AOG breechloader

Out of curiosity RFC why did you pick the Ferguson rifle rather than the Hall rifle? Ever shoot a Hall replica?

Poker

pokermind wrote:Out of curiosity RFC why did you pick the Ferguson rifle rather than the Hall rifle? Ever shoot a Hall replica?

Poker

Never fired one, but I have handled one.

And who says I'm not going to have someone come up with it --- or a variant of it, or of the Burnside, or any one of several others littering the early years of the 19th century --- before I'm done?

I guess the real reason I went with a modified Ferguson was that I live less than an hour's drive from King's Mountain, to be honest.

I assumme the trapdoor mechanism of this Mayhdrahn conversion works like Tom Selleck's Sharps in "Quigley Down Under" or Burt Lancaster's in "valdez is coming". Am I right ?.

jmbm wrote:I assumme the trapdoor mechanism of this Mayhdrahn conversion works like Tom Selleck's Sharps in "Quigley Down Under" or Burt Lancaster's in "valdez is coming". Am I right ?.

I think this is the classic trapdoor model.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Model_1873

The Sharps is a falling block design where a rising and falling block closes the breech.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharps_rifle

jmbm wrote:I assumme the trapdoor mechanism of this Mayhdrahn conversion works like Tom Selleck's Sharps in "Quigley Down Under" or Burt Lancaster's in "valdez is coming". Am I right ?.

Nope.

The Sharps used a sliding block. That is, you lower the trigger guard/cocking lever and the block which seals the breech behind the cartridge moves vertically in a set of guides. This is why a lot of folks thought I was basically using the Sharps' action when I first described the Mahndrayn, which is really a quite different and — frankly — less efficient design than the Sharps for several reasons. I deliberately made it a less than optimum but workable design. If I’d wanted to go immediately to a better action, or if I’d decided the Temple would be able to mass produce metallic cartridges and I wanted to give them a qualitative edge there, the rolling block would have arrived on the scene, as used in the Remington, because it's a very strong, very simple, and much more easily machined action than the one I actually adopted. For that matter, in my opinion, it's also much better than the Sharps' sliding block.

Be that as it may, the Westley Richards Monkey Tail (the actual historic ancestor of the Trapdoor Mahndrayn) was similar in concept to the Trapdoor Springfield, but had (in my opinion) a better system for locking up the breech block when firing. In both weapons, the breech block was hinged at the forward end, swinging up when a lever was lifted to open the breech (hence the name “Trapdoor” for the Springfield; the Westley Richards’ breech was curved and thought ny some to look like a monkey’s tai. I happen to think that "trapdoor" is actually a better, more descriptive term, so I went ahead and grafted it onto the Monkey Tail with a fine disregard for historic tradition.)

So whereas the Sharps block slid downward and the rolling bock pivoted down and back through a half circle when the breech was opened, the Trapdoor and Monkey Tail both lifted up and forward. These are all examples of the many and manifold breech closures which were experimented with through the 19th century, and IIRFC, the Westley Richards was still being manufactured well into the 20th century. (BTW, I also cribbed the basic design for the Mahndrayn’s cartridge, felt base and all, from an earlier Westley Richards design. What can I say? When you care enough to steal from the very best . . . . )

I have to applaud RFC for allowing me to learn a wealth of information about early designs of breech loading weapons at the turn of the century.

It reminds me of the early wildcatting days of PC creation. A host of companies where out there designing and producing them, leaving many buyers wondering if they were getting the next great thing or a pig in a poke. This far removed from the process it seems so simple; at the time each country and military had ample opportunities to completely screw up the development/procurement process.

Another of the many reasons to enjoy this forum. Thank you all.

Damonby wrote:I have to applaud RFC for allowing me to learn a wealth of information about early designs of breech loading weapons at the turn of the century.

It reminds me of the early wildcatting days of PC creation. A host of companies where out there designing and producing them, leaving many buyers wondering if they were getting the next great thing or a pig in a poke. This far removed from the process it seems so simple; at the time each country and military had ample opportunities to completely screw up the development/procurement process.

Another of the many reasons to enjoy this forum. Thank you all.

I commend Louis L'Amour's "Ferguson Rifle" (1973) which was my first intro to this weapon. L'Amour is an impressive predecessor to RFC as an expert historian writing to their strengths in their novels. It would be interesting if LLA had lived to this era so friendly to the concepts of alternative history.

Damonby wrote:I have to applaud RFC for allowing me to learn a wealth of information about early designs of breech loading weapons at the turn of the century.

It reminds me of the early wildcatting days of PC creation. A host of companies where out there designing and producing them, leaving many buyers wondering if they were getting the next great thing or a pig in a poke. This far removed from the process it seems so simple; at the time each country and military had ample opportunities to completely screw up the development/procurement process.

Another of the many reasons to enjoy this forum. Thank you all.

I've always used that very comparison when talking about 19th Century firearms development.

Remember when the newest and greatest CPU advancement would end up being obsolete 6 months or a year later? Pretty much the whole 19th Century was that way when you are talking about firearms. Firearms designers had to strike while the iron was hot if they were going to make anything off their designs because there was always someone, somewhere, that was a couple steps behind them in the process with something better.

When it comes to breechloading in the mid 19th Century when it was really taking off, if you can imagine a way to do it, there's been a gun (or 3) developed that worked that way. Barrels moving up, down, left and right, sliding forward, pulling back,.... Breech blocks rolling, sliding, falling, raising, flipping, pivoting and sometimes in some unique combinations of the above, too. Some designs leave you wondering why they didn't catch on while many just leave you scratching your head as you wonder exactly why they thought it was a good enough idea to actually build a gun like that in the first place.

By the time things settled down a bit in the latter 1/3 of the Century, the firearms business was just cutthroat. Smith and Wesson started the ball rolling when they rabidly defended the Rollin White patent. Winchester, after 1887, bought absolutely anything Browning designed, the filed the patents for the designs and went after anyone they thought was infringing on them. (Seriously, they bought and patented EVERYTHING Browning brought to them. Browning challenged his brothers to come up the the cheapest, shootable .22 boy's rifle they could think up as a joke nad friendly ocntest. One of the designs became the Winchester Model 1900.) Many times, Browning was asked to come up with something in particular and would show up back East with 3 or 4 guns that fit the bill but did it in completely different ways. Winchester would buy the designs, blueprint the guns, file the patents on all of them to keep the competition from developing something similar and build one of the designs.

Hi JTG452,

Yup, JMB, or John Moses Browning was a certified genius 7 ways from Sunday.

L

Keep smiling

jtg452 wrote:

Damonby wrote:I have to applaud RFC for allowing me to learn a wealth of information about early designs of breech loading weapons at the turn of the century.

It reminds me of the early wildcatting days of PC creation. A host of companies where out there designing and producing them, leaving many buyers wondering if they were getting the next great thing or a pig in a poke. This far removed from the process it seems so simple; at the time each country and military had ample opportunities to completely screw up the development/procurement process.

Another of the many reasons to enjoy this forum. Thank you all.

I've always used that very comparison when talking about 19th Century firearms development.

Remember when the newest and greatest CPU advancement would end up being obsolete 6 months or a year later? Pretty much the whole 19th Century was that way when you are talking about firearms. Firearms designers had to strike while the iron was hot if they were going to make anything off their designs because there was always someone, somewhere, that was a couple steps behind them in the process with something better.

When it comes to breechloading in the mid 19th Century when it was really taking off, if you can imagine a way to do it, there's been a gun (or 3) developed that worked that way. Barrels moving up, down, left and right, sliding forward, pulling back,.... Breech blocks rolling, sliding, falling, raising, flipping, pivoting and sometimes in some unique combinations of the above, too. Some designs leave you wondering why they didn't catch on while many just leave you scratching your head as you wonder exactly why they thought it was a good enough idea to actually build a gun like that in the first place.

By the time things settled down a bit in the latter 1/3 of the Century, the firearms business was just cutthroat. Smith and Wesson started the ball rolling when they rabidly defended the Rollin White patent. Winchester, after 1887, bought absolutely anything Browning designed, the filed the patents for the designs and went after anyone they thought was infringing on them. (Seriously, they bought and patented EVERYTHING Browning brought to them. Browning challenged his brothers to come up the the cheapest, shootable .22 boy's rifle they could think up as a joke nad friendly ocntest. One of the designs became the Winchester Model 1900.) Many times, Browning was asked to come up with something in particular and would show up back East with 3 or 4 guns that fit the bill but did it in completely different ways. Winchester would buy the designs, blueprint the guns, file the patents on all of them to keep the competition from developing something similar and build one of the designs.

lyonheart wrote:Hi JTG452,

Yup, JMB, or John Moses Browning was a certified genius 7 ways from Sunday.

L

Keep smiling

The man designed everything from single shot .22's to automatic cannon (the 37mm AA and aircraft cannon used in WW2 was his design) and worked with everything from muzzle loaders to machineguns as a gunsmith.

There was a period of decades when everything Winchester was making and every semi auto pistol Colt was making his design. He wasn't just prolific, his designs were innovative and over designed to a level where when smokeless powder came around, Winchester didn't have to redesign the guns for them to use it safely. A change in the steel used to make them was needed in some cases, but the design was already safe with that level of pressure. His semi auto pistol action is still the industry standard well over 100 years after he designed it. And he didn't just design guns, most of the time he designed the ammunition that the guns shot as well. Pull out a Cartridges of the World. Every round that is listed with the 'ACP' suffix is a Browning design along with the 'Browning' suffixed cartridges that were used in Europe. He was so successful in Europe that at one time, 'browning' was a slang term for a small semi auto pistol because his .25, .32 and .380 semi autos were that popular. He's also the only designer to present weapons to the US military for trial that never had a failure during the trials. That's impressive when you realize that we fought WW2 with a whole lot of Browning designed arms- like the 37mm auto cannon, the numerous variants of the .50 and .30 Browning MG's, the BAR, and the 1911.

His designs have stood the test of time. The gun that broke his relationship with Winchester was the semi auto shotgun. While it is known as the Browning Auto 5, the initial deal he made with FN named Remington as the Western Hemisphere distributor. It was marketed by Remington as the Model 11- the direct design ancestor (the design they are based on) of the modern Remington 1100 and 11-87's you can pick up pretty much anywhere today. Not to mention that the M2 .50 caliber Browning Machine gun is still in production today- nearly 100 years after he designed it- with no real plans to replace it in the near future.