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Wasn't .52 common?

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DANIEL BOONE DIED SEPT. 26, 1820.
ALTHOUGH PERCUSSION GUNS AS WE KNOW THEM WERE AVAILABLE A FEW YEARS BEFORE THEN, I THINK IT IS UNLIKELY THAT HE WOULD HAVE OWNED ONE OF THEM.
 
Speaking of Silent Lurkers
I bet every one of them has a good story to tell.
They don have to involve being partially eaten by a bear or vice cress. Just some interesting thing that happened to them or a stupid thing they saw someone else . I like the the very great stories about finding a long forgotten rifle or musket that is still in survivable condition and restored to use or jt as a a wall hanger that hangs over a fireplace.
Speaking of which has anyone on the forum visited the incorrectly named Daniel Boone home in Defiance. Missouri?
Defiance is about 5 buildings including a wee bar. The home was actually Boone's son's home and Daniel spent his final years there.
The question I have was the rifle hanging over the fireplace in the kitchen was a percussion model or a flintlock. I seem to remember it as a percussion but that was early days for me as well.
The other odd thing was Boone's bed which was about 4 and a half feet long with a lot of the supporting pad pushed up against the headboard.
"My God. I thought. Daniel deserverves more respect because we apparently was a dwarf or what we call today. a little person.
Having expressed my surprise I was told that people back in those days slept in a pretty much sitting up position. That also puzzles me as a lot of contemporary old time homes had more or less regular beds such as we are accustomed to today. Somebody check me on that last. What might be the case is that then as now people in their very later years are way more comfortable sleeping in a sitting up position to aid in breathing.

See that's a comment that may be of interest based on a 15 minute visit to a somewhat colorless site.
I would like to hear these stories about the bits and pieces that make up history.You probably are working under a Handle and that makes us sdsuffer in trying to hunt you down. Apparently you stood in class and the unapproachable maiden you adored remarked that yo were unzipped and you have been shy for all these following years.
When did Boone stop his famous activity and when did the percussion system become general. Enquiring minds want to know...

Dutch Schoultz
People are shown in painting and drawings as sitting up in bed and laying down. That goes back at least to the Middle Ages.
Lincoln was 6’4 I think, he had to be laid cross wise in the boardinghouse bed he died in.
Since most people were shorter then Abe they may just have not seen the use to build bigger beds.
I’ve been on several old sailing ships that had built in bunks. And I’m 5’10 now and was 5’11 in my youth
And those bunks were too small for me.
By the by Shakespeare left his ‘second best’ bed to his wife. I wonder what he did with his best.
(Was old Bill the wandering Jew? And he took his best bed off in to a new life?... tongue in cheek alert ).
 
We share similar GR barrels then ! My Lehman semi finished kit (mine has the Long Lock) I got back in mid 70s in "54" cal also uses a .526 ball . There was an explanation somewhere on here a while back where a former GR individual shared why that was.

Even today what we call a gun might be a little different. I had a .54 from the now defunct Green River barrels company. It need a .526
 
Speaking of folks who had/have to sit up while sleeping then and now not as uncommon one might think. As an "Old" Respiratory Therapist (1975-2001) Many different reasons exist to precipitate it.
Id guess any of the "lung" diseases, such as "consumption" and what we call today COPD, would create such a need to sit up. Also heart problems such as CHF would also create the need.
 
Now a question to Tenngun and Dr5x ! I see you both hail from MO, and even St Louis county . Im an old MO brat, born in St Charles 1949 , lived in St Ann and Creve Coeur, went to school at Pattonville High (the old one !) From to Missouri to Texas to Montana and now back in Texas has filled by life with some stories that might be of interest !
 
DANIEL BOONE DIED SEPT. 26, 1820.
ALTHOUGH PERCUSSION GUNS AS WE KNOW THEM WERE AVAILABLE A FEW YEARS BEFORE THEN, I THINK IT IS UNLIKELY THAT HE WOULD HAVE OWNED ONE OF THEM.
Very unlikely.

It may be that the rifle on display was Daniel's son's or even grand son's, and may never been seen or touched by Daniel.

If this is the case, it would not be the first time (nor the last) that an artifact has been "misidentified" or attributed to the wrong person.

From what I understand, Daniel had been "retired" from the "frontier" for nigh on 20 years before he passed. Did he even own a rifle after 1805?

I always take any claim of an artifact belonging to a famous person "with a grain of salt". (actually, "with a lump of salt" is more accurate.) I don't believe it.
 
I doubt very much the they sold a rifle without the accompanying equipment such as the ball mold with maybe 25 or 50 sample balls.

The rifle were made and sold with bullet mold, The smithy had several cherries he had made throughout the years for molds of rifles made. The mandrels for the barrels were not exact. After reaming and polishing and maybe a smithy had a homemade rifling bench, the cherry was sized for the projectile was made from scrap material to make the mold. The mold being of annealed metal for easy working. Some of these molds were made of hard wood.
The old residenters had no specific caliber as we think today with modern laser technology and predictable steels. Because of the materials used it is hard to come across an original mold, unless the mold saw little use. On rare occasions the projectile was pounded out with hatchet and formed.
There were formed projectiles early in history, but scrap steel, which was scarce and rocks were fired from a many meat guns.
 
Even today what we call a gun might be a little different. I had a .54 from the now defunct Green River barrels company. It need a .526.

We share similar GR barrels then ! My Lehman semi finished kit (mine has the Long Lock) I got back in mid 70s in "54" cal also uses a .526 ball . There was an explanation somewhere on here a while back where a former GR individual shared why that was.

I'm not sure which Green River company tenngun is referring to--GRRW or one of its successors?

Green River Rifle Works, Roosevelt, UT - Mar 1972 to Sept 1980
74-04-05-MB-1st-GRRW-barrel-ad.jpg



Green River Company, Duchesne, UT - Dec 1980 to Jan-Feb 1982
81-05-BR-Green-River-Co-ad.jpg



Green River Barrel Co., Grand Junction, CO - early 1982 to mid 1986
82-05-BR-Green-River-Barrel-Co-ad.jpg



Green River Barrel Co., Las Vegas, NV - late 1986 to post Feb 1990
87-07-08-ML-Green-River-Barrel-Co-ad.jpg


Most ML barrels makers use reamers to ream the barrel after it is drilled with the deep hole drill. These reamers brought the barrel up to the desired ID. GRRW didn't have a reamer due to their financial situation. They took the drilled barrel and then cut the grooves in it. After cutting the grooves, they changed the cutter to one that cut the lands, using the same equipment that cut the grooves. They stopped cutting the lands when they got the bore ID where they wanted it. If they stopped too soon, which evidently happened occasionally, the bore could be a little undersized.

The successor companies I've shown above bought the GRRW barrel making equipment and continued to use it to make ML barrels until sometime in 1990. I don't know if they cut the lands the same way GRRW did or if they purchased reaming equipment to ream the barrels to final ID.
 
I'm not sure which Green River company tenngun is referring to--GRRW or one of its successors?

Green River Rifle Works, Roosevelt, UT - Mar 1972 to Sept 1980
74-04-05-MB-1st-GRRW-barrel-ad.jpg



Green River Company, Duchesne, UT - Dec 1980 to Jan-Feb 1982
81-05-BR-Green-River-Co-ad.jpg



Green River Barrel Co., Grand Junction, CO - early 1982 to mid 1986
82-05-BR-Green-River-Barrel-Co-ad.jpg



Green River Barrel Co., Las Vegas, NV - late 1986 to post Feb 1990
87-07-08-ML-Green-River-Barrel-Co-ad.jpg


Most ML barrels makers use reamers to ream the barrel after it is drilled with the deep hole drill. These reamers brought the barrel up to the desired ID. GRRW didn't have a reamer due to their financial situation. They took the drilled barrel and then cut the grooves in it. After cutting the grooves, they changed the cutter to one that cut the lands, using the same equipment that cut the grooves. They stopped cutting the lands when they got the bore ID where they wanted it. If they stopped too soon, which evidently happened occasionally, the bore could be a little undersized.

The successor companies I've shown above bought the GRRW barrel making equipment and continued to use it to make ML barrels until sometime in 1990. I don't know if they cut the lands the same way GRRW did or if they purchased reaming equipment to ream the barrels to final ID.
As always! Very informative and educational as well. Thank you.

Respectfully, Cowboy
 
I can only echo Cowboy's appreciation of Phil Meek's contributions. Such historic information allows real appreciation of the evolution of companies associated with the industry.
May you live long and prosper,
Jacobeen
 
Thanks, guys, for you compliments.

For more history on the closing of GRRW and the people that tried to resurrect and reincarnate the company go to my web page GRRW Successors. If you don't bother to read the whole story, at least scroll down to the bottom and read the last paragraph. It shows how circular life can be.

I think tenngun, Dutch, and sawyer04 have addressed the OP's question for "back in the period".

In more recent times, I recall a lot of interest in .52 caliber ML barrels "back in the day" (1970s and 1980s). I know a couple of guys that had some custom barrels made in that caliber. I'm not sure what spurred this interest. If it had been one size up in .53 caliber, I would blame it on various gun writers, but most notably Charles E. Hanson, Jr. and John Baird.

These mid-20th century gun writers didn't like writing the term "balls to the pound" which was the standard way of expressing a gun's bore size prior to the development of cap and ball pistols and the Minie ball for the rifled musket. They confused themselves and the reading public by using modern terms such as "gauge" and "caliber" in place of "balls to the pound".

Charles E. Hanson, Jr. in The Northwest Gun (1955) erroneously used this table for converting balls to the pound.
Hanson-North-West-Guns001.jpg


In the text introducing the table, he equates "gauges" to the number of round balls to the pound. This only makes sense if he is redefining "gauge" to mean something different than its modern definition. But he doesn't. The table above is correct only for the modern shotgun term for "gauge" and the modern rifle term for "caliber". It is not correct if one equates "gauge" to equal balls to the pound.

Hanson uses the same table in The Plains Rifle (1960).
Hanson-Plains-Rifle.jpg


You might ask "why is Hanson's tables wrong, they look right to me?" As I said, Hanson's tables are correct if the headings of the columns are viewed as modern shotgun gauges and modern rifle calibers. They both represent the Inside Diameter (ID) of the bore of the gun.

The error is that the old term of "balls to the pound" represents the Outside Diameter (OD) of the round ball. Now any experience shooter knows that if you try to load a patched round ball that is the same OD as as the ID of the gun's bore, you likely will need a mallet to get the ball started (which some target shooters do, but not most casual shooters). We normally shoot a round ball whose OD is 0.005" to 0.010" smaller than the rifle's land-to-land ID or the smoothbore's ID. This difference in ball OD and bore ID was called "windage" in the day. It was space allowed between the ball and bore for patching material and the buildup of fouling. In military smoothbores, windage could be as much as 0.050 of an inch. Civilian rifles generally had much smaller amounts of windage--on the order of 0.015 of an inch.

Referring back to Hanson's tables, a rifle that carried 32 balls to the pound would be equivalent to a .54 caliber--not .53 caliber. How do I get this? You have to go through the math using the density of pure lead to calculate the OD of a ball, the size of such that 32 of them would weight a pound. The calculations show that the ball would have an OD of 0.526". Now add the windage of say 0.015", and you get the bore ID of 0.541" or a .54 caliber rifle.

Essentially, Hanson's table isn't taking into account the need for windage. If his "Gauge" represents "balls to the pound" as he says, then his "Caliber" is giving the OD of the round ball (rounded off to the nearest hundredth), not the ID of the bore.

Many other writers made this same mistake. Baird has many statements in his first book where he equates 32 balls to the pound to a .53 caliber rifle (Hawken Rifles: The Mountian Man's Choice, pages xi, 23, and 45).

This could also explain why Uberti made the bore of their Santa Fe Hawken undersized. They were either influenced by Hanson and/or Baird or they independently made the same mistake.

But this still doesn't explain why the interest in the .52 caliber back in the 70s and 80s.

Just one final comment. The surviving American Fur Company records show they often ordered trade rifles "32 to 40 to the pound". Assuming a windage of 0.015", that would mean their typical trade rifles were .54 caliber and .50 caliber--how convenient considering those are among the most popular ML calibers today.
 
Speaking of Silent Lurkers
I bet every one of them has a good story to tell.
They don have to involve being partially eaten by a bear or vice cress. Just some interesting thing that happened to them or a stupid thing they saw someone else . I like the the very great stories about finding a long forgotten rifle or musket that is still in survivable condition and restored to use or jt as a a wall hanger that hangs over a fireplace.
Speaking of which has anyone on the forum visited the incorrectly named Daniel Boone home in Defiance. Missouri?
Defiance is about 5 buildings including a wee bar. The home was actually Boone's son's home and Daniel spent his final years there.
The question I have was the rifle hanging over the fireplace in the kitchen was a percussion model or a flintlock. I seem to remember it as a percussion but that was early days for me as well.
The other odd thing was Boone's bed which was about 4 and a half feet long with a lot of the supporting pad pushed up against the headboard.
"My God. I thought. Daniel deserverves more respect because we apparently was a dwarf or what we call today. a little person.
Having expressed my surprise I was told that people back in those days slept in a pretty much sitting up position. That also puzzles me as a lot of contemporary old time homes had more or less regular beds such as we are accustomed to today. Somebody check me on that last. What might be the case is that then as now people in their very later years are way more comfortable sleeping in a sitting up position to aid in breathing.

See that's a comment that may be of interest based on a 15 minute visit to a somewhat colorless site.
I would like to hear these stories about the bits and pieces that make up history.You probably are working under a Handle and that makes us sdsuffer in trying to hunt you down. Apparently you stood in class and the unapproachable maiden you adored remarked that yo were unzipped and you have been shy for all these following years.
When did Boone stop his famous activity and when did the percussion system become general. Enquiring minds want to know...

Dutch Schoultz

Dutch, go ahead with your blog, but continue your presence here as well, please, and thank you.
Perhaps beds were short because the bedrooms were tiny? Bedrooms were not "living" areas like they are now, so little space was devoted to them in building a home.

Phil, thank you for your very interesting and informative posts, I sincerely enjoy them.

There are names attached to posts that just naturally cause me to search them out and to read them first; Dr5X, Phil Meek are among them.
 
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Wasn't .52 once a fairly common bore? I remember reading that Jed Smith's rifle was a cal. .53. I recall references also to .42 cal. Cannot cite specific references to the foregoing comments. My own rifles are .54 but if I was to choose a custom barrel, .52 might be considered, if only to have something different.
My guess is that many barrels were probably originally bored for common calibers of the time .40.44.45 and 50 then were eventially freshed out to clean up corrosion and crown damage winding up at .51-.52 and .53 caliber.
Early barrels were made of forge welded scalps which were reamed and straightened until they got a clean bore to rifle. What ever they wound up with they then fashioned a cherry to cut a ball mold close to the final barrel bore diameter and filled the difference with the appropriate patch thickness.
 
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