Nock rifle at GAOS

[pamtnman]

NRA’s Great American Outdoor Show is this week in Harrisburg, PA. Among the many film industry firearms on display is this Nock flintlock rifle, used in the movie The Alamo. Originally it was made for repelling naval boarding parties. About seven years ago NRA’s American Rifleman magazine had an article about this rifle, which in its own day was said to be “fearsome at both ends.”

 

[pamtnman]

More photos

 

[pamtnman]

 

[pamtnman]

 

[FishDFly]

Would hate to wipe between shots with that rifle.

 

[pamtnman]

Would hate to wipe between shots with that rifle.

Complete workout!

 

[oldwood]

Back in the late 1980's , Kit Ravenshear built one of these and brought it to a Union County Sportsmans Club. We put some targets up and 6 or 7 of us had a shooting match using his gun. I think he used Getz barrels for the project..........oldwood

 

[pamtnman]

Back in the late 1980's , Kit Ravenshear built one of these and brought it to a Union County Sportsmans Club. We put some targets up and 6 or 7 of us had a shooting match using his gun. I think he used Getz barrels for the project..........oldwood

That’s gotta be one of the more fabulous repro projects ever. Are you able to see the lock here? It’s pretty cool. I’ve never seen one like it

 

[oldwood]

I can't remember what the lock on Kit's gun looked like. All I can remember is that it was flint , and he loaded it and handed it to each one of us and we shot. The recoil was mild , so I feel he didn't have it loaded up to maximum. At another shoot , he brought another unusual British gun he had built. It was a flint lock rifle that would be loaded up with four balls , and hesitate between detonations. The initial bang went with the first movment of the lock , then the remaining three , went with hesitation , between bangs. Sort of like a hesitant , full auto w/o the ability to stop firing. Turned out ,the gun had to be loaded meticulously or the "auto" , became a single shot using four balls. It wasn't pursued by the British govt. due to it's difficult to load in combat situations . Kit was like a barrel of monkeys. You never knew what he would build next. I'm sure he could have made a gun out'a dirt......I miss Kit.........oldwood

 

[hawkeye2]

Kit brought the volley gun to our Rifle Frolic. He paid his dollar, spent quite some time loading, and then cut loose at the ham on a string event. All 7 balls went somewhere but didn't come close to the string. I probably shouldn't have let him take the shot as the gun was against the rules but it was going to be too much of a show to let pass by.

 

[oldwood]

Good one , I'd have told my friend Fred M. about that one , and we would have asked Kit how he could have been such a poor shot??

 

[moose23]

Oh my that’s a sweet gun!

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
They were not usually rifled but smooth bore and the idea one was at the Alamo is a total fabrication. Bowie was so sick the Mexicans killed him with very little fanfare. These volley guns are such a romantic fantasy. The British ordnance and navy adopted them for a short period and realized they were useless, and abandoned them. Some were rifled and sold as long range goose guns with brief popularity. The TV series about Sharp and his rifle brigade resurrected this ineffective gun. It is all fiction and the volley gun was abandoned very quickly.

dave

 

[appalichian hunter]

Good info dave,, but man that thing would be a good alley sweeper.

 

[pamtnman]

Hi,
They were not usually rifled but smooth bore and the idea one was at the Alamo is a total fabrication. Bowie was so sick the Mexicans killed him with very little fanfare. These volley guns are such a romantic fantasy. The British ordnance and navy adopted them for a short period and realized they were useless, and abandoned them. Some were rifled and sold as long range goose guns with brief popularity. The TV series about Sharp and his rifle brigade resurrected this ineffective gun. It is all fiction and the volley gun was abandoned very quickly.

dave

Well, reality notwithstanding, this one is real and also starred in the movie, which was super not real, but it pushed all my happy buttons at the same time, nonetheless. It’s quite a monument to something… the 18th-19th century British were masters of weapons development. Maybe we just chalk the gun up to that process, like a missing link. I enjoyed looking at it closely

 

[andy52]

Here's a video on an original.
Nock Volley Gun | International Military Antiques on Vimeo

 

[PathfinderNC]

Yup, that’s a (very cool) monster! What caliber is it?

 

[toot]

I may have missed it, but who made it for the movie? and was it ever shot live fire? not in the movie of course.

 

[Ragged Edge]

This gun should be in the museum in Cody, WY!

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
They are usually about 52 caliber and used pistol balls. Nock actually did not invent the design but he manufactured all of them between 1780 and 1787. The army rejected them outright but the navy thought they might be useful aboard ship. During initial tests using 56 grains of rifle powder, the recoil was more than anyone could handle so they reduced the charge to 41 grains and 0.445 caliber balls. That worked and the guns were issued to some ships but had mixed reviews. Nelson prohibited their use in the fighting tops because the blast from all 7 barrels risked setting rigging and sails on fire. However, other captains seemed to like them but by 1805 they were considered obsolete. Civilian versions were sold as goose guns and many of those were rifled permitting a hard hitting pattern of lead at fairly long ranges. These were usually sold with a speed loader that allowed all 7 barrels to be loaded at once. This was the gun's greatest danger, forgetting which barrels were already loaded when reloading. You can imagine in the heat of battle somebody double or may even triple charging a barrel. Finally, if any barrels failed to fire that presented a real problem because you had to determine which was the failure. Fortunately, that did not happen very often because the priming ignited a central powder chamber in the center barrel. The blast from that barrel was vented to all the outside barrels so if a failure happened, it was ignition of the central barrel and none of the others went off. The blast from the center barrel when ignited pretty much provided fool proof ignition to the outside barrels. The internal vent holes of all the outside barrels had to be drilled from the outside of the barrels into the center one. Therefore, each outside barrel had a hole drilled all the way through its breech and the outside hole was then plugged. I miss Kit too. He was one of my earliest mentors.

dave