Non - Tapered Barrels

If you go to the website and read the description about their fowler, it states that the barrel used is a "special straight barrel."

Click to expand...

Oh please.

Read these boards when this topic comes up. MOST people who buy these things, like me, have no clue its even an issue. Look at the responses on just THIS thread.

"Special Straight Barrel" is a code that even most experienced frontstuffer shooters wouldn't understand.

Dunno why they don't just state up front "our barrels are extra heavy, untapered, less graceful and completely historically inaccurate".

Birdwatcher

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the untapered barrel, my 46" TVM has been swinging on ruffed grouse successfully all season, 13 and counting and 4 snowshoe hare on the side, no dogs, just lots of walking, weight isn't an issue. I've added a little lead behind the buttplate, balance is fantastic and comes to cheek real quick.

5/day bag limit made this morning short.



Cheape

The main reason people dislike them is for the same reason why gun makers invented the tapered barrel style 100's of years ago. To both shift and reduce barrel weight, and thus create a gun that doesn't handle like a lead balloon.

Click to expand...

:grin:

Sad but exactly true.

Well, no worries, one of these years I gotta get me another fowler anyway, this time an actual fowler. That would give me three flinters.

I'm sorta on the home stretch of life now, so one will go to my son, and one each to each set of nephews (to get 'em all their own would take eight flinters, a worthy goal but prolly not gonna happen).

I flatter myself in thinking they would keep the durn things around for years and years after I croak, and think of cool ol'Uncle Birdy every time they took 'em out....

..sure would beat the manure out of a tombstone :grin:

Birdwatcher

shotgunner87 said:

Stumpy thanks again for the info. So what barrel would you recommend for a true fowling piece?

Click to expand...

One correct for the style you are hoping to recreate. :wink:

Personally, I'm a fan of the English fowler style and I went with a 42" Colerain Griffin (O2R Swamped) in 16 gauge because it was lighter than the 12 or 20 of the same length. If I'd been going for a Colonial fowler I'd have gone with a 46" barrel.

Stumpkiller said:

Personally, I'm a fan of the English fowler style and I went with a 42" Colerain Griffin (O2R Swamped) in 16 gauge because it was lighter than the 12 or 20 of the same length. If I'd been going for a Colonial fowler I'd have gone with a 46" barrel.

Click to expand...

At the risk of thread drift and looking stupid, can I ask you (and/or others) to elaborate on the differences/similarities between English and American fowlers? I look at the pictures on Chambers' website but it's too subtle for me....

Jamie

Jamie I am by no means an expert but I have been looking into the subject for a little while. The biggest difference is the barrel length. American fowlers tended to have 44/46in barrel where as their English counterparts favored a shorter 40/42in barrel. English fowlers tended to be a much more ornate affair as they where a status symbol for the upper class owners. The American fowlers were more of a poor boy affair. As to the architecture I can't comment on that someone else will have to chime in on that.

Also, the English will invariably be in walnut. American/Colonial in maple or other woods.

English favor iron furniture - Colonial typically brass.

English fowlers were taxed, Americans not :rotf:

Ouch! Can't imagine adding lead to mine :shocked2:

Anyways, this is how mine prints at 30 yards with an actual ounce and a half of no.7 over 80gr FFg, card on top, fiber wad below....




I don't regularly bird hunt, but I did go after doves one time, took me all friggin' day to finally hit this white-wing. Musta been the lead I was giving, I hit this one going straight away where that weren't an issue.



Birdwatcher

I am struggling with the decision of whether to put a rear sight on it or not...

Click to expand...

I put one on mine for two reasons, as stated the sighting plane is so poor, just the short octagon flat then the top half of the front sight blade way out there in space (here's a better illustration, pre-sight installation)...



Unfortunately I don't have a good pic of my rear sight just now, its the smallest and least obtrusive I could find (barely visible just ahead of the shooter's hand in this photo...



If you are using it as a rifle, I suggest putting a rear sight on it just as they did back then. The present sighting plane is so poor you wont lose much anyway.

The second reason I put one on is illustrated in the above pic. When you hand it to someone else to shoot they find it far easier shoot it at a mark with a rear sight.

Even my own 50 yd groups tightened up significantly.

Birdwatcher

On a different topic, for those having one built...

I really like the big and clunky Chamber's Colonial Virginia lock.



It takes a one-inch flint, is easier to fiddle with when you don't have yer glasses, and is easy for folks to see all the times I'm showing folks how a flintlock works at the Alamo.

I got it because a round-faced lock goes back earlier, and while older-style locks can and sometimes did appear on later guns, the reverse is never true. So I selected a round-faced lock, plain-grade maple stock, and brass furniture to get as generic and non-committal time-period gun as I could manage. FWIW it has passed reenactor inspection for events as early as F&I War and late as 1830's Texian. Could probably pass muster too for Civil War irregular.

Plus it sparks like a champ even on damp days whether firing blanks or shooting ball. Chambers also makes a "Delux English" version of this exact same lock with a "sealed pan", ie. a rain groove around the margins of the pan that mates with a raised rim on the frizzen to better seal the pan against the elements (IIRC this appeared on late English guns). If I were concerned with just hunting I would take out my present lock and drop in one of these.

What I didn't realize tho until I got my longrifle with its Large Siler (3/4" flint)....



...is how SLOW that big Virginia lock is. All else being equal, bigger locks are slower on account of the longer arc the flint describes and longer stroke down the frizzen.

Its gotta be mere hundredths of a second, but hundredths feel about like whole seconds in that eternity between pulling the trigger on game and waiting for the shot to go off.

I still love that big ol' lock, but smaller ones do have their advantages.

IMHO,
Birdwatcher

Thanks for sharing the pics Birdwatcher. I am leaning more and more to a rear sight. This will more of a smooth rifle than fowler with my use. The only thing I will hunt with shot is turkey and our out-of-control squirrel population, but primarily this will be a deer and bear hunting gun. I'm already looking forward to next hunting season!

First, Birdwatcher, please accept my condolences for being "killed" on so many battlefields. :hmm:

We must have got our smoothbores around the same time, as I recall. I've never been a shotgun shooter and this kind of hunting just never particularly appealed to me. I could have specified a tapered barrel but it really didn't make any difference to me. I own an old Winchester single 12ga and the barrel is about the same thickness as the smoothie barrel. I shot that old 12 pretty well. The rear sight on mine is tiny as well and makes a great deal of difference when shooting ball. My gun isn't heavy and swings quite well. In fact, the pictured deer was a running shot. The lock (I like it as much as you do) and the balance was a natural for me and I probably couldn't have made that shot with a modern rifle. The only other smoothbore I'm interesting in is one of the NSW "canoe" guns.

For wing shooting a tapered barrel is an advantage; but for all else the barrel I have is great. You and I learned some things about smoothies (not the drink) around the same time. Just my opinion but too much can be made about straight barrels; they can be quite fine.

First, Birdwatcher, please accept my condolences for being "killed" on so many battlefields.

Click to expand...

Well, at the Alamo every year you're just going down, no way around it. The scary part is how enthiastic your buddies on the Mexican side get when closing in for the kill :grin:

Then too, when ya DO go down, you're falling on concrete, so always fall UNDER your gun :wink:

Before that happens tho you've just rapid-fired about ten or twenty 100 grain blanks. No ramrods allowed, just drop loose powder in, prime and shoot (100 grains of FFFg loose still goes "BANG!"). Very quickly your gun barrel gets too hot to touch. Pretty cool with the audience close at hand and the cannon booms rattling the Alamo Plaza....



You gotta start with a sharp flint and have a vent pick close at hand for misfires. The general rule at all these battles is if you reach a point where your gun ain't working then you fall dead, because someone has to after all.

Goliad is the annual high point of the reenactor calendar, third weekend in March, when the climate is at its very best here. Cannons AND cavalry at that one. The massacre reenactment on the last morning is always somber but the two nights camped inside La Bahia Mission prior to that, all period equipment, is just awesome.



Hey, an attempt at on-topic, there are some smoothbores in this pic. Goliad finally ends with a volley and wreaths in memory of the fallen, here we are on our way to that event. I'm the guy in the gray (sumac dyed) do-rag front row (it was too windy for my big 'ol slouch hat).



We do win at San Jacinto, I gotta tell ya tho, that end-of-April event is oft best described with the words "hot", "humid" and "mosquitoes".

Birdwatcher

So to get back on topic a little. No problem birwatcher that was very interesting. I've been looking at barrels and barrel companies and I am having a hard time understand what you guys are talking about when you say a tapered barrel. What is the difference between a swamped barrel and a tapered barrel everything that I have found has flared back out at the muzzle of the barrel. That seems as though that is a swamped barrel no?

Thanks for sharing the pics Birdwatcher. I am leaning more and more to a rear sight.

Click to expand...

You are very welcome Sir. And I did find a pretty good pic of my sights. If you are into your reading glasses years put the rear sight as far forward as you can manage as the local smith here had the wisdom to do.

Also you can make out the flat, step, and then flat again profile of a non-tapered barrel.



I stood over that feeder for two days straight behind that tree on account of the blind that went with it was 100 yards away (I'm at about 65 yards out, the closest available cover downwind, about as long a shot as I was willing to attempt).

The wind was right and I was quiet but two deer had been shot off that feeder the week before so no luck on my part. My buddy did want to see me shoot SOMETHING with a flinter so we shot that javelina in the video I posted earlier in the thread that same day.

Older javelinas are a bit rank so they say, but little ones aren't bad, a buddy who sells Indian craftwork took the hide (for the skin and bristles) and the meat, I kept the skull.



Birdwatcher

I was going to get the 36" barrel, which may help to alleviate some of the "' clunkiness" little bit.

Caywood's guns, for example, are excellent for wingshooting, because they are so muzzle light; but that same wispiness works against you when shooting ball loads offhand. I had one of his English Fowlers for several years and shot the heck out of it with balls and shot.
Excellent workmanship, but I got to needing something that hung on target better, and was easier for shooting ball offhand.

I'm thinking a TVM with a 36" barrel might be a good compromise since most of my wingshooting targets are starlings, blackbirds, crows, and pigeons which is mostly pass-shooting anyway. Will be shooting lots of ball loads as well.

There are some significant differences between swamped and tapered barrels.

It will be best to go to a site such as Track of the Wolf for some dimensions and diagrams of barrels.

Swamped barrels are explained at this page of the ToW site:
Track of the Wolf - Swamped Barrels

Tapered barrels are explained here:
Track of the Wolf - Tapered Octagon Barrels

The following link will take you to the octagon to round barrels. Take a look at the dimensions on the Harper's Ferry and the French Musket. On the second page of the octagon to round barrels there are several barrels. Some are swamped and other barrels are tapered.
Track of the Wolf - Tapered Octagon to Round Barrels

I hope these diagrams help you to understand the differences between swamped and tapered barrels.

My Deringer replica has a tapered octagon barrel. Its a delight to shoot. Most originals will have some taper to the barrel to slightly lighten the muzzle for better handling.

Thanks grenadier

When I ordered my 28 gauge barrel I ordered it on a 20 ga blank so I would have more barrel weight.

I out foxed myself, the barrel was way to heavy. I had a local machinist turn a taper on it. It balances better now.

I have never seen any historic documentation showing barrels were not tapered.