Would your flintrock rifle make a good club?

[Grizzly Adams]

You got me thinking. I wonder how many original rifles broken at the wrist (or forearm) now in a collection were broken over someones head?

How hard do you think it is to break the wrist of a rifle from a drop from a horse?
I am not going to test that.

Can you think of other ways the wrist could be broken?

I don't believe it would be easy to break one from general day to day use? ? ?

I think of the gun lands flat, the wrist will be fine. If one end lands first, or the middle lands after the ends, it will likely break like a piece of spaghetti.

As far as how to break a wrist, it thing overzealously seating a charge would do the trick. If you ever look close at somebody with a very skinny gun seating a very tight charge, the gun will flex. I have pointed it out to a lot of other LR shooters and they tend to freak out a little. That's why I tend to use a sharp, short stroke when seating the ball, rather than heavy strokes.

 

[Donny]

A drop from 6 ft.
Anyone want to test? :haha:

 

[Artificer]

I not only broke the wrist of my Pedersoli Brown Bess Carbine stock in 1981, but I actually shattered it and not from dropping it from a horse.

I had just begun doing WBTS reenacting and did not have a percussion gun to use, so I used my Bess. At a local "Tactical" (War game) Training Event. I went down on the ground into a prone position, like I had been trained and had done many times with an M14, M1 Garand and M16A1 (and never any stock damage with any of these rifles). That means your knees hit the deck and you put the butt plate out ahead of you with some "body weight" pressure on it, as you lower your body flat to the ground.

Not only did the wrist crack almost through the stock, but two small pieces of wood busted off completely and that was with the thicker Military Stock Wrist of the Bess. I doubt the pressure had been anything close to as much as if the gun had fallen from saddle height, had I been riding.

Now a Rifled Gun's barrel is much heavier than a Brown Bess Carbine Barrel and the a Rifled Gun's stock wrist is not as thick as a Brown Bess stock wrist. So I'm sure the damage to a Rifled Gun's stock would have been much worse had I done the same thing as with the Bess Carbine.

Gus

 

[Grizzly Adams]

A drop from 6 ft.
Anyone want to test? :haha:

Sure! Can I see yer gun a minute? :haha:

 

[George]

My wife had a relative who was a Liberty Man. In later years he put in application for a federal pension.

Anthony Dickey pension application in order to obtain the benefit of the Act of Congress passed the 7th of June 1832:

“King said that Fuller was a lier. I stept to King and asked him if he had no more manors than to tell a liberty he was a liar. I hit him on the side of his head with the breach of my gun. The breech went one way, the barrel another way. I broke my gun. He lay on the ground. King lay on the ground about half a hour.”

From this we obviously can conclude that Torys had hard heads. :wink:

Spence

 

[Obi-Wan Cannoli]

It makes you wonder since braining people was such a popular 18th/19th century pastime, how common were cudgels in civilian use? I know they've been a popular LEO tool since the beginning of time... :hmm:

 

[Crewdawg445]

That's why I carry a war club made from a root burl thats sole purpose is to club, and club well...

Besides reenactments and events it never gets carried, same for my gunstock warclub. However, maybe I'll start carrying it over my pistol for CCW... :hmm: certainly would make bad guys think twice.

If ever a day came were I was to equip my club, my rifle is the last clubbing device I'd be using, sure if all other options are exhausted. I'm sure most on the frontiers had the same mentality when resorting to the rifle as a clubbing device, you break it your screwed. :idunno:

 

[Hawgeye]

I leaned my Dickert against the living room wall last Saturday while I grabbed my range bag from the front porch. I heard it slide down the wall and land directly on the cock and then the front sight. Stock split completely through at the wrist along the grain. No, not a club, it's now a long barreled pistol. :redface: :cursing:

 

[Mickc01]

Would your flintrock rifle make a good club?.....We will never know...

 

[azmntman]

I leaned my Dickert against the living room wall last Saturday while I grabbed my range bag from the front porch. I heard it slide down the wall and land directly on the cock and then the front sight. Stock split completely through at the wrist along the grain. No, not a club, it's now a long barreled pistol. :redface: :cursing:

:shocked2: I bet you puked! very sorry to hear that. I once had my bobcat propped up on the pick up when dad decided to move it. Ran it over, lil black track marks on stock and barrel but they wiped off with some spit n elbow grease and it still shoots fine.

 

[Donny]

noooooo...you gotta repair. :thumbsup:

A rod from the butt and the brass wrap around the wrist?

It would look PC.

? ? ?

 

[Col. Batguano]

There are just soooo many historical rifles out there with those sorts of repairs aren't there? With such thin and delicate wrists, and as much wood as is removed in the inletting of all the parts, that's another case to be made for through-bolts from the tang to the trigger plate (rather than wood screws in the tang).

It's also another case to be made for being extra selective in looking at blanks for grain runout. Dave2C did a build with a routed out hole under the TG, and inserted a cross-grain reinforcing block. A hidden steel rod from the back of the lock down the butt would be another preemptive measure. I have one in my femur from a fracture 10 years ago.

 

[reddogge]

I guess if I shot at a groundhog and missed and he turned and attacked I'd find out.

 

[Hawgeye]

Several folks have suggested a period type repair: copper strap and brads, rawhide, etc:. I think I'll end up pinning it from the trigger guard recess in two spots and then again from directly behind the tang angling to the rear and covering the exposed doweling with a thumb piece. It's hard to look at it now. Maybe it will look more doable if I wait another week. :idunno:

 

[TNGhost]

Do you think your flinter would make a good club?

I seem to recall a story related recently by tenngun about a Seneca, a missed shot and a tree rat.

Don't recall if it was a flinter though. :hmm:

 

[Donny]

Welll...another outing with this gun. I have some very good flintlocks, this is not one of them.
First shot, clunk. New flint, it went off fast. Second shot, klatch. So another flint which worked the rest of the day.
Again, I can't help thinking,
when I get a klatch, It's club time.
Redcoats, Injuns, messicans???
You get everything sorted beforehand, then the shot....

 

[MikeEasy]

Can you post a picture?

A break as you described is probably quite fixable, maybe with no cosmetic change at all on the assembled gun, and I'm sure you can get some good suggestions here or, even better, on the Gun Builder's Bench forum. For example, there's Post: This one I want to work over which has good suggestions, including inserting a threaded steel rod/dowel/screw inside the wrist and embedding it in glass epoxy (suggested by Obi-Wan Cannoli).

 

[Artificer]

When I shattered/cracked the wrist of my Brown Bess carbine stock, I considered and rejected using a modern steel bolt/screw down through the wrist. This due to the dissimilarity of steel and wood.

Instead, I chose to use two small threaded brass rods (two small ones as there was too much damage for a single 1/4" brass threaded rod), as brass has more "give" to it than even soft steel.

Since wood shrinks/swells in different humidity levels, I still think it is better to use threaded brass rod and Accraglass it in place, rather than a steel rod, though I might be mistaken.

Gus

 

[Artificer]

Ooops, sorry. Another reason I went with two 1/8 diameter threaded brass rods to repair my shattered Bess stock was the fact I had to get around not only the normal "through" tang screw/bolt, but also the "through" bolt that went from the trigger guard up to hold the brass thumbpiece in place. So I drilled holes on both sides of these "through" bolts and used the smaller threaded brass rod that was covered by the wood of the stock. One almost never has to deal with the second "through" bolt on a civilian rifle or smoothbore, as they usually did not have thumbpieces and through bolts to hold them in place.

Gus

 

[Obi-Wan Cannoli]

including inserting a threaded steel rod/dowel/screw inside the wrist and embedding it in glass epoxy (suggested by Obi-Wan Cannoli).

That was hawkeye2's original suggestion in the post. :v

I would recommend taking it to a professional to repair...but:

On a traditional Penn/Ken longrifle, you would have to get really wide threaded rod stock, mark where the hole for your tang bolt intercepts intercept the middle of the threaded rod when it is placed in the hole drilled to receive the threaded rod, take it out, drill it at the same angle to allow the tang bolt to eventually pass through, file a bit of length and width on the inside of the hole you drilled in the middle of the threaded rod to allow for expansion and contraction, and double check to make sure everything still lines up PRIOR to acraglassing it in.