how common were composite arms?

[mattybock]

I know that the most common arms in the colonial era were muskets, and toward the revolution, it was the trade musket for all but the military and militias, who had mostly brown bess replicas and french arms.
I've read the during the fur trapper period that up to 90% of the arms carried in the west were trade muskets. But I'm wondering how common composite arms were in terms of all guns in the colonies. Meaning a barrel from broken gun A, a lock from broken gun B, and apply it all to a jimmy rigged stock. Not quite the 'bubba guns' of their day. More like the used rack of your local gun store.
I don't know if committee of safety muskets would qualify as composite arms.

 

[Wes/Tex]

I'm sure that some must have existed but scrounged parts rarely fit together well without a general stock change. "Committee of Safety" muskets were usually privately made guns to arm those committee's militia companies and generally follow the LLP or one of the French models in general form. They were not "thrown together" guns but just weren't arsenal made.

 

[Alden]

"Committee of Safety" muskets were usually privately made guns to arm those committee's militia companies and generally follow the LLP or one of the French models in general form. They were not "thrown together" guns but just weren't arsenal made.

At that time British military arms were generally not arsenal made either -- they were armory assembled from primarily private contracted parts by and large.

 

[Wes/Tex]

Yes sir...you are right. I got my tongue wrapped around my eye tooth and couldn see what I was saying! :wink: :haha:

 

[mattybock]

So COS muskets were not composites in the regular sense. But were they common at all, or will we just never know? I can see restocking being necessary, and any competent gunsmith of the time could have made a stock to fit the bits.

 

[Wes/Tex]

In certain cases that's probably true. Most surviving examples appear to me more or less accurate copies of military muskets, though not always with completely matching hardware. This would be logical since old parts from earlier model LLP Besses would be easier to obtain and molds could be made to reproduce them as parts for the contracts. Some appear to be Dutch muskets which were purchased and smuggled in as things between England and the colonies kept going septic. Some few surviving examples can indeed be thought of as "made from parts" but it's not clear if these are indeed COS pieces or guns make by local smiths for officers of militia, whether they were actually hunting guns modified for military service, etc. Lot of grey area that may never be filled in.

 

[Oudoceus]

Wood was free. Metal gun parts, on the other hand, were expensive. Various metal parts could be made to work together when fitted to a new made stock custom made to work with the parts on hand.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

As far as "composite guns", meaning were metal parts recycled to ceate a "new" gun or rifle.... probably will never really know as the builder might not have noted the origin of the part at the shop.

So COS muskets were not composites in the regular sense. But were they common at all, or will we just never know? I can see restocking being necessary, and any competent gunsmith of the time could have made a stock to fit the bits.

A LOT of Comittee of Safety muskets WERE what we'd call composites. Most of the surviving examples are a mish-mash of barrels and locks, with Brown Bess hardware, because the brass bits could be made from sand casting copies from Bess parts. I have seen them made with flat faced French locks, flat faced Dutch locks, German locks, French barrels, and Dutch barrels... but depending on the maker... they could be very close copies of the British Bess. Some of those that were very close might not be recognized as CoS muskets. There are currently ten muskets with barrels stamped SS which have been identified as coming from one maker, and they are very much like a Bess, with some very minor differences.

Some of what we call "committee of safety" muskets were actually contracted by the state government. Jerusalem Mill Village in Bel Air, Maryland was the location of one such private contractor who made muskets but was paid by the state. Some were also made for the Continental Congress.

Once the French muskets appeared the Bess muskets and look-alikes were relegated back to militia units, and some states sold them off as they had sufficient stores of the French muskets.

Here is a very good paper by Charles Thayer on the subject. Note the octagon to round barrels on the muskets on p.3 and the odd locks on p.7.

For folks who do not care for the Indian made barrels on the India origin bess muskets.... one could rebarrel an India made musket with a "Dutch" repro barrel from Track of the Wolf, and have a very authentic COS musket for about $500 less than suggested retail for the Italian Bess.

LD

 

[mattybock]

I have now saved that PDF, very informative. And I did not know that about the barrel swapping. Long live the jimmying of technology! Outside of a military context, were composite arms common in the hands of civilians, such as for hunting?

 

[Stumpkiller]

Trouble with a pieced together firearm is you don't know when it was reassembled.

So if an existing piece turns up now a historian has a hard time saying "this was used in this current condition in 1780 . . . or 1815 . . . or 1840."

 

[mattybock]

judging from all the new and old information, seems to me that it boils down to this;

Among those who did own guns, which did not constitute the majority of the population, the musket was much more common than the rifle in all aspects of colonial and regency life (sorry Fess Parker fans, ol' Betsy was not the norm).

With pacific northwest trade guns were part of a well documented commercial venture, with some known purchases placing them at the very peak of popularity among guns in the North American continent with 90% of all guns carried by trapped being trade guns.

In the east, among the US militias and regular army the Brown Bess clones were the way to go, with most local militia unit members owning their own BB clones and adhering to militia charters as had been done during the earlier Indian wars. Then the French came in to finance the nearest anti-British venture and gave the army, not civilians, a surplus of muskets which were kept as state or congressional government property.

But bearing in mind that 2/3rds of the population of fighting men either were loyal to the crown of King George or did not care either way, even the French arms were not in a majority.

In the hands of the common man, the farmers who were the vast majority of the population, there were three guns which were probably seen more than any other; the trade gun, a bess clone, and a composite gun. With composite guns being probably cheaper than the other two options, they were probably more popular, but as tools exposed to the elements, as working guns there are fewer surviving examples.

If I had to throw out a random number, I'd say 40% or more of guns sold and owned in the east from 1720 to 1810 were composite smoothbore muskets and fowlers and one-off gunsmith made pieces using premade locks, salvaged parts, and gunsmith cobbled parts, not intended for militia use.

Thanks to Malachite's website the known price of a trade gun in 1822 was $24 each, as listed in 'The West of William H. Ashely 1822-38.' A Brown Bess clone today is about $1000, which translates in 1776 dollars as about $35.

I think it's justifiable to say that a one off composite gun would have cost $14 to $22 in the same time period.

But in the end we'll probably never know... who killed JFK.
ps- it was totally aliens.

 

[Artificer]

Maybe other questions may give us some clues?

How often would even a gunsmith run across one gun that had a cracked or burst barrel (this would also most likely so severely damage the stock as to require complete stock replacement) and another gun that had a good barrel, but a bad lock?

Gunsmith accounts talking about having to “britch” or “re-britch” (replace the tang and cut the breech end shorter for new threads) older barrels. If the touch hole was also worn out, they may have had to cut off enough of the barrel to lose the original touch marks. From the outside, this may or may not appear to be a repair until one takes off the barrel and notices the pin lugs or loops have been moved? With a new stock of American wood, the repaired barrel and old lock; this could look like a composite gun, wouldn’t it?

How bad of condition would a lock have to have been before it was replaced rather than repaired? At some of the archeological digs at some of the Forts in North America, they have found excavated trade and civilian lock plates and locks with pans that were soldered or welded up as many as two times and very rarely a third time ”“ from where they had burned through the pan from extended use. Refacing hammers (frizzens) was a common enough repair on locks, as were making/fitting new springs or other parts.

There are enough original guns left with wrist repairs, that it would seem cracked or broken stocks were at least known, if not somewhat common? If restocked and different furniture was used or the original furniture thinned down, would these look like composite guns?

I like your analogy of composite guns being more like those found in used gun racks, where repairs or modifications can be found or even somewhat expected.

Of course, we don’t often think of American Long Rifles or American built Fowlers to have been “composite guns,” but in fact many were. Many American gunsmiths bought British or European locks, rough barrels from boring mills or even finished barrels from Europe and some even bought some of the stock furniture parts. Of course the purchased parts were new and not usually used or from older guns, but sometimes the locks were from older guns?

In the very late 17th century/early 18th century, Virginia received a quantity of older military arms for the purpose of selling them inexpensively to poorer Virginians to arm them for the militia. However, these arms were so big and clumsy, even at such a reduced cost, they did not sell well. I don’t know if it is clear what happened to those guns. Perhaps they were later purchased by Americans at auction when not sold by the Royal Governors and made into composite guns? Maybe some of the barrels and locks, or even the whole guns, were used for market waterfowl hunting and “used up and lost to history” that way?

Like others, I don’t know what percentage of guns were composite guns from broken guns.
Gus

 

[crockett]

I don't know how anyone could tell if a firearm was assembled from parts originating in several guns. To the best of my knowledge in Pennsylvania there were orders taken by various gunsmiths to fill contracts either for the military or for Indian Treaties. I believe there was some subcontracting. In other as a hypothetical example, say Derringer had a contract for 5,000 trade arms but didn't have time to make all the locks so he bought a 1,000 locks from Henry and used them. It would then be an error to think a particular firearm was a re-assemble of parts from original guns just because a particular piece had a Derringer barrel and a Henry lock.
The other issue is beat up firearms with a lot of repairs such as a belly plate for a broken out bottom along the ramrod hole, a rawhide repaired wrist, a shorten barrel. Such a firearm might look like re-assembled parts but might simply be a lot of repairs.
And of course there could be guns assembled from several originals. As I said, it is probably a very difficult thing to document.

 

[tenngun]

One problem that arises from this is the NMLRA. With the start of that group people started reviving an intrest in those guns. By the 1950s Turner Kirkland was selling original parts and the nmlra was shooting original guns. It didn't take long for some bright boys to start making some 'origanals' out of assembled parts. In Europe for almost 80 years before the nmlra the same thing was going on. Military Wheelocks were getting siler and ivory inlays, chisled barrels ect.Then in the appalations old time gunsmiths were still making brand new southren style guns.
Soon the NMLRA was accepting reproductions on the line but the thirst for origanal continued to grow. Using origanal parts it becomes increasingly diffucult to tell an old gun from a new one. I have no doubt that composite guns were very common, but I also have no doubt that lots of our antiquites havent seentheir first century yet.

 

[crockett]

I thought we bought the muskets from France? $6 versus $10 for the COS BB clone.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

I believe you have hit the nail on the head. We see composite guns in collections but we do not know when they were assembled.

I saw what appeared to be an original condition early English trade gun, the owner knew the time period for the lock and the time period for the barrel, so it was assumed that the gun was produced during the overlap of the two time periods.

This is as logical an assumption as can be made. However the barrel or lock could have been a replacement.

Composite guns show up in almost all locations but historically they were not “thrown together”, they were crafted from available parts.

 

[Rifleman1776]

One problem that arises from this is the NMLRA. With the start of that group people started reviving an intrest in those guns. By the 1950s Turner Kirkland was selling original parts and the nmlra was shooting original guns. It didn't take long for some bright boys to start making some 'origanals' out of assembled parts. In Europe for almost 80 years before the nmlra the same thing was going on. Military Wheelocks were getting siler and ivory inlays, chisled barrels ect.Then in the appalations old time gunsmiths were still making brand new southren style guns.
Soon the NMLRA was accepting reproductions on the line but the thirst for origanal continued to grow. Using origanal parts it becomes increasingly diffucult to tell an old gun from a new one. I have no doubt that composite guns were very common, but I also have no doubt that lots of our antiquites havent seentheir first century yet.

When I was doing Friendship on a regular basis, some of the genuine, original old timers would talk about the early days. They said there were often barrels of ml rifle parts just sitting around (no mention who brought them there) and anyone could help themselves to parts and many rifles were built from those various, sundry parts. So, now....is "composite" an accepted pc term here? :wink:

 

[mattybock]

bought? I was under the impression that the global powerhouse of the French monarchy was throwing aid (or instigation) at the anti-loyalists in an effort to content in a proxy war with the little empire that could, all in an effort to secure favor with and eventually dominate the colonies like had been done with Lousianna and Haiti. Kind of like Vietnam, but with much nicer headwear, and guns that didn't break as often. :grin:

In any case. I think, keeping on track with the first point, that guns assembled domestically from scrap parts and restocked, as opposed to ready made factory guns or government contracted guns, made up a great deal of gun sales amongst gunsmiths and other tradesmen who would take up the work.
I'd say that once the original lock with 51% of its original parts, the original stock, and the original barrel, as they were first sold as a complete gun, constitutes the original gun in spirit. Once this group is separated, you have parts that can be used to create a composite. That's just my view of it.

 

[rich pierce]

Original composite guns are sometimes easily identified because the parts are mismatched in style, place of origin, and timeframe. And we can date it as not earlier than the latest part. For example if we find can original musket with a 1720s Dutch lock paired with a 1770s style guard, we can say it is a composite gun made around or after 1770.

 

[satx78247]

Fwiw, imVho, the farther that a person was from the Atlantic Coast the more likely that he was to have a composite firearm.

For example, Nacogdoches in New Spain had at least two shops that did major repairs upon, "remade" or "repurposed" muskets by 1815. - Evidently, most of those "repurposed"/remodeled/converted firearms were once a Brown Bess.
(By our TX Revolution, the shops in Nacogdoches, San Felipe, Goliad and other "American settlements" were "doing a land office business" of converting BB to a percussion firearm.)

Btw, arguably the "most famous rifle" in Northeast Texas from 1835-45 was a 12-bore RIFLE re-made (out of at least 3 BB muskets & other parts) in Nacogdoches for Mrs. Harriet Anne (Moore) Potter, "the notorious East Texas Wildcat", noted markswoman & dedicated huntress and often called, "the most feared woman in Texas".

yours, satx