Long rifle balance

I’d like to hear some best practices /practical applications of counter balancing an existing long rifle by adding weight to the butt stock - I know a swamped barrel is the ideal remedy
Got to be someone who’s perfected this fix
Thanks
Glenn

I like mine to balance at or just behind the entry pipe. I suppose you could drill and fill under the buttplate or send the barrel out to be bored larger. Those seem the most practical ways to resolve a muzzle heavy gun.

I have balanced two centerfires. One by pouring shot in the the rear stock bolt hole and one by putting a piece lead in the hollow plastic stock. If your rifle has a patchbox, that might work. Because I didn't like the balance, I gave away the one flintlock rifle I owned with a straight barrel. My son is now the proud owner of a nice flintlock rifle.
You could also have the barrel turned octagon to round. I had that done on a percussion rifle once also. It had a 36" 1"x .50 barrel. It removed a little muzzle weight. Done right it will still fill the barrel channel.

I did similar with a custom .303 british sporter, I packed some minnie bullets on top of the stock bolt and the wadding behind to hold them in place. Got the balance just right.
I find a rifle with a swamped barrel has the best balance for myself.

ML'ers invariably balance further forward than a modern gun by virtue of the fact that the barrels are all significantly longer. A long swamped barrel will "hang" on a target really well because of all the mass way way out there, and the inertia of it being so far away. The downside of course is that, without some kind of a hook in the back (like precision rifle shooters use, or a deep crescent BP) or some way to keep them mounted, (like a soft somewhat sticky recoil pad--which would be heresy in a traditional PC ML'er) they're hard to keep on your shoulder without using your cheek weld / pressure to hold them down.

Myself I tend to like an extremely long barrel and forward balance point, because my guns all have deep crescents. Since I don't hunt with them, and all my shooting is offhand and at the range, I have plenty of time to acquire my sights and make very deliberate shots. fast mounting and shooting just aren't what I do with them.

I have found it most interesting that the earlier style rifle with the flatter but plate and really long swamped barrels handle so quickly. I have later style rifles like Col Batguano, they have heavy straight barrels and deep crescents, they hold off hand really well, but are much slower for me to mount to the shoulder for that quick shot in the field. I am assuming these rifles were for heavier charges? Does anyone know?

Heelerau said:

I have found it most interesting that the earlier style rifle with the flatter but plate and really long swamped barrels handle so quickly. I have later style rifles like Col Batguano, they have heavy straight barrels and deep crescents, they hold off hand really well, but are much slower for me to mount to the shoulder for that quick shot in the field. I am assuming these rifles were for heavier charges? Does anyone know?

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‘Deep’ cresents were fairly specific to Ohio and the South. They were designed for a specific style of cross body offhand shooting popular in those regions. Some of the more shallow crescents seen were designed to help hold the gun as the Colonel says yet not so deep as to necessitate shooting from the biceps/pec crook across your body in a way that was disliked in the northeast.

Below is a Southern deep crescent:

After looking at the above post, it appears that I misspoke when I said my guns all have "deep" crescents. I put " just enough" of a crescent in there to keep them on my shoulder. That's more than the original I'm modeling it after, but not so much that anyone not intimately familiar with the original would really notice. I call it a "modern improvement", but to a purist, it's a form of blasphemy.

Col. Batguano said:

ML'ers invariably balance further forward than a modern gun by virtue of the fact that the barrels are all significantly longer. A long swamped barrel will "hang" on a target really well because of all the mass way way out there, and the inertia of it being so far away. The downside of course is that, without some kind of a hook in the back (like precision rifle shooters use, or a deep crescent BP) or some way to keep them mounted, (like a soft somewhat sticky recoil pad--which would be heresy in a traditional PC ML'er) they're hard to keep on your shoulder without using your cheek weld / pressure to hold them down.

Myself I tend to like an extremely long barrel and forward balance point, because my guns all have deep crescents. Since I don't hunt with them, and all my shooting is offhand and at the range, I have plenty of time to acquire my sights and make very deliberate shots. fast mounting and shooting just aren't what I do with them.

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This statement, while correct for straight or straight tapered longrifles is not true for those with swamped barrels. "Invariably" is the phrasing I have a problm with. The barrel on my Early Lancaster longrifle is 44½" long, so I have a long-longrifle. But it is a swamped barrel and is very nicely balanced at the spot where I naturally put my hand when firing off-hand. I also have another production long rifle (Traditions Pennsylvania Longrifle) with a 40¾" straight octagon barrel and it is extremely nose-heavy. My arms aren't long enough to ever find the balance point of that barrel while shooting it off-hand. My Early Lancaster, by the way, is much lighter than my much shorter Traditions.

Up until Remington invented the machine capable of drilling a deep straight hole in a solid blank, swamped barrels were the norm and were handmade by hammer forge-welding. That's also the reason that a rifle in the 1700's would typically cost the entirety of a person's annual income. They were and are extremely labor intensive. If you ever get a chance, visit the gunsmith shop in Williamsburg where they still make their rifles by this method.

I have an Early Lancaster Longrifle and one of the normal features of an Early Lancaster is the wide and fairly flat buttcap. It does not have a heavy crescent and one is not needed. The deep crescents that you see on some longrifles actually became a feature after the Revolutionary War during the Golden Age of Longrifles (~1790 to 1830). After the Rev War the demand for longrifles plummeted while the number of gunsmiths was at an all-time high. As a result gunsmiths were doing all kinds of things to make their rifles stand out from the competition. That's when all the brass decorations, pierced patchboxes, and silver or gold inlay rifles made their appearance. They were some made prior to that, but not nearly so commonly as after the war. That's also when the crescent-shaped butt stock became prevalent.

So don't presume that modern representations of longrifles are historically correct in their representation, especially with the straight barrels. You'll need to look at the 1840's to find straight or straight taper barrels. With the rifles of the time in the 1700's, you didn't need any big crescent to hold the butt plate in place and you didn't need to (or want to) hold it in place with your cheek - good way to bruise your cheek. My Traditions with its much deeper crescent is a cheek buster due to the poor design of its Roman Nose stock.

If you get a chance to handle a longrifle with a swamped barrel sometime, you will be amazed at how well it is balanced. My Early Lancaster with a barrel almost 4 inches longer than my Traditions weighs a full 2-lbs. less than the shorter Traditions longrifle. These were not and are not awkward firearms to handle. They mount easily, they hold easily and they fire very accurately. It's expensive to get one for a number of reasons. That swamped barrel can add $100 to $150 to the price of the rifle, but is well worth the difference.

I bought mine in ~2005 from a private builder, tg, who was active on this forum prior to 2010. It is superbly made and I used it primarily for Rev War reenactments. Have received compliments on it many times and I love using it. I've also used it deer hunting a couple of times and had no trouble handling it at all. Unfortunately my knees are so bad now there's little chance I'll get to hunt deer again, but it really was a pleasure to hunt with. It is, of course, my pride and joy.

Twisted_1in66
Dan

Without going in to the physics of inertia too deeply, let's just say that the further a mass is from the balance point, (or more succinctly the point where force is applied) the harder it is to start and stop in motion. And, all else being equal, yes, a straight barrel is going to balance further forward (on the overall gun length) than a swamped barrel, placing the moment arm of that balance point further forward.