Siding wood patchboxes

[Walter Jones]

Hello all,

Can anyone tell me when the sliding wood patchbox was predominately replaced by metal type boxes? I know that both styles were in use at the same time but it seems at some point the sliding wood boxes went out of use in later rifles.

 

[nchawkeye]

I believe is was Shumway that said that brass patchboxes came to be around 1770 and by 1775 they were "everywhere"...

 

[Zonie]

I would like to think the metal patch box lid could have been used back to around 1760 but I have no proof of that.

I do know the early metal patch box lids were little more than a very simple hinge with a catch with little or no embellishments.

 

[rich pierce]

Sliding boxes were cheaper and were used in certain areas longer than others. Northampton rifles sometimes had sliding wooden patchboxes as late as 1800, from my best guess of when some of them were made based on width of the buttplate. I agree the earliest brass boxes date to the 1760s.

 

[54ball]

JP Beck the great Lancaster maker died in 1811.
He made both wood box and metal box guns. His wood box rifles tend to be plainer than his metal box rifles.
His rifles can be hard to date because they all are very similar in style. So a wood box rifle from Beck in 1810 would look somewhat identical to a wood box Beck from 1780.

 

[Stophel]

I've seen a FEW (not many at all) wood boxes on Lancaster-ish sort of rifles from pretty "late" (like 1800 or so, probably). Lehigh guns, on the other hand, will exhibit wood boxes even later than that. The "David Cook" rifle (that goes with the awesome big shooting bag full of neat stuff) is a Lehigh gun that looks to me like 1820-1830, complete with wooden box lid.

The so called "musician rifle" seems to be 1760's and has a brass box (it is generally attributed to the Bethlehem area, though I have no idea why, given that none of the features look Bethlehemish... perhaps the lock maker Fessler is known, I'm not sure.) There are other Bethlehem/Christian's Spring guns with cast brass boxes that are most likely 1760's. Of course, the Oerter ones are known to be early 1770's. The "Brass Barreled Rifle" is dated 1771 inside the brass box lid. I've seen a few others dated early 1770's.

 

[rich pierce]

I think the Fessler or musicians rifle was long in a family from the area around Bethlehem. I'd not be surprised if it was made in Philly. Nothing but a hunch. Looks like a rifle made for a wealthy city feller.

 

[Walter Jones]

Thanks for the answers folks.