Rifles of the frontier militia?

[Artificer]

Oh, the man who was sneaking Rifle Barrels and Rifles into PA during the 1740's I mentioned earlier was Caspar Wistar.

"In 1730 Wistar established a trade connection with Georg Friedrich Hölzer, a family friend in the Palatinate. He ordered goods from Germany, which were then transported by German immigrants in their personal belongings in order to avoid British duties and then sold in his shop in Philadelphia. Using the immigrant transportation system for illicit trade was quite common among non-British immigrants at the time since the restrictions and duties imposed by the Navigation Acts were prohibitive. Although nowhere near as profitable as his land speculation, Wistar’s trade in imported commodities from the Rhine and Neckar Valleys represented an important step in his entrepreneurial and personal affairs. Establishing himself as the main supplier in an emerging market, he was able to furnish his fellow immigrants with specialized services since the items he imported (knives, scissors, needles, brass and iron goods, copper kettles, mirrors, eyeglasses, tobacco pipes, ivory combs, lace, and custom-made rifles) were not readily available in the colonies at the time. He only ordered high quality items and managed to attain market dominance in rifles by making sure his source in Germany was kept secret."
http://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entry.php?rec=1

Gus

 

[George]

Gus, can you give us the documentation of the Robert Baker 1719 mill?

These might be of interest:

The Pennsylvania Gazette
March 19, 1772
Carlisle, March 13, 1772.
A tract of land and plantation, situate on the west side of Big Codorus Creek, opposite to the last above described tract, on which is a large and commodious saw mill (which, with 2 saws, cuts two logs at the same time, by one water wheel) a mill for grinding sickles, and boring gun barrels , a large square log dwelling house, a barn and stables, an house for a saw miller, and an orchard;

The Pennsylvania Gazette
February 7, 1776
AS the present demand for Gun barrels (especially for Muskets) is now become general, in this, as well as the neighbouring provinces, and the people chiefly unacquainted with the proper method of manufacturing the same; I take this opportunity to inform Gunsmiths, and others, who may incline to improve the said business, that they may be instructed therein in a perfect manner. I can forge, bore and grind barrels, likewise give instructions for erecting a boring mill. I am also skilled in grinding and polishing of Swords, Bayonets and Ramrods, in a complete manner, and all sorts of tools, from a mill saw to the smallest carving tool, nothing inferior to those brought from Great Britain. I can give directions for erecting a skelping or rating forge, and working the same. What induces me to speak so extensively is, my being employed in the above branches upwards of 20 years; therefore I flatter myself, that those who are pleased to favour me with encouragement in particular shall meet with the desired success, and the public in general be fully satisfied with their approbation, which I hope my hand work, or instructions, shall merit. Those intending to make application may have an opportunity, any time before the first of March next, at Mr. JOEL FERREE, in Leacock township, Lancaster county, where my terms may be known. A premium in hand will be required, by
The Public’s very humble servant,
JOSHUA TOMLINSON.

The Pennsylvania Gazette
June 26, 1776
WANTED immediately, TWO or three good Hands, that understand welding Gun barrels; or good Smiths, inclined to be instructed in the said Business; also wanted three good Hands to blow and strike in the said Business: Any such Persons may meet with good Encouragement, by applying to JOSHUA TOMLINSON, at the Gulph Mill, near Lancaster Road, 14 Miles from Philadelphia. For Particulars, apply to JOHN NICHOLSON, Gunsmith, near the Drawbridge, Philadelphia. N.B. An Apprentice, not under 14 Years of Age, is wanted to learn the welding, boring, and grinding of Gun barrels . Apply as above.

The Pennsylvania Gazette
March 6, 1776
EXTRAORDINARY Wages will be given to two or three Journeymen Gunsmiths, who are skilled in Stocking of Muskets and Rifles. Likewise good Encouragement will be given to a Gunlock Filer, that can make Musket Locks. --- Apply to THOMAS PALMER, the North Side of Market street, between Fourth and Fifth streets, Philadelphia.

N.B. Any person that has Skill to accomplish either of the aforesaid Branches, may, if they choose, work Piece work, and receive their Cash every Saturday Afternoon; or a Sum of Money will be advanced to them, by giving Security for the Delivery of their Work.

Spence

 

[Artificer]

This is the lengthiest explanation on Robert Baker and Son, though there are other genealogical sites that confirm the information and that he was a gunsmith and died in 1728.
http://bakerdesign.com/bakerhistory1/early_history.html

Gus

 

[George]

Thanks.

Spence

 

[satx78247]

Do you have any notion of how early that the steppes & prairies of Canada were settled by Europeans??
(For NA & other persons who copied their "pointblank" horseback hunting style, a smoothie would be quite suitable for hunting big game at that very close range.)

yours, satx

 

[Twisted_1in66]

Thanks Gus,

Are you talking about smoothbore or rifled barrels? Any idea of the boring method they used if for rifles?

Why would Remington make such a monster difference in the 1840's with their drilling (boring?) machinery if it had already been done. No question it was a revolutionary change in the ways rifle barrels were made. This was also the dawn of the straight or straight-tapered rifle barrel as opposed to the swamped barrels commonly made with hammer forge welded rifle barrels.

Inquiring minds...etc.... :wink:

Twisted_1in66 :thumbsup:
Dan

 

[Artificer]

Thanks Gus,

Are you talking about smoothbore or rifled barrels? Any idea of the boring method they used if for rifles?

Why would Remington make such a monster difference in the 1840's with their drilling (boring?) machinery if it had already been done. No question it was a revolutionary change in the ways rifle barrels were made. This was also the dawn of the straight or straight-tapered rifle barrel as opposed to the swamped barrels commonly made with hammer forge welded rifle barrels.

Inquiring minds...etc.... :wink:

Twisted_1in66 :thumbsup:
Dan

Dan,

There is a frustrating lack of information on the early boring mills and how they supplied barrels to makers of both smoothbore and rifled guns. So any answer has to be from informed speculation at best.

Early barrels were forged around a mandrel and then reamed to size with long reamers. The mandrel is what rough sized the bore and the reamers then smoothed them out to the desired size. Accurate Deep Hole, Gun Drilling did not came along until the 19th century. The problem for us is that gunsmiths rarely, if ever, seemed to have written inventories of their tools and most people who did Probate Inventories may or probably would not recognize a Barrel Mandrel from other Round or Rod stock.

Some clues may come from the Probate Estate inventories of gunsmiths who were known for making rifles primarily or in addition to smoothbores. (There is a caveat here that American Gunsmiths in the very early years of the 18th century probably worked on smoothbore guns more to much more than rifles. This changed as the century wore on and Rifles came into more prominence and preference by customers.) The number and size of reamers a gunsmith had at his death, would have spoken to both how much barrel work he did and on what types of guns. The problem is that most people who did the inventories, often did not know what many of the tools were the gunsmith left behind. So unfortunately, we have no way to know just how many reamers most gunsmiths had and what sizes they were.

It is only my speculation, but if all boring mills did was bore/ream barrels in the Colonies, there was really not enough call to establish a Boring Mill. Rather, I believe they rough forged barrels around different sized mandrels according to what their customers wanted and then sold the barrels to their customers. The customer gunsmiths then finish reamed the barrels to smooth bore and then rifled the barrels, if that is what the customer of the gun wanted.

This speculation comes from the fact that in England and on the Continent, gun making was already made up of up to 23 specialized trades by the 18the century. Smiths who concentrated on one part of the work could do the work faster and cheaper. Since Iron was found in large quantities in the colonies, it made sense that the Boring Mills forged the barrels and perhaps rough reamed them to sizes their customers wanted. Then individual gunsmiths rough and/or finish reamed the barrels and cut the rifling in the barrels for rifled guns.

Gus

 

[Loyalist Dave]

I cannot say either YES or NO to your belief that the average frontier family at the time of the AWI, had only one firearm & that one firearm remained at home, when the militiaman reported to duty.

I can tell you from period documents from Revolutionary Texas, 60 years later, that MANY militiamen joined the army of GEN Houston without any arms, other than a knife or axe.
(IF they even had a knife/axe. - Some walked to GEN Houston's camp with only the clothes on their back.)

Part of the problem is that prior to the AWI, the 13 colonies had thirteen different sets of militia laws. Pennsylvania, being heavily Quaker, had no militia, and volunteer companies had to be organized for the F&I.

Maryland, one of the three "rifle" colonies chosen to provide riflemen in companies at the start of hostilities, kept a few thousand stands of arms (musket/cartridge box/bayonet) spread around in several different armories...including the city of Annapolis. Not to mention ammunition, as well as spare locks and extra musket barrels.

Showing up without a gun to the militia muster is not necessarily evidence that there was no gun at home. Some colonies required appearance at a militia muster, some with personal arms but did not levy a fine if one did not have the weapon, and then if there was a fine for not having the weapon the collection of that fine was perhaps not well enforced. Consider that showing up at a militia muster, fully armed, meant you were ready at any time for a call to duty, and if shooting started, you were out-of-pocket for the ammo that you used, and any damages to your gun. So why not plead "poverty", and at least get the colony to arm you?

For those in Texas..., people may want to consider that travel cross country to join a rebel army while carrying a gun would mean execution, if caught by any of Santa Anna's men, and the Texans may have known this, and as well may have expected to be furnished with arms upon arrival at the army. The truth that the Texans were low on military hardware may have been left out of notices of calls-to-arms, or simply been a surprise.

Another example of militia laws,
Almost four decades after the end of the AWI, and a year before the War of 1812..., in 1811 in Maryland the law was this:
That if any non-commissioned officer or private, who has provided himself with a musket or firelock, or who has received one the property of the state, shall appear in the ranks at any of said meetings [musters] without such musket or firelock, he shall be fined a sum not less than one dollar, nor more than three dollars, in the discretion of a company court-martial; and if such non-commissioned officer or private shall appear without such musket or firelock in serviceable order, he shall forfeit twenty-five cents for every such neglect.

What this does NOT say is what happens if a man appears who has been "enrolled" in the local militia, but is not known to have provided himself with a musket or firelock, or been given one by the state.

As for the manufacture of guns or rifles...,

February 1776
The subscriber will engage to have made any quantity from two hundred to two thousand muskets, on the same plan, and at the same price, they are made in this or the ajacient provinces and finish one hundred by the tenth day of April next, and one hundred pr month after, till the quantity engaged are furnished, providing I am finish'd [or furnished? writing unclear] with locks for said muskets at least twenty days before said day, (for which shall be allow'd fifteen shillings for each lock) out of the price of the musket so finished,

Since he writes of a discount of 15 shillings out of the musket price, the supposition is that he was being "furnished" with the locks for the muskets, and the entry in the online archives is a typo because it was transcribed from a hand written document. 25 muskets per week is a rather prolific amount. :shocked2:

Maryland did not provide rifles en masse to its militia, and PA had no militia prior to the AWI, yet those two colonies, coupled with Virginia, were singled out as sources for rifle companies at the beginning of the AWI. So perhaps the best bet for a portrayal of a militia man from either of those two "rifle" colonies is a privately owned rifle from probably a Germanic gunsmith, or one trained by a Germanic gunsmith. How "German" you want your rifle to look, would be up to you.



LD

 

[Loyalist Dave]

I cannot say either YES or NO to your belief that the average frontier family at the time of the AWI, had only one firearm & that one firearm remained at home, when the militiaman reported to duty.

I can tell you from period documents from Revolutionary Texas, 60 years later, that MANY militiamen joined the army of GEN Houston without any arms, other than a knife or axe.
(IF they even had a knife/axe. - Some walked to GEN Houston's camp with only the clothes on their back.)

Part of the problem is that prior to the AWI, the 13 colonies had thirteen different sets of militia laws. Pennsylvania, being heavily Quaker, had no militia, and volunteer companies had to be organized for the F&I.

Maryland, one of the three "rifle" colonies chosen to provide riflemen in companies at the start of hostilities, kept a few thousand stands of arms (musket/cartridge box/bayonet) spread around in several different armories...including the city of Annapolis. Not to mention ammunition, as well as spare locks and extra musket barrels.

Showing up without a gun to the militia muster is not necessarily evidence that there was no gun at home. Some colonies required appearance at a militia muster, some with personal arms but did not levy a fine if one did not have the weapon, and then if there was a fine for not having the weapon the collection of that fine was perhaps not well enforced. Consider that showing up at a militia muster, fully armed, meant you were ready at any time for a call to duty, and if shooting started, you were out-of-pocket for the ammo that you used, and any damages to your gun. So why not plead "poverty", and at least get the colony to arm you?

For those in Texas..., people may want to consider that travel cross country to join a rebel army while carrying a gun would mean execution, if caught by any of Santa Anna's men, and the Texans may have known this, and as well may have expected to be furnished with arms upon arrival at the army. The truth that the Texans were low on military hardware may have been left out of notices of calls-to-arms, or simply been a surprise.

Another example of militia laws,
Almost four decades after the end of the AWI, and a year before the War of 1812..., in 1811 in Maryland the law was this:
That if any non-commissioned officer or private, who has provided himself with a musket or firelock, or who has received one the property of the state, shall appear in the ranks at any of said meetings [musters] without such musket or firelock, he shall be fined a sum not less than one dollar, nor more than three dollars, in the discretion of a company court-martial; and if such non-commissioned officer or private shall appear without such musket or firelock in serviceable order, he shall forfeit twenty-five cents for every such neglect.

What this does NOT say is what happens if a man appears who has been "enrolled" in the local militia, but is not known to have provided himself with a musket or firelock, or been given one by the state.

As for the manufacture of guns or rifles...,

February 1776
The subscriber will engage to have made any quantity from two hundred to two thousand muskets, on the same plan, and at the same price, they are made in this or the ajacient provinces and finish one hundred by the tenth day of April next, and one hundred pr month after, till the quantity engaged are furnished, providing I am finish'd [or furnished? writing unclear] with locks for said muskets at least twenty days before said day, (for which shall be allow'd fifteen shillings for each lock) out of the price of the musket so finished,

Since he writes of a discount of 15 shillings out of the musket price, the supposition is that he was being "furnished" with the locks for the muskets, and the entry in the online archives is a typo because it was transcribed from a hand written document. 25 muskets per week is a rather prolific amount. :shocked2:

Maryland did not provide rifles en masse to its militia, and PA had no militia prior to the AWI, yet those two colonies, coupled with Virginia, were singled out as sources for rifle companies at the beginning of the AWI. So perhaps the best bet for a portrayal of a militia man from either of those two "rifle" colonies is a privately owned rifle from probably a Germanic gunsmith, or one trained by a Germanic gunsmith. How "German" you want your rifle to look, would be up to you.



LD

 

[satx78247]

You may well be correct, though most Texas colonists hunted to supplement their family's diet & also hunted for resale, so that may not be true.
(BOTH of us are guessing. - I suspect that some volunteers were too poor to own a firearm that was suitable for militia service but I may be 100% wrong & you may be 100% correct.)

One thing is sure. There was definitely NO shortage of escopetas & Baker rifles or balls/powder to issue after The Battle of San Antonio.
(There were HUNDREDS of muskets/rifles that were "only dropped once", you might say.)

Note: The issued Mexican powder was so poor in quality that most Texas soldiers avoided using it, if possible.

yours, satx

 

[tenngun]

I think I do :idunno: . The point being that even after rifles were being made and traded Canadians and Indians held on to fusils. Indians had been hunting for a bit of time sans guns of any sort. In fact bows seem to have come to the Americas
pretty late. So why did Americans 'reach for the rifle'? The Brits and french didn't in Canada . Smooth bore NWG would be continued to sold up to the late nineteenth century and used well in to the twentieth. The steppes of Canada are the same as Wyoming Montana and Idaho. The late NWG were Looking like a WBTS era enfield, but we're just as smooth and no longer ranged then a North Star west today.
Style is important. It will win out over practical pretty often.

 

[satx78247]

I don't know the answer & presume that your estimate is as good as any, barring someone finding period documentation of the reasons.

I've wondered if it was the thickness of the forests in the eastern part of Canada (with the resulting lack of need for long range accuracy. - In the area that I hunt, the brush is so thick that you usually cannot SEE a WT/hog beyond 20-40M & thus you will generally do FINE with a smoothbore in ML or modern style.) & copying the NA style of horseback hunting at spear-throwing range in the western portions made a long-range firearm unnecessary.

yours, satx

 

[Artificer]

Dan,

More on the subject of barrel making/boring.

Even the gunsmiths who were known for making rifles usually only had one rifling bench and only a small number were known to have had a second rifling bench for a different rifling twist. Though they were not known for making rifles; in 1751 the Geddy Brothers of Williamsburg were offering to "rifle" or cut the rifling in smooth barrels as a service. I mention these because one rifling machine could easily have rifled a variety or bore sizes by using different size wood rods to match different bore sizes and still use the same rifling bench. IOW, the same rifling bench could rifle anything from say a .36 cal. squirrel rifle all the way up to say a .76 cal. musket, if anyone had ever wished the latter done on such a large caliber gun.

However, to rough ream a bore that came directly from forging on a mandrel, one would have needed many sizes of reamers to ream a wide variety of bore sizes.

In the following link, Gary Brumfield explained part of the reaming process after forging the barrel around a mandrel.

"Reaming the barrel begins with a bit that just touches the tight spots and progresses with larger and larger bits until the barrel is free of any forged surface. These rough boring bits are a twisted square that look a bit like a modern bolt removing tool called an "easy out." They are turned in the barrel opposite the way they are twisted so they don't thread themselves into the barrel and break off. This causes the chips to be pushed ahead of the bit and requires us to stop frequently to blow out chips and oil the bit. If a particular caliber has been ordered it may take even more reaming to get out near final bore size."
http://flintriflesmith.com/ToolsandTechniques/barrel_making.htm

So even when we consider the Soft Iron that was used for barrels in the period, it probably took at least two or three, if not four rough reamers to rough ream a barrel for each caliber. Keeping this in mind, if a gunsmith did a large number/variety of calibers, he would have needed a plethora of rough reamers. If he got a request for a caliber he did not normally make, then he had to make new rough reamers for that caliber. That brings up the question if it would have even been economically feasible for a single gunsmith shop to make reamers for a bore/caliber he did not usually handle?

I really doubt that any single "regular" American gunsmith shop in the period would even try to stock all the sizes of rough reamers needed for a large variety of barrel calibers, because it would have required far too much investment in time and money for the tooling.

This is part of the reason so many barrels were imported from England or the Continent, or provided by local boring mills. However, a shop that specialized in barrel making/boring, could afford to have a variety of mandrels and rough reamers for different calibers, when that was their primary function and there were enough gunsmiths who would buy their barrels.

Since Iron was widely available in the colonies and when enough gunsmiths were available to purchase the barrels, it makes sense that boring mills to make barrels was one of, if not the first specialized gunsmithing shops that sprung up in the Colonies.

This while there were no specialized Lock making gun shops in the Colonies until the AWI required it. It was far cheaper to import Locks from England and the Continent than it was to make them here.

Gus

 

[Artificer]

Dan,

Sorry I forgot to mention something else in the link from Gary Brumfield. You asked about tapered bores in your post above and the following is germane to that question.

"Once the barrel is close to size the final reaming is done with s single long square bit that is backed on one face with a thin sliver of wood -- flat on the side against the bit and rounded to match the radius of the barrel on the other. Only two corners cut. This bit takes a very light cut and it is "expanded" by placing thin paper between the bit and the wooden backing strip. This reaming is always done from breach to muzzle and after the final reaming the bore will have a very slight taper due to the wear and compression of the wood."

So even very early barrels had bores that tapered down slightly from the breech to the muzzle, had most been made that way. Personally I believe most barrels were made that way and the original gunsmiths recognized it was better to have the taper going down towards the muzzle.

Now, what I don't know is if that taper would have given better results than a straight bore barrel, since they were using a PRB. The taper may have been so slight it would not matter with a PRB.

Gus

 

[satx78247]

I must add reference Brown Bess use by Revolution & Republic era Texicans that after the victory at San Jacinto that THOUSANDS of Brown Bess muskets & Baker rifles were "surrendered to" the Texas Army & "taken home" by the soldiers when they were "released from military service".
(I suspect that for quite a long time that the Bess & Baker rifles were the most common firearms in TX.)

yours, satx

 

[Treestalker]

Artificer, Charles Burton of FCI barrels advertises his rifle barrels as having about a .003 taper which he claims makes for easier loading and good accuracy. Satisfied customers on his guest page have commented on his accurate and user friendly barrels. I have only a pistol barrel from him, haven't built the pistol yet, and don't know if it's tapered. Have not used his rifle barrels so I can't say if the tapering helps. George.

 

[M. De Land]

Remington formed short billets of cast steel and the billets had a hole down their center.
The billets had a mandrell inserted and were rolled out against the mandrell to full barrel length.The holes were not deep hole bore intially.
They then were reamed smooth and straightened.
They were straightened with lead hammer blows before being rifled using a shadow line while looking through the bore at a good light source. Any break in the shadow line was a bend in the barrel. A smoothly reamed bore is the only way the shadow line could be seen to know where to strike the barrel exterior to straighten it.
Rifling was the last process of machine cutting.
Some of the better bores where hand lapped to induce a level or taper bore.
The advantage to Remington or better yet Shiefield cast steel barrels from England was that they had no seem weld and were much more consistent in quality with few slag inclusions and hard spots to deflect a reamer or rifling head. The best match, cast steel barrels of the time came from Shefield of England and were pressure cast which made them superior to Remington cast steel barrels which were second in the pecking order of quality and preferred barrel blanks.
The muskets of the American Civil war were all forge welded barrels.
The bolster was also forge welded to the barrel.
I have a book on a step by step process of how they were manufactured at Springfield armory.

 

[Artificer]

Artificer, Charles Burton of FCI barrels advertises his rifle barrels as having about a .003 taper which he claims makes for easier loading and good accuracy. Satisfied customers on his guest page have commented on his accurate and user friendly barrels. I have only a pistol barrel from him, haven't built the pistol yet, and don't know if it's tapered. Have not used his rifle barrels so I can't say if the tapering helps. George.

I don't think there would have been that much taper in original barrels, from the type of finish reamer/wood guides they used - but I could be mistaken. Wallace Gusler and Gary Brumfield both commented the 18th century finish reamers cut so little steel that the cutting waste was a fine powder.

I suspect that whatever advantage a tapered bore may have given was not fully realized in the 18th century, because they did not use ball and patch combinations as tight as we use today.

Yet our problem is no original rifle seems to have survived in close to new condition with the ball mold made for it. So we are just guessing.

Gus

 

[M. De Land]

When were talking taper in a bore where dealing in ten thousands not full thousands.
A taper put in a bore by hand lapping will only be a couple of ten thousands restriction from breech to muzzle maximum.
Most target grade barrels made by folks like Horace warner or Norman Brockway were reamed and rifled level and only the muzzle had about 1.5 inches of constriction which was a result of lapping out the rest of the barrel a bit larger.
Pope achieved a taperd bore by lapping in gradually tapered slug gauges each inch of the bore.
A 30 inch barrel required 30 one inch slugs that dropped in to the next index point in the barrel gradually increasing the taper toward the breech according to Smith who authored ( The Story of Popes barrels).
Brockway and Warner both found that a constriction at the muzzle achieved the same result with far less work.

 

[Artificer]

Darn it, lost what I had typed.

I began air gauging NM Barrels in 1974 and you are correct those readings are in Ten Thousandths of an Inch. Back then we selected barrels with no more than .0003" variance. The next decade barrel makers had improved to the point .0001" was the total variance.

Going back further in the early 20th century, Springfield came up with the precision mechanical Star Gauge, but it only read .001" or larger variance. I know of nothing even that precise from the 19th century, though there may be something out there I have not heard of.

Unless I am mistaken, the percussion rifles that seemed to have done better with tapered bores all shot some kind of elongated bullet, rather than PRB's? Of course percussion revolvers benefited from taper bores as the ball was not sized down as it would have been had it been loaded at the muzzle. Hall or Ferguson rifles were probably very accurate before they began leaking gas, as they also used a ball that was sized down as it went from the breech to the muzzle, just like Turn Barrel Pistols had been earlier than that.

What I don't know is how effective a tapered bore would have been in the 18th century for a muzzle loading rifle when ball sizes were not nearly as uniform as they are today and using a PRB.

Gus