Continental Army Rifle

[Twisted_1in66]

Charles, I fear your original question about rifles got lost in all of this, so here are a few generalities that might help you with your selection. Hopefully Mike Brooks or one of the other superb builders we have on here will step forward with any corrections to these:

Ӣ Early Longrifles (pre-Rev War) were typically wide at the butt, up to as much as 2" wide with little curve to the butt-plate. They usually were 50 cal. or larger though specific caliber was inconsistent because hammer welding rifle barrels did not produce truly consistent rifled bore sizes. Thus, each rifle came with a mold to cast the ball for that barrel.

These were smaller calibers than the German Jaeger rifles which virtually all the early gunsmiths had experience making in Germany that were typically .62 caliber in size. During the war the butt-pieces became a little narrower. After the war they became narrower yet and the crescent style of butt-piece became prominent as it moved into the Golden-Age rifles (1790-1830 or so).

Ӣ After the war the caliber of longrifle dropped with lots of .45 and .40 caliber rifles made. During the war a .40 caliber rifle would be very unusual.

Ӣ Early rifles usually had some carving of some sort on them. At least incise carving, though relief carving in the Rococo style was common. During the war, most surviving example have relief carving. About the only ornamentation on them would be a hunting star on the cheekpiece and perhaps a medalion as a thumbpiece on top of the stock behind the tang. Highly ornamented rifles with brass ornamentation around the wrist and along the forend did not show up as normal until the golden age after war, when the demand for rifles plummeted (no more war) and gunsmiths had to do something special to make their pieces stand out and sell.

Ӣ Early longrifles either had no patchbox or had a sliding wooden patchbox prior to the war. Simple brass patch boxes came out right before the start of the war and progressively became more ornamental. Sliding wooden patchboxes were still common in the early war. "Daisy" pattern patchboxes were seen during the war, but "pierced" patchboxes didn't appear until after the war. Pierced patchboxes are those that have wood showing through the brass patchboxes as part of an ornamental pattern instead of the patchbox being solid brass in whatever shape was used.

Ӣ The wrist of the longrifle was always significantly wider than it was tall to make sure there was plenty of strength in the wrist to withstand the heavy loads needed for 50 to 62 caliber round balls. Wrists thinned out some after the war as caliber size went down and powder charges reduced accordingly. However, they never became narrow and tall as you often find now in production rifles.

Ӣ All of the original longrifles I've seen had very slender forends. The front stock was not very deep. That is perhaps a fine point, but most of the production longrifles have very thick fore-ends and you could easily take half the wood off the forend to get them closer to what they should be.

”¢ Rifle barrels varied in length with Haynes Lancaster rifles being short at 38" while more of them were 42 to 44½" in length. So plenty of room to play with there. Capt. John Warner of the Green Mountain Rangers had an exceptionally long rifle at 7-ft. in length. He used it at the Battle of Bennington. That was an unusual rifle. So basically any barrel from 38" to 44½" in length would definitely fall into the Rev War period.

Ӣ All barrels until the 1820's were hammer forge-welded and were swamped barrels. Straight and tapered barrels didn't appear until automatic machinery began making barrels (I believe that was the 1820's...not sure). A swamped barrel is night and day easier to mount, sight, hold on target, and just all around handle than a straight or tapered octagon barrel. I have both and there is absolutely no comparison in my opinion. Nonetheless, no one will give you pause if you don't have a swamped barrel. They are typically an extra $100 to $150 over the standard barrels and worth every penny of it.

Ӣ Barrels at the time were either finished "in the white", or were charcoal blued, which was a high-heat blued finish. The natural "in the white" barrels developed a natural patina with use, but are nowhere near being a "browned" barrel. Browning barrels didn't become popular until after the war. A blued barrel, bright barrel, or natural patina barrel would be typical but again, no one is going to give you grief if yours is browned.

Ӣ Early locks were either German or British as the colonists were prohibited from manufacturing locks. That doesn't mean we didn't do make them, but we tried not to get caught doing so. British locks came in by the barrel-full and were commonly and widely used prior to the war. If Mike Brooks pipes in, he can give you a lot more info about locks used from 1775-1783.

Ӣ Triggers can be either single trigger or double trigger (set trigger) designs as both were used during the war.

So there's some general guidelines to help you out. The rifle I use is an early Lancaster made by "tg" from here on the forum. With its Queen Anne lock (originally made from about 1720-1760) would be considered an early longrifle, pre-war. By the way, did I tell you what a beautiful job he did on it? I use it mostly for Rev War Reenactments, but hunt with it too. It draws admiring comments at almost every event I attend.

Anyway, hope this helps.

Twisted_1in66 :thumbsup:

 

[Twisted_1in66]

OK, one thing I forgot to mention about locks. There were no locks that I am aware of that had rounded ends during the Rev War era. They all came to some kind of point. Rounded ends came in the 1800's "if" I recall correctly.

Twisted_1in66 :thumbsup:

 

[aeatwood]

Example of an early Christian's Spring style rifle. 16-bore (.66). Uses a .658" PRB:

Note the wide, rounded butt:

 

[Dphar]

Saratoga was a big one, but yes, Trenton, Princeton, and Bennington were minor blows to the British and Germans. What Trenton and Princeton did was convince the Colonials to reenlist..., thus saving Washington's army, but had this not been a problem, these would have been minor events in the eyes of both sides.

Now, the Revolution was won in the South in 1780 and 1781...Yorktown was simply a mop up after we ran Cornwallis out of North Carolina...

WOW well the Volunteers of Ireland, plus some regular regiments HELD South Carolina, and the only real seaport in the South, until AFTER Cornwallis surrendered, and the British decided to abandon the South. The previous post was right, had not the British been forced away by the French Navy, and late to begin with..., We might have Queen Elizabeth II on our money right now.

LD

I don't think the British could have won after 1777.
By Saratoga, which was probably the pivotal battle of the American Revolution since this was what brought the French in "full time" the war was pretty much lost to them. And Saratoga victory was heavily influenced by the riflemen.

There was an increasing pressure in Britain to get out as time went on.

Wayne and Washington stupid:
In the matter of rifles they, and others, often were. At the battle of Long Island riflemen were placed in untenable positions, were smart enough the give ground before being killed or captured THEN this is used to point out how ineffective the rifle was by todays "experts" and likely people of the time. Rifles are of limited effectiveness if the enemy can approach safely to within musket range.
They wanted to play the British game and it would have been far more difficult to win had we only fought in this manner. The classic example of rifle use in linear tactics is Morgan at Saratoga (where the riflemen also removed all British scouts with non-linear tactics) and Cowpens. Saratoga and Cowpens illustrate how to use rifle or mostly rifle armed Militia or rifle Companies effectively in conjunction with regulars. Kings Mountain was a classic example of a British officer in over his head in the woods as they invariably were.

The problem with the riflemen was multi-fold.
First many of them were independent as hell. I am sure a great many of the frontier types thought linear tactics were stupid, which they were and thus it was hard to get them to stand for it.
They were initially treated as elite troops (and the good units were) which caused friction in the whole army.
Some commanders seemed to insist the rifleman work just like musket armed infantry and this was too stupid for words. Linking them, rifle companys, to an infantry regiment DID work as was demonstrated at Saratoga but nobody, other than maybe Morgan, paid any attention.
I can see commanders, like Wayne perhaps, telling the riflemen to do things they saw as stupid and then the commander being irritated that his stupid idea was not carried out as he wanted.

The "lets do something because it worked OK in a completely different place and time" is common in the Military. Putting an Armored Warfare specialist in command in VN is a classic example. We were not fighting German (Russian) tanks or German (Russian) infantry divisions in VN but that was the training and how higher command seemed to see it. They were stuck in the "box" and could not see out of it, even when they were TOLD how to fight and win the BIG picture by people who had already done it. In this case the British, talk about full circle...

The rifles of the time often had cheap import locks the got "out of order". At least this is my opinion. Cheap locks were the standard on the average American rifle well into the 19th century it would seem.
Some rifle armed troops were rifle owners not riflemen so they were not effective at longer ranges. But it was cheaper to march around in the snow at Valley Forge than to institute rifle practice. This is a financial/supply thing but its still true. The American Army was not interested in Marksmanship even into the late 19th Century Indian Wars. At the "Wagonbox Fight" the men were armed with then new 58 Berdan trapdoors but did not even realize what the rate of fire was and were sure they were all going to die to the point of preparing for suicide by taking off their shoes to use their toes and shoe strings to shoot themselves with the rifles. They apparently had gone into combat with firearms they had never fired.

Had they turned some of these Rev-War Rifle units loose to work in 10 man teams to snipe the British enroute it would have slowed any advance they were making in any direction and KILLED more officers and NCOs.
But this is WAY outside the box in the 18th century even though the natives the FRONTIER troops fought did it quite often and it was apparently used against Burgoyne during his advance to Saratoga. The English never did learn to deal with this adequately.

The fact remains that the rifle was a very valuable and versatile tool that the Americans failed, in many cases, to properly exploit.
They did not think "outside" the box. And in this case the "box" was owned by the British Army.
I think that even a completely rifle armed American Army would have eventually won. But not with linear tactics.
But there is a lot of opinion and supposition in the post above. Largely because;
1. I was not there.
2. We cannot get inside the heads of the people involved 230 odd years after the fact.

We all tend to think in the 20th century and its a far different place than the 18th century.
We know, or should, all the lessons from all the wars since. We know that linear tactics only work with swords and sharps sticks (the bayonet was still considered a primary weapon during the American Revolution). But this was not finally figured out by the military until near or after the end of WW-I.
I once knew a man, for example, that took part in the last cavalry charge of the Canadian Army. It did not end well for the Canadians since they were charging belt fed machineguns. Old ideas die hard...
Dan

 

[Dphar]

A "correct" "typical" American rifle of the 1760s-1770s would have:
A carved stock of curly hard maple. Maybe not elaborate but some carving, forestock moulding or incised line, carving at the tang and behind the cheekpiece.
Maybe some brass wire inlay or even silver. But pretty atypical but dated examples do exist.
A caliber between 40 and 50, 44-50 most common (IMO). Larger was not as "typical". Over 54 really atypical but exist. This from contemporary accounts and surviving rifles (not the best way to document original caliber).
A patchbox with a brass or wood cover.
A lock of the time period or earlier of Germanic or English styling either of European (common) or American manufacture.
A barrel between 34 and 48" long. 40-44 was more common. But "short" rifles were not unknown longer was also known but over 44-48 impractical. Barrel of American or European manufacture.
Rifle weight between 8 and 10 pounds. Most under 10 I suspect, but some heavier. Most barrels had a far less pronounced swamp than the modern swamped barrels.
Brass mounted, buttplate, TG, rod pipes and forend cap. Usually with a 2-2 1.4" wide x 5" high "flat" buttplate. TG and BP might be imports and might arrive already engraved.
Single or DST.
Very low "barley corn" front sight with a brass or silver blade.
Swamped barrel was probably the most common. Straight or straight taper were less common or far less common.
Skelp welded barrels were the standard.
Powder charge about 1/2 ball weight for 44-50 caliber.
My idea of a "Plain" rev-war rifle would be the Haymaker rifle. Whose owner was killed in 1774 in Kentucky. http://www.kentuckylongrifles.com/html/adam_haymaker.html
Reading of travels of Hancock Taylor (the original owner) prior to his death may surprise some readers.
The rifle is currently listed as 52 caliber and is described in "Rifles of Colonial America Vol II".

Dan

 

[jimshaler]

In the book, "Arms Makers of Colonial America"
President Washington created a select battalion of riflemen in
1792. These men were to be outfitted with superior rifles.
Jacob Welshans was one of the York contractors for rifles for the 328 enlisted men and officers of this special unit. He participated in later state and federal arms contracts.
Hicks, US Ordnance, 1, 14; 11, 18 & 90. In 1812 he directed the work of York gunsmiths at the York Armory on Market St.
He was my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather.

 

[jimshaler]

The following auction site has some good pictures of an original: http://www.cowanauctions.com/auctions/item.aspx?ItemId=98463