ohland
08-17-2015, 08:59 PM
Ball's Magazine Rifle
https://books.google.com/books?id=6n9NAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1059&dq=falling+breech+rifle&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDwQ6AEwBjgyahUKEwjx9MbItbHHAhWFBpIKHXDaBwM#v =onepage&q=falling%20breech%20rifle&f=false
Machinery, vol 22, August 1916, pages 1057-1060
Albert Ball's Magazine Rifle Of 1863
A Chapter On Machine Tool Development And Rifle Manufacture
By Guy Hubbard*
THE machine tool business in the United States is unusually prosperous at present, due to the impetus it has received, both directly and indirectly, by the European war. The direct result of the war is shown in the boom in the manufacture of munitions, while the great increase in the production of machine tools, which are required in quantities by the munition makers in this country and abroad, may be called the indirect result. The conditions at present existing in these lines are considered unparalleled, and in certain particulars they are, but in many respects the same conditions existed in the North, especially in the New England states, during the Civil War. At that time the war was upon home ground, and production was hastened by a general desire for self-preservation and perhaps by patriotic motives; yet in those days, as now, fortunes were made in the mechanical industries. The town of Windsor, Vt., furnishes in its machine tool industry of today and that of fifty years or more ago a comparison of these two periods, and it is with the earlier of these that this article is mainly concerned.
Some years prior to the Civil War a gun shop was started at a point where the water power was abundant and about which Windsor, like many other New England towns, grew up. The organization of this gun shop gradually brought together a considerable company of skilled workmen, among whom were certain men having more than the usual amount of inventive genius. Through the efforts of these men the products of the concern became widely and favorably known at a time when more than a local reputation was rare. The extent of the reputation is shown by the fact that the Windsor rifle was a favorite among Kentucky hunters and it also armed the soldiers of Texas at the time when, as the "Lone Star Republic," she fought the whole of Mexico.
A famous product of the old concern was known as the "100-to-the-pound" rifle, the small-bore gun of its day and a general favorite among sportsmen and pioneers in the '30s. This rifle had a barrel of extraordinary length and shot a round bullet, one hundred of which weighed a pound, making it 0.36 inch caliber. A short man must have had some difficulty in ramming a charge into the long barrel, but it utilized the expansive energy of the powder to such a high degree that a light charge served to drive the bullet at high velocity, as the space for acceleration was great.
A system of rifling called the increased twist was applied to the rifle mentioned, this system being afterward discarded by gunsmiths as being a needless refinement. The greatest care was taken in the manufacture of the barrels for these rifles, and before they were passed by the inspector, each one was held toward, a window in order to determine by the distortion of the reflection in the polished interior whether the barrel was suitable for use or not. The writer has heard it stated that "Dave" Crockett was carrying one of these particular rifles when the coon came down, but does not wish to vouch for the truth of this. In these early days of gun manufacture, a great deal of the work was hand work, or, at the least, work which was partially done by hand, as, for example, chipping and filing, and the turning of metals in slow running speed lathes with hand tools, while threads were frequently cut by hand chasing, the accuracy depending upon the skill of the workman in the initial guiding of the chaser along the rest.
It was not long, however, before this gunshop began to design and build machines to do its work, many of these machines being of novel design which afterward proved very successful. By good authority, credit is given to these designers for the introduction of the shaper or crank planer (as it was then called), milling machines and profilers, disk grinder, and most important of all, the turret lathe. So successful was their machinery that other armories and machine shops both here and abroad began to buy it. For example, when the well-known Arm of Enfield in England began to manufacture rifles, the entire outfit of machinery was built at Windsor, Vt.
Thus it was that parallel to the gun business there grew up at Windsor a machine tool business which was destined to outlive its parallel and to come down to our own time as a leader in the field opened by the introduction of the turret lathe. The original Windsor concern was the root from which grew an extraordinary network of newer machine companies, some of which are now among the largest and best known in the United States. The influence of the industry at this point has been very thoroughly investigated by Prof. Roe of the Sheffield Scientific School.
The name by which one of the factories was known at that time was Robbins & Lawrence. Many inventions were made and developed by this concern, one of which was a five-shot pistol, patented in 1849. A description of this pistol was published in Machinery, May, 1912. At about this time Robbins & Lawrence built the Windsor Armory which was a large brick structure; this is still in a fine state of preservation and is now used as a power station, where the first "Stumpf Uniflow" engine to be installed in New England is in operation. While the armory was still under construction large contracts for army muskets were received from the United States government, with the result that the new shop became a very busy place. These muskets were smooth-bore guns of large caliber not unlike cylinder bored shot guns, though having heavy barrels designed to shoot solid balls, and one phase of their manufacture that may be of interest was the making of the barrels.
A musket barrel was made at that time of flat stock, somewhat thicker than the walls of the finished gun, this stock being forged up about a rod and its edges welded lengthwise along the barrel, just as old-fashioned wrought iron pipe was made. It is apparent that this weld needed to be perfect or the gun would tear open when fired; there were few men in the country who were expert enough to be trusted on this work, and there was just one man with this company who could do it. For this reason this particular workman received the then unheard of wages of $10 per day. He was also experienced in making the so-called "stub and twist" barrels used on the superfine sporting and target guns made up on special orders. The stock for these barrels was forged in a narrow strip from high-grade scrap (horse-shoe nails in particular), then wound spirally about a rod and the edges welded. When finished, these barrels presented a handsome mottled appearance, and because of the direction of the fibers were unlikely to burst.
A short time previous to the outbreak of the Civil War, Robbins & Lawrence became associated with a concern making the Sharpe rifle. This company met with business reverses of such magnitude that both concerns failed completely, which was a rather common occurrence at that critical period. When the Windsor Armory with its full equipment and power was put up for sale, E. G. Lamson of the Lamson & Goodnow Cutlery Co. purchased the entire outfit at a ridiculously low figure, the price that he paid for the machinery being its scrap value only. At this time the Civil War broke out and Mr. Lamson immediately discovered that he had purchased a veritable gold mine, for not only did he own a plant in readiness to manufacture the guns for which there was a prodigious demand, but he possessed also an excess of gun making machinery. From this excess machinery he cleared $83,000 in one year, which was more than the initial cost of the whole plant. $10,000 of this was realized from the bayonet room alone. He also set the armory in operation after having received heavy orders from the government, and after gas was installed for lighting, ran night and day shifts, employing nearly five hundred men.
At this time the standard army gun was being manufactured at a large profit, $17 apiece being paid for them in quantity; yet Mr. Lamson looked about for something better than the muzzle loading gun. This possibly incited Alfred Ball, a young mechanic in Mr. Lamson's employ, to bring forward his magazine rifle, which, viewed from a modern standpoint and in the light of future developments, was plainly an invention far ahead of its time. Mr. Ball obtained basic patents on his gun in 1863, the third year of the war, and steps were immediately taken by Mr. Lamson to manufacture it on a large scale.
146956
The construction of this rifle is shown in Fig. 1. Primarily it is a lever-action, breech-loading repeating rifle, using metallic cartridges carried in a tubular magazine beneath the barrel, and resembling quite closely the present-day repeating rifle in many of its features. It must be remembered that at this time the ready-made brass shell, the magazine principle of handling the shell, and the breech method of loading were all innovations, so that there were three improvements of prime importance in the Ball rifle. These guns were made in two types, one a heavy infantry rifle, 0.50 inch caliber, and the other a short and comparatively light rifled carbine, 0.38 inch caliber, designed for cavalry service. This latter model, while it was never put on the market, was preferred, I understand, by the designer. It was the good fortune of the writer to be able to borrow from Mr. Gridley one of the carbines, although specimens of both models are now somewhat rare; the following description is therefore confined to this type, the essential principles being identical in both models.
The Ball carbine shown in the illustrations accompanying this article has an over-all length of 37 ¾ inches and weighs 8 pounds. Nine of the rather chunky rim-fire cartridges may be carried in the magazine, which consists of a brass tube 16 inches long and ¾ inch in diameter, located below the barrel. This tube contains a pusher G to feed the shells, the pressure being exerted by a long coiled spring of steel wire. The spring was made from No. 22 wire (Birmingham gage used at that time), and when free is 28 inches in length, but compresses on full magazine into a space of 3 inches, so that considerable force is exerted in the range of movement of the pusher. In order to facilitate the loading of the magazine a pull-back rod projects like a ram rod beside the barrel and engages a projection on the pusher. This works in an L-shaped track soldered over a slot in the magazine, the pusher projection / traveling in this slot.
146960
Balls Magazine Rifle, disassembled
146961
https://books.google.com/books?id=6n9NAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1059&dq=falling+breech+rifle&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDwQ6AEwBjgyahUKEwjx9MbItbHHAhWFBpIKHXDaBwM#v =onepage&q=falling%20breech%20rifle&f=false
Machinery, vol 22, August 1916, pages 1057-1060
Albert Ball's Magazine Rifle Of 1863
A Chapter On Machine Tool Development And Rifle Manufacture
By Guy Hubbard*
THE machine tool business in the United States is unusually prosperous at present, due to the impetus it has received, both directly and indirectly, by the European war. The direct result of the war is shown in the boom in the manufacture of munitions, while the great increase in the production of machine tools, which are required in quantities by the munition makers in this country and abroad, may be called the indirect result. The conditions at present existing in these lines are considered unparalleled, and in certain particulars they are, but in many respects the same conditions existed in the North, especially in the New England states, during the Civil War. At that time the war was upon home ground, and production was hastened by a general desire for self-preservation and perhaps by patriotic motives; yet in those days, as now, fortunes were made in the mechanical industries. The town of Windsor, Vt., furnishes in its machine tool industry of today and that of fifty years or more ago a comparison of these two periods, and it is with the earlier of these that this article is mainly concerned.
Some years prior to the Civil War a gun shop was started at a point where the water power was abundant and about which Windsor, like many other New England towns, grew up. The organization of this gun shop gradually brought together a considerable company of skilled workmen, among whom were certain men having more than the usual amount of inventive genius. Through the efforts of these men the products of the concern became widely and favorably known at a time when more than a local reputation was rare. The extent of the reputation is shown by the fact that the Windsor rifle was a favorite among Kentucky hunters and it also armed the soldiers of Texas at the time when, as the "Lone Star Republic," she fought the whole of Mexico.
A famous product of the old concern was known as the "100-to-the-pound" rifle, the small-bore gun of its day and a general favorite among sportsmen and pioneers in the '30s. This rifle had a barrel of extraordinary length and shot a round bullet, one hundred of which weighed a pound, making it 0.36 inch caliber. A short man must have had some difficulty in ramming a charge into the long barrel, but it utilized the expansive energy of the powder to such a high degree that a light charge served to drive the bullet at high velocity, as the space for acceleration was great.
A system of rifling called the increased twist was applied to the rifle mentioned, this system being afterward discarded by gunsmiths as being a needless refinement. The greatest care was taken in the manufacture of the barrels for these rifles, and before they were passed by the inspector, each one was held toward, a window in order to determine by the distortion of the reflection in the polished interior whether the barrel was suitable for use or not. The writer has heard it stated that "Dave" Crockett was carrying one of these particular rifles when the coon came down, but does not wish to vouch for the truth of this. In these early days of gun manufacture, a great deal of the work was hand work, or, at the least, work which was partially done by hand, as, for example, chipping and filing, and the turning of metals in slow running speed lathes with hand tools, while threads were frequently cut by hand chasing, the accuracy depending upon the skill of the workman in the initial guiding of the chaser along the rest.
It was not long, however, before this gunshop began to design and build machines to do its work, many of these machines being of novel design which afterward proved very successful. By good authority, credit is given to these designers for the introduction of the shaper or crank planer (as it was then called), milling machines and profilers, disk grinder, and most important of all, the turret lathe. So successful was their machinery that other armories and machine shops both here and abroad began to buy it. For example, when the well-known Arm of Enfield in England began to manufacture rifles, the entire outfit of machinery was built at Windsor, Vt.
Thus it was that parallel to the gun business there grew up at Windsor a machine tool business which was destined to outlive its parallel and to come down to our own time as a leader in the field opened by the introduction of the turret lathe. The original Windsor concern was the root from which grew an extraordinary network of newer machine companies, some of which are now among the largest and best known in the United States. The influence of the industry at this point has been very thoroughly investigated by Prof. Roe of the Sheffield Scientific School.
The name by which one of the factories was known at that time was Robbins & Lawrence. Many inventions were made and developed by this concern, one of which was a five-shot pistol, patented in 1849. A description of this pistol was published in Machinery, May, 1912. At about this time Robbins & Lawrence built the Windsor Armory which was a large brick structure; this is still in a fine state of preservation and is now used as a power station, where the first "Stumpf Uniflow" engine to be installed in New England is in operation. While the armory was still under construction large contracts for army muskets were received from the United States government, with the result that the new shop became a very busy place. These muskets were smooth-bore guns of large caliber not unlike cylinder bored shot guns, though having heavy barrels designed to shoot solid balls, and one phase of their manufacture that may be of interest was the making of the barrels.
A musket barrel was made at that time of flat stock, somewhat thicker than the walls of the finished gun, this stock being forged up about a rod and its edges welded lengthwise along the barrel, just as old-fashioned wrought iron pipe was made. It is apparent that this weld needed to be perfect or the gun would tear open when fired; there were few men in the country who were expert enough to be trusted on this work, and there was just one man with this company who could do it. For this reason this particular workman received the then unheard of wages of $10 per day. He was also experienced in making the so-called "stub and twist" barrels used on the superfine sporting and target guns made up on special orders. The stock for these barrels was forged in a narrow strip from high-grade scrap (horse-shoe nails in particular), then wound spirally about a rod and the edges welded. When finished, these barrels presented a handsome mottled appearance, and because of the direction of the fibers were unlikely to burst.
A short time previous to the outbreak of the Civil War, Robbins & Lawrence became associated with a concern making the Sharpe rifle. This company met with business reverses of such magnitude that both concerns failed completely, which was a rather common occurrence at that critical period. When the Windsor Armory with its full equipment and power was put up for sale, E. G. Lamson of the Lamson & Goodnow Cutlery Co. purchased the entire outfit at a ridiculously low figure, the price that he paid for the machinery being its scrap value only. At this time the Civil War broke out and Mr. Lamson immediately discovered that he had purchased a veritable gold mine, for not only did he own a plant in readiness to manufacture the guns for which there was a prodigious demand, but he possessed also an excess of gun making machinery. From this excess machinery he cleared $83,000 in one year, which was more than the initial cost of the whole plant. $10,000 of this was realized from the bayonet room alone. He also set the armory in operation after having received heavy orders from the government, and after gas was installed for lighting, ran night and day shifts, employing nearly five hundred men.
At this time the standard army gun was being manufactured at a large profit, $17 apiece being paid for them in quantity; yet Mr. Lamson looked about for something better than the muzzle loading gun. This possibly incited Alfred Ball, a young mechanic in Mr. Lamson's employ, to bring forward his magazine rifle, which, viewed from a modern standpoint and in the light of future developments, was plainly an invention far ahead of its time. Mr. Ball obtained basic patents on his gun in 1863, the third year of the war, and steps were immediately taken by Mr. Lamson to manufacture it on a large scale.
146956
The construction of this rifle is shown in Fig. 1. Primarily it is a lever-action, breech-loading repeating rifle, using metallic cartridges carried in a tubular magazine beneath the barrel, and resembling quite closely the present-day repeating rifle in many of its features. It must be remembered that at this time the ready-made brass shell, the magazine principle of handling the shell, and the breech method of loading were all innovations, so that there were three improvements of prime importance in the Ball rifle. These guns were made in two types, one a heavy infantry rifle, 0.50 inch caliber, and the other a short and comparatively light rifled carbine, 0.38 inch caliber, designed for cavalry service. This latter model, while it was never put on the market, was preferred, I understand, by the designer. It was the good fortune of the writer to be able to borrow from Mr. Gridley one of the carbines, although specimens of both models are now somewhat rare; the following description is therefore confined to this type, the essential principles being identical in both models.
The Ball carbine shown in the illustrations accompanying this article has an over-all length of 37 ¾ inches and weighs 8 pounds. Nine of the rather chunky rim-fire cartridges may be carried in the magazine, which consists of a brass tube 16 inches long and ¾ inch in diameter, located below the barrel. This tube contains a pusher G to feed the shells, the pressure being exerted by a long coiled spring of steel wire. The spring was made from No. 22 wire (Birmingham gage used at that time), and when free is 28 inches in length, but compresses on full magazine into a space of 3 inches, so that considerable force is exerted in the range of movement of the pusher. In order to facilitate the loading of the magazine a pull-back rod projects like a ram rod beside the barrel and engages a projection on the pusher. This works in an L-shaped track soldered over a slot in the magazine, the pusher projection / traveling in this slot.
146960
Balls Magazine Rifle, disassembled
146961