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Thread: B.P. Hawken Kit Build

  1. #21
    Senior Member randyt's Avatar
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    I've been thinking about those as well. I red that Manuel Lisa carried a cut down brown bess but can't find any real info on that. Bottom line is I want a flintlock LOL.
    so the definition of a criminal is someone who breaks the law and you want me to believe that somehow more laws make less criminals?


  2. #22
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    I have always read that the Brown Bess muskets were lacking in accuracy, which, I suppose, is to be expected in a smooth bore gun. Then, I have also read that round ball fired from a 10 or 12 ga is fairly accurate over short distances.

    Either way, watching the effects of a 10 ga round ball on a human were, I'd imagine, ample incentive not to show yourself.

    Alan

  3. #23

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    Oh man. I thought bp was going to be easy compared to modern firearms. So many choices. This is going to end up just like the rest of my collecting...no one gun can satisfy. I just blew my gun budget for the next year on, "I'm going to build that." plans.

  4. #24
    Senior Member kyratshooter's Avatar
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    Things got sort of crazy for me when I moved 50 miles form Friendship, IN where twice a year they have the national BP championships and the trade fair that goes with it. All the suppliers are there, Track of the Wolf, Dixie, Chambers with all those Siler locks, Davis, plus all the small vendors that "just do buttplates", or trigger guards, or just make locks, or just cast tomahawk heads, and the guys with every known factory knife blade in creation!

    It either makes you feel like a kid in a candy store or that you are walking through Dante's inferno; so many parts, so little time!

    Now for the Brown Bess lesson;

    The British changed all of their military firearms to flintlock in about 1670. Most were match locks converted to flint so they were a hodge podge of almost useless nonstandard sizes, shapes and bores. That had to change and it did around 1715. A new pattern was developed and all firearms had to meet that pattern.

    The Brown Bess is not a single gun, it is a pattern. It is just like the M16/M4 platform. Same caliber, some of the parts interchange, but they differ. The first ones are similar to the last but not the same when you hold them up next to each other.

    The "pattern" was standardized when Queen Anne (they called her Queen Bess) was on the throne, around 1715. The pattern stayed as the British Army standard until the mid 1830s.

    As could be expected the manufacturing methods changed during that time. The first ones were hand made and hand fitted, all parts forged individually, all screw threads cut by hand.

    By the end of their run they were made on production machinery with standardized parts, many of them stampings, and interchangeable components.

    The British ordnance board considered the life of a Brown Bess as 7 years, so they were constantly being returned to arsenal and refitted with the latest developments, the barrels sold for scrap, the locks rebuilt, the brass actually melted down and recast to the latest pattern. In the colonies they would simply go onto the surplus market and be replaced with new stock for the troops. There was also a concept among the militia that you got to keep your issue gun when you went home. That was not true but they took them home anyway, sometimes without the benefit of being mustered out officially.

    They were inaccurate because they had to be, they were battle rifles. You shoot a BP gun a half dozen times on the range and you are going to need to wipe out the bore. Most people wipe it out between each shot or every other shot at the least.

    The Bess was expected to shoot 10-25 rounds in battle. That put a lot of crud in the bore and each reload was more difficult than the last.

    I know Sharps Rifles could load 4 round per minute, but that is a movie. You could speed load like that for 1, maybe 2 shots, then it was over and you had to push the bullets down the bore with the ramrod. It was difficult enough that they changed from wood ramrods to steel ramrods right about the time of our French and Indian War.

    So the barrels had lots of windage built in, on purpose. The barrels were forged and reamed to about .75 and the balls would be cast around .70. The ball went in whatever direction it was headed on its last bounce down the bore.

    Everything was "about" sized due to the tolerances allowed and expected. If you got a Bess that had a barrel on the big side and a batch of rolled paper cartridges on the small side your enemy might be praising God for his fortune.

    Look at it this way, would you rather have an M16 manufactured in 1965 shooting 1965 ammo or an AK made in 1965 shooting 1965 ammo? Us old guys that carried those rifles will pick the AK every time! Sure it shot into a foot at 100 meters, but it shot every time and you could not make it jam and the guy you were shooting at was bigger than a foot diameter.

    The settlers, colonists or private citizens that bought the surplus Bess guns were not restricted to the issue paper cartridges, they cast or bought their shot and balls and loaded with patches that steadied the ball down the bore. they got much better results than the military.

    Military qualifications required hitting a 6 foot square at 50 yards, the settlers expected to hit a deer at 50 yards.

    That and the settlers seldom loaded solid ball. They loaded shot of various sizes with no apology at all. So you had a big 10 gauge smoothbore with a 70 grain powder charge loaded with about 2 oz of shot that you made by chopping it up with your hatchet coming out of a 48" barrel and everyone knew it was no good past 50 yards. Inside that 50 yard limit you were going to hit something!

    So the Bess became the standard "issue gun" all through the frontier era between 1715 and 1850. It was also the "backup" gun for every settler that was going into hostile territory and needed cheap firepower. They might have a good rifle out and showing, but there was a Bess stuck in the wagon or standing in the cabin corner.

    The fur companies issued them to first year trappers, survey parties issued them to line cutters, the army issued them to scouts and they were probably among the first guns carried by the white folks into most of the U.S. territories up until 1850.

    I do know that Richard Hinderson issued Brown Bess muskets to the survey parties that plotted the Wilderness Road. Daniel Boone preferred a smoothbore in the standard Bess caliber as a battle weapon. There would always be ammo around if he ran out of his own powder and ball because a lot of the other settlers would be carrying Bess muskets. He was carrying a 10 gauge smoothbore at the Battle of Blue licks in 1782.

    So they were among the first weapons carried through the Cumberland Gap and across the eastern mountains as well as some of the first into the Rocky mountains with the fur trappers.

    When I was reenacting I always claimed that if I had to pick one gun it would be an English "dog lock" dated to 1650. You could use it for everything up to WW1!

    There is a rule used by the button nazis that jury the events and that rule states that you can use an item from and older era than what you are set in but not a newer item. You can use a 1715 Bess in a War of 1812 event, but not an 1820 era Hawkin rifle in a Rev War event.

    If I had a gun dated to 1650 I would need only one for reenactment.

    I never made that gun.

    But I did make, as my first gun build, a smoothbore 16 gauge cut down generic musket type with a 20" barrel and I stripped the parts off a Siler lock and built a hand made lock plate similar to those used before 1700. It is not a copy of anything and fits the part being the product of a time when folks were still deciding what a long gun should be. That gun has reenacted everything from the voyage of Lasalle (1679) to the War of 1812 at Ft Taloouse, AL and fit in at any historic site I visited in the eastern U.S.

    But reenactment is one thing and shooting is another. If I could have only one gun it would be a Lancaster pattern fowler with an extra rifled barrel. 20 gauge smoothbore barrel and an identical rifled barrel in .50 or .54. I passed up buying a half finished kit for $250 about 30 years ago and have been kicking myself over that bad decision ever since. I have had to build about a dozen other guns to take up the slack that one kit would have filled.

    https://www.flintlocks.com/rifles03.htm
    If you didn't bring jerky what did I just eat?

  5. #25
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    I have learned more in this one thread than I have anywhere else in a long time.

    Alan

  6. #26
    Senior Member kyratshooter's Avatar
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    just don't get me started on Colt caplock revolvers and bob'wire and we'll survive.
    If you didn't bring jerky what did I just eat?

  7. #27
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    It's "bob-war"...

    Alan

  8. #28
    Senior Member randyt's Avatar
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    I got close with a snider enfield, some 24 gauge all brass hull but then I found some headstamped 577 from track of the wolf. Not a rock lock and not a frontstuffer. But a blackpowder arm made by the British empire.
    Last edited by randyt; 07-14-2020 at 07:24 PM.
    so the definition of a criminal is someone who breaks the law and you want me to believe that somehow more laws make less criminals?

  9. #29
    Administrator Rick's Avatar
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    I have no idea what these guys are talkin' about. Come on, let's go have a bacon sammich.

  10. #30
    Super Moderator crashdive123's Avatar
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    You said bacon............I'M IN!!!!!
    Can't Means Won't

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  11. #31
    Senior Member randyt's Avatar
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    I haven't mentioned hog rifle yet...
    so the definition of a criminal is someone who breaks the law and you want me to believe that somehow more laws make less criminals?

  12. #32
    Administrator Rick's Avatar
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    And coffee.....

  13. #33
    Senior Member randyt's Avatar
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    so the definition of a criminal is someone who breaks the law and you want me to believe that somehow more laws make less criminals?

  14. #34
    Senior Member kyratshooter's Avatar
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    Dang it I got to reading posts and forgot the coffee was brewing!

    Don't have any bacon.

    Got sausage, the old fashioned country kind you only find in the south. I had this batch imported up from Tennessee. I'm far enough north that part of the folks think they are in the mid-west and half the time you can't find decent food.

    Lots of folks don't realize there is a difference between Yankee sausage and southern sausage, but there is.
    If you didn't bring jerky what did I just eat?

  15. #35
    Administrator Rick's Avatar
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    Well, I'll swan. A coffee makin' rifle. Genius. Pure genius.

  16. #36
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    I used coffee to stain a gunstock once. It came out coffee colored. I've never stained anything with bacon though, except the front of my shirt and my pants legs.



    Alan

  17. #37
    Administrator Rick's Avatar
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    You don't have bacon!!!!! Cheese whiz, I'll be right down.

  18. #38

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    Ok you thread thieves. Lol. Get BACK to work.

    I think somebody warned me about this (check it before, or something). My half cock holds fine. The other doesn't hold. Really barely a hesitation as I let off the trigger. I supposed I'll have to take it off and fiddle with it's innards?

  19. #39
    Senior Member randyt's Avatar
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    you'll have to take it off. do you have a needle file set? The full cock notch possibly needs squared and deepened and the sear mated squarely to the full cock notch. I don't think a slip stone will do the job but after using the files, the mating surfaces can be stoned.
    so the definition of a criminal is someone who breaks the law and you want me to believe that somehow more laws make less criminals?

  20. #40
    Senior Member kyratshooter's Avatar
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    Most of those kit locks have a set screw that can be turned in and out to limit sear engagement. Try that first.

    If the lock is any good it will have been hardened and a file will not even make a mark on the sear notch.

    If it can not be salvaged then Track of the Wolf carries replacement locks of better quality than the originals and parts to repair them. Traditions also offers parts directly.

    You could probably find a replacement for anything if you hunt around at rondys. I have picked up used locks and parts about every camp I ever went too.
    If you didn't bring jerky what did I just eat?

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