Author Topic: Gun makers in the day  (Read 773 times)

Offline A Scanlan

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Gun makers in the day
« on: April 17, 2025, 03:33:43 PM »
Just wondering ....

If a maker in 1830 were to have made 75 rifle per year, how many "employees" would they have had working in that effort??

Offline rich pierce

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Re: Gun makers in the day
« Reply #1 on: April 17, 2025, 03:36:01 PM »
1 is my guess. By this time, there were a lot of plain rifles being built with readily available parts. Give each gunstocker 2 weeks per rifle.
Andover, Vermont

Offline A Scanlan

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Re: Gun makers in the day
« Reply #2 on: April 17, 2025, 03:42:11 PM »
Just looked at my notes.  The year should have been stated as 1820.  It was so reported in the census of 1820 that he made "75 rifles per year"

Offline AZshot

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Re: Gun makers in the day
« Reply #3 on: April 17, 2025, 04:10:01 PM »
That seems like a high throughput for one person.  I'd guess at times he'd have help with some tasks, like rifling.  Many gunsmiths I've read about had an apprentice, or started themselves as one. So that's 2 people.  Maybe another helper came in every fall and helped cut stock blanks.  Another came once a week and helped forge, etc.

I know my family was from Mills River and the family lore was that some of them "helped make rifles."  They were married into the Gillespie family, and several are buried in the Sitton-Gillespie cemetary with them from the early 1800s through the Civil War. Several were timber cutters.  I just imagine one man would have a hard time completing a rifle every 5 days week in and week out, without help.

Offline A Scanlan

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Re: Gun makers in the day
« Reply #4 on: April 17, 2025, 04:22:14 PM »
I'm finding it hard to envision a one or two man operation regardless of what components may have been commercially available.  And it was not a population center with ready access to a hardware store.   

Offline JV Puleo

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Re: Gun makers in the day
« Reply #5 on: April 17, 2025, 06:32:19 PM »
This is only a "related" answer but the late DeWitt Bailey related to me that during the Seven Years War (what Americans refer to the as the F&I War) the British Ordnance suffered a severe shortage of long land pattern muskets. To deal this they brought in outworkers, mostly cabinet makers and the like to do the stocking. It must be remembered that the listed "makers" nearly always had helpers who are not mentioned in the records but, even with that, they averaged stocking 2-1/2 muskets per day. I think we largely underestimate how much a skilled person equipped with a variety of specialized tools and making a relatively uniform product could do. Now, those stockers weren't making any of the parts aside from the stock but that could also be said for the vast majority of American gunmakers...they weren't making locks, nor in many cases were they making barrels despite what is generally thought. All of those things were the products of specialized makers. Very few, if any, were making the mounts, except, perhaps in very remote areas so what they were doing was largely what those British stockers were doing, assembling the parts into a finished product.

I'm not suggesting they could make a rifle per day...but I am suggesting that the process was probably much faster than we think when we base our estimates on how long it takes a modern maker, who is essentially an artist, to assemble a gun. 18th and early 19th century gunmakers were often artistic but they were, essentially, skilled tradesmen whose livelihood depended on producing as many products as they could.

Offline Angus

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Re: Gun makers in the day
« Reply #6 on: April 17, 2025, 09:17:14 PM »
I guessing they weren’t taking coffee breaks and scrolling through twitter for giggles.
I know a guy in his younger days that was making a rifle in a week and worked a full time day job.

Offline Mike blair

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Re: Gun makers in the day
« Reply #7 on: April 18, 2025, 02:55:26 AM »
I think with modern tools and an experts knowledge, a rifle a week (or maybe slightly longer) isn't out of the question. I think most of us use tools common to the Era of our rifles, so a rifle a week is not really possible. I could be wrong however.

Offline Pukka Bundook

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Re: Gun makers in the day
« Reply #8 on: April 18, 2025, 04:03:06 PM »
Joe P,

Good to hear from you and you are right in the money!

All the best,
Richard.

Offline Jim Kibler

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Re: Gun makers in the day
« Reply #9 on: April 20, 2025, 11:11:45 PM »
One gun every two weeks or perhaps a little faster.  A rifle a week could be possible, but not over a long period of time.

Offline alacran

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Re: Gun makers in the day
« Reply #10 on: April 21, 2025, 02:28:14 PM »
Cornell Kemper, Marvin's dad made 3200 rifles in his 47-year career. His first few years he was mostly restocking old guns.
Even so that works out to 68 rifles a year. He is said to have finished three guns a week.
If you think about it just maintaining inventory to make that many guns would be a shore.
Which leads me to wonder just how a gunsmith would be able to maintain inventory to build that many rifles in a year.
Wallace Gussler noted in a lecture, that a variety of rifles he had inspected all had the same identical rear sights. I believe the point he was trying to make, is that were traveling salesmen that catered to the gun trade.
Local timber cutters could keep him in wood. Remington was mass producing barrels by 1820.
Other barrels were available from Europe. All the other parts were available by then.
Probably one Smith and one or two apprentices could easily get 75 rifles out a year.
A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.  Frederick Douglass

Offline Bob Roller

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Re: Gun makers in the day
« Reply #11 on: April 21, 2025, 07:05:33 PM »
I know for a fact that Bill Large could start on a new scratch built gun at 8AM and by 5 PM it was ready to test.He did have the advantage of electricity and machines.Bill gave me the first barrel he made when he got the big shop   running.It was 33 inches across the flats and 58 caliber threaded for a 3/4x16 breech plug.I made a breech plug with a bolster and a simple lock that was bar in wood and full cock only and P.I.Spence style mechanism and a single set trigger that had to be set before the lock was cocked.Black walnut half stock and I sawed the profile in the wood work shop at Huntington High School.5 days later it was ready and the range test proved it was a good rifle and a week later I loaned it to a friend and he set an offhand record with it.When Bill gave me that barrel he had no idea if it was worth a dime or a dollar.I won a turkey with it at Friendship.The barrel,the building of the gun and the match winning was all in the year 1958 and I sold the gun in late 1961 along with some others.I heard later that the gun I made was used by a man who would float down a creek in a boat and poach deer with it and it was left in an open boat and ruined by a heavy rain.Tweedle Dee the Wonder Dummy was alive and well back then.

Bob Roller

Offline whetrock

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Re: Gun makers in the day
« Reply #12 on: April 21, 2025, 08:12:15 PM »
This topic reminds me of a thread years ago which just asked how long it took people to build a gun. One commented a number of days, another commented a week. Gary Brumfield replied with something like, "You guys are a lot faster than I am. It takes me an hour just to file out a screw!"