trigger guard

[m-g willy]

I was looking at some guns from the 1740-1800 and noticed they didn't use screws to mount the trigger guards.
All the repro's guns I see use screws.
What gives
If they didn't use screws on the orginals ,how did they mount them?

Willy

 

[Zonie]

When you go back to the 1740 period, the Jeagers would be included and many of them used screws to attach their trigger guards.
Some of the Pennsylvania rifles also use screws but, your correct, a lot of the Pennsylvania (Kentucky) rifles did not.

The trigger guards on rifles not using screws have small "tangs" or vertical tabs cast into them. These tabs extend up into the stock and a small hole is drilled thru the stock wood and tabs. A pin then is driven thru each hole to retain the trigger guard.

 

[m-g willy]

Thanks,
I thought that might be how they did it but couldn't see any pins in the stocks from the pics.
Thanks for the info.

Willy

 

[CrackStock]

Some are also secured by attaching to the trigger plate via a threaded hole from the trigger plate. The trigger plate is also secured to the tang from the tang bolt.

This is difficult to explain, but look at it and percolate on it, it does work.

CS

 

[11th corps]

Weren't screws a rare item back then? They were hard to make and expensive to buy.

 

[WRussell]

Some used a hook on the inside of the butt end of the tang, which snagged a staple or just the wood down in the mortise for the tang.

The front end could be secured by a pin thru a tang as described by Zonie, or sometimes the barrel tang screw would go into a lug (fat tang) on the inside of the guard in front of the trigger.

It was the style for a while to run a screw from the trigger plate up into the barrel tang to secure the barrel, and to mount the trigger guard on top of it using a pin.

So you had to take the pin (or pins) out to remove the trigger guard in order to remove the screw that held the barrel in. Kind of a "duh".

 

[LSU TIGER]

Screws (wood or machine) aren't hard to make if you have the training and tools. The 18th century gunsmith learned this as part of his training and was adept at it. I've done it several times. It takes a while, thats true, but again, it's not hard.

 

[Zonie]

Seems like I've seen someone make wood screws on TV.
The tapered wood screws threads were hand filed and it didn't take much time to make a few.

Roy Underhill's name comes to mind but I'm not sure it was on his TV show or not.

By the way, although his show has not been on the air for several years, if you see a show called The Woodright (I think) by Roy Underhill, by all means watch it.
Everything he does is done as it was in the 18th and 19th century with the tools which were available then.
I watched him hand saw dovetails and when he was done, they fit together perfectly!

As for machine screws, there was no real standard in the 1700s so the gunmaker made his own tap by hand filing it. With this, it was no problem to make a die and with the two of them, screws and the tapped holes for them could be made.
Of course, some other gunsmiths screws wouldn't work because the other gunsmiths screws were different.