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This might by a possibly but it belonged to the King and is only a 6-shot matchlock. Don't put too much faith in "Hollywood" type productions for documentation.

Frontier is the name of a mini series in Netflix I’ve been watching. Setting is Hudson Bay during late 1700’s. They discussed a rifle that had capability of firing off 8 shots per minute. Any weapon shown was flintlock. Was there any thing capable of 8 shots per minute in that time
 

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The reason these were not successful was because almost from the 1st shot, the threads gum up with burnt powder gunk. Clever idea, but not practical in the real world. Guy was thinkin', though!
Hi,
No that is not true. With the proper lube on the breech threads you can easily get at least 20-30 shots off with no jamming. I do that all the time. Ferguson made sure his rifle unit had the proper lube, which was mutton tallow mixed with bees wax.

dave
 
How about one “accurate shot” ever 13.6 seconds…
For 5 minutes…


Frontier Culture: The Last of the Leatherstockings
All outdoorsmen dream of the frontier. A few still live it.
Frontier Culture: The Last of the Leatherstockings
Photo Credit: Bill Konway
August 30, 2018By Joseph von Benedikt
Frost Blanketed the Fort Bridger, Wyoming, landscape, and tendrils of morning fog drifted across the firing line. Competitors, all wearing the traditional garb of mountain men, were lining up for a muzzleloading smoothbore match, topping off powder horns and checking gear. When the starting buzzer sounded, more than 40 shooters dropped behind a two-foot-high buck fence, slid the long barrels of their flintlock rifles over the top, and fired at targets 25 yards distant.

Against a five-minute clock, the shooters hunkered behind the fence, reloading as fast as possible, firing, and reloading again. Near the middle of the line, one man worked like a finely tuned machine, loading and firing at least twice as fast as the rest. While most of the shooters' roundballs scattered across their targets like a handful of thrown rocks, his created a jagged hole in the center. Each scored 10 points. Incredibly, 22 roundballs followed each other through that center before the bell sounded.
The Mountain Man
Born in the late 1940s in rural Tennessee, Steve Baxter spent most of his time in the woods with his cousins.
"Jim Bowie, Tarzan, Davy Crockett. All them shows were always on TV," Baxter said. "We packed along throwing knives and hatchets, made our own bows and arrows." Baxter pronounced it "arrers" with a strong southern drawl. "Wadn't no deer in Tennessee back then, but we hunted a lot of rabbits and squirrels."
During high school and then a stint in the Navy as a jet mechanic, Baxter became immersed in building drag cars and racing. For a while he co-owned a shop that specialized in Harley Davidson motorcycles. Eventually, he burned out on motorsports and returned full circle to his roots: hunting and trapping in Tennessee's backwoods

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While attending trapping conventions in the 1970s, Baxter encountered a blossoming rendezvous scene. He began building throwing knives and tomahawks and competing with them — and his extraordinary hand-eye coordination manifested. "I won every time," he chuckled. "Just wadn't anybody could beat me!"
I've seen Baxter walk 30 or 40 feet back from a tomahawk block, turn, and throw two tomahawks at the same time — one from each hand — into the center of the block. He could just about call which spot on a playing card he'd drive his knife into.
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Frontier Culture: The Last of the Leatherstockings

An old Navy buddy gave Baxter a .36-caliber Dixie Gun Works Pennsylvania longrifle kit. Back then, kits didn't always come with instructions.
"Took a long time to figure out how to build it," Baxter said. "Nobody knew much about 'em at that point. Once I got it together, I tried to shoot a squirrel straight above my head. The rifle didn't go off, and all the powder fell out of the pan right into my eye! I quickly figured out how to tune them locks and flints to make 'em go off."
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And make 'em go off he did. His flintlocks have none of the discernible delay usually associated with flinters. No scratch-bang, just a swift shwam.

Baxter struck up a deep friendship with traditional riflesmith Jack Garner and began traveling with him to major shoots. At his first visit to the Nationals in Friendship, Indiana, Baxter competed only in the knife and 'hawk throws, winning both and starting a 12-year run of championships.
"That first trip, I wandered over and watched the smoothbore shooting," Baxter said. "I didn't know much about smoothbore at that point, but I'd done some shotgun slug shooting and just knew I could do a lot better than them guys shooting them big targets."

The Flintlock Builder
As he became more immersed in the traditional muzzleloading world, Baxter built a switch-barrel .54 with one rifled and one smoothbore barrel. Intrigued by the challenges and possibilities presented by flintlock smoothbores as a versatile tool for hunting and competitive shooting, Baxter began working with his, learning to tune point of impact and extend lethal shot-pattern distances. He discovered tightly wrapping a section of the barrel near the rear ramrod thimble with string tuned the harmonics of his smoothbore barrel and made it more accurate. "Off the bench at 25 yards, that gun put bullets almost in the same hole."


Photo Credit: Bill Konway


Eventually, his flintlocks settled into a type those familiar with them call a "Baxter gun." More or less an early Virginia style, the gun features a handtuned Siler flintlock, a half-octagon half-round 42-inch barrel, handmade single trigger, and handforged hardware. Wood and metal finishes are rustic and period correct. Decoration is minimal, but the mechanical tuning is a work of art.
Baxter's flintlocks were made to perfection, and he began winning the smoothbore matches he entered.
"I got possessed with muzzleloaders," Baxter chuckled. "I've got my own farm with my own shooting range. I'd go down there about three days a week and shoot a pound of powder. I used to shoot 150 pounds of blackpowder per year.
"If I was shooting bad, I'd keep after it to fix the problem. If I was shooting good, I had so much fun I couldn't quit. Got to the point where I was shooting offhand better than most folks can shoot off a bench. One time I shot five offhand shots into less than two inches at 100 yards. Got to where the shots just seemed to fall in there."
Baxter was arguably in his prime — in terms of shooting ability — when I got to know him. He was old enough to be well seasoned against the pressures of competition and young enough to still be athletically formidable in timed, cross-country-type matches such as the Seneca Run, which can require shooting, primitive-method fire starting, knife and 'hawk throwing, trap setting, archery, and several other traditional skills along a long trail and against the clock.
He didn't give up throwing his handmade blades. He won every time he entered the knife and 'hawk throw at the Winter Nationals in Arizona. "I think the farthest that I've consistently thrown was 192 feet," Baxter said, then grinned. "I can't always stick a playing card that far away."
The Hunter
Almost 30 years later, most of Baxter's shooting involves whitetails, turkeys, or small game. He's taken dozens of deer through the years with flintlock rifles, smoothbores, and pistols. For one 10-year stretch he hunted with flintlocks only. In 2016, he realized a major goal, shooting a big whitetail behind the log cabin he built in the Tennessee backwoods.


Photo Credit: Bill Konway

The highlights of his hunting career, Baxter said, were trips to hunt southern Utah's elk and mule deer country with my brother and me in the mid-'90s. At the time, Utah tags were still easy to get, and elk were wild and scarce. Not to worry. He heart shot a big cow elk at 170 yards. Offhand. With a flintlock. A few years later he returned, stalking within 60 yards of a 4x4 muley before putting a .54 roundball squarely through its boiler room.
Tips from the Expert
"Know your gun." Baxter said when asked how hunters can be better flintlock shooters. "And practice holding it a lot. At home, just stand and aim it, like strength training. Do a lot of dry-firing and learn to hold that gun still through the shot. You got to see that bullet hole in your target before you move the gun."
Keep in mind that almost all muzzleloading matches are traditionally shot from the offhand position, in traditional garb. Locktime is measured in tenths of seconds rather than thousandths. A clean trigger squeeze and follow-through are all-important.
"I had really good guns, too," Baxter added. "Good barrels, good solid locks. That's important. Get a good, well-built lock, take it apart, and polish it up. I like a real light frizzen spring; they're a lot easier on your flint. And keep 'em clean."


Photo Credit: Bill Konway

Most guys can't get really tight groups from a flintlock, let alone a smoothbore. In addition to skill, Baxter achieves great accuracy with traditional components and techniques.
"I like a tight, cotton drill patch, about 18 thousandths thick. For shootin' at the range and in matches, just use a spit patch. As long as you don't wait too long between shots — which lets the fouling dry out and get hard — you can keep shooting all day without cleaning.
"For hunting, I use bear oil on my patch. And I use bear oil inside my barrel after cleaning and to wipe the exterior of the gun down with. It's a really good traditional preservative.
"As for blackpowder, I like FFFg granulation in everything but my 10-gauge turkey gun. It burns a little cleaner than FFg, and it's hotter, so you don't need as much. I use home-cast or store-bought .530-diameter balls in my rifles and .525 balls in the smoothbores. A .54-caliber smoothbore is real close to a 28 gauge, by the way."
While he's taken quite a few gobblers with his 28-gauge smoothbores, he prefers a 10-gauge flintlock built specifically
for "killin' turkeys." It's got one concession to progress: screw-in chokes. "It'll shoot with any modern gun," Baxter stated. "I've patterned it, and 40 yards is pretty much a sure thing."
Baxter uses Murphy's Oil Soap to clean with after a shooting session. "Mix a cup of Murphy's Oil Soap with a cup
of Mr. Clean household cleaner in a 64-ounce dish soap container, then fill it up with auto windshield washer fluid. Mix it good. Then you've got a squeeze bottle of cleaning solution."
 
Frontier is the name of a mini series in Netflix I’ve been watching. Setting is Hudson Bay during late 1700’s. They discussed a rifle that had capability of firing off 8 shots per minute. Any weapon shown was flintlock. Was there any thing capable of 8 shots per minute in that time

A Canadian researcher told me that he has only found 2 refs to multi-shot long guns in Canada, "fusils firing five shots, one dating to 1682 and another 1712". Appears to be the same family, so maybe 2 refs but only one fusil.
 
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The reason these were not successful was because almost from the 1st shot, the threads gum up with burnt powder gunk. Clever idea, but not practical in the real world. Guy was thinkin', though!
According to Wikipedia:, the main reason the Army didn't use more of them was because they were expensive and time-consuming to manufacture at the time. And as Dave mentioned, they were fragile. Every surviving military Ferguson has a horseshoe-shaped iron repair at the breech. As far as the threads fouling, Wikipedia has this to say:
Experience with early modern replicas, made before the proper screw and thread pitch of the breechblock were rediscovered, seemed to indicate that while reloading was rapid, it seemed to be necessary to first lubricate the breech screw (originally with a mixture of beeswax and tallow) or else the (replica) rifle would foul so much that it needed cleaning after three or four shots. However, through the research efforts of DeWitt Bailey and others, the properly made reproduction Ferguson rifle, made according to Patrick Ferguson's specifications of the 1770s, can fire beyond sixty shots.
 
Not something that is often mentioned, but as with modern rifles, the Ferguson forced the ball onto the rifling. So bore fouling wasn't that much of a problem although lead deposits would be an issue after long term use. The forcing of the ball onto the rifling, as with box-lock and "muff" pistols, resulted in much better ballistics for the powder charge.

LD
 
I sold my swivel breech back to the builder so he could pass it down to his sons....
I would like to replace it, but having shot a friend's ferguson,,...it's on my list of wants too.

The excitement is, which one will present itself to be close to my hands first.... LOL

I know, I know. wish in one hand and.........see which one fills up first.
I'll likely never own either.
 
Chelembron-Magazine-Repeating-Flintlock

The Chelembron system was a magazine system used for flintlock repeaters that originated around 1668. While the invention of the system is attributed to Michele Lorenzoni, the system is named after French gun-makers who made many guns in India using the system. The basis of the Chelembron system is a barrel, as well as magazines, that rotate around a central axis, and are turned to load first powder and then ball into the breech. Long guns of the system carry 20 rounds. It was also made as a pistol version.

Video of a Chelembron-type gun that shows how the action is operated:

Chelembrom-Magazine-Repeating-Flintlock-1.jpg
See they used to make good guns in India, what went wrong.
 
Hi,
I am sure it was a Ferguson. There were quite a few civilian versions made including for the East India and Hudson's Bay companies. Eight shots is a stretch but Patrick Ferguson demonstrated 6-7 aimed shots before King George in 1776. The Ferguson has a fatal flaw in that the stock was very weak at the breech where so much wood was removed for the screw breech and lock. Quite a few surviving examples are broken at the breech. It was no "wonder weapon" . I built and shoot one quite often.
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There were other breech loading mechanisms tried at the time including "tip up" styles so it could be another mechanism but I suspect they were describing a Ferguson breech loader.

dave

I bleeve that gunsmith Mark Novak repairs a Ferguson-style rifle on Youtube.......
 
I was at the Mid-west Musket Frolic in ‘85 or ‘86. It was at the Danial Boone Home in Defiance Mo.
Ted Spring, who wrote several sketch books on the F and I was there as a ranger with a squad of like minded folk.
As part of the shoot the competition was defending a wall. And we had to shoot at a paper plate at twentyfive yards get as many hits as we could in three minutes and forty five seconds. The fifteen shot minimum for the British army.
After the shoot was done Spring got out to demonstrate his skill. He got off twenty three shots. The last three his cartridge box was empty and he had three shots tossed to him. From his friends. So those last three were a little slower.
That’s still less then ten seconds per shot, better then six shots a minute
 
The reason these were not successful was because almost from the 1st shot, the threads gum up with burnt powder gunk. Clever idea, but not practical in the real world. Guy was thinkin', though!
I've not examined a lot of the Fergusons. The one's I have looked at, had a channel cut crosswise of the threads, that was to be filled with a lube of some sort, permitting for more shots before the breech fouled out.
 
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