Belated Humpday Triviola

Re: Belated Humpday Triviola

Frederick Nelson

Sounds like something that came out of Penn's Woods, brought over by the folks that came from the Rhine Valley and surrounding area.

I do feel bound to point out that not all "long rifles" were squirrel rifles. This had more to do with the caliber of the firearm. The bore diameters of most long rifles tended to be in the .40 to .45 range with .45 being the most common. Squirrel rifles tended to be quite a bit smaller, in the .32 to .36 range, with a few known examples as small as .28. Dimensions are in inches. Most had flint ignition, even as late as the middle 1800's.

Fred

Sunny with fast disappearing snow in Eastern Missouri

Re: Belated Humpday Triviola

Ken Oakley-Sunny St. Cloud, Fla

WAG-Something to do with Pensylvannia because of the large number of Germans who settled there.

Re: Belated Humpday Triviola

Gary Smyth

If not the PA rifle I'll go back to Europe and the smaqll bores were called fowler rifles.

Fred and Ken.....

Thomas Skaggs, Foothills of Mount Level

....are in the neighborhood. So now I need the name of the weapon they commonly made that preceeded the long rifle?

Tom

The Answer

Thomas Skaggs, Foothills of Mount Level

Close but no cigar this time. The correct anser is jaegers.

Thanks for playing guys.

Tom

Re: The Answer

Ken Oakley-Sunny St. Cloud, Fla.

I thought that was a famous beer.

Re: The Answer

Frederick Nelson

For Ken's benefit, the word "Jaeger" means "hunter."

The usual Jaeger rifle was an old-world hunting piece, featuring (usually) heavy rifled barrels and flintlock ignition. Historically, they were the first readily available firearms to feature rifled barrels, and the rifling was created initially to provide a place for powder fouling to collect between shots. The first rifling was "straight" with no twist and quite large by today's standards, featuring grooves and side channels in the bore that equaled or exceeded the cross-sectional area of the bullet. Sealing of the bullet to the bore was non-existant, as was accuracy or transmitted energy.

Someone, who was probably sloppy when making his rifling machine, induced a twist into the rifling, and discovered that a tightly patched ball could be guided by the rifling, increasing accuracy, muzzle velocity, and transmitted energy.

Immigrants from the German principalities (there was no "Germany" is those days, just city-states) brought these rifles, and the ability to make them, over to the new world, but found the heavy rifles cumbersome for use in the vast wilderness that was North America. American gunsmiths, mostly in Pennsylvania, turned their talents to making a lighter, but just as long-barreled, piece that was better suited to the woods of eastern North America. Lock, stock, and barrel became lighter, producing a uniquely American style of firearm.

The actual "Jaeger" rifles were not built in North America, at least not in any serious quantities. Almost from the beginning of domestic firearm manufacture in North America, the lighter "Pennsylvania" rifle was the norm. I am defining domestic firearm manufacture to exclude those guns manufactured from parts imported from England or a German source, although locks were imported for quite a while, before gunsmiths began manufacturing them locally.

Fred

Warm and spring-like in Eastern Missouri