rifles versus smoothbores

[dannybb55]

I live out in the country and the security piece in the closet is my SMLE. No one is going to break in by walking and without a radiator or a block, they can't make a get away. .
        James Levy needs to jump in on this one, the archaeological record is a better indicator of what was used than any other, unless some maroon put a housing development on top of a trading post site.
 

[rich pierce]

Danny, it would be great to hear from James Levy.  This has been an intersting and informative discussion- let's all try to keep it as longrifle-oriented as possible.  Nothing wrong with discussing home defense in the longrifle context.  It might go like, "Sure wish I hadn't taken my old rifle to Reedy to have him ream it smooth" or whatever.  Smooth rifle versus real rifle, is longrifle talk, and that's what we try to be about.

[bob in the woods]

Danny, they usually do walk in....after parking down the road a ways.  My dog let me know they were around my vehicle !
Back to the period- you would be hard pressed  to find an area open enough here to take advantage of the increased range of a rifle. That is why my smoothbore accounts for about 90% of my hunting .

[Pete G.]

So what are the thoughts on a "Smooth Rifle"? I have never been able to figure that one out, other than boring a rusted neglected rifle barrel, but apparently some were built that way to start with. Seems to me that you are getting the disadvantages of both types with the advantages of neither. Am I missing something here ? I thought about building one because guys that like smoothies seem to really like them. Before I made that commitment I decided to build one of Jim Chambers fowling pieces to get some smooth bore experience. So far the experience shows that wingshooting with a long barrel flintlock is nowhere nearly equated with a modern shotgun; in fact in my hands I might just as well be shooting a rifle, or for that matter a blank charge. Small game and sitting birds are probably the norm for 18th century hunting. I found a patched round ball to be surprisingly accurate out to about 50 yards. Shooting to point of aim with no rear sight is a different matter however.


Incidentally someone mentioned a ratio of battlefield pickups. Those are the guns of the losers of the fight, so using that ratio a rifle is about four times more effective.

Incidentally, seems like this discussion is less about building and more about shooting.

[Dphariss]

I live out in the country and the security piece in the closet is my SMLE. No one is going to break in by walking and without a radiator or a block, they can't make a get away. .
        James Levy needs to jump in on this one, the archaeological record is a better indicator of what was used than any other, unless some maroon put a housing development on top of a trading post site.
 

If we go with the archaeological record there were no rifles.
This is addressed in "Frontier Guns" by Hamiliton. While there is ample WRITTEN documentation, the archaeological record is virtually blank. Apparently the rifle was not considered a throw away item as was the trade gun. So the parts were kept and traded or rebuilt.
An example of this occurring in the west is described in  "Firearms of the American West 1803-1865" by Garavaglia and Worman.
A broken rifle was obtained from the Blackfeet, it was taken to Bents Fort, restocked and used as a match rifle for several years. Then it was traded to another man who eventually took it to a gunsmith in St Louis and had it made into a 1/2 stock and then carried it during all his travels in the west. It was nicknamed "Old Blackfoot".
While 19th century account I believe its valid for the 18th as well.

Dan

[Dphariss]

So what are the thoughts on a "Smooth Rifle"?

There are rifle stocked smoothbores described back the the 1750s that I know of.
But in the 19th century attempts to sell smoothrifles to the American Fur Company  were rebuffed because the natives would not "carry a smoothbore of this weight" if they could get a trade gun.
It puzzles me as well but they do exist. Its nonsensical to me. I think the later ones were as much fashion statement as anything else at least the ones like the JP Beck smooth rifle in the Museum at Cody and others that are full blown longrifles with all the bells and whistles one would expect but smooth. Now its POSSIBLE, perhaps even likely, they were bored at a later date but this is for someone else to decide. Some like the A. Verner rifle were surely bored at some later date. But there is no proof of this either but Verner did describe it as a rifle on the patchbox .
I see the upper grade rifles to have been ordered by people who wanted a gun with all the  fancy stuff but did not want to pay for something they were not going to use, rifling. BTW from the looks of the Beck in Cody it has seen little use.
The "too fancy to use" argument does not wash since there are very expensive guns that were obviously heavily used.
Dan

[Captchee]

 The way I see it , using battlefield pick ups , is relative to the use of the weapon and then numbers being fielded . So say one was 4X more  useful then another  based on those pickups  completely disregards not only the tactics of the day but also the  battle environment of the day..
 I also think that archeological  evaluation my put the rifled bore  in a catch 22 . Just as much as  refurbished documentation does .
 Possibly the reason for this is that  it discounts the value aspect.
 Basically if rifle were as plentiful and easily obtained  then there is less of a reason to hold onto them . But the fewer and more costly  the item is to replace . The more these things get held onto  and re used .

so IMO i dont think we can use eather exsample as proof of anything past  quantity and avalability  of a given system

As to the no rear  reference on a smoothbore .. that’s a myth .
 Some type of rear reference is always use even when there isn’t a  fixed rear sight .
 The idea of smoothbore not carrying rear sight is also a propagated myth .
 Its not very hard to find period examples of smoothbores with rear sights . Even a lot of those that first appear to not have rear sights , show signs of once have them .

Also when we  look to what the re-enacting  communality supports, we s need to realize that not only are they supporting documentation but also Commonality.
So while  the case can very well be made that a rifle could have been owned by say a farmer ,  the re-enactor is expected to justify that equipment with  period reasoning  or stick with the accepted commonality.
 Kind of like the  issue with swords  in the later half of the 19th century .
Would any of us accept a re-enactor showing up to an event packing a Japanese  sword ?
  I would say no . but the fact is  that  photographs   show such swords in at least 1 documented case  among americium Indian people very late in the 19th century  in Canada . So while that particular weapon can be documented , its doesn’t fit the commonality and isn’t accepted .

[Captchee]

 Another aspect of  the smooth rifle I have often wondered on Dan .
Could some of these actually been  more of a planned rouge .
 Make the enemy think you have more rifles the you truly have ?
 Just a thought

[T*O*F]

The idea of smoothbore not carrying rear sight is also a propagated myth .
 Its not very hard to find period examples of smoothbores with rear sights

How true this is!!  The Museum of the Fur Trade has one of the largest and most complete collections of fur trade era smoothbores.  I personally observed that well over 50% of them had rear sights of some type and I was specifically looking for this feature when I visited there.

[Daryl]

The idea of smoothbore not carrying rear sight is also a propagated myth .
 Its not very hard to find period examples of smoothbores with rear sights

How true this is!!  The Museum of the Fur Trade has one of the largest and most complete collections of fur trade era smoothbores.  I personally observed that well over 50% of them had rear sights of some type and I was specifically looking for this feature when I visited there.

Firearms of the American West book shows several 'orders' reprinted, by explorers and/or 'Gun Shops' in St. Louis for Smooth Rifles along with rifles and smoothbores in the earlier periods of 1805 to 1865 book.

[Dphariss]

There is/was a cut down trade gun, butt and barrel both greatly shortened, that while it has no front sight still has its chisel erupted rear sight.
The MT Historical Society has trade guns on display in Helena and  the majority 2/3 or so IIRC, have rear sights. Either the erupted style or dovetailed in.
While these are not smooth rifles in the strict sense they were obviously used with ball.

Dan

[blunderbuss]

Perhaps the cut down barrels on the trade guns had a front sight at one time before being cut down. I think location has allot to do with smooth bores being used meaning I have a shot gun I hunt deer with I added a rear sight and sighted the left barrel for ball, where I hunt it would do as well as a rifle the ranges being not over 60 yards. OK now suppose I only had one gun and was forced to go to war I'd have to take my smooth bore if that's all I had. If it were that much of a handicap in war I would leave it on the field and exchange it for a battle field rifle if possible. Southerners did that allot in the beginning of the War between the states,leaving allot of smoothbores on the field.
For what it's worth there is a musket in the San Jacinto museum  looks like a Bess sort of ( I don't know alot about muskets) lock is marked Dublin It has a rear sight.

[Dphariss]

Perhaps the cut down barrels on the trade guns had a front sight at one time before being cut down. I think location has allot to do with smooth bores being used meaning I have a shot gun I hunt deer with I added a rear sight and sighted the left barrel for ball, where I hunt it would do as well as a rifle the ranges being not over 60 yards. OK now suppose I only had one gun and was forced to go to war I'd have to take my smooth bore if that's all I had. If it were that much of a handicap in war I would leave it on the field and exchange it for a battle field rifle if possible. Southerners did that allot in the beginning of the War between the states,leaving allot of smoothbores on the field.
For what it's worth there is a musket in the San Jacinto museum  looks like a Bess sort of ( I don't know alot about muskets) lock is marked Dublin It has a rear sight.

This one was obviously cut down for horseback use? All had front sights when made but if cut down to be used at a range of feet sights are superfluous.  Western natives often viewed firearms as magical and sights may not have been considered important.

Dan

[SPG]

Gentlemen,

Some interesting passages attributed to the mountaineer John Smith in 'The Old Santa Fe Trail' by Colonel Henry Inman.

On the occasion of four white trappers coming to the aid of a Mexican bull-train attacked by sixty Pawnees-

"Their guns warn't much 'count, being only old English muskets what had come from the Hudson Bay Fur Company, so they didn't do no harm that round, except to scare the Mexicans...

On the occasion of a quail landing on the barrel of his rifle before an Indian attack-

"You see, boys, if I'd a-fired into that cow, the devils would a had me before I could a got a patch on my ball; didn't have no breech loaders in them days, and it took as much judgement to know how to load a rifle properly as it did to shoot it."

On the subject of marksmanship-

"We didn't shoot reckless in those days, every shot had to tell, or a man was the laughing-stock for a month if he missed his game."

I realize that these comments made about adventures in the 1840's may be too late to be germane to this discussion, but they are somewhat interesting in regards to the topic of "rifles versus smoothbores". In the case of the Pawnee attack on the bull-train Smith and his three companions fended off sixty warriors, killing four outright on the first charge. Smith said that the Mexicans weapons "weren't much better than bows and arrows" and that the trapper's rifles kept the Indians at a safe distance. Given the old-timers inclination to "guild the lily" let's cut the number of Indians in half. It is still interesting to contemplate... 

Steve

[smylee grouch]

Bill Hamilton writes pretty much the same thing about how rifles kept most of the enemys at bay in northern Montana in 1860. He claimes most of the old trappers with him had Hawken guns. They were traviling along with the Gros Ventres and had to fight there way through several different enemy tribes of the Gros Ventres.     Smylee

[Ben I. Voss]

Here is an excerpt from an old book that seems pertinent:

            from "A Treatise on the Rifle, Musket, Pistol, and Fowling-Piece"
                         by N. Bosworth, civil and military engineer
                                   published in New York 1846

 
      "Ball-practice with musket, and guns not rifled.
  At the beginning of my practice in sharp-shooting,I had formed an opinion from what I knew, or thought I knew- that a perfect smooth-bored gun, with a perfect ball, would shoot as well as a rifle; and that the superiority of the rifle consisted mainly in the higher degree of finish and attention bestowed upon it.determined, however, to bring the matter to the test of experiment, I ordered a gun to be made with great care; the barrel to be four feet long,of half-once calibre; the gun to be every way finished as a rifle, except that it was to be left a smooth-bored barrel. With this gun, under best possible circumstances of a rest, I made ten shots at a block, forty yards distant, with a medium charge of powder.A circle was then drawn just to inscribe the balls, and from the centre of this circle,each ball being measured, they formed an aggregate of thirty-five inches, or an average of 3 5/10 inches.
  Disappointed, and somewhat mortified at the result, I returned immediately to the gun-smith (who enjoyed a hearty laugh at my expense), to have the gun completed as a rifle.
  "Stay a couple of hours," said he, "and you can take the gun along with you." The gun was finished, and when he put it into my hands, he said: "Now,I want you to go and shoot in the same place, with the same charge of powder- aiming exactly as you did before; don't mind where the balls go- make ten deliberate shots, and then look at the results."
  I did so, and was greatly astonished to find but one hole in the block! The balls had followed each other in nearly the same track, enlarging the hole perhaps a little at each fire, to about an inch across at the greatest diameter. They had, however, glaced into one common centre, each welding itself to those that had gone before, and I cut from the block the ten balls, consolidated into one single mass of lead.
  The result was conclusive; the naked undissembled fact, of the superiority of the rifle, stood before me in silent triumph; and I began anew to study the cause of so great a difference in the same gun, where nothing had been added-- where nothing that remained had been changed, and where even a part had been taken away!"

The author took a scientific approach to guns and came up with a lot of interesting conclusions for his day. A very interesting book, if it can be found.

 Ben

[SPG]

Great post, Mr. Voss...I, too, am going to have to find a copy...

Steve

[Daryl]

Excellent post and documentation.  That fellow was not only a good shot but came away from his experiment a wiser man.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

Well fine, but I still have to find out for myself.  So I'm going to make a "JP Beck" smooth rifle like the one in the ALR  'museum' around a 50 1/2" .50 cal. smooth bored Getz barrel.  I do not expect rifle accuracy, but I'd like to be able to brag a better result @ 40 yards, than the one above.  We'll see.

[Kermit]

Hmmmm. Bosworth, 1846: "Fowling-Piece."

So how come, Santy Claus, do all these folks otherwise concerned with PC/HC-ness to the point of clothing, bags, footwear, knives, horns, no short starters, etc., etc., insist on calling these smoothbores "FOWLERS???"

Fowling piece. A fowler hunts fowl with a fowling piece.

I await persuasion by convincing documentation that they are "fowlers." Anybody?

And: "guns not rifled." Not smoothrifles. Interesting.

[Daryl]

Not sure what you mean Kermit- are you saying they were called "guns not rifled".  The documentation I have which is only one book, but lists original orders to some Eastern gun makers for rifles and smooth rifles in the same order. Friend Ron has borrowed and is reading that book right now. there is at least one reprinted gun "order" that lists "smooth rifles" almongst the other guns ordered, rifles and smoothbores along with common muskets.

edited the word fowlers - must have said smoothbores, memories being what they are - might have been "flowing guns" - I'll see when I get the book back.

[George Sutton]

In Merrill Lindsay's book "The New England Gun" he states "The earliest New England guns were long fowlers, buck-and-ball guns, or muskets." He states that both English and French guns were the inspiration for the New England gun.

He goes on to say in his chapter on "New England Rifles" "The Pennsylvanian's were by nature and inheritance rifle shots. If they went bird shooting they tried to shoot the head off a turkey with a single ball. In New England, the Yankees were more conservative. Rather than take a chance of missing the bird with a single ball, they loaded their guns with birdshot and aimed thataway as the buck and ball guns had either no rear sight or a rudimentary groove in the breechblock".

"Only when the Colonies were united did the New Englanders have a chance to observe the advantages of the Kentucky rifle. A Virginia company of riflemen showed what they could do in skirmishes with the British at Charlestown Neck in 1775. The British were overly impressed with the range and accuracy of the American rifles, especially when snipers armed with rifles started picking line officers off their horses. "

"When the Revolutionary War ended there were only a few rifles and no rifle companies in New England." However by the end of the 18th century there was a large manufactory of sporting, Militia, and target rifles centered around the Worcester-Sutton area.

The battle and skirmishes in and around Lexington - Concord were all fought with smoothbores as were all the early battles with the New England Indians.

Also remember that at the beginning of the American Civil War, AKA The War of Yankee Aggression, thousands of soldiers on both sides marched to battle with smoothbore muskets taken from local armories. It was during the Civil War that the rifle really became of age.

It is my belief that a large number of pioneers headed west unarmed because they could not afford guns (a cow or a gun??) and relied on those they traveled with for protection.

Was it John Colter or Manual Lisa that carried a Brown Bess on his Indian Trading expedition up the Missouri river to Montana in the early 1800's?

Centershot

[James Rogers]

Hmmmm. Bosworth, 1846: "Fowling-Piece."

So how come, Santy Claus, do all these folks otherwise concerned with PC/HC-ness to the point of clothing, bags, footwear, knives, horns, no short starters, etc., etc., insist on calling these smoothbores "FOWLERS???"

Fowling piece. A fowler hunts fowl with a fowling piece.

I await persuasion by convincing documentation that they are "fowlers." Anybody?

And: "guns not rifled." Not smoothrifles. Interesting.

Fowling piece is the gun. Fowler is the one hunting fowl.
One of the London gunsmiths was located at the "sign of the fowler". Due to no records yet showing fowler to mean the gun, it must have been a depiction of a hunter somewhat like my icon below which is also from the 18th century.

Smooth rifles is a period term.

[Daryl]

I'll check it out the fowler/smoothbore orders which included rifles and smooth rifles when I get the book back.  The moniker Fowler meaning man who hunts fowl, sounds more British to me than American - it will be interesting.  I'd thought I remembered them were calling the guns "fowlers" in the quoted order. I am assuming it was accurately copied.

[Kermit]

Fowler vs. fowling piece. Just saying that if one is concerned enough to not "educate" the public wearing "period" clothing and Nikes, why refer to them as "fowlers" while engaging in an 18th century persona? I just haven't seen any documentation of the term "fowler" applied to the gun. I'm willing to change my feelings on this, but haven't seen the research.

Smooth rifle, just fine. I just found the words "guns not rifled" to be curious. Hadn't seen that before.

And I use the terms shimmel, barn gun, and poorboy without documentation, so mea culpa, I reckon.

I could ask whether it's a hammer or a cock, but I won't. Fun, isn't it?