doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com So what gage is this?

Strickly by the tables there was a 15 gauge and Greener mentions 15 gauge wads from time to time when addressing muzzle loader conversion to breechloader. 2piper is absolutely correct on the "nominal" bores but I think using nominal bore dimensions at this time would be compressing time. Sir Joseph Whitworth's measuring device, which measured to dimensions less that a thousandth, probably wasn't strongly peddled until the after the mid 19th century. There wasn't any standardization of cartridges and many guns were supplied w/ loading equipment as accoutrements. The markers used a plug gauge and if it went the whole length and the bore was either rounded up or rounded down(if not fully bored) to the plug gauge pushers discretion.

In German, true proof marks appear mid 19th century but many cities had a city mark which went hand in hand w/ the maker's mark and possibly a firearms merchant mark. When states were created, that mark is also a possiblity. Suhl in the 17th century had a "SVL" and then a "SUL" mark as they had retained a barrel shooter who pulled off a few rounds and used his eye a quality control. In 1634, Croats burned almost everything and proofing in Suhl really didn't occur until the Prussian law/rule/decree of 1891, public in 1892, effective on April 1st, 1893. Essen may have been the source of the barrel shooter/inspector because as early as mid 1500's it had a city ordinance which put a stamp on every firearm made there. 1n 1676, tubes were supposed to be marked with a number which was a value of the number of lead spheres to a pound of lead, which "pound", I don't know. In the early 1800s, the French were managing Essen and the mark of "Manufacture d'Essen" is seen of firearms. And circa 1840, manufactures moved to Saar. They were other cities, but the most interesting one to me is the proof house at Solingen which began in 1867 and had some sort of Imperial/stylized Prussian eagle(which is common mark among Schutzen stuff and in just is sometimes a buzzard) w/ "SP" below it, all in an oval. Mauser, Simson, Schillling all made edged weapons but I haven't seen a Solingen mark on any of their weapons just yet.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Bob; Just a thought, Do you supose, that for whatever reason, that was from a lot of paper shells, perhaps special ordered, to fit a "B-Size" chambered 14ga gun. That .708" is .015" larger than a nominal 14ga bore. A paper case is normally made with some clearence to allow for easy chambering & extracting even with a small amount of swelling so would seem to be in the ball park of a B chamber, though I do not have actual dimensions for same.

I was wondering if this was a "house" cartridge. I wonder why this size was selected? I would guess the gun was made in the 1870's (based on information from Larry Schucknect), but why select this size when common sizes were available?
Chris

Raimey
All that you say here is certainly to the best of my knowledge correct in it's entirety. I am not positive as to the earliest date for the standardizing of the British Gauge dimensions. Even this of course did not mean that every bbl stamped 14 for instance left the factory at an exact .693" size. I have for instance an old side lever opener, backaction hammer, W Richards bearing Birmingham proofs. This gun predates the introduction (1887) of the in-between stamps (14/1 etc) & has a 12ga chamber (no stamping) & bore marked 14. It is cyl bored both bbls, so no B/M stamps. It is quite possible indeed it had bores very near to the .710" (13ga) which it now measures. That 14 stamp simply meant it would accept a .693" plug, but not a .710" one. That's .017" leeway. To say because thiese bbls are stamped 14 they went through proof at exactly .693" would simply be wrong, but to state that 14ga is a "nominal" .693" size is correct. Charts from the British proof houses dating back to at least 1855 give the same sizes still in use to present time, however a chart given by W Greener in his book "The Gun 1834" stated to be taken from "a small work, published by the authority of the Proof Co" show all sizes larger than later ones. It would seem that at this time the ball was calculated to be of exact weight for the gauge & likely the bore was designed to give clearence.
A 14ga gun under this chart was proofed with a 1.142oz (16/14) ball, .875oz (14 drams) of powder & had a listed bore dia of .701". This was .008" over the later listed .693" of a 14ga. Many times on these very early guns about all we can do is speculate as to what the makers intent was.

Barrel boring is an interesting topic in itself. Very early on, it was a closely held art form. In 1775 John Golcher was hired by the Council of Safety of Philadelphia to teach boring at their newly established gun factory. Wallace Gusler, a modern smith, claims they would easily use 13 drill bits for a single barrel. These were constantly breaking and had to be resharpened in the shop.

As it became a more specialized task, apprentices were often first put to work boring barrels under the supervision of older journeymen who were considered too old for other tasks.

It is amazing that more barrels and chambers do not exhibit "peculiar" dimensions.

Pete

And it was truly an art, and art is usually difficult to quantify. By the late 18th century, the appropiate amounts of carbon, manganese, phosphorus, silicon, etc weren't yet known and tool steel wasn't where it needed to be. Today we're fortunate to be able to measure to the nth degree. In hindsight we tend to lump history into one event and forget the advances as they surfaced in the timeline. But to only quantize a unit in one of today's unit is a mistake. The original intent of bore or gauge was to be integers and possibly nothing less. The term probably originated for cannon dimensions with which iron was used. Early on, iron was probably difficult to melt and the element of lead was chosen due to the change of state at a lower tempature. The English had a factor of 12 fetish and could possibly explain the dominance of the 12 bore. 16 bore, a favorite of the continent, just happens to be a 1 oz weight/density and could have originally gone hand in hand w/ the term zweilothige kugeln. So where is the Bureau of Standards 12 bore and 16 bore lead spheres(who's inch/pounce, density, pound)? More than likely, they don't exist and insight can be achieved thru understanding the method or technique of the era, not mirco-measuring. An attempt was made in the 1887 rules w/ the "vulgar fractions" to make an equation between bore and inches w/ some variances which were now noted.

Regarding the cartridges, Berdan, Boxer, Daw, ect. were trying to make their mark on gunnery as well as pinfire being in full swing. Many held fast to the belief that the muzzle loader was king and that breechloaders were a passing fad. Others were having their muzzle loaders converted. So one has to look at the cartridge manufactures like H. Uttendoerffer in Nuernberg, Eley and many other to get an idea of what cartridges were available because standardization just didn't exist.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

While on this subject it is noted that once the formula for the volume of a sphere was established it became only necessary to know the density of lead to mathamatically determine the sizes for any gauge. It is also noted that taking the volume of a sphere as Pi x D cube / 6 & lead @ 707.7 lbs per Cubeic foot /.40955 lbs per cubic inch; will not give the exact sizes given in the British proof charts. The difference is extremely slight, but is different.

Excellent as that is my point. 12 bore, or any for that matter, was never 0.729" or a numeric value. Even the 0.577 is noted as having a bullet diameter of 23 to the pound. A numeric value was a forced definition when folk were able to make that measurement and the truncation of pi was yet another avenue for the interjection of error w/ all the other error. And until the standardization of units, etc. such a value couldn't be accurately measured. If one had 12 spheres of pure lead totally 1 pound, measured the diameter of all and took an average, that would be a close approximation of what the diameter would be. It wasn't until the last 1880s that pi was determined to be transcendental and then in 1897 there was an attempt by lawmakers in Indiana(from memory) to set the numeric value of pi to 3.2. But in the 19th century there were many digits for pi, but how many sig-figs did the early folk doing the computing use(maybe just a fraction equivalent?). The difference is really only in the thousandth range. About a dozen digits are needed for such a computation. In the mid to late 1990s, I was fortunate to see experiments calculating the value of pi out to millions of places via the Cray.

(rad. in feet)^3=3/(4*pi*708(density of lead in lb/feet^3)*gauge)
always, always remember to convert from inches to feet & feet to inches which is yet another source of error. Us US foot and not international.

In metric:
(diameter)^3 =(6*453.59237)/((11.352 g/cm^3)*gauge*pi)

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Raimey'
One cold Rainy day, fit for neither man nor beast, as they say, rather than watching the idiot tube I sat down & Ciphered with a programable calculator. I put in a formula which after having entered a value for the dia of a 1 ga ball would determine the dia of any ga number entered. I worked in conjuction with a chart from the Birmingham proof listing gauge dia's to 3 decimal places. I first used 1.669" from the chart as dia of 1ga. & assumed all dimensions should be capable of being "Rounded" to the three places. I went through the formula for all 50 gauges listed & a few rounded .001" too small. I then went to 1.670" & tried again & a greater number rounded .001" too large. I noted in both cases those sizes which fell "Out of Tolerence". Working then only with those sizes I began closing in. It very soon became evident that to entirely "Fit" the chart required working with a 6 decimal place figure for a 1ga or a lb ball of lead. 1.669285" proved to be the approximate middle of the range. 1.66928 is too small & 1.66929 is too large. This 1.669285 also proved to be accurate on even the gauges which gave dias of less than the 50ga. For example 3√(1.669285^3 ÷ 172.28) = .299998 or rounded to 3 places .300". It is noted though, that working the other way, given that a sphere of lead of 1.669285" weighs 1 lb, then a cubic foot of this same substance would weigh 709.5 lbs. My Machinery's Handbook however states a cu/ft of lead weighs 707.7 lbs (0.3% variation). These same identical dias are listed in British proof charts from at least as early as 1855, for gauges from 1 through 50. It would thus seem someone was doing some highly accurate measuring & calculating pretty early on.
It must not of course be imagined the Gunmakers themselves worked to any such kinds of tolerences & guns all supposedly of 12 ga for instance can be found with widely varying bore dimensions.
It would seem that from 1855 to 2008 the size of a "True" 12ga has been listed @ .729" However using lead @ 707.7 lbs per FT^3 a 12ga would calculate to .730". Considering tools & technology in 1855 it appears to me someone was working "EXTREMELY ACCURATE".All this I suppose has little if any practical value, but is very interesting to me at least. It would of course be quite easy to say they simply were not working with pure lead, but we would have to assume it had a constituent which was denser,/heavier, while the majority of imputities found in lead will be less dense/lighter.

Did you guys ever figure out what gauge the gun was.

I've got an English 12 hammer gun with bore diameters of .717....choked .006 and .028.