Building a 1750s English fowler

[Artificer]

Hi Dave,

What a fascinating way to make the gun truly yours!

Over the years I have gotten the impression there was almost an "Aura" belief/following of Spanish barrels in the 17th/18th centuries. There were stories that Spanish barrel makers would gather up old/used horseshoes to make their barrels and somehow that made the Iron in them better for barrel making.

I have wondered from time to time why the Spanish barrels seemed to have so impressed some English and even American gunmakers?

Gus

 

[dave_person]

Thanks for looking folks.

Gus, those stories about the Spanish makers are true. They did make possibly the best fowler barrels in the world during the 17th and 18th centuries. Their quality is derived from several factors. First, the iron ore from northern Spain is very pure (still is today) producing exceptional wrought iron skelps. Second, the Spanish makers welded their barrels in 5 separate sections that were welded together. They divided the iron into 25 piles, 7 of which were used for the breech and first part of the octagon section, 6 for the rest of the octagon, and 12 divided into 3 separate piles for the round part of the barrel. They spiral welded each section first, inspected them thoroughly for quality, and then welded them all together. That way the welds were inspected very thoroughly assuring the reliability of the barrel that the Spanish were famous for. They also could confidently pare the metal down to very thin walls for much of the barrel's length making very fine, strong but light barrels. The horseshoe story is true. According to Isidro Soler's 1795 treatise on Spanish gunmaking, Nicholas Bis is credited with discovering the quality of iron horseshoes from northen Spain (Biscay) for gun barrels in the early 18th century. Used shoes had been pounded against the ground so that the iron density and ductility was increased. When forged into skelps, the iron made exceptional gun barrels. This is the same idea as using horseshoe nails to make "stub" twist barrels discovered by the British 60-70 years later. Spanish barrels were esteemed throughout Europe and wealthy English sportsmen would vacation in Europe and often buy fowler barrels in Spain or rifled barrels in Germany, return home and have their favorite gunmaker stock them up. Until the British makers made stub twist barrels, the Spanish barrels were considered the best.

dave

 

[Rifleman1776]

Beautiful. :bow:

 

[Rifleman1776]

Fascinating information. That is completely new to me. Your depth of knowledge is very impressive.

 

[Capt. Jas.]

Amazing us all Dave!!

 

[MSW]

tremendous esoterica - I suspected that the pounding would improve the metal's ability to withstand stress.

thanks for the post, and the drool- worthy photos!

 

[Davemuzz]

Dave......just one question......

How did they "weld" these pieces together? It's not like they had an electric company sub-station in their back yard. OR maybe....... :haha: :haha:

 

[Artificer]

Hi Dave,

Thank you very much for that thorough explanation. It was very interesting to see there was a real reason behind what otherwise might be seen as an old myth. :thumbsup: :hatsoff:

Gus

 

[dave_person]

Hi Dave,
They heated the barrel sections in a forge and hammer welded them.

dave

 

[Col. Batguano]

That was pretty hard on the horse wasn't it? :dead:

 

[dave_person]

Hi David,
Now you really are beating a dead horse.

dave

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
I other work to do so I had to put the fowler aside for a while. I added a traditional British silver "spider" front sight. These were often found on British guns of all qualities. The silver is inlet into the barrel and peened into undercuts in the mortice. I also added solder. I'll keep the sight tall and rough until I shoot the gun. When I brown/blue the barrel, the silver will really show.

dave

dave

 

[Artificer]

Hi Dave,

Is the four legged "spider" base also silver or is that Iron/Steel?

Gus

 

[dave_person]

Hi Gus,
All silver.

dave

 

[Artificer]

Wow, never realized the original sights were two piece like that. Interesting. Thank you.

Gus

 

[dave_person]

Hi Gus,
I don't know if they were originally 2 pieces. It makes the most sense unless the silver sight and spider base was cast as one piece. I doubt they were cast. The originals I've seen with the sights suggest 2 pieces because I can sort of see a seam at the base of the sight but I am not sure. Filing one from solid silver would waste a lot of metal so my guess is they were 2 pieces. Also, I know they were peened into mortices in the barrel but beyond that, I have no idea the original procedure. I made my method by intuition and logic and also added solder as insurance since the mortice is very shallow.

dave

 

[Davemuzz]

Nice looking work Dave!!

 

[Col. Batguano]

is the sight post brass? It looks like you made a mortice for the sight post deeper than the spider base, undercut it, and then peened the post to expand in to the undercut. It seems like it would be pretty tricky to cut out your donut hole that precisely for it all to fit

 

[dave_person]

Hi David,
It is much easier than that. The sight is silver like the base and it fits into a rectangular hole in the base. The hole is countersunk on the underside so that the peened sight locks into the counter sink. Then most of the excess is filed off needing only a slight depression in the barrel to fit the peened base of the sight. It is all quite easy to do.

dave

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
Again, this is taking a while because I have other guns and repairs to work on. Well, I needed to decide what to do about a finish for the barrel. This was not an easy decision and historical guidance is unfortunately, largely speculative for the first 3 quarters of the 18th century. I believe most British fowling guns made during 1730-1760 had barrels that were simply polished bright and some likely were rust browned. John George wrote in his book "English Guns and Rifles" that rust browning began to be used in the early 18th century. However, it is not clear how British makers handled foreign-made barrels that might already be colored. The key books by Neal and Back show several guns with Indian, Turkish, and Spanish barrels that were either browned or blued. We know from writings by Isidro Soler and the 3 brothers who wrote "Espingarda Perfeyta" that Spanish and Portuguese barrels were "heat", "fire", or "charcoal" blued. I think our best modern approximation of the process is "charcoal" bluing. However, I have no idea if a Spanish barrel purchased by a Brit was already colored or bought in the white. The bright polished Spanish barrel examples shown in the same books I mentioned above are not necessarily historically accurate given the penchant for over polishing common in Britain. However, some of the browned and blued barrels shown in those same books could be done later in the life of the gun. So what to do? I suggest that many British makers and clients probably admired the gold and silver inlays on their Spanish barrels and would want to show them off by having the barrel browned or blued, if the barrel was not already blued by the Spanish maker. The Spanish barrel on my original Heylin fowler appears to be browned but that could have happened later. I decided that my barrel was going to emulate one that had been charcoal blued but I was not going to expose my barrel to that process. Indeed, I am not set up to do charcoal bluing. Instead, I polished the barrel highly and then applied LMF browning, which I carded aggressively until the brown color was polished in the metal, not on top. That gave me the chance to see how I liked the look of rust browning with the silver inlays and spider sight. I decided a dark blue would be much more stunning so I then boiled the barrel in water to turn the brown, a deep dark blue. Then I rubbed it back aggressively with coarse canvas such that the bluing became slightly translucent. Then I heated the barrel and painted it hot with boiled linseed oil, let cool, and then buffed hard with canvas. It came out pretty nice. I cleaned any oil out of the maker's stamps with acetone, and gilded them. Finally, I coated the stamps with a little lacquer to protect the gold leaf. I kind of like the effect and while it does not match charcoal bluing, it gets closer than typical rust bluing.

dave