Well TG. Your original statement led the discussion in this direction. "You said that antique guns did not have a standard caliber system."
Roughly translated means they had no accurate standard. As you just pointed out this is too much of a generality. After making the same mistake myself a few hundred times I have learned to avoid terms like never, always, impossible and generalities in general most of the time.
Some gunsmiths in the 18th century were capable of extreme accuracy and were able to duplicate it on a fairly mass basis. In General it wasn't done in the colonies for frontier guns or rifles. But some gunsmiths made standard muskets for the American army and they were ordered to be built to a standard bore size, bore and caliber being synonymous. As a ball of a certain weight and the same material is of equal diameter the caliber and the ball size has to be directly proportionate.
What bothers me about stuff like this is that some of the guys on these forums begin to believe that the 18th century gunsmiths were incapable of doing precise work because they think the tools were not available to them. Many guys here think they never even had lathes or drill presses or power tools. This is not so. The great John Twigg in London had 12 lathes in his inventory. Manton had at least 250 men working for him.
In Versailles France Boutet directed about 2500 workers and the truth is he probably never made over one or two guns by himself in his whole life. There were some sophisticated gun shops in Philadelphia but I don't know just how sophisticated they were.
Roughly translated means they had no accurate standard. As you just pointed out this is too much of a generality. After making the same mistake myself a few hundred times I have learned to avoid terms like never, always, impossible and generalities in general most of the time.
Some gunsmiths in the 18th century were capable of extreme accuracy and were able to duplicate it on a fairly mass basis. In General it wasn't done in the colonies for frontier guns or rifles. But some gunsmiths made standard muskets for the American army and they were ordered to be built to a standard bore size, bore and caliber being synonymous. As a ball of a certain weight and the same material is of equal diameter the caliber and the ball size has to be directly proportionate.
What bothers me about stuff like this is that some of the guys on these forums begin to believe that the 18th century gunsmiths were incapable of doing precise work because they think the tools were not available to them. Many guys here think they never even had lathes or drill presses or power tools. This is not so. The great John Twigg in London had 12 lathes in his inventory. Manton had at least 250 men working for him.
In Versailles France Boutet directed about 2500 workers and the truth is he probably never made over one or two guns by himself in his whole life. There were some sophisticated gun shops in Philadelphia but I don't know just how sophisticated they were.
