HC barrel finish for a 1770s...

[Rudyard]

Ile wade into this post. Beech is hard to work looks like a scrubbing brush and is too heavy but that's the only failing .if it is a failing . Ive stocked enough beech its all I could get but then found Sycamore (English) to be better and like its cousin the Maple often exibits nice curl .But Beech can have a pleasant 'Fleck' . The old wooden planes where very commonly made of Beech .Even our NZ Podocarp Native NZ beech can have a great curl to it so can pine for that matter. Woods wood each tree varies . Walnut has the virtue of it is light, strong and works more easily than Beech and is more stable . Maple in a good soaking hunt will open up gaps all over but will return once dried .I know because I've given maple a good soaking on long wet trips . I.ve stocked in SA pine, Jarrah Mulberry, Miro (NZ native ) Kuari ,even West African Shedua and some white stuff No idea what it was , but its a Blunderbuss now . Most fruit woods will stock & the Japonees stocked in Oak which corrodes iron didn't seem to faze them any . Not that Ive any axe to grind re iron mounted guns in the US but since most Germanic rifles seem to be iron mounted and many émigré German gunsmiths operated in the Colonies . It seems odd to say they all switched to brass mounted guns its a very bold man who declares ' Such & such NEVER happened 'as sure as eggs an example will turn up and quite innocently refute such declarations . My remarks are general & not aimed at any ones particular view . Re barrels I often leave barrels' in the white' as many where so made a few bush trips mellows them down.
Rudyard

 

[RAEDWALD]

Just to observe that keeping a working gun 'in the white' requires active work to maintain it; I have some wrought iron which has been sitting outside as a post for about a century. It has had absolutely no maintenance at all over those many years. It has the most wonderful deep brown finish you could ask for. Was it browned? Well no. It just happened. The pre 19th century finishes are impossible to determine from examination of surviving guns which may have been neglected, refinished or just cleaned until the finish has changed-or not. I have a reference around somewhere from the 17th century which refers to 'russeted' barrels of troops.

So, in answer to the question posed; the makers had access to white, blue or brown as they and their customers saw fit. I suspect that all are possible and depended upon the local fashion of the day when made and the care and use by the owners thereafter.

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
Based on John George's book on English guns, russeting likely was more of a paint covering, perhaps containing asphatum, rather than a rusting process. I do not know upon what he bases that conclusion. Here is the passage in his book:

" ... and the circumstance of the barrel being darkened or "russetted" as a protection against rust. This process of "russetting" was applied not only to the military musket, but also to the common fowling-piece of the Stuart period and , though the author has been unable to trace any earlier references to the practice in connection to firearms, it is probably of considerable antiquity at that date (early 17th century), being more closely akin to the ancient method of preserving bills and other hafted weapons by coating them with a dark pigment than to the modern system of "browning" gun barrels by a process of artificial oxidation in an acid bath, which was introduced into England at the beginning of the 18th century."

There was also the blacking, probably asphaltum, applied to British "black" naval muskets as opposed to "bright" muskets.

dave

 

[rich pierce]

One of the primary questions is, “what does the customer want?” Sometimes the builder is the customer- building for themselves. Sometimes a gun is built on “spec” or speculation. That’s what I do. Build what I want, then sell some of them as opportunities arise. And then many build for customers, on order.

30-40 years ago, outside Woodbury-styled rifles by the House brothers and others, all new builds were delivered as new. Now aging is common, varying from subtle shading of stock tones and metal finishes (like Allen Martin) to full on simulation of decades of use and abuse (such as Eric Kettenburg).

And we know more now than we did back then, but customers (including ourselves) have pretty well baked ideas of what seems right. And sometimes folks want to do something that “looks sharp” and then find a couple examples to back it up.

What is understood as HC now is different from what the general understanding was 40 years ago. Just like science, it moves forward with new data and studies.

 

[Rudyard]

Makeing what I fancied was my plan unless a patron wanted a particular piece .Then if not a zip gun I would make to their order .Once its out the door its up to them. I tell them its guaranteed not to burst more than once & Has my 300 year guarantee. Viz If it should fail or break then bring it back in 300 years & Ile fix it . Beyond minor bits non have brought them back .If a lot have neglected or about worn out some . like one international shot gunner who shot a Lot of shots but never cleaned it . Shot twice for England . He subequently packed up shooting did our ' Colonel Hawker' as we dubbed him. I bought it back SH & fitted it out with a rifle barrel option which I often do . Gun number 37 of 1981 from memory . He used it at the first US based International held at Quantico Marine base. His nick name derived from his regularly quoting Col Hawkers works . Plain cylinder 32" brl 12 bore made in NZ barrel . He once shot it in a double driven clay 'Partridge' shoot for double percussions he shot 11 out of twenty & won it but the grumps said it didn't count as 'it wasn't percussion' . Counted in My book . The' aged look' is fine I think Bob Harn had a lot to do with that mostly Ide turn it out like new, but I have' aged' if fitting .If the field use does it quite well. I never really liked shooting minty originals felt more comfortable shooting old dog eared guns & definatly dissaprouve of Aspirant International Gong hunters buying mint originals & shooting the poop out of them as they enevitably must to attain that level of proficiency . We should be about preservation of antigues . But the crispest reproduction is made for shooting if you shoot it till is worn out thats why you have it .Its demise is its glory. Many of my pet rifles I cobbled up from old barrels & locks some so pitted externally the parts where rusted together & no name could be read but the bores had kept good and given me many hours of pleasure shooting them. I sort of think their long dead makers would appreciate my salving floating relic bits and seeing them live again . (Of course they Could be rolling over in their graves ) I cant say they are or arn't doing either just as a maker & restorer we do connect to the old makers in a sense .Ide like to think some one like us 100 years hence would think of my work . But Ime getting sentimental .Better go feed the dogs.
Regards Rudyard

 

[George]

White, blue and brown done as we are familiar with were't the only option, at least in the opinion of some in the day.

_A handbook for riflemen; containing the first principles of military discipline, founded on rational method, intended to explain in a familiar and practical manner, the discipline and duties of rifle corps: conformable to the system established for the United States military force, and the latest improvements in the modern art of war_, by William Duane, 1812

"The barrel may be secured against external rust, by the following means… If it be intended to give the barrel a clean black color, take half an ounce of camphor, a gill of oil of turpentine, a gill of Florence oil, and a clean earthen cup, simmer them over a fire without flame, until the whole shall be incorporated, and in an uniform liquid state, putting the camphor in last; add to this liquid an ounce of clean white bees wax, and melt the whole, adding a little sweet oil or turpentine to preserve its consistency to the state of honey, add an ounce of powdered black lead to this composition, and the barrel of the rifle being perfectly clean, the composition may be put on like paint, very thin, laid by to dry, and polished to a smooth surface.

'To give the barrel a red or brown color, add red lead or ochre, instead of black lead.

"To make the barrel green, add verdigrease, which must be first ground in oil; to make the barrel blue, pulverised Prussian blue.

"The barrel may be preserved bright and safe from rust by this varnish, without adding any color to it; but it must be laid on very thin, and with great care; and the lock plate and parts open to the air, may be protected from rust by this camphor varnish."

Spence

 

[Loyalist Dave]

So if we are looking for something that by its very nature is difficult to see ..., what else can we do to address the question?

I think we can look at circumstantial evidence and assess the possibilities and probabilities of its existence.

Well first, there are problems with such a line of thought.
First, "circumstantial evidence" is NOT used as any sort of proof in most studies, for a reason. It often leads to a wrong conclusion. It's not simply in this case, "we have no surviving examples". It includes no surviving records of people who described the process. And the presence of the ingredients to our 21st century minds is not at all circumstantial proof..., it's our assumption that "hey they had the ingredients to do or make X, so they must have known how to...".
Really?
So they had lemons, they had tea, in the 17th century in Europe, but apparently it was so uncommon a practice to put lemon juice into one's tea with sugar, that it was remarked upon many visitors to the court of Catherine the Great, in Russia, in the 18th century.
They had salt, they had ice...., yet mixing the two to produce temperatures below freezing, something many kids use today to make ice cream at home, wasn't documented until the first half of the 1600's in Florence Italy by a friend of Galileo. Which is why, btw, that the origin of the dairy food that we call "ice cream" is Florentine, from the 17th century, and why shortly after the discovery we find Charles I of England serving it at his coronation banquet.
ALL of the necessary ingredients to do stir-fry in a wok can be found offered for sale in 18th century advertisements..., but you know what? Europeans, who had trading contact with China, didn't adopt it as part of their cuisine.
ALL of the materials needed to make scopes for rifles were present in 1776. Including being able to make cross hairs appear in the image. We know this because they experimented with scoping a rifle in 1776. Including the idea of having to adjust the scope in it's mount to have the cross hairs coincide with the point of impact on a target. The idea wasn't successful until the 1830's. Charles Wilson Peale, the portrait painter, was the guy who tried to make it work, BUT they didn't know how to create eye-relief so when he fired, the scope was too close and smacked him in his eye due to recoil.
So COULD folks have done stuff sooner? Sure. Did they? Well if it was done nobody wrote it down and when it was finally written down, the remarks indicate it sure was unknown to the observer. The old adage "hind sight is 20/20" applies to historic conclusions based on what we know today, and concluding that they must have done it then because if we went back in time, we could do it.

LD

 

[rich pierce]

When I was presenting my defense of my PhD one of my committee members hounded me with obscure questions until at last, exasperated, I said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure if anybody has definitively answered that question adequately.” The professor said, “YESSSS! EXACTLY! It’s important to know what we don’t know.”

 

[plmeek]

Which is why, btw, that the origin of the dairy food that we call "ice cream" is Florentine, from the 17th century, and why shortly after the discovery we find Charles I of England serving it at his coronation banquet.
ALL of the necessary ingredients to do stir-fry in a wok can be found offered for sale in 18th century advertisements..., but you know what? Europeans, who had trading contact with China, didn't adopt it as part of their cuisine.

Based on these two corollaries, the reason that we have no evidence of rust brown barrels in America in the 1770's is because the customers didn't want them? The English and Europeans were doing it. European trained gunsmiths had emigrated to America. Suitable chemicals were already in the gun shops. So it wasn't done because the customer didn't want it, right?

 

[plmeek]

When I was presenting my defense of my PhD one of my committee members hounded me with obscure questions until at last, exasperated, I said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure if anybody has definitively answered that question adequately.” The professor said, “YESSSS! EXACTLY! It’s important to know what we don’t know.”

That's close to the point I was going to make, Rich. We really don't know. The amount of evidence we have on these types of details in 1770 gun making is pretty slim. I bet the number of rifles from the 1770s preserved in good enough condition to determine original finish can be counted on one hand. And how many documents do we have surviving from the 1770s that go into this level of detail on processes of gun making?

The proper answer to the question, "Did American gunsmiths rust brown barrels in the 1770's?" is not "NO". The proper answer is "we don't know."

If you were to ask an astronomer, "does extraterrestrial life exist," I don't think they would say "No". There are so many other galaxies with so many solar systems with so many planets and moons that statistically they know it's possible if not probable. They would answer, "we don't know."

That's why they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars looking for signs of water on Mars and an Earth-like planet orbiting its star in the "Goldilocks zone" and other evidence of life out there.

Even Dave was coming around to this when he wrote,

the supported hypothesis ( in this case, no browning) is correct but not absolutely [emphasis added]. Meaning, more data may challenge it.

And by the way, I didn't present my alternative argument as a proof that barrels were browned back then, but that is was possible that they were.

Also, indirect evidence and circumstantial evidence is used all the time in science, medicine, and courts. There are a lot of subatomic particles that we cannot measure or detect directly. But we know of their presence through indirect detection and measurements. Similarly, the Covid19 test for live virus is direct evidence of its presence. Testing for antibodies to the virus is indirect evidence that it had been present.

 

[Barry Strickland]

I have a question. If you were a hunter would you desire to have a bright shiny anything?

 

[rich pierce]

I have a question. If you were a hunter would you desire to have a bright shiny anything?

Yes I would. If I was a 1700s hunter, absolutely. My gun is more than a tool. I don’t stand out in the sunshine in the open. That’s not my deer stand.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Based on these two corollaries, the reason that we have no evidence of rust brown barrels in America in the 1770's is because the customers didn't want them?

So you can show that customers did want them? How about several historic period advertisements for browned barreled pieces sold in the colonies ?

The English and Europeans were doing it. European trained gunsmiths had emigrated to America. Suitable chemicals were already in the gun shops. So it wasn't done because the customer didn't want it, right?

Again show that people in America were buying it and you probably have a winning argument.

Steel barrel bands on French muskets, and brass bands on Spanish muskets, and the Americans chose the French pattern for their first government pattern musket..., but the British for the entire 18th century didn't have barrel bands. It's a superior idea than pinning the barrel to the stock.

Just because it can be done, doesn't mean it automatically was done....

LD

 

[Stophel]

I have a question. If you were a hunter would you desire to have a bright shiny anything?

If you were a hunter, you would have dogs. Shiny things don't matter much with a pack of dogs chasing a deer.

18th century hunting is NOT the same as modern day "hunting". They often did things in ways that most today simply cannot do (and usually is illegal). The last buffalo was killed in Kentucky in 1790, I believe. Deer and turkeys were nearly extinct east of the Appalachians by 1800. And east of the Mississippi by 1850. Shiny things were not a hindrance to the hunter of days past.... neither was anything else much of a hindrance...

Also, the 18th century aesthetic simply was not what many people today want it to be. It was bright. It was colorful. It was elaborate. It was decorated. It was expected. I know there are probably many people today who dearly wish Gustav Stickley had been an 18th century gunsmith....

 

[George]

An assorted collection of related references from different times and places. Data points....

Pennsylvania Gazette
May 24, 1775
"Mr. Brown also relates, that two regular officers of the 26th regiment, now in Canada, applied to two Indians, one a head warrior of the Caughanawaga tribe, to go out with them on a hunt, to the south and east of the rivers St. Lawrence and Sorrel, and pressing the Indians farther and farther on said course, they at length arrived at Cohass, where the Indians say they were stopt and interrogated by the inhabitants, to whom they pretended they were only on a hunt, which the inhabitants (as the Indians told Mr. Brown) replied must be false, as no hunters used silver (bright) barrelled guns".

Cuthbertson, Bennett, Esq. _A System for the Complete Interior Management and Oeconomy of a Battalion of Infantry_, The Second Edition. London: J. Millan, 1779
"It should be insisted on, that a Soldier at all times keeps his arms in such a state of perfection, as never to be ashamed to shew them; by having the inside of the lock well oiled, the outside of it (even to the smallest screw pin) with the barrel, brasses and bayonet, not only clean and bright, but highly polished;"

Archives of Maryland Online...1813
"It shall be the duty of all persons in the militia, who receive into their possession public arms, to keep the same in neat and good order, the musket barrel and bayonet free from rust, and bright, the lock clean, well oiled, and with a good flint,"

_Military Antiquities: Respecting a History of the English Army, from the conquest to the present time_, Volume 2, By Francis Grose, 1619:
“it is moreover requisite, that a souldier keepe his cocke with oyle free in falling, and his peece bright without rusting;"

The Pennsylvania Gazette
January 13, 1730
".... a Vest lined with Red, his other Cloaths uncertain. They have with them a small new Gun, the Barrel bright, and Stock yellowish."

The South-Carolina GAZETTE
February 12, 1753
CHARLES-TOWN
"Lost between Charles-Town and Ashley-ferry in December last, a bright barrel gun , Wilson's make. Bring it to the Printer, and he will give, you a reward."

The Pennsylvania Gazette
November 3, 1779
GENERAL MILITIA ORDERS
Philadelphia, October 27, 1779
"Every soldier will bring his arms bright, clean and in good order; his accoutrements compleatly fitted; and the officers are expected to be attentive to this order before they march."

_Practical Instructions for Military Officers, for the District of Massachusetts_, Epaphras Hoyt, published 1811
"The non commissioned officers and privates of rifle corps are to be armed with good rifle guns, the barrel of which should be from three to three and an half feet in length, and always kept brown."

_Frontier Memories_, interviews by John Dabney Shane, late 18th century:
"He saw three Indians standing by the fire looking at his gun, which he always kept very bright and he could see it shine by the fire."

Spence

 

[tenngun]

I have a question. If you were a hunter would you desire to have a bright shiny anything?

Seems at first very reasonable, however brass was the primary furniture metal. Later silver was found on many guns. Even plain old SMR were sometimes silver mounted. You may let brass tarnish but if you invested in silver I bet you kept it shiny.
Much of the cloth sold on the frontier was very bright, and reports show bright colors were worn by hunters.
Guns in the ‘white’ were common at that time, and fancy, high style. And British guns were often left that way. Many colonist who were buying rifles fromGerman makers were Brits. And style counted.
Because today we like the looks of brown barrels and muted colors in the woods it doesn’t hold for them.
Makers may have sold barrels in the White simply because any thing else looked ‘cheap’.

 

[Brokennock]

Much of the cloth sold on the frontier was very bright, and reports show bright colors were worn by hunters.

I was just thinking about this the other day. There is a difference between a brightly colored fabric and a shiny fabric. The bright colors of the day would not have been as glaring because the natural fibers did not shine and reflect light the way today's clothing does.

I do think reflection is more noticeable than color in the woods and fields.

I personally don't see a civilian hunter or woodsman keeping his gun mirror bright. A soldier is another story, and, s different kind of fighting than we are used to where stealth was not as much a factor. In fact, I wouldn't doubt that brightly polished muskets and bayonets by the hundreds glittering in the sun was meant for some intimidation factor.

If a gun were delivered polished with no bluing or browning, it is probably quite smooth. No doubt it will tarnish, but, is it maybe less prone to damaging rust than less polished metal that has been left bare? Would maybe our hunter, pioneer, settler, or other civilian gun owner, take delivery of their new brightly polished piece and let it darken naturally?

 

[Smokey Plainsman]

The truth is... nobody seems to know, or can agree, on the period correct barrel’s finish.

As such, chose whichever you enjoy the best. None are more correct than the other, and personal preference is fine.

 

[rich pierce]

We know for sure that the barrels on a lot of guns made here in the 1700s were finished bright. The prevalence of other finishes is less clear.

 

[Barry Strickland]

I will slightly change the question. If you were in Indian territory would you want a bright shiny gun?