Rifled barrel history and our logo

[Ohio Rusty]

I see the new logo of the busty woman riding the bullet and it reminded me of documentation I read about when barrels were first rifled in the pre-flintlock area. In the early 1700's, rifling of iron barrels started to come into being. Long guns were always smoothbores, mostly of large calibers - 60 to 80 caliber. When barrels were rifled with a slow twist from breech to muzzle, the ball would fly straight instead of an inaccurate ball like the smoothbore threw. This mystified the early barrel makers, as they had no clue of ballistics yet. There is published documentation of an early shooter that said 'balls fired from barrels had an imp riding on the ball, and that is what made the ball not accurate, as the imp would veer the ball off course. With the rifled barrel, the spinning ball would throw the imp off, thus causing the ball to fly strait to it's target' How far we have come in our knowledge of ballistics !!

If the woman riding the bullet in an imp ...she is a pretty hot imp !! Anyway ...I just wanted to share that bit of 'rifled-gunn' history.
Ohio Rusty ><>

[Ricochet]

That's an Imp-Proved boolit.

[S.R.Custom]

That theory sounds a bit implausible to me.

[Rusty Parker]

how many imps can fit on the nose of a boolit? one of life's imponderables . . .

[sagacious]

I am always somewhat mystified by the common theories regarding the origin of rifling in firearms. Humans had known for ages that a spinning arrow flew truer than a non-spinning arrow.

I have to give the early gunsmiths more credit than is reported in some historical narratives. They must have known the ball was spinning, and would have quickly made the connection to the accuracy increase accrued by a spinning arrow. Or... one suspects that the smiths had a pretty good idea what would happen to the ball when they cut spiral grooves in the barrel.

When longarms were first developed, to the best of my knowledge, most smiths were unlettered and illiterate men. They learned and perfected their trade through apprenticeships, not books. Those persons who could read and write invariably chose an easier profession away from the noise, heat, and grime of the forge.

So OK, then who wrote these early accounts? Would a smith have told everyone within earshot that by cutting grooves in the barrel, they'd get better accuracy? No, surely not. That was doubtless a precious trade-secret, and even illiterate men are plenty shrewd enough to hold their cards close to the chest. Only a bystanding but curious writer would have penned these accounts, and perhaps one with delicate hands calloused only by a pen, and totally unfamiliar with the vagaries and secrets of interior and exterior ballistics.

I have read what must be anecdotal accounts arguing either way. A spinning ball would unfailingly fling off it's diabolical passenger. But! maybe only a devil could stay seated firmly on such a hellish ride. When the argument turns to the nature of nefarious invisible bullet-riding ghouls, one immediately suspects that no smith was present at the time of writing. Or that no smith would divulge his understanding of rifling, or even perhaps risk that a loose word might draw association of his trade with infernal and satanic imps. Even an illiterate metalsmith would know much better.

Give those early smiths more credit. Their wisdom gave us what we have now, and they may have been a LOT smarter than they appeared. Better to be smarter than you look, than the reverse!
:drinks:

[Linstrum]

I read somewhere that one particular gunsmith of antiquity made two types of rifled bores, one being round and the other square (kind of like a Whitworth but with a square bore instead of hexagonal). That must have been a chore to hand broach a barrel with a square twist! His purpose in having two types of bore profiles was to kill Christians with round bullets and kill Turks with square bullets, as if one's religion made a difference in bullet effectiveness! Hmmm, OK - - - -


rl600

[twotrees]

Giving a place for fouling to go. Some enterprising smith reasoned that spiral groove would collet more of the fouling in the same space (The bore) and tried it. Well he got the advantage of better accuracy.

A friend at a gun-club in Pa. built a copy of a Jeager Rifle, that had rifling but didn't use a patch. The dead soft lead slug was pounded down the bore to take the rifling. It sure didn't do any thing for the nose shape, but it did shoot well at 100 yards. PS: It was 70 cal or there abouts. (24+ years ago and CRS has set in).

Interesting Post !!!

[Ricochet]

His purpose in having two types of bore profiles was to kill Christians with round bullets and kill Turks with square bullets, as if one's religion made a difference in bullet effectiveness! Hmmm, OK - - - -
Effectiveness had nothing to do with it. There have always been attitudes that some enemies were so barbaric and inhuman that weapons too terrible to use on "civilized" opponents were OK to use on them. They're still quite prevalent and evident in the world today. The guy probably thought square boolits would inflict heinous injuries, but it was OK to do that to the Turks.

[Ricochet]

A friend at a gun-club in Pa. built a copy of a Jeager Rifle, that had rifling but didn't use a patch. The dead soft lead slug was pounded down the bore to take the rifling. It sure didn't do any thing for the nose shape, but it did shoot well at 100 yards. PS: It was 70 cal or there abouts. (24+ years ago and CRS has set in)
CRS has hit me hard, too, but I recall reading an article questioning the assertion that the Jaeger shooters pounded in their naked balls. :shock: Some think they also used patches.

[waksupi]

I read somewhere that one particular gunsmith of antiquity made two types of rifled bores, one being round and the other square (kind of like a Whitworth but with a square bore instead of hexagonal). That must have been a chore to hand broach a barrel with a square twist! His purpose in having two types of bore profiles was to kill Christians with round bullets and kill Turks with square bullets, as if one's religion made a difference in bullet effectiveness! Hmmm, OK - - - -


rl600

That was the Puckle gun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Puckle

[jhrosier]

. A spinning ball would unfailingly fling off it's diabolical passenger. But! maybe only a devil could stay seated firmly on such a hellish ride....

Maybe a little holy water could be added to the boolit lube?:roll:

Jack

[markinalpine]

Maybe a little holy water could be added to the boolit lube?:roll:

Jack

I have a history of firearms buried somewhere with my books that are in storage that includes a description of the manufacture of black powder. After the ground ingredients were thoroughly and carefully mixed, they would be moistened with water and the resulting cake would be pressed through a screen to form grains. This process was called "Corning".
Someone determined that urine :takinWiz: worked better than plain water, don't ask me how. The next theory was that the best urine was that of bishops! I suppose that was because they drank wine, instead of beer. :shock:

Hey, I don't make this up. I'm just reporting.:bigsmyl2:

Mark :coffeecom

[Dframe]

That's an Imp-Proved boolit.
Groan! Go to the bad bun corner and stand there for a long time.

[leftiye]

Yer just jealous that he got there first.

[Ricochet]

There were also IMPlausible, IMPonderables...

[Ricochet]

That was the Puckle gun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Puckle
From that article:
Puckle demonstrated two versions of the basic design: one, intended for use against Christian enemies (excluding Protestants), fired conventional round bullets, while the second variant, designed to be used against the Muslim Turks, fired square bullets, which were considered to be more damaging and would, according to its patent, convince the Turks of the "benefits of Christian civilization."

Backs up what I said. It was OK to shoot Turks or Protestants with square boolits, because they weren't "Christians."

[curator]

According to a German gun-curator at major museum.

The Germans invented rifling (of course) but originally it was straight grooves cut into the barrel so a gun could be loaded a few more times without cleaning the bore. The grooves gave the fouling a place to go and not interfere with loading subsequent balls.

Sometime about 1530AD a clever German gunsmith (aren't they all?) reasoned that if he cut spiral grooves instead of straight ones they would be longer and provide even more room for fouling to fill in between bore cleanings. Well it did and by accident they also discovered balls shot from these where more accurate. And the rest is history! I have actually seen several straight rifled wheel lock guns, all German or Dutch from the late 1500s

[Boz330]

I see the new logo of the busty woman riding the bullet and it reminded me of documentation I read about when barrels were first rifled in the pre-flintlock area. In the early 1700's, rifling of iron barrels started to come into being. Long guns were always smoothbores, mostly of large calibers - 60 to 80 caliber. When barrels were rifled with a slow twist from breech to muzzle, the ball would fly straight instead of an inaccurate ball like the smoothbore threw. This mystified the early barrel makers, as they had no clue of ballistics yet. There is published documentation of an early shooter that said 'balls fired from barrels had an imp riding on the ball, and that is what made the ball not accurate, as the imp would veer the ball off course. With the rifled barrel, the spinning ball would throw the imp off, thus causing the ball to fly strait to it's target' How far we have come in our knowledge of ballistics !!

If the woman riding the bullet in an imp ...she is a pretty hot imp !! Anyway ...I just wanted to share that bit of 'rifled-gunn' history.
Ohio Rusty ><>

SOOOO THAAAATS what happened to me yesterday at the Silly Wet match, there were Imps on my 600 yrd boolits. Thats my story and I'm stickin to it.

Bob

[Linstrum]

Hey, Boz, you need to get a faster twist in that Silly Wet rifle of yours to spin off the imp!

A long time back when I read up on the history of black powder, one of the things mentioned was the use of urine for processing raw meal powder to form it into cakes for corning. According to what I read, the best urine was the Pope's, which was mainly used for making the gunpowder used by the Vatican's Swiss Guards. After the Pope, like markinalpine already mentioned above, the next best urine was from wine-drinking cardinals and bishops. After that came urine from beer-drinking monks. Alcohol or water is used in making black powder to help form it into a hard mass plus prevent accidental ignition during grinding since black powder is fairly sensitive to percussion and friction, and both alcohol and water do a pretty good job of desensitizing it from ignition (remember the old saying: "Keep yer powder dry!"). I think the theory was that powder makers noticed that when alcohol was used in place of water that a more vigorous powder resulted. This is a known fact, when just water is used in powder making, some of the saltpeter slowly but constantly re-crystalizes back into larger crystal sizes as long as it is wet, which negates pulverizing it. Since saltpeter is only slightly soluble in alcohol, once the saltpeter is ground into a fine state it stays that way, which results in faster reaction and hence a stronger powder. Since alcohol was and still is pretty expensive compared to pee, it was a matter of simple economics to run the alcohol through somebody first :drinks: in order to obtain the benefits :veryconfu of its consumption, and after whoever was done drinking it, the alcohol that didn't get metabolized by the liver was recovered by collecting the booze drinker's pee. Urine also contains a fair amount of urea, which quite effectively controls crystal size by interfering with crystallization - urea will prevent Portland cement and plaster of Paris from hardening because it interferes with the formation of large crystals - plus when urea is heated hot enough its break-down products are a real duxe mixture of gases and solids like carbon monoxide, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, mel, melamine, soot, and a bunch of other rather exotic materials, so it does contribute a small amount of extra gases to black powder besides a small amount of unwanted solids.

If any of you have ever had to deal with a full thunder mug in camp where indoor plumbing isn't available, you know how awful darned ripe pee gets after sitting outside the tent all night in a bucket (or re-used beer cans from the night before). Imagine being the royal powder-maker waiting for a bottle of the bishop's pee to arrive by horse-drawn wagon from 100 miles away, especially in warm weather! Good grief! :bigsmyl2:


rl601

[Boz330]

The early salt peter was recovered from the soil under old out houses as well. That worked till they needed large quantities of it and then had to look elsewhere.

Bob

[Linstrum]

The early salt peter was recovered from the soil under old out houses as well. That worked till they needed large quantities of it and then had to look elsewhere.

Bob

Yup! You are quite right. Until the huge potassium nitrate deposits were discovered in India and the even more extensive sodium nitrate deposits were found in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the only source of saltpeter for about the first 500 years of shooting guns, fireworks, and making nitric acid was from large well-composted accumulations of human and animal manure mixed with pea vines and ashes. The process of making saltpeter that way was called "nitre farming" and the nitre farmers went around collecting duck and chicken droppings, human urine, all manner of manure, pea vines, rotten meat, bones, hides, hair, feathers, along with ashes as a source of potassium to separate out the nitrate in the form of potassium nitrate aka saltpeter. During the American Civil War, the Confederate States powder makers had to resort to nitre farming to obtain potassium nitrate when gunpowder supplies from Europe were cut off by the Union Navy's blockade of all shipping to and from the Confederacy. Genteel Southern ladies were asked to collect ashes and their family members' urine every morning and take it to the local nitre farm as a patriotic duty. Nitre farming is a rather slow method of obtaining potassium nitrate since it takes somewhere around a ton of raw manure and urine to get an ounce of saltpeter after composting for a year, or so. The urea in urine and uric acid of bird droppings (the white stuff in it) are digested by several kinds of highly specialized anaerobic bacteria normally found in damp soil and converted in several steps to the nitrate ion. The first reactions convert urea, uric acid, and amino acids from proteins in pea vines to ammonia, and then the ammonia is partially oxidized to nitrate in several more steps. Ammonium nitrate is probably the first nitrate to form, and that with potassium carbonate from wood ashes undergoes precipitation to less soluble potassium nitrate, which accumulates in the soil under the compost heap and as crusty white crystals around the bottom edges of the compost piles. The ammonium carbonate that remains undergoes oxidation to more nitrate, and the process keeps going until all the urea, uric acid, and other nitrogenous materials such as amino acids from pea vine protein are all used up. If de-nitrifying bacteria get into the compost they will decompose the nitrate ions as fast as they are made, but the de-nitrifying bacteria are apparently temperature-sensitive so the compost heap must operate at a warm temperature to optimize the formation of as much saltpeter as possible.

Ricochet has a rather funny true story about a modern nitre farmer and his first batch of saltpeter, and the black gunpowder made with it. Maybe he can find it, it is a pretty good read!


rl603