Hi all, I recently picked up an 1800's Belgian made Howda double pistol in 18mm or 73cal pinfire. Would anyone have any information about ammo or loading for this?
I'm wanting to shoot this old beast.
Thanks.

Hmm, .73 calibre = 12 gauge, likely with brass cases. Or 14 gauge with paper cases? A 14 gauge paper I have is .765 just above the rim.
?????

Bye
Jack

To the best of my admittedly limited knowledge, the common wisdom is that 15mm is the largest pinfire metallic ever loaded. That is not to say this didn't use some modified pinfire shotshell or something even more exotic. How one would load ammo for your pistol is an even more problematic question!

After the gun got here, I measured everyting and it looks more like a 16 bore. A 16 gauge shotshell will go into the chamber about 1.6". The bore slugs at .703" I've made a couple of cases from turned down 50 BMGs. I made a 810 gn bullet mold and shot a few with 20-30 gns of Pyrodex RS. I wasn't able to get any velocity data as the filler kept messing with the chrony readings. I've since found some CBC 16 ga brass cases from Old Western scrounger. They are much easier to modify and I picked up a Lee 12 ga 1 oz slug mold to try. Would anyone have any info on the bullet weight and velocity of the original round?
Pics of the gun are here:
http://members.fortunecity.com/howda/howda.html