Late 1800's style rifle, any info appreciated.

[bennypapa]

A friend owns this rifle. It was a full stock of about .40 cal with 7 very interesting small grooves and wide lands. The bore almost looks heptagonal. The barrel is a straight octagon about 7/8" wide.

There was a wooden patch installed in the 19??'s by the owners father in the lock area.

We'd be interested to know any information anyone can provide. I told him that I guessed 1890's central appalachia, probably Tennessee judging from the iron hardware but What do I know. Aside from the profile of the stock notable details include the lock plate engraving, trigger guard and long barrel tang. I have no information about the initials on the barrel.

 

[Flint311]

I wish I could help, but the barrel looks like one in an antique store I saw just south of Lexington. This was when my sister went to the U.K. Years ago, I remember hearing of this style of rifling that took a special mold for a cast bullet/ballet. Interesting piece. Good luck on finding info. :thumbsup:

 

[Zonie]

I agree that it looks like a Tennessee or thereabouts. The long barrel tang and the iron furniture was used in that area.

The age could range from the 1840's on upward but I would guess it is 1850-1860.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

I've seen a few guns with muzzles that appeared the same way. The odd number of grooves generally meant it was hand rifled, because the cutter needed a solid base on the opposite side of the barrel, so the back side of the cutter was squeezed against a land. However, I'm not so sure that the bore is hexagonal or whether the muzzle was "coned" that way. I have a nearly identical looking barrel and lock on a plain percussion gun that has a brass trigger guard and butt plate. I also have a similar looking muzzle on a turkish flint muzzleloader from the 1700's.

 

[bennypapa]

How would you cone a muzzle to a shape other than circular?

 

[Va.Manuf.06]

It's not coned, it is badly worn, a fairly common state of a well used soft iron barrel when the hickory ramrod is normally used. It started out round like all other rifles and did not need a special bullet or "ballet". (You do know that Ballet is a form of dance, right? :haha: Just kidding Flint311, we know what you meant.)

That is a very interesting rifle. Do you think it started life as a full stock?

 

[bennypapa]

Without a doubt it started as a full stock. I did not get a picture of the entry pipe or the point that the stock currently ends. If I had you could see that
1.the finely made entry pipe and plain, straight thimbles which look to be made of tubing and lack any of the sculpted ends that the entry pipe has so they don't match.
2. There is no under rib and the attachment of the thimbles is so much cruder than the fine craftsmanship shown in the rest of the rifle. and
3. the end of the wood at the entry pipe looks to have been smoothed away after the forestock was broken (or removed). This shortening of the forestock was likely not done by the original maker. The workmanship is way too rough by comparison.

I had never thought of wear as a reason for the crown to look out of round. If you hold a smaller diameter circle (like a ramrod) so that it rides down in the groove, it will ride on the corner of each adjacent land flattening that land as it wears. Great observation. Thank you.

 

[bkovire]

whitworth? 1854-59? got the info here ok you can read for your self, book is called the gun and its development page 609.

 

[Dphar]

The rifling is pretty typical for the time.
They shot patched round balls and did not use shaped projectiles like the Whitworth.
This style rifling is what brought about the "pure lead" myth in MLing. It would be very difficult to load a hard lead ball in this bore design.

I wonder about the rod wear thing. Having worked with abrasives to change the size of a bore by lapping I figure it takes a LOT of shooting/cleaning to get this done with a wooden rod. So much that the rifle would likely need recutting by the time the rod wear got to be a factor. Not to mention how many rods it would wear out.
But I could be wrong I suppose.
I guess I could cut a chunk from the iron wagon tire I have, anneal, file and polish to t aflat surface then rub it with a wooden rod to see how long it takes to make a groove. But I think I already know.


Dan

 

[Va.Manuf.06]

Well Dan, you may be right or you may be wrong. What do you think caused the uneven wear that is seen on so many muzzleloading rifles and, for that matter, fowlers? Repetitive motion with a hickory rod applied in the same place so many times may indeed not be the cause, but it is a great coincidence that the worn section on so many muzzles is in the place where the rod rubs the muzzle when ramming a ball or cleaning the barrel. Why do so many shooters insist on using muzzle protectors when loading and especially cleaning? And that is with modern steel barrels that are harder than the "soft" iron barrels on 19th Century and earlier guns. As you say, you may be right, but.....
Signed,
A Demon of Stupidity
:redface: :v

 

[Dphar]

Well Dan, you may be right or you may be wrong. What do you think caused the uneven wear that is seen on so many muzzleloading rifles and, for that matter, fowlers? Repetitive motion with a hickory rod applied in the same place so many times may indeed not be the cause, but it is a great coincidence that the worn section on so many muzzles is in the place where the rod rubs the muzzle when ramming a ball or cleaning the barrel. Why do so many shooters insist on using muzzle protectors when loading and especially cleaning? And that is with modern steel barrels that are harder than the "soft" iron barrels on 19th Century and earlier guns. As you say, you may be right, but.....
Signed,
A Demon of Stupidity
:redface: :v

Get a piece of iron and rub it with a piece of 3/8 hickory rod. See what the effect is with the pressure likely to occur in loading or wiping. Without actual testing thinking its rod wear from use is supposition. Would the rod wear out first?
The Winchester lever actions must be cleaned from the muzzle too but they don't show this and they had pretty soft barrels before smokeless and virtually no crown. They used jointed rods too. Nor do I recall seeing this in the Trapdoor Springfield which also must be cleaned from the muzzle. But they may not have been shot all that much.
I understand this theory pretty well since I make cleaning rods for BPCRs.
I had always thought this was the case until I started to think about it then I began to wonder just how much wear was done in actual use. I have lapped a few barrels but no iron ones.
It takes a lot of work to wear down iron without abrasives.
A friend lapped a original barrel (one at least) and spent a lot of time getting a few thousandths *with* abrasives. He thinks the rod wear thing is a little hard to swallow.

I wonder if some had rods carried in the bore. This was apparently done in the west to some extent to provide a spare loading/wiping rod. Maybe its rod wear but not from loading and wiping.
Wear they hauled in wagons with a spare rod in the bore? Wagons are very hard on firearms and a great deal of "saddle wear" is actually wagon wear. This from a guy who spent quite a few miles hauling people, freight, hay, diesel fuel and guns on horse drawn wagons. Not to mention horse back with guns to a considerable extent.

There are a lot of questions.
Were rifles "freshed" fairly often due to rod wear or due to erosion at the breech as more likely from the powder gas temperature side or from corrosion? Or all three?
If the rifle was freshed they would have cleaned the muzzle at that time and the process would have had to start over.
Did funneling at the muzzle reduce this phenomenon? Did it simply transfer the wear to the choke below the funneling?

How do they get the angle on the rod to get this kind of wear at the muzzle? Once it the bore any distance the rod pretty well aligns with the bore.
Crooked rod? Could be.
Then there are the other parts exposed to rod wear.

Why are the rod pipes not worn through?

Dan

 

[Va.Manuf.06]

Well Dan, you make some very good points, but as to the pipes? I have seen pipes, both brass and iron, worn from rod insertion and withdrawal as I am sure that you have too. Wish I had photographs of examples, but I don't. All I can say is that it does happen.

A non-period example: Hickory wood is at least as abrasive as the hemp chord used as pullthroughs by the British and Commonwealth nations from the earliest days of breachloading firearms up until well after WW2 and improper use of the pullthrough chord seriously damaged the muzzles of many SMLE rifles - they became "Chord Worn" and had to be downgraded. Barrels were replaced or downgraded to training or Drill Purpose status. It is a common problem often seen on the surplus market.

 

[Dphar]

Belled muzzles on M-1s etc etc.
Being devils advocate again here.
:stir:
You see some worn rod pipes. But remember the rod pipes are there for the life of the gun.
I wonder if the rod wear is the result of kids and youths using the guns in their old age. It did happen we know and a short person cleaning a long gun. People used to give pretty valubale guns to their kids to play with. I personally know some people no older than I who used to play Cowboys and Indians with a TIFFANY COLT, a really nice percussion military pistol, and a fairly rare repeater a BALL as I recall in 44 Henry. The Waters/Johnson whatever and the Ball stood up well. Tiffany has the gold wash worn off the cylinder, though its bright in the protected areas. The Silver plate is tougher and the gun is still mostly white. So when you look at old guns with horrid bores, locks or hammer gone. Remember tha kids probably had them for awhile either is actual use or as disbaled, or not, toys.
When I was 17-18 (circa 1967) we were farming land belonging to several farmers and one was in his 80s and a gun guy, he said as a kid he hunted with a double shotgun to heavy to carry as a kid and dragged it to the point of wearing a big flat spot on the buttstock

The rifle at the start of the thread with its flat sided lands shows no real wear from a rod unless flat sided.
We also have to remember that precision was not a high priority with some makers, thus the large flat lands seen on some rifles. This carried over for a long time, until the advent of smokeless powder in breechloaders. I have seen Sharps Borchardt's from the mid-1870s with .040+ headspace, the barrels were often .010-.014 over nominal.

The have ALWAYS been slob gunsmiths.
Now I would never say its not rod wear, though the recutting/freshing of rifles would eliminate this periodically as would the boring of rifles smooth. We have to think about things and wonder how this happened.

Rides here gotta run.

Dan

 

[t.l.a.r. eng]

Perhaps a method of intentional coning of the time would be filing the lands tapered lengthwise with a narrow flat file to open up the muzzle by .010 or so. That would give the apearance of a worn muzzle with flat lands.

I was warned of this when looking at the family percussion rifle [1850-1860] for caliber size that the muzzle was usually bigger diameter to help start the patch and ball.

The old .036 cal has a .380 round bore and the muzzle measures .390
Starting a patched ball is very easy in this rifle.

I might be way off base on this but this could be how one would cone an iron barrel with minimal tooling and fuss. :idunno:

 

[Va.Manuf.06]

Well, I'll bow out by saying that I retract my statement and say that we just don't know and and that we never will. But it was fun....

:surrender:

 

[Zonie]

Maybe I missed it but it seems that no one has mentioned the real cause of wear from using wooden ram rods.

It's not the wood that causes the wear. It appearently (according to the Bevel Brothers tests) is the dirt that often gets on the outside of a wooden ramrod.

Oil from the finish, the patches or even from the shooters hands gets on a wooden ramrod and because wood is fairly soft the dirt often gets embedded in the ramrods surface or surface finish.
This dirt (of any kind) is an abrasive so a dirty ramrod acts like a lapping tool.

Although cleanliness of the hands can help reduce the contamination of a wooden ramrod the folks in the wilderness and back woods and farms in the 18th and 19th century weren't noted for the amount of soap they used.

 

[M Kuhn]

I'm not so sure that barrel is worn all that bad.
I have seen that style rifling on several originals.
I have seen ramrod wear particularly on newer guns that have used fiberglass ramrods. I've shortened three guns an inch or two from wear caused by fiberglass ramrods and the wear looks different from that rifle.
I think it may be cut that way.
Of course I could be wrong but it doesn't look like ramrod wear to me.
Oh, That is a great looking rifle BTW.
Speaking just for myself I would be tempted to find a similarly figured piece of maple and splice a new full length forearm onto that rifle.
It's quite easy and can be an almost invisible repair on figured maple.
That's just me though.
It's a nice rifle as is.