Good little serfs usually get what they deserve.
So do their masters. Eventually.
Activists loaded low-pressure cartridges
Handloading of low-signature rifle cartridges has been "a doubtful proposition" in Finland since the very first years of 20th century. Amongst the first pioneers of special-purpose handloading was the very most valiant National Hero of Finland, EUGEN SCHAUMAN, who executed detestable Russian governor-general NIKOLAY BOBRIKOV with an explosive (mercury-filled ?) bullet from his BROWNING pistol model 1900, and committed a suicide with next two shots, in the June 1904. Schauman died instantly. Bobrikov languished many long hours, moaning in Russian: "Pochemu..? Pochemu..?" ("Why..? Why..?").
Before his death Eugen Schauman was a member of the ACTIVISTS, a troop of daring Finns who planned to release Finland from the Imperium of Russia - by fighting with firearms, if necessary. There were obtained (in 1902) some Swedish 6.5 x 55 mm MAUSER/-96 rifles and (as early as in 1899) the WINCHESTER Model 1894 hunting rifles of caliber .25-35 WCF, for elementary training of the riflemanship and maintaining of the marksmanship by the regular target practice, but also for elimination of the most detestable Russian officials in Finland -- and their Finnish collaborators -- of course. As high-ranking Russian's sycophant as an Attorney General, ELIEL SOISALON-SOININEN was executed, along with some police chiefs, but all of them were eliminated with handguns. These capital punishments were executed after death of N. Bobrikov and Eugen Schauman.
Gun Control - creation of a dictatorship !
Governor-general Bobrikov was fully authorized dictator in Finland since 1903. Among his very first dictations was "A Gracious Act On The Registration And License-compulsion Of The Rifled Fire-arms". Those compulsions were applied to rifled shoulder arms only, including the "gallery rifles", chambered for .22 BB Caps or similar pipsqueaks, known as FLOBERT rounds. Shotguns and handguns were free from registration or license-compulsion. Then-modern military rifles, like Swedish Mauser, were especially risky to possess and use on the outdoor shooting ranges.
Left: Portrait of Governor-general Bobrikov.
Noise of the target practice became a problem. There were some models of the suppressors invented in 1903, but they were not yet produced, except a bulky "sound deadening device" of W.W. GREENER's "Humane Cattle-Killer"; a slaughtering tool. Logical solution was handloading of "silent without silencer" cartridges. Eugen Schauman developed them, or at least he gave information about low-noise loads with lead bullets and the "blue powder" by his letters to the activists all-round the Finland.
Right: Eugen Schauman, a Finnish Independence Activist.
Lost correspondence
Most of those letters are lost forever. They were "too hot material" to possess after the heroic deed and death of Eugen Schauman. Russian "OKHRANA" (the Secret Police; predecessor of KGB) did not believe fully on the claim: "I committed my deed alone, without any conspiration behind me..." A letter, including this statement -- addressed to the emperor of Russia -- was found from the pocket of deceased Schauman. This letter contained many answers to the question: "Pochemu ?", but the Czar of Russia never read it...
The forgotten Deputy Executioner
An other National Hero of Finland, an university student LENNART HOHENTHAL, was made all the necessary preparations for a physical elimination of Bobrikov. He was hired a room with an un-obstacled view to the route from Bobrikov's residence to the governor-general's office. Hohenthal was equipped with a rifle and some handloaded cartridges -- presumably charged with a small dose of the "bluepowder" and a lead bullet. Lennart Hohenthal planned to escape after his deed, without an intention of the "Kamikaze assault". Therefore he was forced to avoid an alarming noise of his planned fatal shots.
Eugen Schauman had, however, a more suitable official position - as an accountant in the Board of Schools. He could meet Bobrikov in a staircase of the Senate House..! Distance of his pistol shots was less than three meters..! Deputy executioner L. Hohenthal eliminated somewhat later the Finnish General Procurator (i.e. Attorney General), a traitor Eliel Soisalon-Soininen -- but with a handgun. He was caught by Okhrana, but escaped with assistance of some other activists. He exiled to Sweden and died there after a long unnoticed life - not so many decades ago - as a forgotten and almost unknown Finnish freedom fighter: "SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI !"
Although this painting "Attack" by Eetu Isto had to be kept secret, independence activists were shown it to arouse their spirit. The artist has painted the Finnish Maiden as trying to protect the book "LEX", laws of Finland from being torn by the twin-headed Eagle of Imperial Russia. The original painting was sought to be destroyed by Russian authorities without success. Now it is kept in the National Museum of Finland.
Lost handloading data
Just one letter, written by Eugen Schauman to one Communal Health Officer in rural Finland, has escaped confiscations of the Okhrana, or destruction by timid addressees. The physicians and drug-store owners were very important advisers to the handloaders in 1903, because they had the very best scales or "balances" for weighing of the powder charges to the precise search of an optimum reloading combination for each individual rifle, and for indented purpose. With a balance was weighed the volume of each handloader's set of the powder dippers.
There were four different kinds of powder in use: The black powder, a "bluepowder", the "smoke-lacking powder" and a "strong(ly) smoke-lacking powder", according to the nomenclature of Eugen Schauman. The letter was written in Swedish, which was a common language of educated Finns in 1903. Technical vocabulary of Swedish was undeveloped, because smokeless and semi-smokeless powders were novelties in the remote countries, as well as the art of rifle cartridges' reloading with those propellants.
The letter (almost) lacks reloading data, because Schauman was delivered it earlier to the addressee in a parcel, containing a rifle, selection of the bullets and a hundred grams of bluepowder. Weights of the bullets are, unfortunately, not mentioned on the letter, dated in March 12th 1903 and addressed to Doctor A.J. WAREN, Esq., of Orimattila. But the bluepowder was a very strong medicine, and the dosage of it was found necessary to repeat.
"Just what the Doctor orders..."
Doctor Warén was inquired Schauman the loading data for a Swedish 6.5 mm Mauser cartridge for the rifle, previously delivered to him. Eugen Schauman was able to give him reloading hints "from the mouse up to the moose", or from the mildest back-yard practice load up to the full-power charge with the strong smokeless powder.
" -- For the shooting to 20 - 30 meters distance you may load cartridges with 0.20 gram of bluepowder and a spherical bullet of the hardened lead alloy."
"-- For the shooting to 100 - 150 meters, the cartridge loaded with 0.3 gram of bluepowder, along with a long lead-alloy bullet."
"-- To the long-range shooting, up to 400 meters, the cartridge loaded with the smoke-lacking powder along with nickel-jacketed bullet and to still more extended ranges the cartridges loaded with strong(ly) smoke-lacking powder, along with a long nickel-jacketed bullet."
Doctor had the sample bullets and powders, presumably in original boxes and cans. Almost a century later it is very hard to guess right at the "Doc's orders" to his fellow-activists.
Something blue
Mysterious "bluepowder" was some kind of a then-common BULK SHOTGUN POWDER. This is still today THE propellant for reduced-charge rifle cartridges, from the .22 Hornet to 14.5 mm Russian or even the 20 mm anti-tank rifle ammo. (That 14.5 mm -- or ca. caliber .60 -- is, however, the biggest practical caliber for silenced firearms with an usual caliber-sized bullet. More "fat" projectiles are too noisy in the flight, even when flying at less than the Mach 0.9 velocity. The fléches = arrow projectiles, or tubular bullets, may extend the maximum caliber of silenced firearms up to the shotgun gauge 10, or 20 millimeters).
Those bulk powders are no more in production, despite of the demand. American bulk powders were usually made by tearing the bone fiber, compressed from the nitrated cotton, to the small kernels. They were rolled in the rotating drum, making so the tiny "dust-balls", impregnated with a saturated solution of inorganic oxidizing salts -- usually with potassium and barium nitrate -- and dried.
Then those little kernels were moistened with HOFFMANN's DROPS (ether-alcohol mixture), or acetone or aceditin, and rolled in the "candy drum" until surface of the kernels was dry, smooth and hard. They were actually coated with a nitrocellulose lacquer. Before impregnation or after this surface gelatinizing, it was possible to dye the powder kernels with very bright aniline dyes.
Making of the "hottest" powder
An optimum propellant for the rifle "gallery loads", the renowned "E.C. BLANK POWDER" -- mentioned in ARCANE Part 1. -- was made by similar process, but with a very slight percentage of salts and usually without kernel surface gelatinization at all. Gun-cotton fibers were interlaced with a dilute gum-Arabic solution in the "candy drumming" stage of the manufacturing process.
An unwritten textbook
Unfortunately there is unavailable "A COMPLETE BOOK OF THE POWDERS"! So it is impossible to tell the trade-mark or manufacturer of the bluepowder. It was definitively not the German blank cartridge powder (bright yellow) and presumably not the grass-green Belgian "EMERALD".
American DuPONT's "SCHULTZ SHOTGUN" powder was popular in Finland many years after the end of its production in 1926. It was used for forest-bird hunting with 7.62 mm MOSIN-NAGANT rifles, loaded with 7.65 mm Luger bullet or a shortened rifle bullet, weighing 6 grams. Powder charge was one gram or slightly more. Cartridge case was more than half-full, because the bulk powders were "bulky"; id est: Weight of them was light when compared to the volume of a charge. The charges were rather bulky, when compared with modern handgun powders, because of the low calorimetric energy of bulk powders.
The original Dram Equivalence
Semi-smokeless bulk powders were developed for reloading of the shells to the old shotguns, which were never proofed for shooting with smokeless powders. Shotshells were charged by the old -- but still valid -- rule of thumb: Equal volumes of the black powder, bird shots and the wadding. ("Third-third-third" rule).
Earliest bulk powders, like an original "42 Grains SCHULTZ" in 1864, were developed to give an equal muzzle velocity and the chamber pressure, compared with equal volume of the "shotgun grade" black powder. Actual weight of the semi-smokeless powder did not matter. A vast majority of handloaders had never seen the more accurate balance than a steelyard of a butcher or fishmonger.
Charge weights were compared with a volume of a dipper, holding three Avoirdupois drams of CURTIS & HARVEY Nr. 6 black powder (with a very uniform density). Three drams equals 82 grains Avdps. or 5.13 grams. The same volume of original "Sawdust Schultz" weighed 42 grains or 2.72 grams.
"Gone are the days..!"
There were also still less dense bulk powders in the turn of 20th century, like "SMOKELESS DIAMOND" or "E.C. No. 3" with a weight 33 grains, and "AMBERITE" with the weight 28 grains per three drams dipper's volume. (In modern readings had "28 grains bulk powder" the weight-per-volume ratio 9 grains or 0.58 gram per CC). Some most modern powders, like HODGDON "CLAYS/UNIVERSAL", are truly light in weight-per-volume ratio: 0.45 gram per CC, or approximately so..! That is ca. seven grains per CC, or according to the old reading is the Universal powder a "twenty-two grains powder", but PLEASE, NOTE: Do not think ANY of modern smokeless general-purpose powder to be as an old bulk powder ! They may be three or four times as powerful as were the propellants of "Good Old Days"..! Those days are gone...forever ?
WANTED: Information !
The author has not yet all the needed information re DuPont "SCHULTZ SHOTGUN" powder, which was manufactured between 1900 and 1926, mostly for the reloading of shotshells with "bulk-by-bulk" dosage, using a black powder dipper for the distribution. That powder was also recommended for "the light gallery charges in metallic cases." (Recommended by the MANUFACTURER ?? >Jess ! In the FIRST quarter of the 20th century..!)
Powder kernels were irregular in size and shape. Such were most of bulk powders, known in Finland as the Old-fashioned Corned Powders. Who can, and is willing, to tell the COLOR of powder kernels and the DENSITY of this propellant ? It is presumably printed on the powder canister label as: "XX grains (bulk) powder." Some blank lines of Finnish history may become printed by this information.
Lead bullets were plentily available
In 1903 were the lead-alloy bullets available for each & every rifle cartridge, save the most wildest "wildcats". Jacketed bullets were new and unusual projectiles in Finland. Still, in early 1930's, more than 30 years after the date of Eugen Schauman's letter to Dr. Warén, a German "WAFFEN UND MUNITION"/"ARMS AND AMMUNITION" catalog listed more than thirty cast lead-alloy bullets for handloaders of the rifle cartridges, in several calibers from .22 to .45.
There were also spherical lead buckshots and air-rifle pellets listed for loaders of the "gallery practice" rifle cartridges. Air-gun pellets were not yet of a frail Diabolo-design, but the neat conical-pointed Minié-shaped slugs in several calibers up to 6.5 mm. Two kinds of lubrication-grooved cast bullets for Swedish 6.5 mm Mauser rifle were listed on the W.u.M-catalog: A round-pointed slug, weighing 4.15 grams, and a flat-nosed bullet; weight 4.30 grams.
("Imperial" weights were 64 grains and 66.4 grains). Bullet diameter was 6.72 mm and the price 53:57 US-$ per a hundred... kilograms ! Not so high price, because there were almost 24100 round-pointed bullets in the delivery crate, net weight 100 kilograms. In the very same year 1934 was the possession of a firearm's silencer rated at $ 200:00 by a strict provision, "LEX MORGENTHAU" -- a.k.a. Federal Firearms Act -- in the United States of America.
"The bloodstained shirt of Eugen Schauman (1875-1904). On the 16th of June 1904, Schauman assassinated N.I. Bobrikov, the Russian Governor-General of Finland, on the staircase of the Senate building in Helsinki, after which he shot himself.
-- Photo Matti Huuhka / National Board of Antiquities"
Schauman's shirt is on display at the National Museum of Finland, their version of our Smithsonian Institution Museum.