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serious stuff - historic rifle manufacture c1861

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mattybock

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I was reading the old foxfire books, the one about how the old timers actually made those pretty little guns they liked so much. It struck me as odd how I never actually read about the government equivalent.

The book is just the tops, goes into steel making, lead quelching, equipment, spring tempering, fluxes, wood finishes, etc.
I'm wondering if anybody could shed some light on this topic- what about the factories?

How did the factories make their muskets and rifles? Any info on the machines, the tools, the mechanical processes, would be very welcome. Surely those one at a time kentucky ways weren't applicable to those big operations....? I mean- a couple thousand rifles a year for a factory versus two dozen for a shop? They must have been doing something different.

I was watching this old clip about the cotton gin and eli whitney's guns. I saw this big machine, looked like a lathe, spinning a stock and cutting on it. The machining and tool making bug has bit me and now the disease of curiosity has festered in my brain.

ps - I think most of us are patriotic in nature and try to buy US made stuff. SO I was carousing on the interweb and found this joint called Union Shirt Supply company. US made t-shirts from US-grown cotton for 6 to 7 bucks. Sounds like a heck of good deal to me! Just something to spike your spare time with later on down the road.
 
mattybock said:
How did the factories make their muskets and rifles? Any info on the machines, the tools, the mechanical processes, would be very welcome.
Some semi-automated procedures were adopted fairly early on by the US arsenals. Here's a short blurb from the book written by an Englishman touring this country in 1823-23.

William N. Blane, "An Excursion through the United States and Canada, during the Years 1822-3"

"Manufactories for small arms are established in different States of the Union, and supported by the Government. The two principal ones are at Springfield in Massachusetts, and at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia, at both places the workmen employed are the best that can be obtained. Among a variety of very curious and useful machines that have been adopted for assisting labour, I was most struck with one that is made use of to turn the gun-stocks; and I can see no reason why the same principle might not be applied to the turning of wooden busts, as well as to a thousand other purposes. An Iron model of the gun-stock called “a former” directs, while revolving, a small cutting instrument, which in a short time fashions the piece of wood placed in the machine into a complete stock for a musket, with the exception of hollowing out the place to receive the barrel and the lock. All the musket-stocks of the United States army are made by this machine, which might certainly be used in dock-yards to the greatest possible advantage."

Spence
 
They had sophisticated machines that shaped and inletting stocks. They were much better than the pantograph machines in use today.
They would shape and inlet the stock so little or no fitting was needed. The parts simply went into place and they fit.
And they had a lot of people making guns. Locks etc needed hand work though the parts were machined and were interchangeable.
Sharps alone made 100000 1859 and 1863 model Carbines and Rifles from 1858 to 1865. Most of these from the start of the War to the end. They made just under 67000 of the 1863 model alone in 2 years.

Dan
 
I had pics of the stock duplicating machines used by the Providence Tool Co. that was an Armory here and was contracted and produced the second most 1861 Springfield rifles (700,000) during the Civil war. Wish I knew where the pics are...
 
I found pics of the machine used at Harper's ferry armory. It's called a Blanchard stock duplicating lathe, or the Blanchard lathe. Turns out that the technology and the actual tools used to make the guns for the military way back then was used all the way until the Korean war of the 1950s!

Now that's what I'd call durable!

What about barrels? How were they made?

Were the locks cast or forged and hammered? If they were cast- what method was used.

And most importantly- did you know that all Winchester guns are now made over seas? PS- mossberg makes the same 94 lever action for cheaper and right here in the US. Tell your friends.
 
For accurate information on the progression of weapons in the US arsenals, find a copy of the book Harpers Ferry Armory and New Technology by Meritt Roe Smith. It is accurate and well written discussing the work done at Harpers Ferry from 1798 to 1861. It is easily found on any of the online search book sites like Amazon.com and abebooks. It is so well thought of that it is used as a textbook at many colleges and universities when teaching about the development of technology and the machine age. Used it can be found for as little as $10 in the paperback version.
 
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We had a guy here in Michigan who had a duplicating machine from the 1830's that he could do gun stocks or ax handles on. He has somewhat retired and the equipment just sits there now.

Foster From Flint
 
How about barrels? How were so many barrels of decent accuracy made in so little time?

My experience with barrel making in the old may is to beat wrought around around a steel mandrill with sand and iron flux.

How did they do it?
 
"mossberg makes the same 94 lever action for cheaper and right here in the US. Tell your friends."

It isn't the same and from all I have heard about them your friends are the last you would want to tell.

Springfield Armoury was the cutting edge of technology worldwide in the mid 1800s The history of firearms manufacture in this country is pretty much the history of the industrial revolution.
 
I own one and they're wonderful. Much better than those Indonesian disgraces. Shame on Winchester for outsourcing and taking away those jobs.

Anyway, anyone know how the barrels were made at the Springfield armory?
 
Barrels were hand welded at Springfield until 1815 when triphammers were put into operation. It wasn't until 1840 that triphammers replaced hand welding at Harpers Ferry. After welding, they were ground to their final dimensions on huge grindstones. As early as 1799, experiments were carried out with a barrel turning lathe to finish forged barrels at Springfield, but it failed. But by 1818, a barrel turning lathe made up of composite parts from different designers was adopted there. It was basically a lathe designed by Sylvester Nash with improvements by Dana & Olney and Wilkinson. A straight Nash lathe was used at Harpers Ferry until 1829 before that armory switched to the improved lathe. It wasn't until 1858 that barrel rolling mills were installed at Springfield and at least 1859 at Harpers Ferry.

All lock parts were forged. None were cast. For many years lock filers filed all the parts to fit. By 1816 jigs were in full use at the Armories, though they were used in France years before. The filing jigs and fixtures gave a little bit of interchangeability to the parts, but it wasn't until milling machines and better work holding tools along with gauges to check the work with came along that the long awaited dream of interchangeable parts came to pass.
 

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