Reason I ask, is that I have recently been reading The Kentucky Rifle, written by John G.W. Dillon and published in 1924 by the NRA, and on page 29 there is an account by a Milton Warren an apprentice to gunsmith John Whitesides of Abingdon, VA, in which he states they turned out a good, well finished, but plain rifle in a week.
Which got me to thinking about how long current custom gunmakers take to complete a gun, and how long most of us take to finish putting together a kit, especially considering the account by Mr. Warren states building the rifles included fabricating the barrel and the lock and other fittings from bar iron, and brass or German silver sheet and forming the stock from slabs of wood seasoning in a corner of the shop. Makes modern gunmakers sound like pikers.
Anyone else familiar with this book? It seems to have a lot of interesting information on the origins and use of the "Kentucky" rifle as well as plates showing a number of American Long Rifles and their predecessors. I am wondering how accurate some of the ideas and speculation are that are included in this volume?
TNGhost,
I'm glad to see you are reading some of the published information on Kentucky rifles rather than just getting all your information from the internet. That said, you are wise to question some of the things that were written mid-20th century like Dillon's
The Kentucky Rifle. When these early writers were writing about the evolution of the Kentucky rifle and where it originated they were relying more on speculation and very little on solid research and facts. Dillon in particular was fond of repeating stories told him by old timers and information from decedents that amounted to little more than family lore.
The narrative by Milton Warren that Dillion quotes is a good example. It's not clear what all the steps were that Warren was including when he states "
It took about a week to make a good, plain rifle, of which time two days would be spent on the stock." He starts out stating that Whitesides owned a sawmill implying that he cut his own stock wood. He also describes where the iron ore deposits are and the smelters that smelted the ore and the forges that worked the pig-iron into wrought iron.
Knowing that the stock wood had to be dried for long periods after it was cut and that the smelting and working the wrought iron cannot possibly be part of the week it took to make a rifle makes one wonder how much of the other processes he describes is and isn't included in his "week to make a good, plain rifle."
The only other time estimate Warren gives that I noticed in his narrative is where he said the rifling "could be done in about two hours." I suppose if two men were taking turns pulling and pushing the rifling guide, they might could rifle a barrel in that time.
Bob McBride mentioned Bob Lienemann's three-day rifle challenge. Lienemann wrote it up in an article titled "The Three Day Longrifle" that was published in the Volume 9, No. 2 - Summer 2017 issue of
American Tradition, The Journal of the Contemporary Longrifle Association.
Lienemann first presented the challenge to his friend, Jack Brooks, and later commissioned several other gunmakers to attempt the challenge.
Bob and Jack kept notes and took some photographs of the process. Jack worked 10-hr days with lunch and breaks. He started with a plank of wood, a finished barrel and a finished lock, and rough castings for butt plate and trigger guard. He hand made the other parts.
At the end of the first day, he had the stock blank cut to his chosen pattern, breech plug installed in the barrel, barrel inlet, barrel lugs installed, barrel pinned, ramrod groove cut with gouge and rasp, ramrod hole drilled, lock inlet, lock and stock drilled for lock bolts and tapped, tang bolt drilled, trigger plate made, drilled and inlet, and finally the tang bolt installed.
The second day involved making the trigger and installing it. The butt plate was cleaned up and inlet. Same for the trigger guard. A sideplate was cutout from brass sheet, shaped and inlet. Ramrod thimbles were made and inlet. Sling swivels were also made and installed. With all the metal parts on the gun, the stock shaping began in earnest. The stock was shaped to final form from butt to just past the entry pipe.
Day three began with final shaping of the forend, making a two-piece nose cap and installing, and filing up a front sight of brass and rear sight of iron and installing on the barrel. The barrel was then engraved with the makers name. After final sanding of the stock, it was stained with nitric acid and blushed with heat. Linseed oil was applied.
Bob said:
A bit of time was spent under a shade tree, boning the linseed oil into the stock and discussing the project. The brass mounts were also burnished, and the barrel was left bright.
The longrifle has the components, lines and detail of a fine longrifle, and is complete -- like the old longrifle at Dixons's from a few years before, though this one has both stain and finish.
If all the metal parts had been made by another worker and ready to install by the stocker, it might be possible to stock the rifle in two days as Warren said.
Just as a comparison to another shop from about the same time that Warren is describing Whitesides gunshop (Warren mentions the use of back action locks, indicating mid-1800 or later), Sam Hawken's shop participated in a business census in 1850. It gives some details on Sam's business at the time. He had four workers working for him. They produced 100 rifles and 20 shotguns in the preceding 12 months. We don't know what the shotguns look like as none are known with Hawken markings. It's possible they were NW trade guns as these were often referred to as "shotguns" at that time or they could have included simple single barrel fowling pieces.
Taking all 120 guns as the year's production and dividing by 52 weeks/year, we get an average of 2.3 guns made per week. Looking at this figure per man-week and including Sam with his four workmen, 2.3 guns divided by 5 men yields 0.46 guns/man-week. If Whitesides had half as many people working on his guns as Hawken, it would yield about 1 gun per man-week, but that means he had to be twice as efficient.
As another data point for a large scale operation of the day, data is available from a business census in 1860 on Henry Leman's operations in Lancaster, PA. At that time, Leman had 62 workmen and produced 5,000 guns in the fiscal year. The math gives us an average of 96.2 guns/week and about 1.55 guns/man-week.
Leman's factory was over three times more efficient than the Hawken shop. Leman made his own barrels and locks, but he had a steam engine to power machines. Hawken sometimes made their own barrels and locks, but are known to have used commercial barrel blanks (Hawken did the boring and rifling of the barrels) and commercial locks on most of the surviving rifles.
For Whitesides's shop to make a rifle (including making the barrel and lock) in a week, his operation would have had to have been almost as efficient as Leman's. That would suggest a bigger operation than a master gunsmith and a few workmen like the Hawken shop. He would need a lot of machinery (he had water power) and many workmen to get the economy of scale. It would be doable, but would require a bigger operation than Warren's narrative implies.
If the lock and barrel were already made, there is no question that a small gun shop could make a rifle in a week. Jack Brooks and other professional contemporary gunmakers stocked unadorned rifles and guns in as little as three days for Bob Lienemann's Three-Day Challenge. Sam Hawken's 5-man operation averaged 2.3 guns per week in 1850.
If Warren's narrative included the making of the barrel and lock in his "week", then he wasn't describing a small gun shop but a factory approaching the scale of Leman's factory in Lancaster.
Or he was exaggerating!
