Historical Smooth Rifles

[brushyspoons]

So…. We’re 38 comments in and no one has mentioned a documented southern mountain smooth rifle. I know this doesn’t necessarily mean there were none but they clearly weren’t plentiful.

There are a few bags and accoutrements associated with smoothbores featured in Jim Webb's Sketches of Hunting Pouches, Powder Horns, and Accoutrements of Southern Appalachia. I've not seen a smooth rifle with the architecture you'd expect to find in the mountains of eastern TN/western NC; nearly all rifles from that region I've looked at all have set triggers and are otherwise referred to as rifles. All of the rifles featured in Randall Pierce's books have set triggers, and nearly all rifles featured in Jerry Nobles' four volumes of books do as well. I'm not sure what benefit set triggers would lend to a smoothbore, so I operate on the assumption that if there's two triggers, it probably started life with a rifled barrel. That's not to say no southern mountain smooth rifles ever existed, but when centuries separate us from these objects, there's some things we might never know.

 

[Hermit Tim]

So…. We’re 38 comments in and no one has mentioned a documented southern mountain smooth rifle. I know this doesn’t necessarily mean there were none but they clearly weren’t plentiful.

Don't have any documentation on this, but I'm thinking the "barn rifles" were smoothies. I believe they went back to the 18th century. Not a history expert though. Just a guy that looks at a lot of guns. Many of the barn guns I've seen tend to remind me of SMRs and such.

 

[Hermit Tim]

Here is mine. It's a .45 smoothie. Pretty old gun that has had several mods done in its time. Barrel is around 36 inches. I've never fired ball in this one. Just shot. It'll do anything a modern .410 will do but is a lot funner.

 

[Gum Slough Muzzleloader]

Kibler offers a Colonial in .58 cal. smoothbore .

He offers the Colonial in .50 and .54 Smoothbore also

 

[ronaldrothb49]

Whiskey was bartered and used in addition to pay for farm hands in SW Pennsylvania in the 18th Century.
The Whiskey Rebellion was fought over what was seen as an unfair tax by the federal government in part on income.
The tax was based upon the gallon amount of each still producing spirits all year long. Big distillers, like George Washington (He was the largest distiller in America!) could afford the tax because he produced whiskey all year. His tax rate was about 6¢ per gallon.
Smaller frontier farmers only distilled their excess grain at about 18¢ per gallon.
On average a gallon of whiskey if sold brought about 25¢ per gallon in 1791.
For the cash strapped frontier farmers this was unaffordable and led to Rebellion!

I thought that would have been higher, Reedy list a bushel of corn as worth $0.50. Then don't know how much of the liquid version they could get from that bushel and then you still have the used mash that you can use to feed your animals. I live in the heart of Bourbon country. My Brother in Law used to get the used mash from the Distillery's by the truck load to feed his cows. He had some very happy cows.

 

[Raindog1799]

A B Longstreet wrote a delightful book published in 1835 titled "Georgia Scenes", containing a number of short stories that he claimed in the preface to be absolutely true scenes from Georgia. One of the stories is titled " The Shooting Match" and it is probably the best detailed account of the old time matches ever written. In it he describes the use of rifles and shotguns (smoothbores) in the same match. The match he was attending was shot entirely with rifles but he went on to add the following:

"In olden times the contest was carried on chiefly with shot-guns, a generic term which, in those days, embraced three descriptions of firearms; Indian-traders (a long, cheap, but sometimes excellent kind of gun, that mother Britain used to send hither for traffic with the Indians), the large musket, and the shot-gun, properly so-called. Rifles were, however, always permitted to compete with them, under equitable restrictions. These were, that they should be fired off-hand, while the shot-guns were allowed a rest, the distance being equal; or that the distance should be one hundred yards for a rifle, to sixty for the shot-gun, the mode of firing being equal."

He seems to indicate that in the South smoothbores were predominate in his youth, which would be the late 1700's.

Search for the book on Google Play and read the whole story free. It's a great and fun read..

Excellent! I just downloaded this. Thank you.

 

[Hatman/2nd line]

I had a .54 colonial from Kibler's that I ended up selling, would get 3" groups at 35yd.s, shouldn't have sold it!

 

[Hatman/2nd line]

I had a .54 smoothie colonial from Kibler's that I ended up selling, would get 3" groups at 35yd.s, shouldn't have sold it!