water blaster furnace and early iron smelting

[M. De Land]

Did a bit of research tonight on some stuff I read some years ago about how the early Appalachian Gun Builders smelted there iron.
They would split boards or use hollow logs as pipes to catch falling water and with the water a great deal of air would also be mixed in. As it force accumulated at the bottom of the pipe the water would compress the air mixed in which was siphoned off into a capture box. It then was directed into an earthen forge that had a mixture of raw iron ore and charcoal contain there in. This was a blast forge not just a charcoal fire. When the blast was completed the bottom of the forge would yield a small amount of charcoal iron. This rough smelted iron was in turn reheated in a bellows forge and hammered into flat bars a bit longer than the finished barrel was to be, of suitable gun barrel quality iron.
These where formed in a U shaped die and then forge welded into a tube over a mandrel. They were than straightened , reamed , straightened, rifled, straightened again and then flat were filed on them to form octagons,hexagons, pentagons or round barrels as desired.
Chamber plug threads were cut with a file and barrel threads with a plug thread die. All made by hand. Truly amazing and is why I maintain we are rifle assemblers not true gun builders of this ilk.
Some years ago here in Alaska there was a fella up near Palmer on the Knik river that collected and smelted his own iron ore and forge beautiful Samurai Damascus swords. The local paper did a big spread on his work that was absolutely fascinating to me. He said some of the original and best quality swords had 250,000 folds or laminates in them.
Any way the early Appalachian smiths did indeed build there guns from beginning to end with what the earth provided. I think that "is" kind of romantic let alone phenomenal.
I'm also reminded of the gun mechanic that was along on the Lewis and Clark expedition that freshed out a barrel while in winter quarters at Fort Clapsop with nothing but a piece of broken file he fashioned into a groove saw, reamed the bore and freshed out the grooves. It was reported to be as accurate as ever it was before. Stuff like that is what keeps what ever abilities I have accumulated over the years in perspective. MD

 

[54ball]

This is an interesting subject but it is far more complicted than alluded too.
You are really talking about several different industries. These include mining, logging, smelting, casting, and wrought iron production. Not to mention all the industry surrounding finished iron, not only rifle and gun barrels but wagon tires, hinges, horseshoes, nails and a multitude of other objects made from iron.

These industries need labor. They also need acrerage in a pretty secure area. This means with few possible exceptions east of the Apalachian Mountains pre Rev War.

In what is considered Southern Apalachia today, most areas did not have the labor, population or security to support such industry until around 1800.

I have studied the North Carolina Gillespie gun makers for a number of years. With their start in the Rev War era this puts them amongst the earliest of Apalachian makers. Here is a brief history.

John Gillespie is listed as a gunsmith in the 96 district of SC imediate post Rev War.
The family moves to the East Fork of the French Broad River sometime in the 1790s. In East Fork there is a creek called Boring Branch. Along it's banks the possible remains of a barrel forge or boring apparatus has been found.
The family had close ties to another family who forged or were dealers in iron.
John Gillespie's sons married into this family. It is from his sons that the ealiest Gillespie rifles are found.
These are from the Mills River Region of NC. The ealiest signed rifle is a Mathew Gillespie circa 1810. Another rifle from the same period is unsigned.
Records show the purchase of iron for gun barrels. There is no evidence that this family ever mined or produced iron from ore. What is known is that they did purchase forged iron bars or skelps for their barrel making.
Since no pre-1810 era Gillespie rifle has been found, it is unknown if John Gillespie ever actually built a rifle. It is pretty certain he built barrels dating back to the Rev-War era. Being listed as a gunsmith, it is possible in reality he was a barrel smith and never actually made a complete rifle... It is also possible that he made finished rifles. Until one comes to light it will remain unknown if there were Gillespie Rifles made prior to 1810. Is it likely, probably, for certain, no.

One thing that the Gillespie rifles share with other Southern Mountain rifles and even Rev War era rifles made in NC and Virginia is the use of a English made lock.
By far the American made longrifle with American made locks and hardware are found primarily in PA and MD.

I have never heard of a "true" hexagon or pentagon shaped barrel. I have seen a square breeched rifle. How do you attach sights and a lock to a hexagon barrel?

Refreshing a barrel can be done with a ramrod, a lead bore slug, a cutter shaped to the groove inlet into the slug and some shims.

 

[Robby]

Refreshing a barrel is not difficult and doesn't require a lot of tooling,like 54 says it could be done with a ramrod, lead slug and a small sliver of hardened steel shaped into a cutter, but having done couple, I can say it is a dirty, tedious, and time consuming job.
I find it hard to believe that anyone engaged in the gunsmithing business would have time to make iron from ore. Most were engaged in other pursuits that were closely related, like general black smithing, locksmithing, etc. and records show that many included the description of farmer on the tax records.
People can use whatever term they wish to describe what many of us do that make these guns, but to label me as an 'assembler' is to minimize all that goes into the finished shootable gun. Ignorant is the nicest term I can come with.
Robby

 

[M. De Land]

I know how it's done, where it was done and with the available tools was the amazing part.
Forming a saw from a broken file fragment rather impressed me on the Lewis and Clark expedition.
I make lots of steel gun parts and cutting tools in my electric powered, equipment filled shop but out in the wilderness it would be very challenging for me.
What I described about early smelting came from Walter Cline's book and as he was considered by many to be an authority on early gun making having owned and shot many originals I'm wondering why I should believe what you say over what he has. MD

 

[54ball]

What I described about early smelting came from Walter Cline's book and as he was considered by many to be an authority on early gun making having owned and shot many originals I'm wondering why I should believe what you say over what he has. MD

Maybe because what I say is true and what Walter Cline says is also true. To a point.

I used the Gillespies as an example of one gun making family who purchased their iron. Did they smelt it from ore?

I said there was no documentation that they did, not that they unequivocally did not.

There are many others who purchased iron going back to the Colonial days to John Armstrong in Emmitsburg to the Jamestown makers in North Carolina. These purchases of iron are in record, documented.

I'm sure what Cline says is a good description of smelting iron and forming it into bars at the reheat forge. But that is not the only way iron was available.
Making the charcoal iron is primitive form of pig iron.
The thing about pig iron and wrought bars after the reheat is that they can be shipped just like finished barrels and just like English or Pennsylvania made locks.

These industries need labor. They also need acreage in a pretty secure area. This means with few possible exceptions east of the Appalachian Mountains pre Rev War.

I imagine it is hard to smelt iron while dodging Cherokee,Creek and Shawnee arrows and rifle balls.
Could it have been done? Maybe so that's what I mean by a few possible exceptions prior to 1800.

I know how it's done, where it was done

You read how it was done. You read where it was done. What about When?

Could what Cline writes about be the post Civil War era,when Appalachia became the land that time forgot?

Was it when it was much simpler to make your own iron than to bother having it shipped?

Was it also when since there was no threat of Indian attack, local communities had small isolated mines, mill dams and forges just like they had grist mills?

The majority of surviving rifles from Appalachia have English locks. Later they are found with Goucher percussion locks and sometimes with CW musket locks. Very few that I've have researched are found with homemade locks.
Maybe in 1900 a flintlock was made from scratch but I do not study 1900 era flintlocks. I study 1800 era flintlocks.

All I'm saying is there is more than one way to skin a cat and more than one method and more than one historical source.

 

[M. De Land]

I agree with most of what you said but I know from the man I spoke of here that smelted his own iron ore from the Kick river and made full length Damascus swords from it, that it can be done on the independent level and does not require large amounts infrastructure. This squares rather well with what Cline describes as was done by gun makers of early Appalachia.
I have no idea of how prevalent it was as there was probably not much recorded about it.
Any way it is a most interesting and fascinating topic and I would like to learn more of it. MD

 

[Capt. Jas.]

This just keeps getting funnier by the post. I believe from looking at some other threads that the OP may either be well studied and pulling our leg or beyond being able to see without the rose colored glasses of romanticism.
I am pretty sure that the smelting information relating to gunsmiths performing it may be isolated to an individual and area but most importantly a time. I believe it was post war of northern aggression. If a gunsmith did all this work at the smelter he was a part time gunmaker at best.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Before we say Yeah or Nay to using an example from Alaska as evidence that something put forth in a book published in 1942 was done or even possible in the original colonies..., one might want to check on the quality of the iron ore in the colonies. The geology of the continent changes a bit when one is talking about a distance of four thousand miles. Poor quality iron ore would need more ore to produce a proper amount of iron, which means more time and more effort to mine, and more time and more effort to transport the greater amount of ore to the smelter, and more time and more effort to fuel the smelter, and a bigger smelter. This isn't taking into account the time needed to prospect for the iron ore.

The primary source of iron in colonial times was "bog iron", which was the primary source for iron in Europe for millenia, until better ore became available in the 17th century. Bog ore is an impure ore that forms in swampy and boggy areas. Ironworks were established where bog ore was found in the colonies, also in the 17th century, in VA, MA, and NJ. The supply was limited, and in less than fifty years the Massachusetts iron works had closed.

So it's likely that a person who is picking up iron ore off the ground has probably found a source of bog-ore. The question still is, how much raw materials would be needed to produce enough finished, workable product?

Thus, the quality of the ore that was available will directly determine how viable the miner/smelter/smith hypothesis will be. Remember we are not talking about the possibility of one such rifle or gun being produced from raw ore to a finished product..., we are talking about an entire industry, needing production of iron on a vaster scale than the iron needed for a few prototypes.

LD

 

[54ball]

LDave,
I live in extreme Southern Appalachia. Here you can find natural springs in that the water is red with rust and has a greasy look to it. You can drag a magnet and little rocks will stick to it.

You have to be careful where you put a well because you can get either iron water or sulfur water.

20 or so miles up from me is an area named Champion after the iron ore because it is 90% pure. That vein was discovered in 1816. Then in Downtown Birmingham you have Red Mountain, nearly a whole mountain of ore.

One of the first settlers to the area here after the Creek war built a water powered iron forge in 1816 or so, much like MD describes.

I do not doubt Cline's description of working iron. My only point was when.

Just like the iron forge was set here in my community, 1816, it was after the threat of Indian War was over. It was a time when the land was being settled and local communities needed iron and home grown industry.

Basically the later 19th Century era.

 

[BillinOregon]

M.D. Thanks for starting this thread. I'd love to see a living history gunsmith make a barrel from a smelted iron bloom. There are some good sites and Youtubes on smelters/bloomeries. Ore sources can be rock, bog or even black sand. Amazing what a resourceful pioneer could accomplish!

 

[kaintuck]

Not far from me is a open pit 'pig iron' mine, on the Natchez Trace~ ALOT of ioron came outta there...and the big pit is still there, and next to it, is a nice big creek for turning the mill wheels......

but I believe TOTW was where they all bought barrels! :rotf:

 

[M. De Land]

Thought this might be informative on how it could be done individually as Cline described. They made five pounds of steel from iron ore in one floom.
They of course had an electric motor but the water fall provided the same air flow and is the same basic technology at play.
http://youtu.be/9IBFRy7GTaY
Probably enough steel for one barrel in a single bloom , two men , one afternoon.
The furnace was made of mud and fire brick all available to a resourceful pioneer. MD

 

[M. De Land]

Here is another one similar to what the man here in Alaska was doing.
http://youtu.be/wDbg1aikq1I MD

 

[tallbear]

MD
A bloom does not a gun barrel make!!! A five pound bloom would hardly make a pistol barrel.Blooms must be refined in order to make them wrought iron,only the most refined wrought iron was used to make gun barrels.As you refine you loose mass to scaling which at welding heat is considerable.The chances of a gunsmith making a barrel from ore that he refines from bloom to wrought iron while not impossible is improbable in any period.As pointed out it is too different trades and skill sets.

The romantic notion of the gunsmith making his own iron or even cutting his own trees for gunstocks is not bourne out by period documents.Huge amounts of finished material and gun parts were imported into this country.In addition large amounts of gun parts were fabricted in this country by dedicated tradesmen(barrel makers,brass founders, etc ,..... While there were gunsmiths capable of making every part of a rifle they were the exception rather than the rule.Most gunsmiths purchased parts pretty much the same as gunsmiths do today.It just made better business sence.

Mitch Yates

 

[rafterob]

Gillespie settled not far from where I work in Mills river NC, he chose the area partly to get away from the "crowds" in SC and also because there was a supply of raw materials available close by. Forge Mountain bears the name of its importance to the area in the late 1700s. Reading history of the area is interesting, there were not a lot of people but they were very interconnected economically, not to mention extremely hard working and enterprising.

 

[BillinOregon]

Mike, looks like they used crushed upper Midwest ore as their iron source. Here in Oregon, the best sources would be bog iron or hematite (black sand) saved from gold panning.
Another option I have considered is trying to recover copper ore from a 19th-century mine near here to smelt in a similar bloomery. I have long been fascinated by the Bronze Age, and there's some great material out there on Viking Bronze foundries. I'd love to pour a copy of Oetzi the Ice Man's axe.
Neat stuff!

 

[M. De Land]

Just seems to me Mitch that if one can make steel from a bloom good enough to make full length swords, knifes, axes and farm implements than iron which is less refined was certainly doable for gun barrels.
Good point about the five pounds of bloom iron not being enough for a gun barrel. Cline said this was added to amounts necessary and reforged by bellows furnaces until enough stock was made to form flat bars that were long enough.
I don't think this would be recorded with these people as most had no formal education. It would be handed down and related to people who asked about it such as Cline who did record it.
Prevalent, perhaps not but the point was that it was done by some folks and thus interesting and worth discussing.
Certainly manifests of produced iron stock would have been recorded by the retailers selling it which is probably the records and source information that exists.
These hill folks were probably not in the habit of buying things they could make for themselves and especially when manufactured iron was so far away and expensive. MD

 

[M. De Land]

Yes Bill, I think the black sand ore was what the man used here to make his swords. Wish I could find that two part news article. It was an unusually long, two part right up as I remember it. MD

 

[BillinOregon]

Mike, I looked in vain for part II as well ...
As to the resourcefulness of residents of Appalachia, somewhere I saw a photo of an old grandmother seated in a rough chair with a knife, carving the long wooden screw that would guide the cutter on a rifling machine! If those folks could pull off this sort of thing just eyeballing it, I think they could have done "purt near" anything.

 

[M. De Land]

If they could make cutlery and farm implements from iron they smelted themselves(which none seem to question) than they could certainly make gun barrels which does not require perfectly refined iron either.
As shown in the video, they actually made steel which is nothing but iron alloyed with carbon in a reducing environment. MD