Thread: Lancaster Oval bore rifling. Who's got one ?

So who owns and shoots a Lancaster Oval bored rifle ?

It's my next quest to find and shoot one
I have a lot of different rifling styles and my quest now is to try and collect as many rifling types as possible

Oooohhhhhhhh - now where did I leave that picture of a rabbit hole????

Haha. Could be quite the quest, and you'd never know if you completed it!

Originally Posted by No.3

Oooohhhhhhhh - now where did I leave that picture of a rabbit hole????

Oooohhhhh I'm way down the rabbit hole already .... I'm just getting a bigger spade and making the hole larger

Should / could like something like this

If I stare hard enough, I can see a sailboat

Then the migraine starts

Well less than 24 hours and I have found a Lancaster Oval bore rifle for sale at the very top end of my Lancaster budget

Will be a while before I get to see it.

Sadly it has one more barrel than I generally like
But it does have hammers, which is what every decent rifle should have

NOW your just teasing...a tribarrel perhaps????

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

NOW your just teasing...a tribarrel perhaps????

No only a double

A gun without hammers is like a spaniel without ears. George V.

Originally Posted by Ross Nolan

A gun without hammers is like a spaniel without ears. George V.

Yes it was either that quote or the John Browning one in my footer

Lancaster oval bored rifle? Gee, I've got a crate of them somewhere in my garage, all new and unused, still packed with the original grease...

Originally Posted by Ranger 888

Lancaster oval bored rifle? Gee, I've got a crate of them somewhere in my garage, all new and unused, still packed with the original grease...

Need photos…can’t possibly be a true story without evidence😁

I just thought it would be interesting to hear how they were loaded and shot

An oval bore with about 20 thou difference between the major and minor diameters in a .500
Interesting thing to rifle with there being a lot of load on the rifling shaft with such a wide cutter
Most Lancaster Oval bores were also heavily choked so quite a task to lapp them

It would be nice to find someone who shoots one and hear if they shoot paper patch or lubed bullets.

I do see some mention of Lancaster barrels in some 280 Ross rifles and good accuracy with jacketed bullets

Prefer to find one that's been shot.
Can't afford a new old stock one packed in grease.
But certainly would like to see what they look like

Here's an interesting Lancaster.
Seriously unlikely to find one of these NOS and still in grease in NZ
But worth looking at to marvel at the skill in regulating 4 barrels and the cocking and trigger mechanism

"
The above magnificent gun is a four-barreled hammereech-loading rifle that was once owned by the Maharaja of Rewa in India. The four barrels are all oval-bore. The rear trigger is actually a cocking lever. Pulling the cocking lever for the first time makes the upper right barrel ready for firing. Each pull of the trigger and cocking lever fires each of the barrels in turn. The oval nature of the barrels is almost impossible to see, as the oval is only 0.006 inches out of round.

The Charles Lancaster company continued to produce oval bore rifles from the late 1800s to the early 1920s or so."rless b