Was making the parts for an accurate rifle (say a Kentucky long rifle) beyond the skills of a talented village blacksmith in the 1700’s or early 1800’s. Don’t you need a lathe and precision machining equipment (of some kind) to do this especially for the barrel and little bitty parts?
You’re right, a good lathe would be required to acurately bore out the gun and then cut the rifling grooves. That isn’t something a local blacksmith is likely to have. The lathe would also need power so a water wheel (or, later on, a steam engine) would be needed, again not something most smithys would have. As for the “little bitty parts”, guns of that era were muzzle loaders, they didn’t need much for small parts (firing pins, etc.). All they needed was a small hole to apply a fire or spark that would ignite the powder.
I thought the rifle was famous for its involvement in the American revolution?
According to Britannica rifled firearms are way older than the 18th century.
quote: “Rifled firearms date at least to the 15th century. As some of the earliest had straight rather than spiral grooves, it is thought the purpose may have been to receive the powder residue or fouling that was a problem with early firearms. Gunmakers soon discovered, however, that spiral grooves madebullets spin and that spinning improved their range and accuracy. The effect increased when spherical balls were superseded by somewhat elongated projectiles.”
However, I don’t think they were common until the times you mentioned. Rifles were used, by the British at least, in the Napoleonic Wars although smoothbore muskets were more common by far.
And village blacksmiths would probably have the skill but not the tools needed. I would suspect that the tools of the day would make a rather crude bore, rifling would be added and then the bore made smooth by lapping using a swab and abrasives.
Yes, but they were muzzle-loading rifles :). Rifle just means they have a rifled barrel.
- Tamerlane
Oops misread that. What was the basic difference between gunsmith and black smith back then, just those tools? Wouldn’t seem to be that hard to make.
You ask two questions:
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Could a blacksmith accomplish the job? Yes.
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How difficult – how much skill – needed to make a rifle from scratch?
From the era of the wheel lock, circa 1500??, gunsmiths were among the most highly skilled workers. They needed knowledge in metallurgy, blacksmithing, drafting, etc.
Power tools did not exist.
Denis Diderot’s Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry (1763) shows an illustration of a mandrel lathe, a machine designed to replicate screw threads similarly to the way early rifling machines duplicated rifling grooves. This device was foot powered.
The most important part in a RIFLED firearm of the muzzleloading era is the rifled barrel. This was made by two or three people working together. Barrel was made from three or more strips of metal – iron and steel. Some strips were hard and strong. Some were soft and tough.
Briefly, the strips were heated just below their plastic temperature. One or two men “fed” strips of metal to a smith who hammered the strips axially around a metal rod. The heating-and-beating forge welded the metal into one cylindrical tube.
The tube was placed in a horizontal wood machine (See Roberts, Ned, “The Muzzle Loading Cap Lock Rifle,” Appendix.) where a handmade cutting tool was pulled with great force many times until the tube was regular inside.
The same wood machine – it’s really a hand-powered lathe – then scraped grooves in a regular spiral axially inside the tube. A wood block indexed the metal scraper so it would scrape the spiral in a pattern axially around the inside of the tube – to yield several grooves rather than one groove.
Making locks was comparably time consuming, but the skill level apparerently was lower.
Because dimensional metrology – being able to accurately measure small dimensions – and the ability to reliably replicate items – “go-no go” gauges – did not exist, jigs and fixtures to automate the process were rudimentary.
So problems to overcome included:
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Use the correct materials, and use them properly to avoid making a bomb.
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Have a superb eye for dimensions and detail because you “eyeballed” much of your work.
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Have the ability to visualize is three planes.
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Be a competent blacksmith.
The National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association can furnish much more detail. There are several people in the USA who are capable of creating a flintlock rifle much as I have briefly described.
The barrel’s easy; just wrap a sheet of metal around a long straight rod, then build a simple jig with a blade on the end of a long stick to cut the rifling. The small parts are a bit more difficult, but not excessively so.
For more information, there’s a series of books on country living, one of which goes into detail on building a muzzleloading rifle.
While Googling I came across a page that said a Kentucky long rifle sold for about half a year’s wages of the typical working stiff.
So if a village smith did have the skills to make a decent rifle, he probably moved out of the village to a bigger town where he couild cash in on the high monetary value of his skills. (Or, to put it another way, a small village probably couldn’t support someone with such expensive talents.)
Gunslinger wrote: The barrel’s easy; just wrap a sheet of metal around a long straight rod, then build a simple jig with a blade on the end of a long stick to cut the rifling.
The easiest way of putting his comment into perspective is: To make elephant stew, first catch an elephant . . .
When I visited Williamsburg VA (for those who don’t know, they have a replica colonial town set up there for tourists, and they attempt to do things pretty much the way they were done in colonial times) a blacksmith was making a gun barrel, using exactly the technique described by gunslinger. He had a long, rectangular piece of metal, a rod, and a hammer, and he kept heating the metal and pounding it into shape around the rod. It looked to be fairly time consuming, but not all that difficult.
I agree with those who say it’s possible.
It would be very difficult, but possible.
Saying that the blacksmith would “need a lathe” is subject to interpretation.
Would he need a modern machinists lathe? No.
Would he need some type of “engine” (as such things used to be called) to do complex precise work? Yes, likely.
Craftsmen of the old world can really amaze you if you do any research. When you see how much people have done, and done with minimal resources, you will conclude that these guys were not quitters. If they had a vision, they d**n sure got it done.
A blacksmith make a rifle?
Easy? No.
Possible? Yes.
One of the Foxfire books (books on basic crafts practiced by the settlers) gives detailed instructions on making black powder, and also tells how to make a rifled barrel. here’s even a photo of the guy using an bviously home-built rifling lathe. My vote: If there’s big enough maret for it – and who wouldn’t want a more accurate shot? – he certainly could build a rifle.
I apologize to all of you. I forgot that most people are unaware of nuances of barrel making.
A problem, for the most part no longer an issue, is barrel steel need be of much higher quality than remainder of muzzleloading metal parts. Remember, pressure inside the MUZZLELOADING RIFLE barrel jumps from zero to about 10,000 pounds per square inch in microseconds. The temperature jumps from zero to about 4000 degrees Fahrenheit in microseconds. Poor steel becomes a bomb waiting to happen. Over time “almost good” steel develops flaws and becomes a bomb waiting to happen. This is the reason for proof testing.
Every country that manufactures/manufactured firearms has either government proof houses (United Kingdom) or private proof testing (USA). The test has nothing to do with how well the firearm functions. It pertains only to: Is it safe?
Repetitive heating and cooling of the inside diameter causes the bore inside diameter to flake and crack off – accuracy goes in the toilet. If the loading/cleaning rod aka ramrod deforms the muzzle, accuracy goes in the toilet.
The second problem will always exist – quality control. “Accuracy” from a rifled barrel means: not only that where you aim you hit. That’s easy to deal with.
Much more difficult is making the barrel regular, defect free, so smooth inside, with correct axial rotation of rifling spiral, that every shot hits PREDICTABLY. It makes no difference where shots are hitting; point of aim can adjust. If every shot is an adventure, the rifle is useless for its intended purpose.
This is the reason barrels are the most imortant part of a muzzleloader. And achieving near perfection with tools of the era is art as well as science. Even today the number of barrel makers is miniscule.
Being capable of creating a poorly shooting rifled barrel – that is, putting grooves inside a steel tube – does not metamorphose a machinist into a barrel maker.
The Foxfire books, especially volume 5, are interesting. If you are seriously interested in the topic, find a copy of U.S. Rifles and Machineguns, a tome published by Springfield Armory in 1917. It describes in great detail the most modern factory in the world at the time. Other books include: Hatcher’s Notebook; Book of the Garand; The Modern Gunsmith Vol.s I and II. The age of the books allows the reader to get a feel for older technology.
The thing is, Mentlock’s overcomplicating this. The standard weapon of the Brits… and eventually of many americans, the Brown Bess, was not a rifled weapon. It was a musket. Which played a large role in the American Revolution. Long rifles weren’t army weapons at the time, they took too long to load. Though, if I recall correctly, many americans may have had them despite that. If my copy of Rebels and Redcoats hadn’t been flooddamaged, I’d check.
E-Sabbath is correct, although irrelevant to original question.
Yet more tangential, the first battle in history where rifled longarms were ubiquitous on the winning side was the Battle of King’s Mountain, October 1780. See “Major Ferguson’s Revolutionary Invention” for more info.
Oops! It hasn’t been published yet.
Please, please. Stop me before I reply again.
It’s not entirely irrelevant. A village blacksmith could have, but was unlikely to, and was more likely to make a musket, which was easier.
Actually, what was the typical arms of the american soldier? We have a Brown Bess, but it was a captured weapon, according to family lore. Used in battle, but he didn’t start with a gun.
Yes, a decent blacksmith could and did make rifles. Some still do.
The only specialized tool he would need would be a rifling machine, something he could probably make himself.