smoothbore/smooth rifle

[john4645]

What is the difference between a gun called smoothbore and a smooth rifle?

 

[roundball]

What is the difference between a gun called smoothbore and a smooth rifle?

I've always understood it's mainly that a smoothbore with rifle sights is called a smooth rifle to sort of make a distinction between it and a plain smoothbore without them...maybe there's more to it

 

A smoothrifle is a smoothbore firearm otherwise made to look like a longrifle--that is the styling of the stock, etc is the same as a rifle and it has rifle sights--as opposed to a fowler style, for example. Smoothbore is simply a general term for an unrifled arm and would include muskets, fusils, fowlers, most trade guns, etc...

 

[Gemoke]

can a smooth rifle be used in a smooth bore shooting match.
cut finger

 

[Slowpoke]

what Mike said.. cheekpiece, sights, and looks like a rifle.

 

[amccall]

Unless otherwise stated in the rules for that competition, no. Smoothbore shoots have the one front site, no rear sites allowed.

 

[gordy]

In some collections of longrifles are a few smoothbores,according to the experts some were made as a smoothbore,others were made into smoothbore after the rifleing wore down.It was a lot cheaper to ream out the bore,then to re- :thumbsup: rifle it.

 

[George F.]

Are any of you familiar with the Issac Berlin pre-revolutionary smoothbore that is available on a blueprint? ...Would that be classified as a smoothbore, or a smoothe rifle? Also, if anybobody is interested, it's a real pretty gun, pretty architecture, nice brass mounts and supurb carving. A real assett to someones collection. This gun features a barrel in 1 1/8" breech tapered to the muzzle at .62 caliper. with transitions with wedding bands at around 12" to a 4" area that has 16 flats to another wedding band then round to the muzzle. The barrel and this guns carving puts it in a class by itself!!!..........George F.

 

[Ronald Canter]

In building one of my guns I decided to build a 45 smoothbore for compitition. Well I found out later that a smoothbore must have only a front sight, one trigger (no set triggers). And If I'm, not mistaken it needs to be at least 50 cal. or better. By the way the 45 shoots great. I've hit the gong at 125 yds 3-10 times.

 

[Stophel]

I've never liked the term "smooth rifle"...always irritated me...BUT, it is a historical term (though it doesn't seem to have been all that commonly used).

"smoothrifle"...a smoothbore gun constructed the same way as a rifle would be...sights, cheekpiece, standing grip rail, etc. I just use the term "smoothbore gun" (as opposed to "rifle gun") and be done with it. :thumbsup:

I think the more oft-misused word is "fowler"... :winking:

 

[Okwaho]

I ran a check once on a bunch of rifles in Shumway, I believe, and I came up with about 55-60% rifled and about 43% smoothbore with the difference being guns which didn't specify rifling or the lack of same.While there may have been a few shot out or reamed out ,there's still a lot of smooth rifles. I believe that the term "riffle gun" often found in old accounts included both guns without rifling as well as those with rifling with the reason being that the smoothbore guns were virtually identical to the guns with rifling, the only difference being the lack of rifling which wasn't noticeable in outward appearance.It's just a theory of mine and maybe Dutchman or Mike Brooks could offer some comment.
Tom Patton