Puckle gun

[wheelockhunter]

Anyone ever heard of the puckle gun? It's supposed to have been a multibarrel revolving flintlock design.

Here is a picture

 

[TANSTAAFL]

Pyror Mountain Bill in Wyoming was building those things back in the 70's. He used to bring them to rondys & such.

 

[Will Bison]

Ah yes, the old Puckle gun. Came with two sets of barrels, square bore/bullet for Turks and round bore/ball for Christians.

 

[benvenuto]

One inch bore I believe, manually operated quick firing artillery.
I think it was originally designed as a matchlock, and then upgraded to flint with a single frizzen and automatic sliding covers over teach individual pan.
Despite the oft quoted provision of square bullets for turks, the main idea was to defend " your Country, King George (I), and the Protestant cause" against the nasty evil Catholics and Jacobites.
Puckle is most famous for the financial bubble which burst when the army failed to adopt the gun. still, it wasn't a bad design...

 

:winking: Where can I find one of those puckel guns.???

 

[marmot]

NRA's "The National Rifleman" ran a good article on the history of the Puckle gun and its designer back in the 1980's, including details of the flint firing mechanism which is a masterpiece of design.
Don't know where you'd find one today...

M

 

[patch knife]

I've got one.......... in my dreams ! :rotf:

 

[kentucky bucky]

Did they call it a "puckle" because it caused the enemy's butt to "puckle"? :shocked2:

 

[WRussell]

There's one here:[url] http://www.boughtonhouse.org[/url].uk/htm/boughtonhouse.htm

On the right, select 'tour', then go to the right again and scroll down to select 'armoury'. It's billed as "Quick-firing revolver gun"

 

[spitfire]

Nice link :applause: !I wouldn't refuse the estate as a gift (in my dreams :haha: )with the one condition-the armoury collection must be included :thumbsup: !Well I can only dream.

 

[WRussell]

Apparently it's one of the estates where the owner still lives there and puts all his money into trying to keep up with the decay. One by one those places seem to get sold off because it's just too expensive to keep them up.

The web site is an interesting read.

 

[benvenuto]

where do you get one? start machining!
basically its a big version (1.2 inch apparently!!!) of a "gas seal" type revolver. The handle tightens the coned end of each chamber into the breech end of the barrel, the shot is fired, then the handle is wound back and the cylinder manually rotated to align the next chamber with the barrell and the process repeated. When all the shots are fired the handle is wound completely off and the empty cylinder replaced with a freshly loaded one.

From Peterson's "Encyclopedia of firearms":
"James Puckle, a notary public of London patented such a gun in 1718. It was a large revolver mounted on a tripod with interchangeable cylinders holding varying numbers of charges.These cylinders were turned by hand, and there was a crank at the back by which they could be screwed up tightly against the barrel for each shot, while the coned mouth of each chamber fitted into the contersunk breech of the barrel to form a reasonably tight and properly aligned joint. one surviving specimen, believed to be an experimental model is ignited by a match.The other two surviving examples are both flintlock...."
"A stock company was formed and public demonstrations arranged.. the london Journal reported on one of these in 1722 when the gun was fired 63 times in 7 minutes in the midst of a rainstorm, an amazing feat for the period..."

When Puckles company failed in the late 1720's, i recall a satirical poem about puckle and his gun that ended with the line "thems only wounded, that have shares within"

 

[benvenuto]

I must be going blind to have missed this!

Quick-firing revolver gun



Quick-firing revolver gun


Invented by James Puckle, London, 1718-22

Barrel 2 ft 8.7 in (83.2cm), calibre 1.2 in, mould 21 in (53.3 cm)

Brass with fittings partly of iron. Smooth-bore barrel of circular section with a muzzle-ring; it is thickened at the breech, where it carries short trunnions and is inscribed on top in relief 'A DEFENCE'. Mounted at right-angles below the rear end is a threaded spindle for a removable cylinder which can be reciprocated by turning a handle at the rear of the spindle. Hinged to the top of the breech, and projecting over the cylinder is a flintlock mechanism with a lever trigger. The gun is mounted on an iron and wood tripod (the wood replaced in 1934) incorporating swivelling and elevating mechanisms that can be locked by means of wing-screws, and is accompanied by two nine-chambered cylinders, and an iron ten-piece gang-mould, all for square bullets. The cylinders are mainly of brass, but are fitted internally with an iron cog which, with a ratchet on the spindle, prevents them from being rotated in the wrong direction, while one is also reinforced with iron. Each chamber has its own pan with a pivoted cover, and is chamfered at the front to fit an internal chamfer in the open breech of the barrel. Each cylinder is engraved with numbers corresponding to the chambers and, round its rim, with an inscription (different on each):

i. 'Defending King George your Country and Laws Is Defending your Selves and the Protestant Cause'.

Between the beginning and end of the inscription are engraved a bust of King George I in an oval within the royal monogram G.R., an open book inscribed 'Holy Bible', and a figure of Britannia.

ii. 'For Bridges, Breaches, Lines and Passes, Ships, Boats, Houses and other Places.

The handle at the rear serves merely to engage or disengage the chambers with or from the breech, with which they are brought in line in turn by rotating the cylinder manually. Preparation for firing the loaded cylinders involved merely cocking the lock and opening the pan-cover.

James Puckle (c. 1667-1724) was a notary-public and also an author, his best-known work - reprinted as recently as 1900 - being The Club, a moral dialogue between a father and son. His 'portable gun or machine called a defence' - designed to fire round bullets against Christians and square ones against Turks - is one of his only two known ventures in the field of military technology (the other being a sword concerning which no details are recorded). In 1717 it was rejected for government use after trials at Woolwhich, but, despite this, he obtained a patent on 15 May 1718, and then made strenuous efforts to market the gun, raising a company for this purpose in 1721. In March, 1722 the Daily Courant carried an advertisement for 'Several sizes in Brass and Iron of Mr. Puckle's Machine or Gun, called a Defence....at the Workshop thereof, in White-Cross-Alley, Middle Moorfields'. At the end of the same month the London Journal reported that at a demonstration of one of the guns 'one Man discharged it 63 times in seven Minutes, though all the while Raining; and that it throws off either one large or sixteen Musquet Balls at every discharge with very great Force'. The invention was not, however, a success, and a contemporary satirist wrote of it:

Fear not my Friends, this Terrible Machine

They're only Wounded that have Shares therein.

Three other examples of these guns are recorded: an iron manually ignited version, also at Boughton, and two brass ones respectively in the Tøjhusmuseum, Copenhagen, and (until recently) in the Artillery Museum, Leningrad. The presence of the two guns at Boughton is explained by the entry '2 Machine Guns of Puckles' in a printed list of armaments carried by the ships taking part in the abortive expedition to establish British settlements on the West Indian Islands of St Lucia and St Vincent mounted by the 2nd Duke of Montagu in 1722. They are next recorded in 1801 (BH9): 'Brass Defence piece with 9 Chargers on a triangle frame, 1 Iron ditto with 22 Chargers, 1 slug mould for the same'. A similar entry appears in 1836 (BH11), but with the number of brass chargers increased to eighteen.

EXHIBITED Both guns were deposited on loan in the Tower of London Armouries in 1934, and the brass one still remains there, It was also exhibited at the Arms and Armour at the Dorchester Antuques Fair of 5-6 November, 1982 (4). Since January, 1990 the iron one has been displayed at Buckler's Hard Maritime Museum, Beaulieu, Hampshire.

 

[WRussell]

Just ran across the best documentation I've seen on the Puckle gun. (No, I haven't seen the National Rifelman article.) It's in a coffee table book called "Guns" by Dudley Pope (available cheap on Abebooks, I'm sure). 11 by 12 color photo and drawings.