Bare Bones AWI Period Southern Rifle

[Artificer]

Not sure how many folks have heard of or seen this really plain Southern Rife, so I thought some would enjoy seeing it.
http://emuseum.history.org/view/ob...ate:flow=4db4a7d7-1b89-4d48-ab48-cd729d1fdba0

Gus

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Thanks Gus

Here's an old article on Southern Rifles..., the first one has an unbridled lock, very little hardware, and thimbles of copper.

Southern Longrifles Plain and Fancy

LD

 

[Rifleman1776]

Always nice to see originals. That one has the teensy-weensy-tiny sights so often seen on the old timers. I have never understood that.

 

[Artificer]

Thanks Gus

Here's an old article on Southern Rifles..., the first one has an unbridled lock, very little hardware, and thimbles of copper.

Southern Longrifles Plain and Fancy

LD

Neat Article Dave,

Wow, that last one sort of gives a whole new definition of a "pistol grip" stock. It looks like a pistol was given super vitamins and grew a butt stock, fore stock and longer barrel. :haha:

Gus

 

[Artificer]

Always nice to see originals. That one has the teensy-weensy-tiny sights so often seen on the old timers. I have never understood that.

That has often been a wonderment to me as well and especially as I have done so much function/accuracy test firing at 100 yards with open sight rifles over the years.

Something I have noticed is a fair number of people report they can shoot unmentionable rifles more accurately w/the finest NM Aperture and thin NM front sight blades at 100 yards - compared to larger front sight blades and larger rear sight notches or apertures. It may have something to do with the finer sights caused people to actually focus more and/or better?

Gus

 

[Flint62Smoothie]

Wow, that last one sort of gives a whole new definition of a "pistol grip" stock. It looks like a pistol was given super vitamins and grew a butt stock, fore stock and longer barrel. :haha:

Worse that that ... did you see the DROP on that stock? Holy cow, more than an offhand Schuetzen rifle comb’d for scope shooting offhand!

 

[Artificer]

Yes, even considering that stock was made for the butt plate to go on the arm rather than in the shoulder, you are right it still has A LOT of drop in that butt stock.

Gus

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Maybe it was made for a relative of Lon Chaney (senior)

:idunno:

OK so obscure reference...., lets see how long it takes somebody to figure it out....,

LD

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Yeah I liked it as it gives a little more credence to my very simple rifle, sans butt plate, side plate, and nose cap.

LD

 

[Elnathan]

I have never seen that one. Very nice. However, the stock architecture looks a bit later than the date given - I'd be inclined to date it no earlier than 1790 on that basis. Guard looks like a Golden Age valley rifle, too. Be interesting to know why they date it that early.

Two things of note - a Germanic flat-faced lock, and the presence of a sliding wooden box without a buttplate.

Wish there were more and better pictures. Very nice gun, though, and a prime candidate for reproduction. Love that architecture.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Yeah I wonder if folks get thrown off due to the locks, instead of looking at the architecture of the stock as the primary factor...?

I found that unbridled locks were being imported and used after the AWI, though I had been taught in the past that they pretty much were gone by the start of the AWI. So if one had the inaccurate information when the article was written, it would skew the dating of the rifle.

LD

 

[tenngun]

I wonder if this is not an old restock of parts, maybe everything isn’t from the same time??? A Frankenstein gun ? :idunno:

 

[Elnathan]

I dunno. The trigger guard really does look post-Revolution to me.

The overall shape of the stock, which is all I can make out, reminds me a lot of RCA 124, 126, and 127. Those last two are '80s or 90's rifles cobbled together out of spare parts, whereas the first might be earlier.

 

[satx78247]

In frontier America, NOTHING that could be repurposed/reused was ever thrown away.

For example "Sweet Baby" the big-bore hunting rifle that the famous, or notorious (depending on one's opinion of her "rather colorful life") Harriet Potter (called: "Our very own Texas wildcat") was made of parts of at least 3-4 Brown Bess muskets (according to her diary), sometime after our TX Revolution but before 1844.

yours, satx

 

[tenngun]

I’ve mentioned before, but I think our view of guns is slanted by a predator trap. The metal drives of the wars and just the need for horse shoes and axe heads led to the old worn or poorly cared for guns going in to the pot, where as the nicer guns the true works of art, got saved. So I think that sways are view of guns.
Schoolcraft records how half the time his gun wasn’t working. I bet it wasn’t the fine gun we think of coming out of the our gun makers of that time.

 

[Elnathan]

I’ve mentioned before, but I think our view of guns is slanted by a predator trap. The metal drives of the wars and just the need for horse shoes and axe heads led to the old worn or poorly cared for guns going in to the pot, where as the nicer guns the true works of art, got saved. So I think that sways are view of guns.
Schoolcraft records how half the time his gun wasn’t working. I bet it wasn’t the fine gun we think of coming out of the our gun makers of that time.

That is certainly possible. Jim Chambers mentioned to me awhile back that he thinks that it wasn't uncommon for folks to own two or more guns - a fancy gun for shooting matches and other social occasions, and another more utilitarian piece for everyday use. I'm not sure what he is basing that theory on, but I can think of evidence for people owning more than one firearm even along the frontier. So it is possible that proportion for fancy to plain is skewed among survivors.

However, I don't think that we can hypothesize a whole class of Revolutionary-era "poorboys" that just all got used up, though, if that is what your are thinking. The fact that in the 1770s and '80s the Brits reproduced a wood-boxed copy of a Lancaster rifle with full furniture and moderate carving as their cheap trade rifle is pretty conclusive as to what was the norm at the time, I think.

I'm wondering if the appearance of cobbled-together rifles, right at the same time the really nice art pieces are beginning to be produced in the post-war period, is related to the land-rush to Kentucky in the later '80s and 90s. Most of the earliest settlers in the KY-TN region were pretty well off, but I think there was a massive influx of settlers who were quite poor and I suspect that lots of them specifically wanted a rifle. Add to that economic downturns and an arms embargo from Britain that wasn't lifted until the early 90s IIRC, and there might be a market for inexpensive rifled guns made from cobbled together parts that wasn't there earlier.

 

[excess650]

Yeah I wonder if folks get thrown off due to the locks, instead of looking at the architecture of the stock as the primary factor...?

I found that unbridled locks were being imported and used after the AWI, though I had been taught in the past that they pretty much were gone by the start of the AWI. So if one had the inaccurate information when the article was written, it would skew the dating of the rifle.

LD

I HAVE an original flintlock, late Lancaster, with single lock bolt and unbridled frizzen.

 

[tenngun]

For sure we could run away with the poor boy argument, and I see that failing from two grounds: 1) the absence of them, 2) the tendency to decorate even mundane items at that time. Theirs was the time of carved powder gingerbread on ships carved plasterwork. Even military muskets had a touch of fancy work.
This Poor boy here even sported some carving. So I don’t want you to misunderstand what I was saying.
I do wonder though if we weight our views of eighteenth century arms based on survival of the best.and I wonder how many mismatched and restocked Frankensteins were seen at this time.

 

[Gene L]

All but one of the rifle pictures posted above were cap locks. I think the cap lock Southern rifles existed far longer than the hc/pc assessment of 1870. My uncles and Alvin York were shooting them well into the 20th Century.

 

[Elnathan]

For sure we could run away with the poor boy argument, and I see that failing from two grounds: 1) the absence of them, 2) the tendency to decorate even mundane items at that time. Theirs was the time of carved powder gingerbread on ships carved plasterwork. Even military muskets had a touch of fancy work.
This Poor boy here even sported some carving. So I don’t want you to misunderstand what I was saying.
I do wonder though if we weight our views of eighteenth century arms based on survival of the best.and I wonder how many mismatched and restocked Frankensteins were seen at this time.

Gotcha. That is about what I thought you meant, but I figured that I better clarify the difference between "nicer guns had a higher survival rate and are over-represented" and "the frontiersmen all used poorboys" to avoid confusion...

One does occasionally run across guns with some interesting combinations of parts. At the Knoxville show last year I got a couple pictures of a rifle a roman-nose stock and English roller lock from around 1800 or so, using an iron open bow trigger guard with an acanthus leaf finale evidently recycled from a German jaeger. Flat wrap-around buttplate and wooden box, too. Really interesting rifle, and I am kicking myself for not getting a bunch more pictures and some measurements.

Edited to add: I think one of the really early NC rifles that has cropped up recently is a restocked Lancaster - lock, barrel, furniture are all from Graef, but the stock is in the NC style. I think an awful lot if not most of the Mecklenburg Co. rifles are built around recycled barrels, since they never had a barrel manufactury down there.