Blasting Away With a 142-Year Old Black Powder Breech-Loader (Video)

The neat thing about an 1875 Portuguese Navy contract British-made Snider .58-caliber carbine is that by the time the smoke clears, the watermelon is gone.

Eric with IV8888 has a fully functional vintage carbine of Mr. Jacob Snider’s design that dates from the tail end of the 19th Century. Snider was an American who by 1867 had sold the English on converting their muzzleloading rifles to single-shot breechloaders that (typically) used a .577 cartridge. The guns were fast and simple (though, without an extractor, left the user to dump their brass manually) and remained in service around The Empire for more than 30 years.

Eric’s was made for the navy of Portugal– one of Britain’s most loyal allies– and after slaying a series of pop bottles and melons, he has a shoot-off with Kevin, armed with a P61 style muzzie, to illustrate how much faster the Snider was back in the day.

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