Fur trade and military production techniques.

[northmn]

We started to drift off on a thread about exageration and barrel bedding and started getting into historical issues.  I find them very interesting.  Questions.  Brown Bess muskets were produced in very large quantities.  I do know that the English had stockers, barrel makes and lock smiths working individually.  To turn out the vast number of similar weapons they had to have had more advanced production techniques.  They were even shipping locks and barrels to the colonies.  Our military also had a large number of guns built as did the fur trade.  Eli Whitney gained fame for his "interchangeable parts" for gun locks (I have heard they were not exactly pop in parts).  Actually he did not invent that concept, he was a proponent of it.  Invention is given credit to a Frenchman, Jean Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval.   He had an order for 15,000 muskets to be made in 2 years for the US government form 1798 to 1800.  He is also credited for inventing the milling machine or being one of others involved in its invention. Considering that he died in 1825 I feel that the custom gun shops were taking a beating at this time due to this type of influence.

DP

[smart dog]

Hi David,
I think Blackmore, Bailey, Neal, and Back have written extensively about some of the pieces of the puzzle you described. There probably are a number of folks on this board who are better prepared to discuss this with you than I am but I'll give it a go. I think 3 factors are very important, the Tower armoury, the London Gunmakers guild, and the fact that most successful gunmakers made their fortunes filling military contracts. I think very few gunmakers only catered to local civilian customers. Most either built military guns or filled contracts for the East India Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, or export.  The military gun trade was well organized by the Tower.  It was also organized and aided by the gunmakers guild.  The gunmakers guild helped to organize the piece workers and gunmakers to fill contracts, the Tower bought the completed guns or parts that were assembled in the Tower armouries. There were a lot of gunmakers in England, which also helped supply. There were inevitable tensions among all players about prices, supply, and demand, but I think overall it was a pretty efficient system.  Also keep in mind that technology didn't change very much during the 18th century so the Tower would assemble guns from old parts that they saved from previous orders. I am sure that helped production considerably.  I guess you could think of it as a decentralized factory system organized by a lot of tightly controlled middlemen. As far as iron and steel go, the British government probably purchased a lot from Sweden and Germany.  Remember, the king had very strong ties with parts of Germany. They also were gathering resources from throughout the world as their empire grew. The use of patterns, pattern pieces (examples of firearms made to specifications and supplied to contractors) and standardized jigs helped to standardize components and firearms making production easier (but not capable of truly interchangeable parts). Anyway, that is my take on  your question, a very good question indeed.

dave

[northmn]

I have been rereading parts of Baily's book British Military Longarms 1715-1815 and have found a general discription of method with contractors being Barrelmakers, Lockmakers, small parts makers (screws pins and triggers) and the furniture makers (brass foundrys). Everything was sent in the rough to the Tower to be finsihed off.  They had rough stockers and finish upers.  In 1715 the British military wanted standardized weapons.   To get an idea on volume, the India pattern alone, 1793 to 1815 had up to 3 million weapons manufactured.  A cheaper cruder model but it still went bang and all of the recognized Golden age makers like M Fordney, Beyers etc combined could not have produced that volume in that time frame.
By 1800 the small shop crafstman must of had a limited customer base, which explains why some went into farming. In America another valuable trade was that of the fur trade. Here again standardization was desired and the small craftsmen were not able to meet production needs. Many NWTG were imported and the Natives liked the English made guns the best.  Derringer was one who was able to tap into both the fur trade and the market for plainer guns.  Ther were others.  Hansen mentioned in his book on Trade Rifles that they had both a Native and white market. 
A story was told about Whitney that the military was used to a few guns dribbling in at a time and was wondering what he was up to.  He set up and manufactured all the parts and also had an assembly system predating Ford in which the military received their orders in much larger volumes when they got them.  He was late in delivery by a couple of years. (It may or may not be true) This was the Harpers Ferry rifle.  Look at one and I suggest you will see the adaptions of a more modern manufacturing technique.  The Trade rifles were more traditional for the times but still had standardized parts.

DP

[Ionian]

Were the British gun makers advanced enough to have made interchangeable parts for the Baker? I only ask because the rifle came into use in the beginning of the 19th. century and served the crown for over 3 decades.

[smart dog]

Hi Ionian,
The answer is no.  I don't think the Brits ever achieved truly interchangeable parts until they persuaded James Burton to leave Harpers Ferry in the 1850's and work for the British ordinance system. He supervised the almost complete makeover of the British small arms manufacturing system and introduced machinery and systems modeled on those developed at Harpers Ferry, Springfield, and Colt. As late as the early 1850's, British small arms were the products of many small-scale gunmakers (actually cottege shops) organized by the guilds and the Tower.

dave   

[northmn]

They claimed that Whitney's guns were loosely defined as using interchangeable parts.  The Standardization the British wanted was mostly that of gauge and looks.  Big advantage to using the same gauge of firearm, but ball at that time was claimed to be rather loosely fit as bore dimensions likely varied somewhat.  Whether a barrel from one Bess could be placed for a good fit into another is questionable.  Even today I ordered a frizzen for a L&R Lock I had to rebuild.  It came as cast and required fitting to the plate.  I had to drill the hole for the frizzen screw.  Amusing that an American had to teach the Brits how to build guns.  I misspelled Deringer with 2 r's, which was a common way of copy back then, could not remember the spelling.  J. Henry. Tryon and Leman were others that supplied the fur trade with look alike guns.

DP

[northmn]

Been doing a little more research.  I think Whitney may have been involved in the "contract rifles" for the Harpers Ferry arsenal possibly predating the familiar 1803.   The sources indicate Harpers Ferry built their own.  In 1822 Blanchard developed the "stockmaking lathe" for Springfield armory .   I have a book on Remington rifles.  E. Remington got into the gunmaking business in 1816.  They show several "Kentucky rifles" but the flintlock they show built by Remington is a very plain half stock flintlock with a poured combination nosecap ramrod entry, which I have always associated with the later percussion trade guns.  It would make a nice quick build hunting rifle (I do not like the nasty crescent buttplate) for someone wanting to copy it.  Indications are that Remington "tooled up" for gun building.  Later mention was made of 200 employees before the Civil War.  These may be the regular man's guns that many of us suspect existed.  Remington supposedly got his start building a gun to take to a beef shoot.  Another point reading that history is that I suspect many of the more elaborate long rifles were built for that type of activity as a show piece.

DP

[Elnathan]

Northmn,
I don't know what rifle you are looking at, but I believe that for a while Remington was showing around a flintlock rifle representative of the first made by Mr. Remington in 1816. Problem is, it is a 1840s percussion converted to flintlock with the help of some wood putty, and is otherwise a typical mass-produced rifle from the 1840s.
William B Edwards discusses this rifle in Civil War guns : the complete story of Federal and Confederate small arms. It has been a long time since I read that book, but I believe that he hypothesizes that Remington's early output was probably barrels only, and that manufacture of complete firearms came several decades later.

[northmn]

It is very possible that the rifle pictured in the booklet was about an 1840 vintage as it followed that pattern, especially in the buttplate.  I also do not know what Remington produced early on, only that that booklet implied gunmaking.  The book was a Remington book. Others may have done more study.  Hansen, in his sketch book on Trade Rifles dates Deringers as starting in 1809, and Wheelers in 1793 (could have been a little later, but in the 1790's, going by memory).  there was also an early Lancaster pattern that was traded.  His claim was that these were the more inexpensive guns of the day, produced through machine tools and water power.  Barrels were generally straight or tapered.  By 1820 or a little later the trade guns were being produced at a higher level. 
Personally I could postulate that the early gunsmiths made a business of repairing and building of custom guns.  I used to think that they made more plain guns that did not survive, but now think that it is possible that their business was in custom guns (Hansen refers to this) as today.  Mention has been made of how many barrels were freshed by a particular gunsmith, which implies a proportion of repair work.  Also mentioned is made of steeling frizzens and other such tasks.  These were times when American wealth started increasing and a middle class was developing with more income.  What I would guess is that they did not make a lot of custom guns and the money was in the fancier ones as in today.  Were I to go to one of the pros on this thread and request that he build me a Lyman Great Plains Rifle and try to come close in price, I would likely be told to buy a LGPR.  If you came to me with that request I would do so also.

DP