40_Rod,

  I agree that much of what the old timers knew was considered such common knowledge that it wasn'y written down.

  But the really frustrating part is that a lot of it was published, but those publications have long disappeared and the copies of them only reside in a few collections. Some, such as Shooting & Fishing and The Rifle have been reprinted but not many have a spare $5000 or so to spend on them. Magazines like Forest & Stream and Arms & The Man, probably will never see the light of day as reprints. And this is sad since so much info is in them that we haven't even considered yet.

  Bob (GWarden) and I went to a gun show today and naturally got talking about things relating to SS's on the way down. A lot of things came up that I didn't know the answers to, or had thought about but hadn't done any testing for. But they are such common ideas I'm sure the answers are buried somewhere in old publications.

  Just transcribing out the 1800 + pages of the Warner-Lowe letters has been a tremendous education for me. Not only in how, or why things were done the way they were back then, but an interesting look into the times.

PETE

Bob,
 Ok.... Here it is. I make no guarantees that this will work any better than any of the other formulas out there.   These formulas are about like lubes. One for every shooter! A Maj. Cundill & Mr. Hancock also have their interpretations of Greenhills formula listed to.

What I've printed below is a direct copy from the letters, so spelling and sentence structure might make it a little hard to understand, but hopefully the math examples will make it clear. This comes from Lowe's daybooks and as such were more something to jog his memory than to be absolutely clear to someone else reading it.

PETE

Take the calibre of projectile (or diameter) of the bore of your rifle in hundredths of inches and multiply by 3, then multiply the result by itself; then take the length of one turn in rifling in inches in gun rifle and multiply that by 7 divide the first sum by the result of this and it will give the length of projectile
in hundredths of inches that can be shot from that rifle.
If you have a certain length of projectile and you wish to know the length of turn in rifling to shoot this projectile and keep it right end to, take the length of projectile in hundredths of inches and multiply by 7 then take the calibre (or diameter) of barrel of rifle it is to be shot from multiply by 3 and the result by itself and divide by result of the projectile; this will give the turn in number of inches (cut off the fractions and leave it even inches).
In small calibres with shallow grooves a little longer projectile can be used, for the weight has not been cut away on the surface.
Hollow bases must be cut down flat before measuring.

Sample calibre .32  .32 x 3 = .96 x .96 = 9216
Rifling 16 inch – .16 x 7 = .112
9216 divided by .112 = .8228 or discarding the extended decimals .82 the length of the projectile.

       (32 x 32)2 = 9216 = 82+ or .82 length
         16 x 7         112

Rule I

C = calibre taken in hundredths
T = twist in inches for one turn
L = length of projectile in hundredths of inches

Then  (c x 3)2  L  measured in hundredths
          T x 7

 Rule two T is taken in hundredths of inches

Then T = (C x 3)2  = 32 x 3 squared  =  9216  = 16
              L x 7                 82 x 7     =   574 

Joeb,

  Well, there you go. I'm no math wizard so wouldn't know one formula from another. Ed Stutz in a PM said the same thing as you did.

  But..... as Dick Gunn, and those of us around here found out, when using Greenhill, it's far better to use 125 or 130 as the constant in predicting what twist or bullet length will work best in a given rifle.

  From your post it just goes to show that we "re-invented" the wheel, and the idea of using the approximate same thing was known over 100 yrs. ago.

  Warner, Cundill, & Hancock all had their ideas as to what variation of Greenhill would be best. Lowe was also interested in Cundill & Hancock work as they used a proportion system where the twist was figured as a proportion of the cal. and bullet length.

  What we all have to remember to is that not matter what formula you use to figure twist it is more than likely some variation of Greenhill. After all, twist is twist, and bullet length is bullet length, and they have to be in the right proportion or tipping results. If you use math to figure out what you need, there are only so many ways to do it.

  This idea that some shooters have these days that slight tipping is acceptable, as it "doesn't affect accuracy", would have probably gotten you a good lecture from the old timers. You see this all thru the Warner-Lowe letters. They examined every target to make sure the bullets were flying "point on", or "true" at the distances they wanted to shoot at. If not they spent a lot of time and money making sure they did, either with new barrels, or moulds & swages.

PETE