Riveted, and brazed or welded iron/steel buttplates

[rich pierce]

This practice of forging buttplates in two pieces from iron, and brazing them together, seems to have been practiced between about 1790 to 1880, mostly on guns from North Carolina and Tennessee in the flintlock period. Then it became more widespread as the so called Southern Mountain Rifle style became well known. On halfstock percussion rifles it was a style common in St. Louis, on rifles by the Hawken brothers and Creamer, at least. It seems that by about 1845 or so this style gave way to cast steel buttplates where so called iron furniture was employed. I’ve examined a Sam Hawken rifle where the cast buttplate was apparently made by using a forged and brazed one as a template. One can see the irregular lump of what would have been braze in the inside corner, but it’s all iron with no braze line.
Recently someone posted about a halfstock rifle with a cast brass buttplate and stated that it was brazed! Had not heard that one before.
Comments on timespan and geographical use of forged, brazed iron buttplates?

 

[ZUG]

My first Hawken rifle I built was with a two piece steel butt plate that I brazed together and I think it was much better than a cast one. At least I did not have to file and sand off the sand casting pimple junk and even up the casting !!!

 

[plmeek]

Comments on timespan and geographical use of forged, brazed iron buttplates?

Rich, your dates are probably about as good as any. As you know, not many rifles were made with iron mounts in the 18th century, but those that were likely had forged iron butt plates. If the return on the butt plate was short it could have been bent and shaped by forging. I suspect most military muskets in that period were done that way. If the return on the butt plate was long, they likely would have brazed it.

I'm not sure when St. Louis smiths started using cast iron/steel butt plates. The ones I'm aware of on Hawken rifles are marked S. Hawken, so they would be post-1849, but that doesn't mean other St. Louis smiths were doing it earlier.

I wonder if there is any way of finding out when the first foundry capable of casting iron/steel items was established in the St. Louis area. Iron/steel has to be heated much hotter than brass or silver and not something I would expect to see being done in a gunsmith's shop.

Researching the history of early iron ore being smelted in southeast Missouri, I found reference to an Ashebran furnace on Stout’s Creek in Iron County that started in 1815 or 1816. It is thought to have closed in 1819 or 1837. The next effort at commercial iron production was by a company called Missouri Iron Company that was formed in 1836, but it wasn't economically viable. The American Iron Company was incorporated in January, 1843, and began mining operations at Iron Mountain in 1844. The first furnace there began operating in 1846 and a second in 1848.

In 1854, the American Iron Mountain Company completed construction of a hot blast furnace at Iron Mountain—the first of its kind west of the Mississippi River. Furnaces at Iron Mountain produced only pig metal for shipment. Vallé Forge was established in either 1851 or 1853, 25 mi east of Farmington, Missouri, to convert Iron Mountain pig iron into blooms, which were porous masses of iron and slag sold to be further worked into wrought iron.

From the above, it appears that iron ore smelting became economically successful in the late 1840s and early 1850s, and that this may have provided the impetus for a foundry to be established about the same time.

This also coincides with Sam Hawken continuing the gunshop after Jacob died in 1849.