Smoothbore "rifles"

[frogwalking]

Spending an evening with Kendig's "Thoughts on the Kentucky Rifle in it's Golden Age", I was struck by the impression that many or most of the surviving examples of high quality flint rifles are smoothbore.  This is not just larger bores that could effectively fire shot, but also smaller ones.  It looks to me as if the legend of the American long rifle may be somewhat overstated. 

This may be an old and oft-repeated discussion, but I have not seen it lately.  Is there a consensus on this topic?


Frog

[rich pierce]

A rifle-built smoothbore is called a smooth rifle.  a larger bored gun with a round barrel is often called a buck and ball gun.  and fowling pieces have lighter barrels and a fowler style guard.

There is little consensus on what portion of longrifles that are now smooth were originally rifled because it is often difficult to ascertain whether barrels were originally rifled then bored out later.  There are clues.  If a gun has double set triggers it was probably a rifle.  If it has an octagon to round light barrel, probably a smoothie from the beginning.  No rear sight, a smoothie, but its rare to find one with no rear sight.  If it has a fowler style guard, it was likely a smoothie.  That's the easy diagnosis. 

Note that such smooth rifles are less common in the South and that certain schools of Pennsylvania rifles actually are now seldom rifles.  Show me a Bucks county gun with a rifled barrel.  They are rare even when still of small bore.  This and makers logbooks indicate that smooth rifles were not rare in certain areas.

It's helpful to keep this discussion separate from the discussion of the usefulness or efficiency of rifles versus smoothbores which is a tangential topic.

[Pete G.]

There is evidence (old advertisements in particular) that seem to indicate that a lot of rifles were bored out when they became worn and/or rusted beyond use. I suspect that some of the old time guys, like some today, were not necessarily "gun guys", and maintenance suffered, thus accelerating the process.

Still, there are some guns that seem to have been built that way from the start. My own limited smoothbore experience surprised me at the accuracy that can be delivered by a smoothbore at close range (30 to 40 yards). They don't stack the bullets into one hole like a rifle can, but it certainly can supply an acceptable hunting accuracy. We've all heard the story about the British muskets that were not accurate enough to hit a man @ 50 yards. I wonder if maybe that story was exaggerated a bit to encourage Americans, perhaps the other side of the coin that all American riflemen could hit a target the size of an orange at 200 yards.

[Acer Saccharum]

Probably a fair amount of tall tales on both sides.

If you were just ramming a paper cartridge down the bore, I can understand how you'd have fairly wild shooting.

[John A. Stein]

Yeah, Tom, especially if the guy facing you was doig the same thing and was trying to beat your time!

[Lucky R A]

     I have a friend who shoots a faithful Bucks Co. smooth rifle copy that has a 50 cal. smoothbore barrel made by Ed. Rayl to the dimensions of the original barrel.  He has practiced and experimented w/ loads, and he shoots that smoothie better than many rifle shooters whom he compeats against.  Last year at the annual turkey shoot he took a turkey shooting against rifles.  Don't underestimate the useful accuracy of a properly loaded smoothbore.   
      As you guys have stated an undersized ball in a paper cartridge in a musket trying for volume of fire is a different matter entirely...

[heinz]

To return to the first two posts by Frogwalking and Rich.  The "legend" of the American longrifle is largely based on its performance in the south during the later phases of the American Revolution, its use by southern, especially Virginia, troops, and its use on the over-mountain frontier.  In these instances the period observers felt the performance of the rifle gun and the shirt tail men was notable and mentioned it in their writing. 
I am still looking for a period comment on the outstanding performance of smooth rifles on the frontier as opposed to killing hogs in Pennsylvania.

[Don Getz]

Here is another thought.   In the 1700's, those guns that were owned by people in the backwoods were kept loaded.   This
means that they probably got very little cleaning.  Also, barrels made of wrought iron were soft and would probably wear
rather rapidly, freshing sticks seem to be rather common among collections.............Don

[Acer Saccharum]

I wish I could go back and ask a bunch of people.

[whitebear]

I wish I could go back and ask a bunch of people.

Wouldn't it be great if we could all go back and ask the old makers how, why,
where, when, and a bunch of other stuff.

[BIGMAN]

Interesting historical note form a book I am reading, Sons of the Mountains, about shooting competitions held in 1759 at Fort Ligonier in Western Pennsylvania between soldiers during the French and Indian War. There were teams from the different contingents there. The 77th Highlanders, 60th Royal Americans, and Pennsylvanians. It notes the shooters from Pennsylvanian did not all have rifles, including many of their best shots.