Isaac Haines rifle- RCA no. 81

[willyr]

I hope this is the correct forum for this discussion, if it isn't please move it. I have been closely studying the Haines rifle and I have a question perhaps someone can answer. Does this particular rifle have a "swamped" barrel? I have photocopied and blown up the copies to approximately full size and I cannot see any taper and flare when laying a straight edge on the top barrel flat, and the line of the top flat appears to be parallel to the top line of the forestock. The previous rifle in RCA, no.80, has a visible "swamp", but I cannot see any on no. 81. An absolutely beautiful rifle, by the way.
Be Well,
Bill Ridout

[Don Getz]

I have never seen this rifle, and don't have the RCA books in front of me, but, since it is an original flintlock, I am sure it
has a swamped barrel.   It would be an extremely rare gun if it had a straight (not swamped) barrel on it.   It has a hand
forged barrel on it, and most of these were done in a swamped configuration.........Don

[willyr]

Don; If it is swamped, it has to be an extremely mild swamp. Shumway said that this rifle could date from the 1790's.
Bill

[Don Getz]

Willy.....take my word for it, it's swamped.    If you're going to copy that gun, use any of the available swamped barrels
on the market.    Check the size at the breech and buy a barrel that corresponds to that size and don't worry too much
about the forward dimensions, no one will criticize you for doing it............Don

[B Shipman]

By the 1790's swamps were often very little. Less than we see on barrels made today. Nevertheless as Don says, none will care. As an example, I have a Nicholas Hawk rifle with a swamp of .88 at the breech, .85 at the small, and .87 at the muzzle. Hard to tell the difference from a.875 straight barrel.

[willyr]

The thing is, I would care. I am sick and tired of all the generic Lancaster kits- some with iron furniture- being called "Isaac Haines" rifles. RCA no. 81 is a beautiful rifle, and if it is to be copied, it should be copied as closely as possible.
Cheers,
Bill Ridout

[rich pierce]

If you want a more gentle swamp, you could buy a D weight swamped barrel and grind and file the breech to waist taper and waist to muzzle taper back to C weight but keep the waist the same.

[JTR]

Willy, If you want to make a close copy, then go to it.

As for the barrel swamp, I don't have any info on that gun, but a 1790/1800 Dickert that I know of has a barrel 1.020" at the breech, .940 at the waist, and .980 at the muzzle. About 45" long and 52 Cal.

Another Dickert barrel measures .980 at the breech, .920 at the waist, and .950 at the muzzle. About 44" long, and 56 Cal.

John

[John Knaack]

Bill,
I checked out that rifle last night.  Hold the staight edge so that it covers the barrel, not above it.  You will be able to see the swamp a little better.  I calculated .0625" of swamp.  It is tough to see on a print that small but, it is swamped.
Regards,
John

[willyr]

Thank all of you for your response. 1/16" inch isn't much swamp on a long barrel.
Rich, I think it might be easier to file a slight swamp on a straight barrel, but I'm not sure I'm up to that. Might just stick to my southern rifles with straight barrels.
Bill

[Lucky R A]

Unless you are in a really big hury, you can have any of a number of custom barrel makers build you a barrel with minimal swamp, absolutely as P.C. as you want.   

[stuart cee dub]

This may be a silly question but if one is hand forging a barrel would it not actually be more difficult to make a straight barrel ?

It seems to me that the tendency in when hand working anything is to work the middle part of the work rather than the ends especially when hammering something ,One would tend to grip the ends and work the middle.
 
Very slightly swamped might be a straight sided as some one is going to produce in the 18th century without an extra level of effort to level , plane or to grind something flat and straight sided.Did the barrelmakers then have a really nice square and straight edge like I have hanging on my shop wall accurate to the thousandth bought on the cheap at a garage sale or was a taught string good enough and a trained eye?

Sure we have surface grinders now but what kind of profile is more likely to be made if one were using a giant sized circular grinding  wheel to clean up some of the hammer work ?

Maybe we have the whole swamped vs straight barrel all backwards as we think l like 21st century post- industrialist rather than 18th century  pre-industrialists
Getting 20th century milling machinery to duplicate a hand forged swamped takes a bit more figuring and is a bit more costly . Just thinking out loud here.

So anyway maybe a real straight barrel in Haines time just isn't that  likely.

[Mark Elliott]

Thank all of you for your response. 1/16" inch isn't much swamp on a long barrel.
Rich, I think it might be easier to file a slight swamp on a straight barrel, but I'm not sure I'm up to that. Might just stick to my southern rifles with straight barrels.
Bill

Bill,

Southern rifles do not necessarily have straight barrels.  If the barrels are hand forged, they are going to have a slight swamp to them.   18th century southern rifles are going to have about the same swamp as a PA rifle.   When you get into the 19th century, you had less swamp, but it was still there in the hand forged barrels.  You didn't get true straight barrels until they came from a factory where they were ground by a machine.   I have a 1820-30 original flint E. Tenn/S.W. VA rifle on my wall that might look straight at a distance, but if you look at the last 12", you will see a flair.  It currently measures .855 at the breech, .84 at the waist, and .86 at the muzzle.   I just measured it.  It has had about 3" cut off the breech over its service life. It was probably originally .86 at the breech.   Granted, it isn't much, but it is swamped.   Now, I would use a straight barrel to build a similar one only because it would be so much trouble to have such a barrel custom made.   

I do use swamped barrels for all my early VA rifles as the originals were swamped.  The 1775-1785 Augusta/Rockbridge VA rifle that I completed last year is based on an original rifle that has a barrel measuring 1 1/16" at the breech, 13/16" at the waist, and 15/16" at the muzzle.  I think that is a fairly significant swamp and it is most definitely a southern rifle. 

Mark E.

 

[WElliott]

To affirm Mark's point, I sampled a number of original Southern rifles and every one has some variance in the barrel diameter. The earlier rifles tend to have swamped barrels, and the later rifles sometimes have more of a taper.  But none that I sampled had straight barrels.