About ten years ago I was visiting with a neighbor near my cabin when he showed me this old long barrelled rifle. His father had a body shop and over the years a few customers had paid their bills with guns and other articles and this one obviously spent a long time in a corner of the shop before he passed away and the neighbor got possession of it. It was covered with dirt and surface rust and what turned out to be brass fittings had turned black with oxidation. It had a strange breechblock that was frozen about a third of the way open and appeared to have been pounded on a bit. Wiping off the sideplate revealed "Enfield" and "1867".
It was obvious he had never done anything to it since receiving it and said he didn't intend to so I asked if he wanted me to take it and see what I could do to clean it up. He handed it over along with a couple brass cartridges with cardboard crimped ends that were actually shotshells marked .577 Snider.
It took about a month of soaking to get the breechblock free and in the meantime I cleaned it up and fired one of the shotshells to test operation. It was a short unexpected relationship with a very interesting rifle.
Jacob Snider was an American inventor, whose breech mechanism was adopted by the British for the conversion of Enfield Muzzle-Loading rifles into "Breech-Loaders", around 1868.
"Mavt" - You did a nice job of cleaning that one up and getting it functioning.
The round you fired may have been a British Prison or Riot load, (if it was military and not a 24 gauge shot-shell).
If there was a "D.C." stamp on the Left-Side of the stock-butt, it was issued to the Dominion of Canada.
I have had a worthy Snider-Enfield, since 1968. (I also have a Portuguese Cavalry Carbine, built as a breech-loader by B.S.A. in 1885. Portugal was an Ally of the British and adopted the Snider as a service arm.
The Danes and Dutch also adopted breech-loaders based on the Snider Patent.
The British Sniders are fun arms to shoot and tinker with. .577 Cartridges can be made from cut-down 24 ga. shot-shells.
After firing, the Snider is kept 'near-level' and brought to waist height.
To Extract, the hammer is cocked, the block is swung open with the side of the thumb, and the fully-opened block is pulled rearward (against spring pressure) on its axis-pin.
To Eject, the near-level rifle is rotated counter-clockwise with the thumb holding the block open. (The block is allowed to spring forward after extraction). The fired/extracted case drops to the ground by gravity from the 'upside-down' rifle. It works quickly with practice!
Kipling comically wrote about soldiers having trouble, with getting out of the habit of turning their rifles upside-down to eject, when the Martini-Henry was adopted, around 1871-72. (I don't know if this was actually true, but, why ruin a good story)!
