Bayonet question

[Ghost 23]

I finally purchased my Pedersoli Pennsylvania(50 Caliber) this month. Id like to get a bayonet for it, but can find no one who makes them for the model. I presume they were made historically.

Does anyone know of a company who makes them, or a good substitute that can be rigged to it?

 

[Loyalist Dave]

No, both questions. Pennsylvania long rifles were not fitted with bayonets, as they were civilian hunting arms. I think there is one example of a longrifle having been fitted with a bayonet, and it's on display because it was such an oddity. Standing orders were for riflemen to carry a tomahawk if they were armed with a rifle. German Jaegers armed with rifles were also armed with hunting swords, for the same reason.

LD

 

[Sam squanch]

Some European hunting rifles had bayonets, mostly for boars.

 

[tenngun]

I saw a double plains type rifle, very unusual piece. The patchbox was a stylized American Indian, and stock shape was typical heavy rifle construction
It was fitted with a spring bayonet between the barrels
As said there were som Central European hunting guns fitted with them
By the early nineteenth century military rifles might come with them. Often in short sword shape, ready to be used as a hand weapon instead of a bayonet
While today one may get a bayonet on an AR15 type platform civilian bayonets are few and far between, and that was so back then

 

[Grenadier1758]

I finally purchased my Pedersoli Pennsylvania(50 Caliber) this month. Id like to get a bayonet for it, but can find no one who makes them for the model. I presume they were made historically.

Does anyone know of a company who makes them, or a good substitute that can be rigged to it?

As @Loyalist Dave has stated, the Pedersoli Pennsylvania Long Rifle is styled after a civilian rifle and was not intended for use with a bayonet. The only bayonet that could fit would be a plug bayonet sized to fit in the muzzle and at 59 caliber, the handle would be too small for any practical purpose. The tomahawk is for more useful.

 

[Ghost 23]

Most interesting indeed. I suppose that makes sense, as at the time there were no American game that would really require it.

They werent used by any large military with the funding to have special equipment made.

Thats unfortunate, thank you all for the answers!

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Most interesting indeed. I suppose that makes sense, as at the time there were no American game that would really require it.

They werent used by any large military with the funding to have special equipment made.

Thats unfortunate, thank you all for the answers!

Perhaps you are looking at it from a modern perspective, no worries, for we are all modern people.

The bayonet and musket was considered at the time of the flintlock era, as a spear, that could shoot, while today, and from probably the end of the American Civil War period, the rifle was considered a rifle with a backup blade on the tip. The primary tactic was the bayonet charge during the AWI, and in fact several engagements during the AWI were decided by soldiers charging without firing a shot. By the ACW, Prickett's Charge, demonstrated that such tactics had pretty much been eliminated. OH armies around the world persisted in using bayonet charges, up into WWI, but that was old training and old thinking. A young, Lt. Erwin Rommel and a twelve-man Maxim squad annihilated an entire French infantry company that was charging with bayonets, in WWI.

Rifles were used in large numbers during the AWI, on both sides, but the whole idea of the rifle was to attack from extreme range with accuracy. George Washington actually proposed that riflemen be accompanied by pikemen, or that a folding pike for use by riflemen be made. The Germans had riflemen as part of their armies for a century by the start of the AWI, but never thought to add bayonets to the rifles. It wasn't just the short length of the Germanic rifles used in the army, since the British had smoothbore Serjeants' and Artillery Carbines about the same size as the German rifles, and these were fitted with bayonets. The British added bayonets to rifles by 1802. Rifling came to "muskets" in the 1840's.

LD