doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Iron / Steel possible defiinitions

Butler has a blurb in his 'The American Shotgun' about material selection for various parts of the shotguns he was involved in engineering. I would value more research information gleaned from the folks who actually did engineering and process development on the old guns, or even not so old guns. Is there any such material extant?

Good Morning Pete!

Those trip hammers, typically driven by waterwheel, sometimes by steam, were widely used in at least the Vallon part of Swedish iron industry. I have seen several that look much like those pictures -- at least one can easily imagine that from what remains. One trip hammer was recently reactivated, this summer, at Österbybruk and used breifly by one of very few remaining smiths. I got to watch that ceremonial event. At Österbybruk they have been systematically restoring the forge and smithy, complete with waterwheel driven bellows (piston type).

The continuous loud banging of those trip hammers was hallmark sound of Vallon iron works (järnbruk). The very elaborate manor houses of these järnbruk were nearby, meaning that everyone there lived from Monday morning to Saturday midday with the sound of these hammers ringing in their ears -- 24 hour operations.

Those trip hammers were used to hammer the long casts (pigs in english? göt in Swedish) of iron into bars for delivery to buyers. All anvils I have seen were rather simple designs. In later decades, walzing machines did much of this conversion to final product bars, at least in some järnbruk -- Karlholm Järnbruk was one.

Some järnbruk converted iron bars into produce final product. Strömsberg had exclusive right to make large anchors for Swedish navy. Vira was a järnbruk were swords (rapier, cutlass, etc.) were made for mounted and foot troops. Vira also made axes, sythes, knives, etc. Vira first got its privelidged status in 1645. Its klingesmedjor (edged weapons and tools smithy) and sliphus (where blades were finished, sharpened and made into swords) were a successful move by Sweden to develop large-scale domestic production of edged weapons, rather than import them. See Vira klingsmedja och liebruk, 1969, Norstedts, Stockholms läns kulturminnesråds skriftserie Nr 2.

Niklas

It appears that small advances in blast furnace technology in the latter part 18th century lead to higher production and lower prices. From Bell's "Manufacture of Iron and Steel", during the 1840's, coal miners used wood rails to move their product when expensive iron was available. During the next 40 years, there were advances in iron smelting and processing that led to the use of iron as rails by the miners. I think that it would have also influenced barrel making because there would have been a greater source of a better basic product at a lower price. For example the average weekly make of the British blast furnace was:

1788 - 15 1/2 tons/week using ordinary clay ironstone
1796 - 20 tons/week "
1806 - 21 tons/week "
1827 - 35 tons/week "

From Dr. Thomas Tooke's "History of Prices":
(Tooke was an Economist born in St. Petersburg, Russia)

1782 - 6-7 Pounds/Ton for English pig iron
1790 - 3-7 "
1806 to 1818 - 7-9 Pounds/Ton
1822 - back to 6-7 Pounds/Ton

And in the next 40 years production went to a furnace's weekly average of 400 tons/week. So, England had to have good sources of iron from other countries during the mid 19th century. Dr. Thomas Tooke and William Newmarch collected empirical ecomomic data and within their works may reveal sources in other countries of iron & steel for rail.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Niklas,

I thought the etching would elicit a response This sounds fascinating. Do have any pictures of this restoration? Yes, I have read similar things about Nessonvaux and the constant hammering.

Raimey,

Great stuff. Can you tie the production to changes in the smelting / refining? Or are you seeing normal growth?

Pete

PeteM:

Yes, production and cost/sales are tied directly to advances in smelting and refining. The reason wooden rails were used instead of iron is just a matter of economics. It's the same with barrel types changing from Damsacus to fluid steel: cost of manufacturing.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Some interesting reading on "Iron & Engine Works" as well as Bell, Cort, John Birkenshaw on "wedge form" cast iron rail, etc. as well as the effects of the steam engine at the mill here: http://www.pitwork.net/terrymcbedl.htm


Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Well for those 2-3 still interested in all of this, I'm working my way through a fascinating book, and have included some relevant passages. Though clearly damascus BLADE production went from India/Persia/Middle East to Europe, firearm technology went from Europe to the Middle East (after first starting in China) And Hungarians, Germans, French, and the Liegeois were in the middle of it.

Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire Gabor Agoston
Cambridge University Press, 2005

p.1 & 58
Gunpowder…was first made in China in the seventh or eighth century AD and the first proper firearms were manufactured there from the 1280s onward. Within decades, gunpowder weapons had reached both Islamdom and Christian Europe…By (the mid 1300s) firearms had reached Hungary and the Balkans, and by the 1360s the Mamluks (Egypt) and by the 1380s the Ottomans were also acquainted with the new weapon. The Safavids (Iran) used firearms by the late 1400s…but the Safavid warrior aristocracy regarded the use of firearms as against the idea of honor and manliness…and were also handicapped by the scarcity of raw materials needed for the casting of cannons and the manufacturing of gunpowder. By 1517 (however), Shah Ismail created a corps of 8000 musketeers (tofangchi).

p. 18
…throught their wars against the Hungarians in the 1440s, the Ottomans became acquainted with Christian…Wagenburg, or “wagon fortress,” first used by the Hussites in Bohemia during the Hussite wars (1419-36), was a defensive arrangement of “war wagons” chained together…manned with crossbow-men and hand-gunners…

p. 58
The wheel-lock mechanism (was) introduced in Italy about 1520…and in 1543, in the siege of Szekesfehervar (Hungary)…(the Turks) confiscated several wheel-lock pistols from German horsemen.

p. 19
Fifteenth-century Ottoman chroniclers mention tufenks or handguns…as a general term for arquebus and, later, the musket.

p. 23
…the Janissaries (paid household troops of the Sultan) started to employ hand firearms (tufenk/tufeng/tufek) under Murad II (1421-51).

p.24
…during the 1663-64 Hungarian campaign 10,982 tufenks were distributed to the troops from the Imperial Armory.

p.25
(In the 1570s) Lazarus Freiherr von Schwendi…advised the Habsburg Emperor to enroll Spanish and Italian arquebusiers as well as “Schutzen zu Ross.”

p.27
In the summer of 1600, some 400-500 French and Walloon mercenaries of the garrison of Papa offered their services to the Sultan…

p. 44-46
…Jorg of Nuremberg, who was captured in 1460 while working in Bosnia as Buchsenmeister or cannon founder…worked for 20 years for the Ottomans.

Nicolaos de Nocolay, who visited the Ottoman capital city in 1551, pointed out that these western technicians “to the great detriment and damage of the Christianitie, have taught the Turkes divers inventions, craftes and engines of warre, as to make artillerie, arquebuses, gunne pouder, shot, and other munitions.” Vincente Roca in his History, first published in 1556, claimed that the Jews expelled from Spain taught the Ottomans “most of what they know of the villainies of war, such as the use of brass ordnance and of fire-locks.” Jewish blacksmiths are recorded in the 1517-18 accounts of the Imperial Cannon Foundry at Istanbul…

In 1544…at the foundry there were forty or fifty Germans employed by the Sultan to cast cannon. The French ambassador to Istanbul, d’Aramon, added that in 1547-48, several French, Venetian, Genoese, Spanish and Sicilian experts worked at Tophane.

…in the sixteenth century a considerable number of Slav and Gypsy artisans from the Balkans served the Hungarian kings…making swords, guns, projectiles and gunpowder.

p. 47
The first blast furnaces for casting iron ordnance in Spain were erected with the help of master founders from Liege…in 1613, by Jean Curtuis from Liege.

Under Ivan III (1462-1505) the Tula (Russia) arms factory was established by Andries Vinius, a Dutchman who ran the enterprise until 1647…

England’s “quasi-monopoly” of cast-iron ordnance between 1540 and 1620 owed much to French cannon founders and iron-workers.

Sweden’s cast-iron ordnance industry…dominated the European arms market from the 1620s until the late eighteenth century. The blast-furnace technology was introduced to Gustavus Adolphus’s country by Louis de Geer and Willem de Basche, two master founders from Liege, and their Liegeois iron-workers.
(From Arnold Pacey, Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History. 1990)

GUN BARRELS COME NEXT

Drew,

Yes it is a worthwhile book. He does a good job of documenting the Ottoman influence on firearms. So are you going to learn siyaqat so you can read the Ottoman chancery records? He really is great researcher. I can not imagine how much work went into those tables of cannon production by foundry or the maps of arsenals!

Mostly I found it interesting the way he documents "the cross-cultural interactions of the Ottomans with Europe from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries." By for more complete than any other source I have read to date.

Pete

Pete,

I have one picture of restored trip hammer in action at Österbybruk in summer of 2007. It is picture from deep in a Swedish webbsite about nyckelharpa (ancient Swedish bowed, string instrument from at least 1350). We were not allowed to take pictures at inaguration of trip hammer, apparently because someone(s) is/are writing book about restoration of this forge and trip hammer, etc.

I have not yet attempted to establish what is needed to post pics on BBs. Will be glad to send it to anyone that sends me their e-mail address. Send me your e-mail address via this board's personal message and I will e-mail you this jpg image with short caption in English.

Niklas

We all tend to be ethno-, culture-, and nation-centric, when in reality we ALL are what we are because of each other

But which direction did pattern welded gun barrels go? The first were manufactured in India by Ain I Akbari and in Turkey c. late 1500s. More to follow!