Non shimmel guns

[B Shipman]

this post has raelly taken of, but to answer an earlier question about Dickert, he was born in 1740. Emmigrated in 1748. (not trained in Germany.) Moved to Lanc. in 1756. Married in 1764. First listed as a gunsmith in 1770. Did he make guns before that. Almost certainly.

[Dphariss]

There are so many facets to the plain rifle verses the decorated one discussion.
I had a short conversation with a friend this AM. He pointed out that the lower paid people in the west during the 1880s, the cowboys,  might be riding a very expensive saddle and have a fancy rifle an/or six shooter. The were known to watch their shadow to see how well they looked. The $100
Company D of the Texas Rangers in the 1870s-80s shows one man with a special order 1876 Winchester with a shot barrel and a pistol grip stock. Everyone else pretty much has the run of the mill Winchester etc. The is in "Firearms of the American West 1866-1898". It was also pointed out to me that the higher grade guns can be sold if times get tough, it was kinda like a bank account that served other purposes.
The saddle costing more than the horse was a fact.

Some people consider a gun little different than a hammer and others like higher end guns regardless their income.
Also the longhunters were not bottom of the ladder income wise anymore than the free trappers of the West were. They likely did pretty well at it.

There could very well have been more plain guns than fancy ones. But then we would have to ask what was considered plain in 1760-1770. Even muskets had some carving, the Brown Bess at least.
Then we have makers like Melchoir Fordney and John Armstrong who were late who obviously had a market for better grade guns much later than fashion would dictate for a carved Kentucky. Fordney was making relief carved rifles 60 years after 1770 unless he made all his better grade guns very early.
I am sure the scrap drives of WW-I really ate into the "plain gun numbers" and a lot of high grade guns got melted down as well. So we really are not going to know the answer to the plain gun question.
We do know that in DeWitt Bailey's "British Military Flintlock Rifles" there is a quote from the 1760s stating the the poor in the frontier (in the south in this case) were selling their rifles to the natives "for monstrous price" and that the rifle was the greater part of their estate.
We have prices for the Girty brothers rifles in 1775 running 7-8 pounds. These were no likely low grade guns.
Were these guns better looking as well as having better locks etc? Who can say at this date?
Rifle makers did work on credit according to the information in Kindig's book. Could it be that a person could work out a rifle? Perhaps cutting firewood or clearing land over the period of a year or so? We don't really know.
This could have made it possible for someone without the cash to still own a rifle with all the parts and some carving.
Does anyone know what a spinning wheel cost in 1750-70? Just curious?

Its way past bedtime in Montana.

Dan

[Long John]

Hey guys,

Instead of "rippells" maybe the author spelled rifles "riphells", using PH for the f sound.

JMC

[flintriflesmith]

I do appreciate your comments in relation to the iron mounted rifle recovered from the burial. I also appreciate your posting the photos of that document.

This reference to "best iron" may, indeed, be in reference to iron mounts, but, IMHO, the way it is worded can suggest either Best iron barrels or best iron mounts, depending on one's interpretation.
Personally, I dunno. I do wish the wording was less ambiguous.
God bless

Ambigous, criptic, confusing, and coming from a mind set and intent that is almost impossible for a modern person to understand. A saying we use in the museum field is "The past is a foreign country." Some days its like we don't even speak the language!

Gary

[TPH]

Well said Gary.

[Michael]

Gary,
To be off topic slightly. Can you make out the first entry from your hand written inventory?  I can see that it referring to trade fusees for the Indians but I can't quite make it out.

Thanks

Michael

[flintriflesmith]

After this thread I hate to even post this because a fly speck on the 250 year old paper may actually be a comma -- or vice versa!

As best I can tell it says:

abt. 2. dozn. [about 2 dozen] fusee Guns proved barrels @ 14/ [14 shillings each] __ very good at the price, but rather larger Bores than those commonly use’d in the Indian Trade; they wou’d [would] answer very well for Bullet & Shot & wou’d suit the Southern Indians; as I have been told they do not use a single Bullet so much as the Northern Indians

[Acer Saccharum]

This sounds like the Northern Indians preferred, or were accustomed to, smoothbores with a single roundball. I imagine the Northerns would prefer rifles if they could get them.

[Dphariss]

I do appreciate your comments in relation to the iron mounted rifle recovered from the burial. I also appreciate your posting the photos of that document.

This reference to "best iron" may, indeed, be in reference to iron mounts, but, IMHO, the way it is worded can suggest either Best iron barrels or best iron mounts, depending on one's interpretation.
Personally, I dunno. I do wish the wording was less ambiguous.
God bless

Ambigous, criptic, confusing, and coming from a mind set and intent that is almost impossible for a modern person to understand. A saying we use in the museum field is "The past is a foreign country." Some days its like we don't even speak the language!

Gary

I think this is profound and very true.
Its even more difficult that a foreign country.

Dan

[northmn]

This sounds like the Northern Indians preferred, or were accustomed to, smoothbores with a single roundball. I imagine the Northerns would prefer rifles if they could get them.

Mention has been made that NWTG's found in the Rainy River (A little North of me on the Canadian border) were usually loaded with shot.  When you look at the competition between the American company and the HBC and the economics of the fur trade, the Natives could have gotten what they wanted.  Rifles seemed to become popular for the Western trade where shots were a little longer.  Even so Russel talks about the natives using their fusees in his Journal.  In the wooded East a smoothbore may have been more versatile.  When you read the history of the NWTG you find that several unsuccessful attempts were made to cheapen them.  They were expected to work for their users.  Likely they used a lot of ball also as moose were more common back then.

DP

[flintriflesmith]

I think you have to keep in mind that this is a document about trade goods for the Ohio Company in the 1750s. Their definition of of a "Northern Indian" was probably in terms of those native people they were trading with.

Other records (I believe some are referenced in DeWitt Bailey's book on English rifles) say that the Shawnee --northern indians in terms of the Ohio Company's sphere-- did prefer rifles. And if I remember correctly the Indian trade regulations in SC, passed by traders out of Charleston, required the use of buckshot because they felt it did less damage to the hides. More holes but smaller and easier to repair I guess.

Gary

[rw]

I think you're wanting to see "iron mounted" there.  I can clearly see a comma after "best iron" (partially obscured by the big "J").  Besides, why would one gun be made of the best iron, and the other one "Best iron mounted"?

There are others who have seen the mark that resembles a comma as an ink blob on the bracket like the one at the lower end of it or on the bottom of the seven in the price. The writer was clearly having a problem with his quill at that point in the document.

As for the underscore after "best iron" on the second line--I tried to explain that underscores were used in account books to show where text had been left out. Ditto, abbreviated as Do was used the same way.

I have no dog in this fight and was merely trying to point out this document in relation to the mounts of the iron mounted rifle that were dug in an Indian site at about the same time.
Gary

I do appreciate your comments in relation to the iron mounted rifle recovered from the burial. I also appreciate your posting the photos of that document.

This reference to "best iron" may, indeed, be in reference to iron mounts, but, IMHO, the way it is worded can suggest either Best iron barrels or best iron mounts, depending on one's interpretation.

Personally, I dunno. I do wish the wording was less ambiguous.

God bless

I believe that the term is fairly unambiguous, just something important to clear understanding of it was left out of this discussion, that being the historical context of the phrase "best iron".  Just on the face of it, that phrase had to me the appearance of being a "buzz word" or standard phrase... a "term of art" specifically related to gunmaking, the meaning of which would have been clear to anyone with knowledge in the area at the time but which has since lost to us through technological change.  Indeed the technology of today in the form of Google makes short work of researching a matter such as a turn of phrase.  I found a number of uses of this term of art on the web, and the ones that I found that related to gunmaking almost all referred to gun BARREL making (one maker of note contracted with the U.S. government in February of 1800 to make the locks of his pistols of "best iron" ( http://www.archive.org/stream/simeonnorthfirst00nortrich/simeonnorthfirst00nortrich_djvu.txt ).  Now mind you I'm not saying that "best iron" was used only by gunmakers or that they used it only with barrels.... nor that the meaning of the term would have been absolutely identical to everone who used it, but it was a term widely applied specifically to gun barrels because of the obvious need for use of strongly made iron in a gun barrel and would have been a term that followed gun barrels from their makers, into trade channels... perhaps losing some specificity along the way, or not.  In that regard the best reference (see: http://www.wvculture.org/history/businessandindustry/harpersferryarmory05.html ) to "best iron" I found in a cursory review of historical literature, was the published testimony to a select committee of the U.S. Congress on 20 March 1854, of Colonel  Benjamin Moore, a man who had 19 years experience as the master-armorer at Harper's Ferry Arsenal... because Col Moore made clear in his testimony that this term of art had metallurgical complexities that would not necessarily be understood even by military men of some stature... he gave as a hypothetical the Secretary of War (Col. Moore was obviously not a man of nuanced political skill... either that or he had something in particular against Jefferson Davis who then served as U.S. Secretary of War). 

I can't claim to have found the earliest historical fountainhead of the use of the term of art "best iron".  My best guess would be that writings of this nature now published on the web dwindle considerably for dates before 1800... that and and writing itself was a lesser occupation the further back in time one goes.  But I have managed to follow it from its heyday into its use a term of disgust as technology advanced.  For instance, to William Greener in 1858 when properly used it was still a term of approval; but for W.W. Greener by 1888 it was more like a lingering bad taste.  For more insight, see:

1799 U.S. War Department correspondence: http://wardepartmentpapers.org/document.php?id=30370
   
A new and complete dictionary of arts and sciences: including the latest improvement and discovery and the present states of every branch of human knowledge, Volume 2, Collins & Co., article on "Gun-Smithery" 1819: http://books.google.com/books?id=CDlOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PT367&lpg=PT367&dq=guns+barrels+%22best+iron%22&source=bl&ots=AU15NixmBW&sig=eFxgG8naLceLoDkipGoIf9HxCQg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DkAHT6yhEoSCtgeN2tGfDw&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBTgy#v=onepage&q=guns%20barrels%20%22best%20iron%22&f=false
 
"Edinburgh Encyclopedia" by David Brewster, article "Gun Making" (1832): http://gluedideas.com/content-collection/edinburgh-encyclopedia/Gun-Making_P2.html
 
"Engineer's and Mechanic's Encyclopedia" by Luke Hebert (1835), article on "Gun": http://gluedideas.com/content-collection/engineers-and-mechanics-encyclopedia/Gun_P1.html

"Gunnery in 1858: being a treatise on rifles, cannon, and sporting arms" by William Greener:
http://www.archive.org/stream/gunneryin1858bei00greerich/gunneryin1858bei00greerich_djvu.txt

House of Commons Papers, Vol. 42, 1866: http://books.google.com/books?id=nw8TAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA132&lpg=PA132&dq=guns+barrels+%22best+iron%22&source=bl&ots=bUz62yjZ7g&sig=HZ--mmHeMdP5Tfo-EnJATYD3B9U&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jDcHT4O_L9LAtgeF2uzQBg&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBw#v=snippet&q=%22best%20iron%22&f=false

The American Cyclopaedia. Vol7, article "Fowling Piece", 1873: http://chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-V7/Fowling-Piece.html

MODERN SHOT GUNS, W.W. Greener 1888: http://www.archive.org/stream/modernshotguns00greeuoft/modernshotguns00greeuoft_djvu.txt

[Dphariss]

My thoughts on the "best iron" thing.
Gun barrels were often specified as "best iron" and for good reason. Many trade guns, for example, had very poor quality iron in the barrels.
Why best iron would be needed for a TG and BP or rod pipes I could not say.
So I begin to think that maybe they were not specifying the mountings after all.
Just a thought. I can't see mounts needing "best iron" which would have done nothing but increase the cost since best iron at the very least required significantly more labor to produce than common wrought iron.
But maybe it was a buzzword.

Dan

[Dphariss]

It's an aesthetic common today, but NOT 200+ years ago!  Many people say they admire "clean lines" and want their guns as absolutely devoid of decoration as much as possible (often, they even want them crude), and they try VERY hard to force this aesthetic into the 18th century, which was definitely not an era of minimalist decoration.  Often using phrases like "surely somebody did...", or "there MUST have been...".  

<snip>

I think this covers a great deal of the plain rifle argument very well.

The elaborate decoration of the 18th century gave way to a very plain and austere fashion by the late 18th, early 19th century, carving largely disappeared on furniture and firearms in Europe. It hung on longer here especially on rifles, but the elaborate decoration was considered vulgar by the people who had adopted the fashion sense of the Europeans. Thomas Jefferson was one of these, I believe referring to the ornamentation of the 18th century as vulgar or something similar.

As Stophel points out people today tend to adopt the 19th century opinion of carved gunstocks etc and then try to push this back into the mid 18th century to make this era match THEIR personal tastes. Or they simply want gun to shoot that resembles the proper time frame but do not want to spend the money on carving so they grope for an answer that lets them delete the carving that their modern fashion sense tells them is ugly and unnecessary.
It does not work this way. This is simply revisionist history.
If you are to have a HC 18th century firearm you are governed by the 18th not the 20th century fashion that might be convenient or more pleasing to the modern eye.

Dan