English Trade Gun

Finished an English trade gun a while back and finally got a chance to shoot it last Saturday even though it was pouring down rain. I was surprised, 23 shots with no misfires.
20 gauge Getz custom barrel 48" long, Caywood Wilson's lock. I used 80 grains of 3F goex under a .595 ball and a .025 denim patch. Was a little tight to load but I got 4" groups at 25 yards which I didn't think was too bad considering I haven't had any practice since last summer and this is my first smoothbore.
If the weather clears some this weekend I want to try the same load but with .015 pillow ticking to see if it loads easier and holds accuracy.
[url] http://photobucket.com/albums/y122/dvlmstr/TradeGun1.jpg http://photobucket.com/albums/y122/dvlmstr/TradeGun2.jpg http://photobucket.com/albums/y122/dvlmstr/TradeGun4.jpg http://photobucket.com/albums/y122/dvlmstr/TradeGun5.jpg http://photobucket.com/albums/y122/dvlmstr/TradeGunBagandHorn.jpg[/url]

Regards, Dave

Nice gun! :bow: What buttplate did you put on it? Are these parts from NSW?

That gun has GREAT lines. Sweet job. Anyone would be proud of that one. Glad to hear the lock is a great sparker- I may try it.

Mike, Rich
You don't know how much your comments mean to me, you guys are some of the people I respect the most here.

Mike
The butt plate was casting from Reeves that was for a jeager. I rounded the toe and filed in the heel finial shape. The barrel is a custom job from Getz I had made a few years ago. The side plate I bought from Curly at North Star years ago. Everything else is my work.

Rich
I really felt I screwed up the butt stock architecture by over thinking it. As first laid out I thought the butt plate angle to the bore was too acute and it might cause the butt to slide up my shoulder and crack me on the cheek during recoil. I increased the angle to make it more perpendicular to the bore and lost some of the convex shape to the comb. I really did think about restocking it, but it fits me perfectly and shoots well.
Thanks again for your thoughts.

Regards, Dave

Dave,that's really good looking gun.It seems to me you mentioned in an earlier post that you had seen another English gun like the R Wilson gun illustrated by Hamilton{1980} Did you by any chance pattern this gun after the other gun you saw.I saw what you did on the buttpiece and sideplate but what about the guard? Also I don't see a problem with the comb. It doesn't need to be any more convex.It looks good just like it is. All in all this is a very nice gun.
Tom Patton

Okwaho
Yes this was meant to be a copy of "the other Wilson" that I saw. The gun was owned at the time by our friend George C. I see from everyones comments I may still be in the over thinking or over engineering mode.
The trigger guard was made from a pencil rubbing of the original guard and forged and filed by myself.
I also highly value your comments.

Regards, Dave

Dave, I'd be very interested to see the buttplate finial. I've been studying up on these early north west guns the past couple of weeks. It's shocking how early this type of gun was traded by the HBC. You certainly did a fine job of representing it. I especially like your effort in getting the details correct. This gun wouldn't be right with anything less than a 48" barrel! :hatsoff:

Very nice looking! Keep up the good work!

Don't over think it. This gun is clean. That's what you want. I believe the parts dictate the architecture a lot and have a theory that the tools used to shape a stock dictate much of the rest. I am sure that original smiths did not file or rasp away stocks to try to get rid of the bulk of the wood and so lines were established by drawknives and spokeshaves and coarse rasps, such as would have been used to make that wrist extend back into the buttstock. Especially on military and simple trade guns such as this, the lines are everything. It flows nicely and that's what matters.

"This gun wouldn't be right with anything less than a 48" barrel!


I am interested in that statement Mike, I see 3 1/2' guns ordered as early as 1684 by HBC and often in numbers equalling the 4' ones thru 1781? (Indian Trade Guns) by Pioneer Press.

Yep, you see orders for 4 foot, 4 1/2 and five foot too....I've handled several original trade guns now from this time period 1750-1760's with 4" barrels and I think they are ideal. 4' is just a personal prefernce thing on my part. :thumbsup:
You know, it seems odd that so few of the 3 1/2' guns survived. It seems the longer ones had a higher survival rate...or is it just I've seen more longer by chance? :hmm:

Hae you ever given a thought that the reason those long barreled guns have survived is that few people wanted to lug such a cumbersome gun into the woods and back? I suspect they survived because they stayed on the mantle, or gun rack while other, more manageable, guns went out and did the work. These long barreled guns were just like the guns of the Golden Age, with all the fancy inlays, grass, and silver glistening in the light. These too were show guns, but best kept at home, and not taken into the field, where they could be damaged. They too survive in far greater numbers than common rifles.

Many years ago, I saw a picture of a young boy standing on a tree stump to load a muzzle loading rifle that was taller than he was. The caption talked about this was the only gun he was allowed to use to hunt squirrels, rabbits and ground hogs. It went on to say that he did well on squirrels as they were shot out of trees, and he could find a tree limb to rest that gun on to take the shot, but he had a lot of trouble finding such a tree limb for a shot at a rabbit, so had to settle for sneaking up on ground hogs, where he could find a downed log to rest the barrel on to shoot.

I think those long barreled guns were found to be almost as impractical back in their day, as we modern hunters find long barreled guns. Having said that, I shoot a 39" barreled .50 cal. rifle, but I stand over 6 feet tall, and have no problem lifting the gun, or firing it off-hand. I did try a friends .45 rifle with a 42 inch barrel and found it annoyingly muzzle heavy. And, I have lifted guns with those 4 foot barrels, and even one that had a 5 foot barrel, and simply will say, " No thank you."

Respectfully I must say you have never handled an english styled trade gun with a 48" barrel. They weigh less than 6lbs and handle well enough to shoot birds on the wing with great success. All of this nonsense about standing on a stump to load a long barreled gun comes from people who have vever loaded a gun with a 60" or better barrel. They load no diffeent than your carbine with the 39" barrel. :shake: You don't load the darned thing with it sticking straight up in the air, you grab ahold of the muzzle leaving the butt on the ground then walk away from it untill the muzzle is at a convienint level to load from.
For you information, the annual deliveries for the HBC 1670-1770 shows the 48" barreled gun to be FAR more popular than the 3 1/2' (42") with the 36" barreled gun coming in a distant 3rd. There was a period from 1680 to 1699 that several hundred 5' and 4 1/2' guns were delivered. I can give you a break down of the numbers between the 4' and the 3 1/2 if you like.
The concept of short barrels handling better is a modern concept and has nothing to do with 18th century.

To add to that Mike, the "modern" trend of short barreld guns is waining. Now most all pro clay target shooters use 32" and 34" guns. Even the skeeters are shooting the longer barreled guns now when just a few years ago the "standard" skeet gun had 26" barrels.

And, after 40+ years of using guns with 40"-48" barrels in the woods, I have yet to have a problem moving through thick cover with one. A long barreled, well balanced gun is a joy to use in my experience.

Paul
The length of barrels is often discussed today with some folks taking the same stand you do, that they would be cumbersome in the woods. Please remember for the most part those people were not in the same type of woods we have today. Almost all forest today are second or more growth, thus they are much more dense in the understory than the virgin primary forest were.
The trade gun illustrated here that I made weighs just under 7lbs. Most of that is because I used a butt plate a full 2" wide. I could have went with a slightly narrower butt plate ect. and probably shaved off a few more ounces, but I like my guns early and with big butts (baby got back LOL). My barrels have ranged from a low of 42" to this 48" barrel and I have never found them cumbersome in the woods, now I might change my mind if I were to try and hunt deer in the same thickets were I hunt grouse.
I might add here that I would bet your friends heavy .45 barreled gun did not have a swamped or tapered barrel, and that may be appropriate for a later period rifle.

Mike
I will try and get you some pictures of the butt plate finial tonight. You will note it is not engraved yet as I'm not much of an engraver.

Regards, Dave

Here are more pictures of the English trade gun I made. Including photos of the trigger guard and butt plate finial.
[url] http://photobucket.com/albums/y122/dvlmstr/TradeGun6.jpg http://photobucket.com/albums/y122/dvlmstr/TradeGun8.jpg http://photobucket.com/albums/y122/dvlmstr/TradeGun9.jpg http://photobucket.com/albums/y122/dvlmstr/TradeGun10.jpg http://photobucket.com/albums/y122/dvlmstr/TradeGun11.jpg[/url]

Regards, Dave

Thank you for that reminder. I already knew that. However, I also would remind readers that the average American stood only about 5'4" tall, and weighted about 125 lbs. Find someone like that, and hand them that 4' barrelled gun and ask him how it feels! We all forget that as a people, we tend to be much larger and stronger than our forebearers. In my mind it makes it even more humbling to realize how difficult their lives were, and I am awed by what they accomplished. Can you imagine canoeing from dawn to dusk, day after day, to cover a couple of thousand miles to get from Montreal, for instance, to what is now Duluth, Minn. in a single summer, so that you can be trapping all winter, and leave for Montreal when the ice breaks? Two years of that kind of work, and the scouts for the national football conference would be seeking all of us out to tryout for linebacker positions!

As to moving with the long guns, I have no trouble taking my long rifle through any woods or brush that I can get my body through. I don't try to carry it at right angles to my body, unless I am pointing the muzzle through a hole in the brush I am going to follow the gun through, and I don't try to carry it on a sling, muzzle up!

I do believe that long barreled guns did not get used as much as shorter barreled guns, because man is basically lazy, and swamped barrels cost more back then, too. We see long guns that have survived more than 200 years, and a few shorter barreled guns that show several indications that the barrels were sawed off, along with the stocks, in the 19th century, and often converted to percussion at the same time. Making a 4 foot long barrel involved a lot of labor, considering the forging techniques in use at the time, and that would mean such a gun was more expensive to acquire than one with a shorter barrel. If these long barreled guns came over from England with early colonists, which I believe did happen, it did not continue to be the practice. Civiliam arms then, as now, tended to conform to the military guns of the day, both in calibers, accoutrements, and lengths. Trade guns, built solely for trading with First peoples, were the exception.

Paul
I would like to respectfully submit that according to my little research and my training as an apprentice in an 18th century gunshop, that swamped or tapered barrels are the standarded in the 18th century. Parallel barrels come along at about the turn of the century or shortly thereafter. They are the result of attempts to simplify manufacturing techniques for barrel making factories.
My wife is 5'2" and shoots a copy an Andreas Albrecht rifle I made that the barrel is 44" and .60 caliber. She has no trouble with it at all because I used a swamped barrel. This puts the weight between her hands and not out at the muzzle. This rifle weighs about 8lbs. I can't imagine you could build a similar rifle with a straight barrel in that weight without it being to thin in the walls.
As to you thought that we today are much stronger than folks in the 18th century, I don't know what to make of that. We are pretty lazy as a society today and I can't help but feel people on the frontier were much more enured to physical labor than we are.
But then again I could be completely full of hogwash.

Regards, Dave

Well Paul, I'll compile the info from the HBC deliveries today and post it today. This info will pretty much be at odds with your theories ofhow unpopular or uncommon long barreld guns were in the 181t century.

However, I also would remind readers that the average American stood only about 5'4" tall, and weighted about 125 lbs. Find someone like that, and hand them that 4' barrelled gun and ask him how it feels!

Click to expand...

with the number of 4' barreled guns HBC was trading I'm sure the 5'4" 18th century average Joe would have said "well, this feels about right" :winking:

I do believe that long barreled guns did not get used as much as shorter barreled guns, because man is basically lazy, and swamped barrels cost more back then, too.

Click to expand...

as I said above , 4" barreled guns were more comon than the 3' or the 3 1/2' foot guns. And, by the way, these englis trade guns did not have swamped barrels they were tapered oct-rnd, no flare on the end. Many of them never had the botom three flats of the octagon part fomed, they were just left round in the section that was under the wood....cheep, cheap, cheap. I believe the records of the HBC reflect the demands of the customers for 4' barrels, it isn't like they would have made more of these than any other length if the customer didn't want them.