There are several specimens of the breech-loader made on this plan, now in the Woolwich Museum. There are also other specimens, on a plan entirely different, made at a date but a little more recent, for it seems that then, as in modern days, one invention was very apt to suggest another. Three years after the Marquis of Worcester had taken out his patent, one Abraham Hill, of London, patented some six different systems of breech-loaders. In his specification concerning one of them he says:
“It is a new way of making a gun or a pistoll, the breech whereof rises on a hindge, by a contrivance of a motion under it, by which it is also let down and bolted fast by one of the same motion.”
This, as will be readily seen, was rubbing pretty close upon the breech-loader of the present day.
Since the dates of the patents just referred to, the breech-loading fire-arm is known to have been in uninterrupted existence; but so strong was the current turned against it by popular prejudice, that it was little known to the people in general. A want of scientific training among the masses was the cause which held it back; they were unable to clearly understand all the whys and wherefores connected with its workings, and, therefore, rejected it on the plea that it was dangerous, without really knowing whether it was or not.
Great improvements in the breech-loader now succeeded each other with astonishing rapidity up to the time when M. Lefaucheux, of France, capped the climax by inventing the cartridge containing within itself the cap, or means of igniting the charge. This made it available as a sporting gun, and hence promptly set it forward into public attention; and finally, after a score or so of improvements, usually at the hands of the English, into public favor. It is, at last, the gun of the period, and the old muzzle-loader, with all its good qualities (and they were certainly many), is rapidly surrendering the field to the more successful candidate, and retiring in the footsteps of its honored predecessors, the wheel-lock and the flint-lock.
CHAPTER II.
HOW GUNS ARE MADE.
Gunsmith—Gunmaker.—The modern gunsmith is not necessarily a gunmaker, but rather a repairer of guns that have happened to get out of order. In earlier days the devotees to his calling may, in their little shops, have made guns entire, but now, if the gunsmith makes them at all, that making consists in merely finishing up the parts and putting them together—generally making the stock entire. All gun parts can now be bought as “gunsmith’s materials,” either finished or in the rough, as may be desired. They are made by a variety of workmen, the business of each man being to make a single part, and nothing more. There is at present too much in a good gun to admit of all being made advantageously by one man; he would need to be a kind of “Jack-of-all-trades,” and, like the traditional Jack, it is but reasonable to suppose that he would be really first-class at none.
In some of the large establishments where guns are made all these different workmen are employed, hence such an establishment is really a collection of workers in many trades. The gunsmith who has his shop for repairing purposes, or for putting together materials under the name of gunmaking, will not be specially concerned with reference to any of these trades; still it is but reasonable to suppose that he would like to know something of how the implements, or parts of implements, that he will be constantly handling, were put up; and, besides, there will exist something akin to a necessity for his possession of such knowledge, owing to the fact that his customers will often call upon him to answer many a question as to how this or that gun was made, etc. With this view of the case, it is really necessary to give a brief outline of gunmaking, following the work from the rough material to the final finish.
Gun-Barrels—Best Materials for.—The barrels of the finest and best guns, either Damascus, or other steel, or iron, are formed, as made in Europe and England, of scraps of iron suited to the purpose, and selected with great skill and the greatest possible care. These scraps, which are usually bought up about the country, are placed in what is called a “shaking tub”—a vessel which is violently shaken and rocked about by machinery or otherwise (depending upon the particular locality) for the purpose of scouring and brightening the scraps. This done, they are carefully picked over by adepts, who cull out the unsuitable pieces. So rigid is the culling that it often happens that out of a ton of scoured scraps not more than one hundred pounds weight of them are chosen as suitable for going into the best barrels.