Search for Trade Gun

[coloradoclyde]

A blacksmith gets tired of being a blacksmith so he becomes a farmer but still does some blacksmithing to supplement his income......


People having and doing more than one trade is well documented

 

[robert reed]

Sounds like its all about "elbow room." Who said that?

Its hard to carry a box of tools or an anvil without slinging your longarm. :stir: op:

 

[Coot]

The 1790 census records for the Shenandoah valley area include "occupation" for each head of household. These records are full of dual entries - farmer/cooper, farmer/weaver, farmer/blacksmith, etc.. In some cases, the second listing might be 'fill' work during the winter months. As previously mentioned, there was not just an economic incentive but prestige involved in owning land. Landowners were "somebody" and owning a certain amount of land made (adult white males) eligible to vote.

 

[Artificer]

As for cutting a gunbarrel...you don't use a hacksaw in the 18th century, and you don't simply file it either... you heat it at the point where you want it cut, you may or may not insert a cold mandrel to support it, then you hot file it to make the cut. You can use a worn out file or a a worn rasp instead of a good, sharp file..., then when the barrel is cool, you can finish the rough edge on the new muzzle with the proper file, thus saving the file for finishing work.

LD

Dave,

You are absolutely correct in the above procedure when a barrel was first forged.

However, after a barrel was finished, doing that procedure would have meant more time and labor as it would normally have required reaming the bore smooth again, besides the other work. It also risked warping the barrel and that would take more time to straighten it, to get the barrel back in the stock. If there was a hacksaw available, that would have been far preferable to use to cut a finished barrel and especially a smoothbore barrel.

Unlike a file, a hacksaw blade was more readily re-sharpened by blacksmiths and gunsmiths. When the blade could no longer be re-sharpened, then one went to a general store or trading post and snapped another piece of blade off the hacksaw blade roll (if he did not have his own hacksaw blade roll). If the trading post did not carry the blade rolls, there was no problem ordering them or even snapped off blades from further east.

Gus

 

[Artificer]

Sounds like its all about "elbow room." Who said that?

Its hard to carry a box of tools or an anvil without slinging your longarm. :stir: op:

:rotf: :rotf: Now that was GOOD! :rotf: :rotf:

However, many Journeymen's tool boxes were documented as being set up with long rope handles and a stick stuck between the rope handles to allow the stick to be put on the shoulder. That allowed them to "sling" their tool box and CARRY one's gun that did not have a sling in the other hand. :rotf:

Gus

 

[Artificer]

As previously mentioned, there was not just an economic incentive but prestige involved in owning land. Landowners were "somebody" and owning a certain amount of land made (adult white males) eligible to vote.

Very good point!

Gus

 

[Luke MacGillie]

"here is documented proof that it happened."

How do we document?...what does it mean?...how much and or what type of proof is needed for documentation to be accepted?....

I agree that one should be able to cite a source for their claim. But the source may also need to be accepted.

That is a good question.

When I think I might want to do something, Instead of figuring out how to do it, I start first with "Was it done" I look first at artifacts, not just complete artifacts, but also those recovered from the ground.

So regarding slings on Northwest Trade guns.

First thing I do is survey surviving guns, like this one:
http://anthro.amnh.org/anthropology/databases/common/image_dup.cfm?catno=50.1/ 2714 AC

and look at books that have these items pictured
http://www.trackofthewolf.com/imgPart/book-ftat_2.jpg

Then I look also at archaeology.

These photos are of trade gun parts recovered from a number of western Ohio sites, 1750 to 1815.







Note the lack of recovered sling swivels, this backs up my initial survey of surviving complete guns without slings and shows that the complete surviving slingless guns are not an anomaly.

Of course this is not documentation for some folks. They will find that one surviving NW Gun that has a hole drilled thru the stock and a thong run thru it, take it out of context and say that all the guns had slings......

 

[rich pierce]

Thanks for sharing those photos. There are a good many native gunflints in that collection. I also see a couple rifle-style trigger guns. Is this in a museum somewhere?

 

[Luke MacGillie]

Thanks for sharing those photos. There are a good many native gunflints in that collection. I also see a couple rifle-style trigger guns. Is this in a museum somewhere?

A guy on Facebook, Greg Shipley has them all as public photos on his page.

 

[Elnathan]

"here is documented proof that it happened."

How do we document?...what does it mean?...how much and or what type of proof is needed for documentation to be accepted?....

I agree that one should be able to cite a source for their claim. But the source may also need to be accepted.

Yeah, there is that issue as well....the reliability, limitations, and applicability of a given source for a given questions is something best assessed on an individual basis, I think. Very hard to make useful generalizations.

Different people will gravitate towards different types of sources, too, I've noticed. That isn't a bad thing, I think (I hope!).

 

[robert reed]

However, many Journeymen's tool boxes were documented as being set up with long rope handles and a stick stuck between the rope handles to allow the stick to be put on the shoulder. That allowed them to "sling" their tool box and CARRY one's gun that did not have a sling in the other hand. :rotf:

Gus

Ouch! I'm savin up for a mule fore I head west. :wink:
I here there is a gentleman on a farm called Mount Vernon that breeds big ones. Mules that is.

 

[Artificer]

Good humour!! :grin:

Gus

 

[coloradoclyde]

Sounds like its all about "elbow room." Who said that?

Its hard to carry a box of tools or an anvil without slinging your longarm. :stir: op:

:rotf: :rotf: Now that was GOOD! :rotf: :rotf:

However, many Journeymen's tool boxes were documented as being set up with long rope handles and a stick stuck between the rope handles to allow the stick to be put on the shoulder. That allowed them to "sling" their tool box and CARRY one's gun that did not have a sling in the other hand. :rotf:

Gus

Bedroll, haversack, shooting bag, possibles bag, canteen, snapsack.......All essentially on a sling :grin:

 

[coloradoclyde]

Luke, the problem I see is that wood and thin steel or iron have a low survivability rate over time. Most of the items in the pictures are made of brass and lead, which have a much higher rate of survivability.
A second problem is ......does that collection accurately represent the sheer volume of guns produced?

 

[Grandpa Ron]

Gentlemen, the last 10 pages have proved my point exactly; there are so many opinions on the proper way to interpret documentation, the only way to reach a consensus is to agree to disagree. :yakyak:

Now on to something of more relevant importance. Just how many Angels were dancing on the head of that pin? :hmm:

Adieu and enjoy the ride. :v

 

[Luke MacGillie]

You do have a point. We are never going to be able to be "Perfect" we just have to be as right as possible by following what the evidence shows, and not make stuff up to fit how we think it should have been

 

[Loyalist Dave]

There are many period examples of even established Blacksmiths who worked other trades or farmed. One famous one was Squire Boone, Sr., who was a blacksmith AND a weaver, before he packed up the family and moved to North Carolina.

What the article suggested is that blacksmiths appeared on the frontier, ready to blacksmith, and also ready to farm as soon as he arrived in country, or was ready to begin blacksmithing after completing being a journeyman (perhaps I'm reading "into" it too much)....What I'm objecting to is not the situation, where the blacksmith has grown his business to a point where he cannot expand further, such as Squire Boone Sr. and moved to further expand his economics. There wasn't any additional land (iirc) for the Senior Boone to purchase except at high price. So this is why he moved, no?

Perhaps I was a bit obtuse in my objection.

As far as cutting a barrel, since we are talking trade guns, it would be quite easy, and would not warp the tube, to hot file it.

LD

 

[Artificer]

As far as cutting a barrel, since we are talking trade guns, it would be quite easy, and would not warp the tube, to hot file it.

LD

Since you are a Sergeant Major, there are two rules one has to remember about Sergeants Major, that may be germane to the discussion.

1. The Sergeant Major is NEVER wrong.
2. When it is shown the Sergeant Major was misled or mistaken , REFER BACK to Rule Number One.

Iron Temperatures involved:
1. Iron begins to form scale at 760 degrees F, a low red heat.
2. Scale falls off Iron freely at 1750 degrees F a low end orange heat.
3. Hot filing is done at Orange to Yellow Heat, normally at least over 2000 degrees F, but higher than the temperature when scale falls off freely.

What this means is that hot filing the end of the barrel is going to form scale that falls off. That will require aggressive polishing at least, if not reaming, to smooth the metal in the bore near the muzzle after hot filing is done. I know Trade Guns were relatively cheap, but I doubt any owner would have accepted the rough bore after hot filing without getting it smooth again.

Further, the temperatures involved in hot filing are well above the plastic point for Iron and that means it would be easy to warp relatively thin gun barrels while hot filing them. Hot filing was/is generally done on thicker pieces of Iron.

Then of course comes the question was hot filing even DONE in the 18th century? In fact, it probably was not done until the 19th century after improvements in steel caused the price of hand files to come down a great deal.

Peter Ross, the longtime blacksmith at Colonial Williamsburg before he retired, has often stated that Colonial Blacksmiths probably did NO hot filing. With the access he had to research documentation and his practical knowledge of period blacksmithing, I will go with what he says.

Gus

 

[tenngun]

My grandfather was not a wainwrite, but he broke an axel on his wagon, and made a new one. I think you would find the average farmer or frontiersman to have been able to black smith as well as the average ironwork seller at an event. Basic skills we're idly diffused.
When it comes to documenting the past we have to be careful to understand that assumed knowledge existed. Often people didn't explain well, or they wrote down the out of the ordinary. Useing the equipment gives us a taste of how it worked, sometimes our our assumption from today can not be made to work. It's easy to misrepresent the past by a mistakin view based on a misunderstanding of the records and it's easy to apply modern ideas to past stuff. So far this seems to have devolved in to an everybody had slings vs nobody had them. Is one point of view more valid then the other?
Tin and copper cups were light and common. Thick pewter cups were heavy and bulky. We know everyone who was on the move carried light tin or copper cups, but did one or two guys carry a fancy heavy pewter?

 

[Coot]

I think that your grandfather was a skilled man who had access to tools and information on a vastly greater scale than in the 18th century. The industrial revolution and the use of pulp paper & mechanized printing presses as well as the development of the railroads made tools and how-to booklets available in the mid 19th century and later in a volume and at a much lower price than ever existed before. The scarcity of surviving 18th c items creates two questions - how widely were different things in use and are the surviving examples skewed towards the high end?