Dumb question about breech-loading rifles

First off, I do not know anything about guns so this question is probably stupid. :teary:

But many parts in the world both had rifled guns and breech-loading guns quite early. So why were there, AFAIK, no breech-loading rifles used often until relatively late?

What am I missing?
 
But many parts in the world both had rifled guns and breech-loading guns quite early. So why were there, AFAIK, no breech-loading rifles used often until relatively late?

What am I missing?


It is not a stupid question, if it were easy it would have been answered very early on in the development of firearms, as you pointed out rifling shows up very early and efforts at breech loading also. The problem is in obturation or creating an effective gas seal. What tended to happen to early breech loaders was a large part of the burning product of the gunpowder escaped out of the wrong end. For artillery this was bad enough as it meant a loss of range and power but for small arms it could be even more uncomfortable for the users, both the Dreyse needle gun and the Chassepot had something of a reputation for burning the faces of their users as key parts wore out and those were two quite late examples.

It was not until the invention of effective means of mass producing metallic cartridges of soft metals like copper and brass that the problem was finally solved. Before that there had been various efforts involving screw plugs and separate breechs (the latter more common in artillery but also found in the Hall Rifles). Then in small arms paper cartridges with separate primers, inclusive paper cartridges with their own attached primers (this actually followed the first metallic cartridges but there was no good way to make them), additional obturation at the breech by various methods (the Chassepot used a rubber ring only this wore out depressingly quickly) and finally massed produced metallic cartridges became available. The latter would expand to create that gas seal and ensure all the propellant effect went down the barrel.

In artillery sliding vents were tried as in the Armstrong guns but fixing these sufficiently strongly for larger guns proved unworkable, the Germans used sideways sliding blocks to seal the breech but it was the interrupted screw thread and de Bang's asbestos cap mounted upon this that really provided the first effective solution.
 
How effective would breech loaders with screw plugs have been?

Well Patrick Ferguson developed a weapon with a multi-start thread that meant one turn would drop the breech plug clear for loading. The Ferguson Rifle as it is most commonly known does seem to have been an effective shooting arm. However it suffered a few defects that may or may not have been the cause of its not being taken up into regular service. The firing mechanism is the contemporary flint lock and the combination of having to mount one of these and the screw plug led to a weakness in that part of the stock with breakage seeming to be a frequent problem. In addition they were complex to make Ferguson paid £4 for his weapons but at least one of the gun-makers contracted argued they should have received another £4 pounds per weapon as compared to muzzle loading rifles made by Birmingham manufacturers which cost £3.2.0 (that is 3 pounds and two shillings in contemporary usage) so maybe would have cost some 30% more per weapon. Of course this price may have been inflated by the small numbers involved but both rifling and the manufacture of the screw plug would have required skilled or semi-skilled artisans and a fair amount of labour.


The link is a video of Ricky Roberts speed firing a replica Ferguson Ordnance Rifle, he has studied both the weapon and the history of Patrick Ferguson quite extensively.

Edit okay we now get youtube straight here cool
 
Were there breech-loading rifles using screw plugs around 1700 or so?

Yes Chaumette demonstrated a single thread screw breech loader to the French Academie des Sciences sometime in 1704 and he was following on the earlier work of Bidet who also used a single threaded screw.

Added: the problem with single threaded screws was that it took several complete turns to open the breech so firing was a lot slower than the later Ferguson design.
 
Yes Chaumette demonstrated a single thread screw breech loader to the French Academie des Sciences sometime in 1704 and he was following on the earlier work of Bidet who also used a single threaded screw.
Thanks.
I'm looking at a Chinese inventor who, in the 1680s, made ten copies of European guns that involved screws and possibly rifling. But presumably it wouldn't have been very effective (if at all)?
 
Thanks.
I'm looking at a Chinese inventor who, in the 1680s, made ten copies of European guns that involved screws and possibly rifling. But presumably it wouldn't have been very effective (if at all)?

Well the question is do you want to use it specifically as a rifle or as a general arm?

The use of rifles in warfare was initially confined to dedicated skirmishers and sharpshooters, rather than a hail of shot these needed accurate shooting against fleeting targets often at longer range than than main line troops needed to worry about. Short barrelled European rifles tended to use higher grade powder than contemporary muskets though the American long rifle had such a long barrel because it enabled it to make use of lower quality powder...it would have made carrying around in the undergrowth more awkward though. Rifles tend to be able to reliably hit targets further away than muskets or smooth bore carbines but they were much slower to reload, breech loading probably even with a single thread screw was probably quicker than trying to force patched ball down a rifled barrel. It just might not be as quick as loading a musket.

If you want your troops to hold ground then volume of fire is key as the enemy at some point must come to you to take that ground. If you want to snipe off enemy troops at range then accuracy is the key so normally there would have been a mix of both arms smooth bores being in the great majority. Even in skirmishing experience gained in North America taught the British and Americans that you often needed men armed with smooth bores to back up your riflemen lest the opposition mob them at close range.

So advantages of your hypothetical Chinese breech loader might be: More accurate than a musket (as it is a rifle), faster firing in most circumstance than a muzzle loading rifle and since you are loading straight to the breech you can use a tighter fitting bullet without having to fuss about any kind of patching.

Disadvantages would be: Still slower firing than a musket or carbine, somewhat awkward to use as shooter would have to count the number of turns lest he took the screw out completely by mistake (so a lot of training required), probably a bit tender around the lock mechanism so again a lot of training to learn not to break it, more difficult (as in an extra skilled person to make the screw) to make and slower than a musket (though assuming dedicated screw makers not necessarily slower on a per unit basis than a rifle) to make.

Depending on your doctrine it might still make sense...mounted rifle men would find them a lot easier to use from the saddle for example. What it will not do is conquer the world by itself.
 
Well Patrick Ferguson developed a weapon with a multi-start thread that meant one turn would drop the breech plug clear for loading. The Ferguson Rifle as it is most commonly known does seem to have been an effective shooting arm. However it suffered a few defects that may or may not have been the cause of its not being taken up into regular service. The firing mechanism is the contemporary flint lock and the combination of having to mount one of these and the screw plug led to a weakness in that part of the stock with breakage seeming to be a frequent problem. In addition they were complex to make Ferguson paid £4 for his weapons but at least one of the gun-makers contracted argued they should have received another £4 pounds per weapon as compared to muzzle loading rifles made by Birmingham manufacturers which cost £3.2.0 (that is 3 pounds and two shillings in contemporary usage) so maybe would have cost some 30% more per weapon. Of course this price may have been inflated by the small numbers involved but both rifling and the manufacture of the screw plug would have required skilled or semi-skilled artisans and a fair amount of labour.


The link is a video of Ricky Roberts speed firing a replica Ferguson Ordnance Rifle, he has studied both the weapon and the history of Patrick Ferguson quite extensively.

Edit okay we now get youtube straight here cool

Correct. Manufacturing efficiency was the single most important impediment to producing complex breechloading weapons. It wasn't overcome until 1819 when John H. Hall had to find a way to efficiently make his new breechloading rifle, and he ended up practically inventing modern mass production over the next 3 years. Once he found out how to do that, the rifle was finally produced in significant numbers- 25,000 of them were manufactured and issued to the US Army over the next 20 years. More importantly, the methods pioneered by him and others at Springfield and Harpers Ferry armories (notably Simeon North and Thomas Blanchard) spread to other industries, and became known as the armory system of manufacturing in the US, and the American System of Manufacturing outside the US, after the place where they originated. Once this was in place, breechloaders became cheap enough to be adopted as standard issue in most armies (along with other Industrial Revolution-associated advancements).

Article about how John H. Hall produced his rifle: http://civilwarscholars.com/2011/06/mr-hall-showed-us-how-to-make-things/

I highly recommend reading this, as it shows just how revolutionary his methods of making things primarily with machine tools (one of them Thomas Blanchards pattern lathe) and using gauges throughout the process to ensure interchangeable parts were. It is apparent when reading the reports from inspectors sent to his works that they have clearly never seen anything like this before. The only similar facility was the Portsmouth Block Mills, but this never caught on in England for some reason, and it didn't use gauges, so they never produced interchangeable parts. For comparison to previous methods, here's a video of how rifles were produced before Hall. Note how even though the workers have specialized in one task, they still work by hand wherever possible, inspect parts subjectively (such as checking the straightness of a barrel by eye), and make sure parts fit to the rest of a specific musket. By contrast, Hall's system (which became the American System of manufacturing) used machine tools wherever possible, inspected parts by using gauges throughout the production process, and made sure parts fit to identical gauges (which was what achieved interchangeablitiy after over 100 years of failed efforts). There were at least 3 versions of each of Hall's gauges; one for the workman, one for the foreman, and one for the master armorer to measure the wear on the other 2. There were also more gauges for the final inspection. By the 1850's the British introduced the system after the Robbins & Lawrence Armory (a contractor for Springfield Armory using similar methods of production) demonstrated 6 interchangeable rifles at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, a then unheard-of feat outside the US. A Commission to study US systems of manufacture followed (video links)(also influenced by the experience of the Crimean War), and resulted in RSAF Enfield ordering tools from Robbins and Lawrence, among other US manufacturers, to update the RSAF Enfield to the same level of sophistication as the US armories.
 
.... to update the RSAF Enfield to the same level of sophistication as the US armories.

Higher....higher level of efficiency than the US armories, it may have been the added U or it could simply have been the British were better at making the barrels for small arms but output from the British factories was well and above that achieved by the US ones :D

Otherwise though it is a fair assessment.
 

plenka

Banned
I am sorry about diverting thread from the subject, but I wanted to ask something. Could the rifled flintlock musket be used with minie bullet?
 
Higher....higher level of efficiency than the US armories, it may have been the added U or it could simply have been the British were better at making the barrels for small arms but output from the British factories was well and above that achieved by the US ones :D

Otherwise though it is a fair assessment.
Most likely due to the larger size and funding of RSAF Enfield (they had to provide small arms for the largest empire on earth) compared to Springfield and Harpers Ferry armories at the time. They imported the same machines the US armories used to modernize their machines, and they supposedly even hired US experts to install them and lay out their new factories. The US generally had the most efficient mass production techniques (though the UK had advantages in precision techniques since the 1850's thanks to Joseph Whitworth) in the world until post-WWII due to the likes of Blanchard, Pratt & Whitney (originally a machine tool company), Ford, Sendzimir (Polish immigrant known for his contributions to metallurgy), and others. So while British output was higher, it was likely no better (if not worse) in terms of man-hours, material, and cost per weapon.

I am sorry about diverting thread from the subject, but I wanted to ask something. Could the rifled flintlock musket be used with minie bullet?
Of course (in fact that's the only reason they were rifled), but it was invented after the caplock replaced flintlock muskets, so almost everyone who converted smoothbore muskets to rifled muskets firing minie balls figured they might as well convert them to caplock while they were at it.
 
breech loading was something that couldn't be done until more advanced manufacturing came along, but the minie ball seems like something that could have been invented a lot earlier (doesn't require any advanced tech)... apparently it's just one of those things that 'no one thought of'...
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Most likely due to the larger size and funding of RSAF Enfield (they had to provide small arms for the largest empire on earth) compared to Springfield and Harpers Ferry armories at the time. They imported the same machines the US armories used to modernize their machines, and they supposedly even hired US experts to install them and lay out their new factories.

Perhaps, but it went both ways:


Although much more publicity is given to the adoption of American machinery by the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield, the Springfield Armoury had been envious of British barrel-manufacturing techniques long before the British commission made their inspection. In America, barrels were formed and welded under a trip hammer, a laborious process which produced barrels which frequently failed under proof, while British barrels welded by rolling were quicker to produce and more reliable.[108] Attempts to roll-weld barrels using American machinery and iron failed: it was only in 1858, when the Springfield Armoury bought an English rolling mill, 50 tons of English iron and a Birmingham operative by the name of William Onions to supervise the work, that the Armoury successfully rolled its first barrels.[109] Onions remained the only trained barrel-roller at Springfield until the outbreak of the Civil War, when necessity led to the importation of four more machines and the training of other workers in the art. But English iron was as important as English machines to this roll-welding technique: only the iron produced by a single English firm was sufficiently homogeneous, contained the right quantity of phosphorous, and possessed a ‘fine, uniform distribution of slag particles’ with ‘relatively low liquidus temperature’.[110] As a biography of one of the leading American industrialists makes clear:

no first-class gun-metal was available in the United States. The supply of such metal had to be imported at high cost from Europe. A little came from Scandinavia, but most of it from Great Britain… during months when the British attitude became more and more alarming, the United States remained dependent on Marshall & Mills. The British ironmasters had the formula; the Americas did not.[111]

Put simply, at the time of the Trent Affair the United States could not produce a modern musket without British assistance.
 
Perhaps, but it went both ways:
I wasn't aware of that. Thank you.:)

EDIT: Now that I think about it, if there ever was a war between the US or UK and both had technologies the other needed for modern industrial warfare, they wouldn't just concede the war because of it. The US would likely steal the ironmasters' formula from the UK the same way they stole practically the entire textile industry's secrets in the late 1700's-early 1800's, and the UK would likely steal any mass production techniques and machine designs from the US the same way.
 
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Saphroneth

Banned
I wasn't aware of that. Thank you.:)
It happens, the "narrative" sometimes overwhelms nuance in a standard treatment.

Here's something I think would be interesting - an old-style replacable-breech gun which is used for rapid fire with a half-dozen breeches "pre loaded". Devastating opening broadside in a naval battle and might get breechloading "locked in".
 
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