Retrieved: 12/06/2013
"Everyone knows" you're not supposed to shoot pointy bullets in tube magazine rifles, since the recoil might jam a point into a primer and cause a kaboom.
This is evidently something gun and ammunition manufacturers worry a lot about, though I haven't been able to tickle any pictures out of google.
I just found out that back in the 1930s, Remington changed their Model 14 pump-action rifle from a straight magazine tube to one with an internal spiral, to keep the bullet noses away from the primers.
TRX
August 17, 2013
I haven't yet found a picture of the Remington tube, but I'm imagining it has some sort of rolled flute, like a twisted gun drill. I don't think it's a helical magazine like an Evans or Calico.
TRX
September 05, 2013
I've been sketching around on a high-power bolt action rifle with a tube magazine; something in a big Magnum or Nitro Express caliber. Most of the bolt-action rifles using those cartridges only hold two or three rounds due to the diameter of the case, and the magazines are usually single-stack to get the monster cartridges to feed.
I figured a tube magazine would allow four or five cartridges without having to have a magazine box extending down in front of the trigger guard.
Googling around, I found there were a number of military bolt action rifles with tube magazines in the 1800s, before most nations standardized on box magazines.
The problem I then considered was that with many of the big dangerous-game calibers, it's recommended to crimp the bullets heavily so they don't back out due to recoil. Sort of like revolvers in .454 or .500. I'm thinking that kind of recoil would definitely cause bullet setback on the end cartridges of a stack of .470 Nitro or .458 Win Mag.
I set the idea aside for a while, reading on on Mannlicher's spool magazine. Then a while ago, out of nowhere, I found a mention of a Chaffee-Reese rifle. Turns out Springfield Armory built a whole bunch of rifles in the 1880s-1890s that I'd never heard of, some of them only a few hundred or so produced. Several of them were tube fed bolt actions, and one of them, the Chaffee- Reese, was chambered in .45-70 and was supposed to have some kind of ratchet and rack arrangement that kept all the cartridges in the tube separated. I found a couple of Chaffee patents, but they're for other things.
[snip]
"The bolt-action system was designed by Reuben Chaffee and General James Reece
of Springfield, Illinois. It was patented in February 1997. The feed mechanism
relied on a special oscillating double-rack unit, operated by the bolt,
instead of a conventional magazine spring. Retracting the bolt pushed the
mobile rack down the magazine until special retainers slipped behind the
cartridge rims; the fixed rack simply field the cartridges in place. Closing
the bolt lifted the mobile rack, pulling the cartridges forward, until the
bolt face caught the rim of the first cartridge and pushed it into the
chamber.
Unlike the competing Hotchkiss rifle, which had a conventional tube magazine,
the Chaffee-Reece system separated the cartridge noses from the primers of the
preceding rounds." - John Walter
[/snip]
http://www.collegehillarsenal.com/shop/product.php?productid=1193
[snip]
The Chaffee-Reece (often misspelled "Reese" by even the most reliable and
well known of authors and researchers) was a bolt-action, magazine fed rifle,
chambered for the 45-70 Government cartridge. The rifle held 6 cartridges in
the magazine tube in the buttstock and one in the chamber. The magazine was
loaded through a trap in the butt, and the bolt had to be open to release the
pressure on the feed device to allow it to open. Rather than a spring feed
magazine, the Chaffee-Reece design used a ratcheting cartridge feeder that
pushed a new cartridge forward each time the bolt was worked. A small lever,
mounted on the forward right side of the receiver activated a magazine cut-
off, which allowed the rifle to be fired as a single shot rifle. This held the
contents of the magazine in reserve for rapid fire when necessary.
[/snip]
I guess an upside to not being able to get any shop time in, is I get to consider all sorts of weirdball stuff...