Jackie Brown "Carolina Smoothbore"

[Bark-eater]

manure

 

[WALT53]

I don’t! But thanks for asking. I’ve been wanting to experiment some with shot loads. When I get to it I’ll take a picture.

Notchy Bob

Bob just out of curiosity what size flint do you use in your L& R Queen Anne lock ,I use a 3/4 “ in mine at least that’s what Jackie recommended.

 

[Notchy Bob]

Bob just out of curiosity what size flint do you use in your L& R Queen Anne lock ,I use a 3/4 “ in mine at least that’s what Jackie recommended.

Hey, @WALT53 ,

I use 7/8” x 1” black English flints, and they seem to work pretty well. Those are what was recommended for this lock by Track of the Wolf. You do have to make sure they are positioned far enough to the right (for a right-handed lock) so the left front corner of your flint won’t tag your barrel, while maximizing contact with the face of the frizzen. I never thought of using 3/4” flints, but I think I have some and might give them a try. You clearly get good ignition with yours!

I tried some French flints in a well-tuned Siler lock a while back and found the English flints just worked better, so I haven’t even tried them in this Queen Anne lock.

Notchy Bob

 

[WALT53]

Hey, @WALT53 ,

I use 7/8” x 1” black English flints, and they seem to work pretty well. Those are what was recommended for this lock by Track of the Wolf. You do have to make sure they are positioned far enough to the right (for a right-handed lock) so the left front corner of your flint won’t tag your barrel, while maximizing contact with the face of the frizzen. I never thought of using 3/4” flints, but I think I have some and might give them a try. You clearly get good ignition with yours!

I tried some French flints in a well-tuned Siler lock a while back and found the English flints just worked better, so I haven’t even tried them in this Queen Anne lock.

Notchy Bob

I use and quite like the French flints but don’t find that much different except the French are thicker and tend to last longer.I still have one I got over a 100 shots from and I’m sure it’s because they are twice as thick as the English flints .I also think you good strong flints and you get fractured flints it’s the luck of the draw me thinks .oh by the way L&R recommends
3/4 “ flints but I’ve used 7/8” $ 1” in mine but have a few dozen 3/4” so that’s what use .I get my French flints from loyalist arms for 2.99 $ Canadian which is the best price I’ve found and you still have to pay postage.you take care Bob and shoot that gun lots .

 

[WALT53]

I use and quite like the French flints but don’t find that much different except the French are thicker and tend to last longer.I still have one I got over a 100 shots from and I’m sure it’s because they are twice as thick as the English flints .I also think you good strong flints and you get fractured flints it’s the luck of the draw me thinks .oh by the way L&R recommends
3/4 “ flints but I’ve used 7/8” $ 1” in mine but have a few dozen 3/4” so that’s what use .I get my French flints from loyalist arms for 2.99 $ Canadian which is the best price I’ve found and you still have to pay postage.you take care Bob and shoot that gun lots .

Oh by the way one of the reasons I get goog fast ignition is because my touch holes are a tad bigger than 1/16” pruffs in the pudding .

 

[Notchy Bob]

Oh by the way one of the reasons I get goog fast ignition is because my touch holes are a tad bigger than 1/16” pruffs in the pudding .

Yessir. Mine if 5/64". No liner, either. Touch hole liners are vastly overrated, and unnecessary in smoothbores like these.

Thanks, Walt!

Notchy Bob

 

[WALT53]

Yessir. Mine if 5/64". No liner, either. Touch hole liners are vastly overrated, and unnecessary in smoothbores like these.

Thanks, Walt!

Notchy Bob

Couldn’t agree more Bob .

 

[smoothshooter]

I just noticed I forgot to put quotes on Carolina. Most, actually all Carolina guns I've seen have that large thin trigger guard, I've heard it was for mittens, but I'm not sure if that.
It's on my list of builds... I feel I could replicate the guard fairly easy.

Addendum:
Here's what Clay Smith says about the naming of the Carolina Gun.

I don’t think it gets cold enough to need mittens in the Carolinas very often.
Modern conjecture says it was because some of the guns had such hard trigger pulls that two fingers were needed to get the trigger to move.

Another is that the Indians liked guns that they could get two fingers on the trigger because they were used to using two or more fingers to draw a bow string back before releasing it.
Maybe both theories are correct. Maybe others as well.
Who knows?

 

[Notchy Bob]

Those very large triggerguards were on the Northwest guns. The Carolina guns had triggerguards made from a simple strap, but the bow was not nearly as big as on the Northwest guns.

Why did Northwest guns have such big guards? @smoothshooter has summed it up pretty well. The mitten theory persisted a long time, then somebody came up with the bowstring theory. Northwest guns were originally a Hudson's Bay Company offering, and the Company's primary customer base was around the Bay. These would have been mainly Cree, Innu (Naskapi or Montagnais), Inuit, various Athabaskan people such as the Chipewyan, and possibly some Assiniboins who allied themselves with the Cree. There were several monographs on arrow releases in the late 19th century, and oddly enough, all of the above groups, with the possible exception of the Assiniboin, shot arrows with a "Mediterranean release," as used by most of today's archers. The string is pulled with the index, middle, and ring fingers, with the index finger above the arrow nock, and the middle and ring fingers below it. These Chipewyan boys from west of Hudson's Bay are showing us how it's done:



This Naskapi/Innu hunter, from east of the Bay, pulls his bowstring essentially the same way:



So, I don't necessarily think the bowstring theory explains it. I have heard the "hard trigger pull requiring two fingers" theory, also. Isaac Cowie, an old Hudson's Bay Company man, shot a trade musket and wrote, "The sight was coarse, the stock straight, and the trigger very hard" (In the Company of Adventurers, p. 197). Maybe the hard trigger pull might be the reason for the big triggerguard and the two-finger pull, but we just can't say for sure. The Indians may have just preferred using two fingers.

I do want to point out that the Jackie Brown smoothbore that was the original subject of this thread is not a copy of any kind of trade musket. Jackie just called it "a fowler" in his conversations with me, but this type of gun was more or less a standard pattern for him, and he was calling it a "Carolina Smoothbore" at one time. That may have created some confusion. It is not a true copy of the historic "Carolina Gun," and it is definitely not a Northwest gun.

Best regards,

Notchy Bob

 

[WALT53]

Those very large triggerguards were on the Northwest guns. The Carolina guns had triggerguards made from a simple strap, but the bow was not nearly as big as on the Northwest guns.

Why did Northwest guns have such big guards? @smoothshooter has summed it up pretty well. The mitten theory persisted a long time, then somebody came up with the bowstring theory. Northwest guns were originally a Hudson's Bay Company offering, and the Company's primary customer base was around the Bay. These would have been mainly Cree, Innu (Naskapi or Montagnais), Inuit, various Athabaskan people such as the Chipewyan, and possibly some Assiniboins who allied themselves with the Cree. There were several monographs on arrow releases in the late 19th century, and oddly enough, all of the above groups, with the possible exception of the Assiniboin, shot arrows with a "Mediterranean release," as used by most of today's archers. The string is pulled with the index, middle, and ring fingers, with the index finger above the arrow nock, and the middle and ring fingers below it. These Chipewyan boys from west of Hudson's Bay are showing us how it's done:

View attachment 325612

This Naskapi/Innu hunter, from east of the Bay, pulls his bowstring essentially the same way:

View attachment 325613

So, I don't necessarily think the bowstring theory explains it. I have heard the "hard trigger pull requiring two fingers" theory, also. Isaac Cowie, an old Hudson's Bay Company man, shot a trade musket and wrote, "The sight was coarse, the stock straight, and the trigger very hard" (In the Company of Adventurers, p. 197). Maybe the hard trigger pull might be the reason for the big triggerguard and the two-finger pull, but we just can't say for sure. The Indians may have just preferred using two fingers.

I do want to point out that the Jackie Brown smoothbore that was the original subject of this thread is not a copy of any kind of trade musket. Jackie just called it "a fowler" in his conversations with me, but this type of gun was more or less a standard pattern for him, and he was calling it a "Carolina Smoothbore" at one time. That may have created some confusion. It is not a true copy of the historic "Carolina Gun," and it is definitely not a Northwest gun.

Best regards,

Notchy Bob

Hey Bob do you have any idea what Jacky used on the outside of the barrel to get the French grey I think is what he called it .thanks

 

[Notchy Bob]

Hey Bob do you have any idea what Jacky used on the outside of the barrel to get the French grey I think is what he called it .thanks

@WALT53 ,

I don’t know how he did that. In my conversations with him in planning this gun, I believe he referred to it as his “antique finish.” I’ll say he accomplished that… this gun looks 300 years old! The photos in post #1 on this thread represent that metal finish just as it looks. It is smooth to the touch, not pitted, but it looks rough, with sort of mottled, uneven coloration.

Again, I don’t know how he did that, but I think I’ve read of people doing an overall cold blue finish, and then spritzing the metal with straight Chlorox. I don’t recall how they “killed” the bleach when the process had reached the desired finish, and in fact the metal on this gun had some rust in the concealed areas, suggesting the agent was not completely neutralized. Jackie may have used a similar procedure, but I can’t say for sure, and I’ve never experimented with it on my own.

There is an outfit called Zombie Tools, up in Montana, I think, that makes fully functional cutlery in fantasy designs. Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, you know. Anyway, their website says they use 5160 and 80CRV2 steels (carbon tool and spring steels) for their blades, which are treated with ferric chloride. The result looks a lot like the finish on my Jackie Brown fowler, at least in their pictures.

I don’t know if any of that helped or not, but that’s about all I know about it.

Best regards,

Notchy Bob

 

[WALT53]

@WALT53 ,

I don’t know how he did that. In my conversations with him in planning this gun, I believe he referred to it as his “antique finish.” I’ll say he accomplished that… this gun looks 300 years old! The photos in post #1 on this thread represent that metal finish just as it looks. It is smooth to the touch, not pitted, but it looks rough, with sort of mottled, uneven coloration.

Again, I don’t know how he did that, but I think I’ve read of people doing an overall cold blue finish, and then spritzing the metal with straight Chlorox. I don’t recall how they “killed” the bleach when the process had reached the desired finish, and in fact the metal on this gun had some rust in the concealed areas, suggesting the agent was not completely neutralized. Jackie may have used a similar procedure, but I can’t say for sure, and I’ve never experimented with it on my own.

There is an outfit called Zombie Tools, up in Montana, I think, that makes fully functional cutlery in fantasy designs. Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, you know. Anyway, their website says they use 5160 and 80CRV2 steels (carbon tool and spring steels) for their blades, which are treated with ferric chloride. The result looks a lot like the finish on my Jackie Brown fowler, at least in their pictures.

I don’t know if any of that helped or not, but that’s about all I know about it.

Best regards,

Notchy Bob

Yes sir it looks exactly like mine and I thought he said it was his French grey ,well maybe one day I may just ask what he does to make his barrel look that way .thanks stay well.

 

[Fitzhugh Williams]

Some years ago I tried a method using charcoal from a blacksmith's forge, wetting it in a piece of rain gutter, and placing the barrel in it for some length of time. I did not like the results and did not pursue it any further. I like the look I get with Laurel Mt. the best. I can remove as much of the dark color as I want to achieve an aged look. Or I can just shoot it and it will naturally age over time.

 

[flconch53]

This is just an I wonder, Does the name Carolina trade gun have anything to do With the Carolina Rendezvous. In the early 1700's I don't remember the exact dates, Lachlan Macgillvery and Daniel Clark established a trade network where they would head West from Georgia to rendezvous with the natives to trade for deer skins. They worked for Ogelthorpe. It is referenced in the book Lachlan Macgillvery Indian trader.

 

[Notchy Bob]

This is just an I wonder, Does the name Carolina trade gun have anything to do With the Carolina Rendezvous. In the early 1700's I don't remember the exact dates, Lachlan Macgillvery and Daniel Clark established a trade network where they would head West from Georgia to rendezvous with the natives to trade for deer skins. They worked for Ogelthorpe. It is referenced in the book Lachlan Macgillvery Indian trader.

I don't know why Jackie Brown elected to call his fowlers "Carolina Smoothbores." I think he might have been living in one of the Carolinas at one time, but I'm not certain of that.

As for the historic Carolina trade guns, the absolute best reference I know of is Lee Burke's 18th Century English Trade Guns in the South, or the Carolina Gun... (American Society of Arms Collectors Bulletin 65: 2-16). Mr. Burke wrote, "English guns made for the Southern Indian trade may appropriately be called 'Carolina guns' as this name was used in British Rules of Proof, and in at least one instance in colonial documents in America" (p. 65/6). He goes on to reference an inventory of a store owned by a man named Thomas Hancock of York County, Virginia, between 1732 and 1740. The inventory lists with the shooting supplies "40 Carolina guns" (p. 65/6).

From reading this paper, it is my understanding that Charleston (or Charles Towne) was the real hub for the buckskin trade with England, at least in the south. Charleston at that time would have been analogous to St. Louis during the beaver trade 80-100 years later. Ships from England anchored in the harbor and unloaded, and traders ("packhorsemen") carried the goods into the interior, and carried the buckskins out. There were almost certainly some white hunters, but it is my understanding that the bulk of the skins were collected by Indians, who resented the white hunters killing their deer. Traders would have been tolerated and in many cases welcomed. Hunters... not so much. Interestingly, this pattern was repeated in the buffalo robe trade of the 19th century.

So, they were called Carolina guns because that was where they were headed when they left England, and they were of a recognizable type. I'm not familiar with the Carolina Rendezvous. Oglethorpe landed in 1733 and laid out the plan for the city that would become Savannah, but I don't know when the port was established there. I'm pretty sure the trade from Charleston was already underway, and I suspect Oglethorpe's traders may have gotten their goods from Charleston, initially. Florida was a Spanish colony at that time and until the end of the Revolutionary War. There were traders heading north out of Pensacola into the Indian Country, under license from Spain. I think most of these guys were actually English, carrying English trade goods. As I understand it, Spain had no real interest in trading, but they had to in order to keep "their" Indians from supporting the British. I don't know where these traders got their goods, whether from brokers in Charleston or Savannah. New Orleans was French until 1763. This really doesn't have much to do with Carolina guns, but the Spanish were trading with their native subjects in Texas pretty early on, to assure their alliance. I found this interesting "price schedule" for trade goods coming out of Nacogdoches on the Texas Beyond History website:



Note the date of 1782. Spain owned New Orleans then, but France and Spain were allies, and I'm thinking the east Texas trade goods might have been French. In any event, we see one buckskin would get you five loads of powder and ball, or six gunflints, or a worm for cleaning your piece. A fucil, though, would set you back thirty skins. That sounds like a lot. I don't know how this might compare to prices asked by the English traders farther east. Maybe someone reading this will be kind enough to post the value, in deerskins, of a Carolina gun from that period.

History gets really complicated if you dig into it.

Notchy Bob

 

[flconch53]

I know from Documents at FT Toulouse there was an English trading post close enough to to FT Toulouse that the French Soldiers
Went there to get things the French Army didn't provide. I maybe mistaken but I remember that they where out of Ga.

 

[Notchy Bob]

I know from Documents at FT Toulouse there was an English trading post close enough to to FT Toulouse that the French Soldiers
Went there to get things the French Army didn't provide. I maybe mistaken but I remember that they where out of Ga.

I would not doubt that a bit. I think Toulouse was at the very edge of French Louisiana on the east, and slightly above the 32nd parallel, nudging right up against British territory. I would not be at all surprised if they did some business with the English traders at Fort Okfuskee, on the Tallapoosa, or with packhorsemen from farther east, and Georgia was just the other side of the Chattahoochee. I understand that Fort Okfuskee was abandoned in the mid-1740s due to difficulties in keeping it supplied. The Creek town of Okfuskee was actually at the intersection of two major trading paths, the upper one going to Charleston and the lower one to Savannah. I don't know which of those centers would have been closer, or easier to reach, considering the mountains in north Georgia and western South Carolina.

For me, the question would be where the fellows from Georgia got their trade goods... directly from England via Savannah (after 1733), or packed into the Georgia interior from Charleston, thence to Alabama. I don't know. It would appear that if they came out of Charleston and went into central Alabama, they would have had to cross Georgia. Fort King George, near Darien, Georgia, was contemporary with Fort Toulouse but was there earlier than Oglethorpe's colony of Savannah, so we wonder where their supplies came from. I don't think they have a deepwater harbor closer than Jacksonville, but that would have been enemy Spanish territory. There's a lot I don't know here. I don't doubt that some of the English traders were from Georgia. The question would be where they obtained their trade goods. Some of those old boys really got around.

Best regards,

Notchy Bob

 

[flconch53]

I would not doubt that a bit. I think Toulouse was at the very edge of French Louisiana on the east, and slightly above the 32nd parallel, nudging right up against British territory. I would not be at all surprised if they did some business with the English traders at Fort Okfuskee, on the Tallapoosa, or with packhorsemen from farther east, and Georgia was just the other side of the Chattahoochee. I understand that Fort Okfuskee was abandoned in the mid-1740s due to difficulties in keeping it supplied. The Creek town of Okfuskee was actually at the intersection of two major trading paths, the upper one going to Charleston and the lower one to Savannah. I don't know which of those centers would have been closer, or easier to reach, considering the mountains in north Georgia and western South Carolina.

For me, the question would be where the fellows from Georgia got their trade goods... directly from England via Savannah (after 1733), or packed into the Georgia interior from Charleston, thence to Alabama. I don't know. It would appear that if they came out of Charleston and went into central Alabama, they would have had to cross Georgia. Fort King George, near Darien, Georgia, was contemporary with Fort Toulouse but was there earlier than Oglethorpe's colony of Savannah, so we wonder where their supplies came from. I don't think they have a deepwater harbor closer than Jacksonville, but that would have been enemy Spanish territory. There's a lot I don't know here. I don't doubt that some of the English traders were from Georgia. The question would be where they obtained their trade goods. Some of those old boys really got around.

Best regards,

Notchy Bob

Everything I have read is that they were out of FT King George in what is now Darien.

 

[flconch53]

Everything I have read is that they were out of FT King George in what is now Darien.

I just remembered, FT King George is where I got the book I referenced

 

[Rob M.]

Those very large triggerguards were on the Northwest guns. The Carolina guns had triggerguards made from a simple strap, but the bow was not nearly as big as on the Northwest guns.

Why did Northwest guns have such big guards? @smoothshooter has summed it up pretty well. The mitten theory persisted a long time, then somebody came up with the bowstring theory. Northwest guns were originally a Hudson's Bay Company offering, and the Company's primary customer base was around the Bay. These would have been mainly Cree, Innu (Naskapi or Montagnais), Inuit, various Athabaskan people such as the Chipewyan, and possibly some Assiniboins who allied themselves with the Cree. There were several monographs on arrow releases in the late 19th century, and oddly enough, all of the above groups, with the possible exception of the Assiniboin, shot arrows with a "Mediterranean release," as used by most of today's archers. The string is pulled with the index, middle, and ring fingers, with the index finger above the arrow nock, and the middle and ring fingers below it. These Chipewyan boys from west of Hudson's Bay are showing us how it's done:

View attachment 325612

This Naskapi/Innu hunter, from east of the Bay, pulls his bowstring essentially the same way:

View attachment 325613

So, I don't necessarily think the bowstring theory explains it. I have heard the "hard trigger pull requiring two fingers" theory, also. Isaac Cowie, an old Hudson's Bay Company man, shot a trade musket and wrote, "The sight was coarse, the stock straight, and the trigger very hard" (In the Company of Adventurers, p. 197). Maybe the hard trigger pull might be the reason for the big triggerguard and the two-finger pull, but we just can't say for sure. The Indians may have just preferred using two fingers.

I do want to point out that the Jackie Brown smoothbore that was the original subject of this thread is not a copy of any kind of trade musket. Jackie just called it "a fowler" in his conversations with me, but this type of gun was more or less a standard pattern for him, and he was calling it a "Carolina Smoothbore" at one time. That may have created some confusion. It is not a true copy of the historic "Carolina Gun," and it is definitely not a Northwest gun.

Best regards,

Notchy Bob

Yep yep ...