die Kriegshandfeuerwaffen: Eine genaue Darstellung iher Einrichtung in den europäischen Armeen, iher Anfertigung, ihres Gebrauches und ihrer allmäligen Entwickelung [Military Firearms: An Accurate Representation of the Best Weapons in the European Armies, Their Production, Their Use and Their Gradual Development], Volume II, Verlag von A. Bath, Berlin, 1864.

Regards,
Don Dixon
2881V

broadarrow
08-31-2012, 03:57 AM
Hi Folks,

First up thanks to Moosette for posting the question to get things moving it appears to have got the exact result I am after. And a big thanks to Don for his excellent response, this is exactly the sort of material I need to take it to my ruling body if they are going challenge me for running this type of projectile, the information you have posted should get me across the line if I get questioned. A couple of years ago we modified a standard minnie mould to make copies of several different cavity/base designs to try and see what sort of characteristics they had and one of them was an extremely shallow "cavity" which was knocked back by one individual saying it was no longer a minnie even when I provided documentation to the contrary showing the design was "from the period".

Thanks again,

Regards, Peter Burgess