Why do they have so much more drop on the stock than (most) of the earlier Virginia and Pennsylvania school guns?
SMR and Tennessee rifles…
- Thread starter brazosland
- Start date
Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:
Cant answer for sure
But here’s my guess
Style
Gunmakes were small private shops, a master smith a few journeyman helps and some apprentices . They wanted a product that stood out.
Early southern guns resembled contemporary Pennsylvanian styles. But like Lancaster were different the Becky or Lehigh style folks just wanted to stand out. Soon a style evolves and new makers copied and adopted
The French styled calfs foot design was all elegance and the south was heavily influenced by French style. And so the deep curved evoloved.
We can never underestimate the appeal of style.
But here’s my guess
Style
Gunmakes were small private shops, a master smith a few journeyman helps and some apprentices . They wanted a product that stood out.
Early southern guns resembled contemporary Pennsylvanian styles. But like Lancaster were different the Becky or Lehigh style folks just wanted to stand out. Soon a style evolves and new makers copied and adopted
The French styled calfs foot design was all elegance and the south was heavily influenced by French style. And so the deep curved evoloved.
We can never underestimate the appeal of style.
A lot of the mountain rifles were used in over-the-log or chunk type matches where more drop was needed to enable a more head-up style of shooting. Shooting prone or off the bicep/upper arm you can't comfortably get behind the early straighter, wide BP, shoulder pocket type of hold. The deeply curved buttplates don't lend themselves to shoulder-hold shooting.
I don't know the answer to your question (which is a good one...), but I have wondered about this and I have a hypothesis.
Taller, lankier fellows with longer necks need more drop. Horace Kephart wrote a wonderful book entitled Our Southern Highlanders, which was published early in the last century. He lived with the people of the east Tennessee and western North Carolina mountains, and his book is an ethnography as much as anything else. He considered all aspects of southern Appalachian culture, and even commented on typical body types. Men were frequently tall and lanky.
We might not see this in southern Appalachian culture so much now. People have more fat and sugar in their diets, their lives and livelihoods may not be as physically demanding, and with advances in transportation, I'm sure there has been more diversity added into the gene pool. However, in Kephart's time, he was able to make generalizations that could have been accurate.
So, I think that distinctive, local style of rifle was probably developed to fit a body type typical of the area.
It's just a hypothesis, though.
Best regards,
Notchy Bob
Taller, lankier fellows with longer necks need more drop. Horace Kephart wrote a wonderful book entitled Our Southern Highlanders, which was published early in the last century. He lived with the people of the east Tennessee and western North Carolina mountains, and his book is an ethnography as much as anything else. He considered all aspects of southern Appalachian culture, and even commented on typical body types. Men were frequently tall and lanky.
We might not see this in southern Appalachian culture so much now. People have more fat and sugar in their diets, their lives and livelihoods may not be as physically demanding, and with advances in transportation, I'm sure there has been more diversity added into the gene pool. However, in Kephart's time, he was able to make generalizations that could have been accurate.
So, I think that distinctive, local style of rifle was probably developed to fit a body type typical of the area.
It's just a hypothesis, though.
Best regards,
Notchy Bob
@Notchy Bob, I think you are making a good hypothesis. Many years ago, I knew a builder, Bill Decker, in Pensacola, Florida. He built some excellent rifles as only an excellent tool maker and craftsman could build. Many of his rifles, built for shooters I knew, had way more drop at the heel than I had seen in some of the books such as "Rifles in Colonial America". He fit his rifles to the shooters for a more natural offhand shooting stance. When I was laying out my stock pattern for my Deringer replica rifle, he helped me to lay out a little more drop and about 1/4" of cast off. This is a rifle that I can close my eyes, bring the rifle to shoulder and when my eyes open, the sights are lined up.
Most of those guns were made to shoot while you stand facing ninety degrees to your target and the rifle is brought up to you rather than you scrunching down to it. When it was explained to me, like that, I tried it and it was like an epiphany.
Robby
Robby
Last edited:
So Across Your Body shooting style became more generally accepted and genetics combined with better nutrition created a larger shooter.
Not a bad theory.
Not a bad theory.
I don't know if this is entirely pertinent, but here is a quote I found interesting:
This was from An Excursion Through the United States and Canada During the Years 1822-23, by William N. Blane, published in 1824. Blane was discussing the backwoodsmen of Kentucky, primarily. At that time, Kentucky was considered "the West." Relevant to this thread is his mention of the "...very small and crooked stock..." referring to the narrow butt and great amount of "drop" which inspired @brazosland 's question. There must have been a practical reason for this.
While it has nothing to do with stock design, I also found Blane's description of bore size noteworthy. He mentions "balls to the pound," which convert to the following bore sizes:
50 balls to the pound = .453"
60 balls to the pound = .427"
80 balls to the pound = .388"
100 balls to the pound = .360"
150 balls to the pound = .314"
"...a rifle carrying a ball of a larger size than 60 to the pound [.427"] is very seldom made use of..." I can only speak for myself, but I'm not so sure I would go after a buffalo with a .43 caliber rifle.
He also mentions the rate of twist, "...one turn in four feet...," and weights of "...twelve to fourteen pounds..," for hunting rifles! Too bad they didn't have forums like this one, to let those old boys know they needed lighter rifles with bigger bores and a slower twist!
Notchy Bob
This was from An Excursion Through the United States and Canada During the Years 1822-23, by William N. Blane, published in 1824. Blane was discussing the backwoodsmen of Kentucky, primarily. At that time, Kentucky was considered "the West." Relevant to this thread is his mention of the "...very small and crooked stock..." referring to the narrow butt and great amount of "drop" which inspired @brazosland 's question. There must have been a practical reason for this.
While it has nothing to do with stock design, I also found Blane's description of bore size noteworthy. He mentions "balls to the pound," which convert to the following bore sizes:
50 balls to the pound = .453"
60 balls to the pound = .427"
80 balls to the pound = .388"
100 balls to the pound = .360"
150 balls to the pound = .314"
"...a rifle carrying a ball of a larger size than 60 to the pound [.427"] is very seldom made use of..." I can only speak for myself, but I'm not so sure I would go after a buffalo with a .43 caliber rifle.
He also mentions the rate of twist, "...one turn in four feet...," and weights of "...twelve to fourteen pounds..," for hunting rifles! Too bad they didn't have forums like this one, to let those old boys know they needed lighter rifles with bigger bores and a slower twist!
Notchy Bob
Last edited:
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2021
- Messages
- 824
- Reaction score
- 756
I sell guns, I shoot guns, and I was trained to shoot guns(differently than I was raised to). I see fellas nowadays virtually wrap their support hand over the top of an AR hand guard and us their support hand index finger to point at the target. Conversely, old school Camp Perry gents brace their support arm against their body and prop up the AR by the magazine(a big no-no for modern combat training). Some newer school shooters want a lite buttstock, while the guys like me from a decade ago want a fatter stock with more cheek support.
I say all that to say that some of the earlier opiners are right: styles change. Not necessarily for the better or in a superior more advanced way. But in a way that still works and grabs they eye of the younger folk looking for their first rifle. No one wants a front sight post on an AR anymore, but my simple brain says it is superior in every way to a sight completely detached from the barrel. I may be wrong about that, but style is supreme in the aesthetically obsessed human brain.
I say all that to say that some of the earlier opiners are right: styles change. Not necessarily for the better or in a superior more advanced way. But in a way that still works and grabs they eye of the younger folk looking for their first rifle. No one wants a front sight post on an AR anymore, but my simple brain says it is superior in every way to a sight completely detached from the barrel. I may be wrong about that, but style is supreme in the aesthetically obsessed human brain.
- Joined
- Dec 25, 2011
- Messages
- 9,387
- Reaction score
- 4,559
So a .45 cal was considered a big bore in that era and even most Hawken's when made in St. Louis I've read, were around .52-53 cal.
Years ago someone took all the bore diameter's of the known antique rifles of the period and came up with an average of .42.something bore size. This doesn't consider how many had been freshened and how many times.
Robby
Robby
It was big bore for that style of rifle
Likewise Ohio style guns were mostly less then .45 these are all contemporary with plains guns that were bigger, or cape guns that were starting to come in to their own
hanshi
Cannon
Economy of loading/shooting was also likely more important back then when powder & lead weren't as available as today.
- Joined
- Dec 25, 2011
- Messages
- 9,387
- Reaction score
- 4,559
Good point and I think also having to pack ammo on person or horse back was probably another encouragement to lighter calibers (especially the long hunters) that could still get the job done.
When one has to feed and defend ones self adequate bore size for both would seem to make the most sense. Small game would most likely be the order of the day rather than large when on the move and defense from humans doesn't require large bore arms.
Just to be clear, this thread is about southern rifles. The quote from Blane in my post, above, was concerned primarily with people in the hills of Kentucky, which I think should be considered "southern mountains." It is a pretty well known fact that there were still buffalo there at the time (1820's), but the hunters used the rifles they had.
However, if we start moving the focus farther west, some things change. I think it should be fair to say that distances at which shots were taken might be longer, wind might be more of an issue, and the really big animals were likely more frequently sought. Moving west of the Mississippi, I think larger bore sizes were appreciated. This is from Rufus Sage, Rocky Mountain Life, page 38:
Note the fourth and fifth lines from the bottom, "...a good rifle...carrying from thirty [.538"] to thirty-five balls to the pound [.511"] ..." He was not describing a southern mountain rifle. In The Plains Rifle, Charles Hanson suggested that southern rifles had a significant influence on the evolution of later plains rifles, but bore sizes were increased. In Wah-To-Yah and the Taos Trail, Lewis Garrard described swapping his "eastern" rifle (though probably not a southern mountain rifle) for one better suited to the plains:
Getting back to the original question about the shape of the stock, southern rifles often did have a substantial amount of drop. Referring back to the quote from Blane, he commented on the light powder charges and low recoil associated with southern rifles. However, I've never seen a systematic study of drop in plains rifle stocks. I would think that the bigger bores and greater recoil would dictate a somewhat different way of shooting, which might affect the stock design.
Best regards,
Notchy Bob
However, if we start moving the focus farther west, some things change. I think it should be fair to say that distances at which shots were taken might be longer, wind might be more of an issue, and the really big animals were likely more frequently sought. Moving west of the Mississippi, I think larger bore sizes were appreciated. This is from Rufus Sage, Rocky Mountain Life, page 38:
Note the fourth and fifth lines from the bottom, "...a good rifle...carrying from thirty [.538"] to thirty-five balls to the pound [.511"] ..." He was not describing a southern mountain rifle. In The Plains Rifle, Charles Hanson suggested that southern rifles had a significant influence on the evolution of later plains rifles, but bore sizes were increased. In Wah-To-Yah and the Taos Trail, Lewis Garrard described swapping his "eastern" rifle (though probably not a southern mountain rifle) for one better suited to the plains:
Getting back to the original question about the shape of the stock, southern rifles often did have a substantial amount of drop. Referring back to the quote from Blane, he commented on the light powder charges and low recoil associated with southern rifles. However, I've never seen a systematic study of drop in plains rifle stocks. I would think that the bigger bores and greater recoil would dictate a somewhat different way of shooting, which might affect the stock design.
Best regards,
Notchy Bob
Last edited:
longcruise
70 Cal.
Wonder who was shooting buffalo in Kentucky in 1822?
woodsnwater
40 Cal
Wow! Thanks for that. I tried it last night and you are absolutely right.
Thanks for your comment!
I submitted the post with the quote from Blane (post #8, above). We know there were bison in Kentucky in the 1700's, and Blane, writing in the early 1820's, did specifically mention the preferred ball size for "...larger animals, as the buffalo and elk..." However, I did a little more reading on the topic today and most of what I found indicates the last wild bison in Kentucky were seen in about 1800. So, we may have a historical conundrum.
In his book, Born Out of Season (1981), Marshal Ralph Hooker reported killing bison in Kansas and Missouri with his old "Boone rifle," which shot a .457" ball. So, the question of whether bison were present in Kentucky in 1822 or not may be moot. I guess the point would be that a sub-fifty caliber rifle is capable of taking down a buffalo when the shot is properly placed.
Again, I appreciate the comment from @longcruise ! It gave me a reason to look into the subject a little deeper.
Best regards,
Notchy Bob
Well buffs ain’t elephants
Traditional elephant guns were small cannon, 6,4 and even 2 bore.
After breechloaders we see .625 nitro express and today even have the big .458
But lots of elephants have been brought down by .308 and 30-06
Boys often had one gun, and they might shoot Rocky one day and Bulwinkle the next.
And, they weren’t as concerned about quick clean kills as we are today.
Traditional elephant guns were small cannon, 6,4 and even 2 bore.
After breechloaders we see .625 nitro express and today even have the big .458
But lots of elephants have been brought down by .308 and 30-06
Boys often had one gun, and they might shoot Rocky one day and Bulwinkle the next.
And, they weren’t as concerned about quick clean kills as we are today.
