Jaeger vs Longrifle

[Artificer]

I was referring to a barrel with a front bead or sight and no rear sight. Once a rear sight is installed the equation changes because precision sighting is easier.

Sorry, I thought you meant rifled barrels as well.

regarding smooth bore barrels; having no experience with them, when shooting an un-patched ball (fast fire musket style) is a longer barrel generally more accurate (or precise) than a shorter barrel? I'm just speaking of the intrinsic abilities of the barrel itself, not the integration of the shooter AND the barrel.

All the target shooting I did was with a Navy Arms "Brown Bess Carbine" and PRB, so I can't answer that personally. However, in the period, it is notable the British Military went from a 46" barrel down to a 39" Brown Bess Barrel by the end of the 18th century. However, they still needed a somewhat longer barrel to mount a bayonet and guard themselves against Cavalry attacks when they formed fighting squares.

Gus

 

[Rokon]

So having started this very erudite discussion I once again observe that a swamped carbine (aka Jaeger-type) is much more handy and useful in the field than a swamped longrifle(1800 42" barreled Pa-Ky) given equal calibers.

The question remains, why did the longrifle develop?

Again, my hunch is that a LONG barrel (not a longrifle) at some time became considered to be more POWERFUL than a shorter and handier barrel.

The rest was FASHION.

 

[tenngun]

Just a thought that may have the value of most of my opinions, ie none at all :haha: I shoot a lot at a public range, and see a lot of AR15 and such guns. Them folks bang away a lot and seem to have a lot of fun. Me, well it looks as boring as golf, or drying paint. Now military guns back in the day were long,and snappy looking. Long to make a good handle for a bayonet,snappy looking as a political statement. Was there an interest in long guns because they were sexy? Did the 'burns a charge better' an after the fact justification?
Carted long guns in the woods a lot, have never found it to be less handy then my shorter ones. And the ozark woods can look like an old Tarzan movie at times. One of my favorite hunting spots is a grove of persimmons grown tight together. Another is under the dropping branches of a cedar tree.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

We were doing fine until you got to this one. I know it is one of the things "normally accepted;" but if that's true, why were rifles shortened and fired at longer distances at the beginning of the 19th century through the Plains Rifles years, when still using PRB's?

Gus

Part of that I already mentioned...more shooting from horseback...as far as "shooting at longer ranges" that may simply be one cannot get closer to the animal...a necessity...you'd have to show they would not have preferred to be closer but shot at the ranges the open plains dictated, and cared as much then as we do today about "clean kills".

The other reason is the same as today, where you still find, the rifles are shorter with thinner barrels for combat or hunting vs. for the target range....where you find LONG HEAVY barrels, especially in iron sight competitions. Cost and weight was and is outweighed by the needs of the combat or hunting use...The sniper's barrel is much longer and heavier than the infantryman's, as well as the hunter. The USMC M40 and M40A1 total weight was 14.48 pounds, while the M16A2 was 8.79 lbs., yet in 1000 yard match shooting the "light" classification stops at 17 lbs. and the "heavy" classification is unlimited. True these are modern examples and we are talking on this forum of antique technology...but the principals are the same...the difference in the past two and one-half centuries is the ignition system and the distance the propellant can launch the round with accuracy...but the physics still applies, and the needs of the shooters have not changed.

LD

 

[Artificer]

Military Muskets through Rifle Muskets for the Infantry in the 18th and up through the WBTS were longer barreled than they needed to be, because they had to mount a bayonet and be effective (in formations) as a spear against cavalry. The barrel length and bayonet also kept them a bit further away in a bayonet fight. However, by the end of the 18th century, the British found a 39" barrel was long enough for those purposes.

Gus

 

[Sean Gadhar]

:hmm: I think I can help :stir: :wink:

There seems to be a lot of "why did the Americans build um longer"

Well, why did the Germans build um shorter? They were shorter right? Not just then "long Rifle" But shorter then English, French, Arab, etc. etc.

I mean shouldn't we be asking that as well? What if the Germans desperately wanted long guns but :idunno: Guns over x long were subject to being appropriated by the army in times of war (I'd want a gun they wouldn't come take)

Or something as simple as the German woods were as "maintained" as a Georgia quail hunting fields might be today. Driven game past raised stands, set at regular intervals (where a fast swinging short barreled rifle was best)?

Hunting techniques can become traditions and might have played a major roll. When I ran liquor stores here in Western Colorado We had a hunting & fishing cork board :hmm: 18 years & I never did see a deer or elk killed with a shotgun slug. Not one deer, but walk into an old hardware/sporting goods store east of the Mississippi & about every 5th deer photo has a shotgun in it. :idunno:

 

[Artificer]

Dave,

We sometimes forget that the Long Hunters traveled long distances with those long barreled Long Rifles on horseback and got off them to hunt. With the exception of the running buffalo hunts, the Mountain Men also got off their horses to hunt and made their long distance shots from the ground - where they had a stable enough position to do it.

Hawken and other Plains Rifles that were noted for their long range accuracy (beyond the capabilities of the Long Rifles) were heavier barreled, BUT they averaged 34" to 36" in length and thus proved that the 42" to 48" barrel length of the American Longrifle was not important for accuracy. The heavier weight of the Plains Rifles barrels were important for keeping felt recoil more manageable for the heavy ball and powder charges necessary for larger or more dangerous game out West. Though the Plains Rifle barrels were tapered and not swamped, those barrels had a lot more in common with Jaeger Rifle Barrels than Long Rifle Barrels. It was the heavier weight of the Hawken/Plains Rifle/Jaeger barrels (in shorter lengths than Long Rifle Barrels) that made them more accurate because barrel vibrations were more uniform. I do not know if 18th/19th century gunsmiths knew that, but they knew the accuracy effects of the shorter/heavier barrels OR they would have made the barrels as long as the Long Rifles.

As an amateur historian, black powder shooter and career military RTE or Precision Weapons Armorer; I was surprised and a bit ashamed/envious that it was the British who came up with a rifle more accurate for military use than we Americans did in the early 19th century ”“ even though we had much more of a Tradition of Rifle Use than the British. The effective accuracy of the SHORT 30” (short Jaeger length) barrel of the Flintlock “Baker Rifle” with PRB equaled or exceeded our Long Rifles and Flintlock M1803-M1817 rifles and our Long Rifles. The Baker Rifle was in a more typically "Jaeger Caliber" of .62 caliber, as well. The British were also WISE enough to use the two leaf rear sight from Jaeger Rifles that helped make those rifles more effectively accurate. However, at least we learned that both Military Rifles of Models M1803-M1817 in 33” to 36” and Civilian Plains rifles of 34” to 36” were AS accurate, if not MORE accurate, than earlier long barrels.

We Marine RTE Armorers stole the technology for the M40A1 from Bench Rest shooters. We often said the M40A1 was nothing more than a "Militarized Bench Rest Rifle," because that is exactly what it was. Though I was not directly involved with the development of the M40A1, I was one of the RTE Shop Armorers polled in 1974 on whether we would use SS or CM steel for the barrels, wood or fiberglass stocks, and whether we would "glass bed" the rifles. On my last tour, I was the Shop Chief of the RTE Shop where we built and rebuilt the M40A1 and other precision weapons.

Dave, it may surprise you and many others that the 24" barrel length of the M40A1 was only FOUR inches longer than the M16A1. However, it was the larger diameter and thus the weight of the barrel kept down barrel vibrations that helped make the M40A1 so accurate, along with the high grade of ammunition, of course. It may also surprise you that as a VERY young Marine Sergeant in 1974, I called those M40A1 barrels, “Jaeger Barrels,” as they were also the modern version of the 18th century Jaeger Barrels. Yeah, it drove a lot of the older RTE Armorers crazy. :haha:

Gus

 

[Len Graves]

I was quite surprised to learn that the Jäger took "ten minutes to load with special tools". I under stand it took longer than we do now with patched balls, but ten minutes? Me thinks an over estimation.

 

[Dean2]

I would like to provide a slightly different perspective than most of the others published so far.

In the days of the fur trade guns were sold against the height of a pile of Beaver skins, both to the Indians and to white trappers. Long barreled trade guns were an intentional strategy (ploy) by the trading companies to get far more skins per gun. Six inches more barrel is about 10-12 dried Beaver skins so there was lots of incentive to go from 30" to 44" or even longer barreled guns.

Thus extra long barrels were imported from England and France in the early days of settlement, and were then turned into long barreled guns, as well as the completed long guns brought in for trade.

What was available for barrels and locks had far more to do with the evolution of the long barreled Kentucky rifle than sight radius or powder burn considerations. It was all about getting the highest price possible for a gun.

After many years of using and building long barreled guns it would naturally take quite some time for the style to evolve back to shorter barrels as the American gunsmiths started making their own barrels, locks etc. In addition to style, short guns were considered "Cheap" guns and less effective so there was also the prestige part of owning a more expensive "Long gun".

In Canada, where there were relatively few Gunsmiths, flint and percussion guns stayed long barreled until the advent of centerfire weapons because they continued to use imported barrels and parts to put guns together.

 

[Artificer]

So having started this very erudite discussion I once again observe that a swamped carbine (aka Jaeger-type) is much more handy and useful in the field than a swamped longrifle(1800 42" barreled Pa-Ky) given equal calibers.

The question remains, why did the longrifle develop?

Again, my hunch is that a LONG barrel (not a longrifle) at some time became considered to be more POWERFUL than a shorter and handier barrel.

The rest was FASHION.

One of the problems then was there was so little scientific ways to test things in the 18th century. Powder varied enough in quality that Powder Testers were quite common in the military in the 18th century. Known as "Eprouvettes," these spring loaded/pistol shaped devices tested the potency of black powder. The average gunsmith did not have one, though, nor did the average hunter. However, we do have quotes where they knew powder varied in quality.

A 1773 Letter written by Christian Oerter, gunmaker of Christian's Spring, to Martin Bauer, friend and customer in Lancaster County PA.

Christiansbrunn, the 9th September, 1773

Most valued Friend Martin Baer,

At your request I have prepared [completed/finished] a good rifle and sent it over to Mr. John Hopson together with 4 pounds of Powder. The rifle is decorated [inlaid] with silver wire and well made, as well as tested and she shoots right well. It has a double trigger, so that you can fire with the triggers either unset or set. Between the triggers there is a screw with which you can make it lighter or harder to fire. There is also a ball puller with which you can pull the ball out no matter how rusty she gets. She costs 8 pounds all together and with the powder @ 3 shillings per pound makes twelve shillings, for a total of L8.12.-. Because it is very good powder I have added two pounds more than you requested. I hope it will suit you well. You can write me a couple lines to let me know how you like it. Together with friendliest greetings I am your faithful

friend and servant,

Christian Oerter

Gunmaker


We know that some 18th century American Hunters and Gunsmiths fired their rifles over a blanket of snow, or sometimes canvas, to see if unburnt powder was coming from the barrels. This as a way to measure if they were putting too much powder in a barrel and it was not burning, but being blown out of the barrel. If the powder charge so large that some of the powder was not burning, it was a waste of powder and money.

However, there is a problem with empirical evidence like this that one MAY come up with the wrong explanation/interpretation of the observed evidence. We now know that almost any reasonable black powder charge will be consumed in a barrel shorter and even much shorter than 42," but they had no way to know/test that. I would suggest that there was/is always going to be SOME small amount of unburned powder that comes out of a BP gun. More of the unburned powder grains may and probably did stay inside the barrel on longer barreled guns than shorter barreled guns. So they may or even probably came to the wrong conclusion that longer barrels were required to fully burn the powder.

Gus

 

[Artificer]

In the days of the fur trade guns were sold against the height of a pile of Beaver skins, both to the Indians and to white trappers. Long barreled trade guns were an intentional strategy (ploy) by the trading companies to get far more skins per gun. Six inches more barrel is about 10-12 dried Beaver skins so there was lots of incentive to go from 30" to 44" or even longer barreled guns.

Dean,

With sincere respect, this is an old wives tale about the length of barrels for more beaver or other skins, that has been around quite a long time and just refuses to die. It seems plausible and that may be why it continues, but there is no historic justification for it in the period.

Gus

 

[longcruise]

I would add that there was no set or continuing value of a pelt. They fluctuated just as the do today as a result of market forces.

I have heard many times that the number of lines on a point blanket were the number of beaver pelts required to purchase it. This is not correct. Trade was not for beaver pelts alone, for one thing. The lines denoted the relative quality of a blanket. It's value in pelts varied from time to time and place to place.

The price /value of a trade gun was driven by the value of the various pelts.

 

[Dean2]

Dean,

With sincere respect, this is an old wives tale about the length of barrels for more beaver or other skins, that has been around quite a long time and just refuses to die. It seems plausible and that may be why it continues, but there is no historic justification for it in the period.

Gus

:thumbsup: :rotf: No offense taken. I am well aware that it is an old wives tale. My point is, it makes as much sense as some of what I have read in this post.

Below is just a small selection of the materials I have on the old fur trade in Canada.

Let us start by examining the myths mentioned above in the light of practical experience. First, the pile of beaver pelts. Both the Northwest Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company operated a standard of trade. This meant that the price paid to the trapper for his fur stayed the same from year to year, no matter what was happening in the European fur markets. The price of a gun was between twelve and twenty ”˜Made Beaver’, and this remained the price right up to the first years of the twentieth century.

Strangely, the story of piling up beaver pelts is only told about the Hudson’s Bay Company. For a time I lived in ”˜The Land of the Little Sticks’ (Canada’s Northwest Territories) and I heard this story from many of the Native trappers, especially the Elders. However I never actually met anybody who could say ”˜It happened to me’ or ”˜I watched it happen to so-and-so’. All I ever found was hearsay evidence.

The HBC, of course, have always denied that they did it. My conclusion is that, while it may have happened it was not common practice. Was this the reason for the long barrel? The answer here is a definite ”˜No’. Many guns produced in the eighteenth century had barrels equally long and even longer. Fowlers with barrels of 54 inches were not uncommon. Originally Northwest Guns came in barrel lengths of 48 and 42 inches (”˜four foot’ and ”˜three and a half foot’ guns.) Ballistic theory at the time held that longer barrels produced greater accuracy, more power and better shot patterns.

Here are the values of many of the NWC trade goods in Made Beaver: 1MB = 3/4 pounds of coloured beads 1MB = 1 1/2 pounds of gun-powder
1MB = 1 brass kettle 1MB = 2 pounds of sugar
1MB = 1 gallon of brandy
1MB = 2 yards of flannel
1MB = 12 dozen buttons 1MB = 1 pair of breeches
1MB = 1 pair of shoes 1MB = 20 flints
1MB = 8 knives 1MB = 2 pair looking glasses
1MB = 2 hatchets 1MB = 20 fish hooks
1MB = 1 blanket 4 MB = 1 pistol
1MB = 2 shirts 11 MB = 1 musket


However, as with the Buck, the realm of the Made Beaver remained narrow and flexible. Sometimes, 2 small beaver skins would equal 1 Made Beaver. Also, 1 Made Beaver could be equated with 1 or 2 lynx pelts, 1 to 7 martens, or 9 to 14 muskrats. Further the values of goods in Made Beaver varied depending on the season, the location of the post, the extent of competition, and the natural supply of beaver. The myth about a gun costing a pile of beavers equal in height to the gun itself never applied in the case of the NWC. In fact, Indians controlled trade routes and were indispensable as trappers and food suppliers. As such, it is difficult to imagine a NWC trader fooling an Indian by trading longer firearms for more beavers.

 

[LaBonte]

I would like to provide a slightly different perspective than most of the others published so far.

In the days of the fur trade guns were sold against the height of a pile of Beaver skins, both to the Indians and to white trappers. Long barreled trade guns were an intentional strategy (ploy) by the trading companies to get far more skins per gun. Six inches more barrel is about 10-12 dried Beaver skins so there was lots of incentive to go from 30" to 44" or even longer barreled guns.

Sorry but that is one of those mythic factoids that has long been debunked via period sources by professional researchers such as James Hanson, that show they were bought and sold by the plew or the pound - barrel length had nothing to do wit it.

 

[Dean2]

Please read post just above yours. :v :wink:

 

[Stophel]

I was quite surprised to learn that the Jäger took "ten minutes to load with special tools". I under stand it took longer than we do now with patched balls, but ten minutes? Me thinks an over estimation.

Like so much else, this is another example of long-repeated anti-German propaganda. I've seen all kinds of this sort of nonsense spewed by people intent on proving how Americans did it right, and those awful Germans did it wrong. The author of this article even seemed quite reluctant to say that the early gunsmiths in PA were German, beating around the bush as much as he possibly could before deigning to say the "G" word.

 

[bpd303]

I can load my original German Jaeger faster than any of my long rifles, both with hollow base minie's and patched round balls, even with it's Thouvein Tige pillar breech. With it's short barrel it's just as accurate, maybe even more so.

 

[Dphar]

Because the Jaeger you are looking at is not an original for one thing and you were not actually SHOOTING it for another. If you shoot offhand, or shoot chunk matches the advantages are instantly apparent. They did not make the LR because it was an inferior design. Our forefathers were not stupid. The typical Jaeger of the time would be 62-66 caliber or more and would have had a rifling twist too fast (generally 1 full turn in the barrel so 1:25-1:30") to allow enough powder to even have a usable point blank range in many cases. IE it might need a 3 leaf sight to shoot to 100 yards. A Kentucky of 50 caliber would have a point blank to 100-130 yards. IE simply hold in the middle of a deers shoulder to 100 yards or perhaps more and get a killing shot.
The Kentucky was higher velocity and smaller in the bore than the typical European rifle of the time. It was more efficient and much cheaper to shoot. It was also easier to get hits with at unknown ranges.
You need to look at a LR without the contamination of modern too light, too short rifles as a reference.
Dan

 

[Dphar]

And you base this on? Remembering that many of the original Hawkens had barrels 6-12" longer than a Jaeger. 34-36 being very common on the later rifles. And they were HORSE BACK GUNS.
The powder? It WAS a factor as well. Along with the idea that the rifle was used differently and by different people than it was in Europe. The high velocity Kentucky was more efficient than the Jaeger. You must remember that there were long barreled rifles in Germany too. So it was not just an American thing.
The long rifle was the way it was for a reason. As time passed and especially by 1830 or so the rifles became shorter but HEAVIER even if small caliber. Probably because of improvements in powder and the use of the Picket bullet for target shooting.
That the longer barrel is superior is sight radius is easy to prove. Most over the chunk rifles have had barrels over 40" and often much over 40" for a very long time. I would also point out that most historical rifle matches in America were REST matches either over a "chunk" or a plank rest until well into the 19th c. Offhand shooting being seen as a poor test of the rifle.
Why you feel compelled to come here and be insulting I cannot say. You also seem to lack any real LR experience based on your posts.

Dan

 

[Dphar]

Hi Gus. Do you have any actual 18th C documentation for the shooting over snow/sheets thing? Just curious if this is an outgrowth of the tale Brockway told Ned Roberts who then repeated it. A bulleted ML shooting a 2.75 to 3 caliber long bullet would need a lot of powder to put unburned powder on the ground.
Much of the powder used in the 18th c, probably almost all of it in America, was not press cake powder but was "granulated" by being pushed through a sieve. This resulted in a powder that was porous and fast burning if the proportions were right and it was well milled. But it would have been fairly low powered if compared volume to volume with even something like 1990s Goex.
Also the ball of hot gas at the muzzle would ignite any powder blown out the muzzle. Especially if its relatively soft powder that was not pressed and broken since this would tend to further break down under pressure, crumble. So finding unburned powder is tough for me to believe. I tried this once when I was a kid. It was a waste of time and I stopped testing at 65 gr of FFF Dupont in a 32" barreled 32 caliber drum and nipple rifle shooting a RB.
Since we have no 18th c powder to use it would be tough to recreate any such testing. But the press cake powder of today should still produce unburned grains if this myth is really true since its harder and burned slower. A significant amount of the BP charge is not fully reacted and the things seen exiting the bore in low light are not powder grains but are simply incandescent fouling being ejected from the gun. Sulfur "beads" etc.
When I read Ned Roberts writing that Brockway shot over sheets to get the best slug gun load I just have to wonder that he could be that gullible. But he said some stuff about picket bullets that most picket shooters today think is "iffy" too.

Dan