doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Damascus-making book ca 1834

I recall a Damascus tread last fall that had 35,000 hits before I dropped out and headed south for the winter. Given the interest in the topic, let me mention a book now at auction on eBay:

#250249482391 William Greener's The Gun. London, 1834/35

Not for everyone because the seller has some sense of its value and the starting bid is almost $1,2000. But what an addition to a gun room library for someone who lives and breaths the topic of Damascus-type forged iron and steel barrels.

There is a 1971 reprint by Donald B. McLean and Normount Technical Publications of Forest Grove OR, which is also a rare find, but not quite so pricey. By the way, William Greener is the father of the much better known gunmaker and author, William Wellington (W. W.) Greener, who wrote the much expanded latter-day version: The Gun and its Development (1881 et seq.). Ed Muderlak

Thanks Ed-and for a preview, most of W. & W.W. Greener's stuff is now digitized

The Gun, or a Treatise on the Various Descriptions of Small Fire-Arms 1835
http://books.google.com/books?id=oIEY4qL6_z0C&pg=PA30-IA1&dq=wiswould%27s+iron#PPA1,M1

The Science of Gunnery, as Applied to the Use and Construction of Fire-Arms 1841 Oxford
http://books.google.com/books?id=ThYkeKlemD8C&dq=w+greener+barrel+patents

Gunnery in 1858: Being a Treatise on Rifles, Cannon, and Sporting Arms
http://books.google.com/books?id=A4TPW796iD8C&dq=w+greener+barrel+patents

The Gun and It's Development 1907
http://books.google.com/books?id=3HMCAAAAYAAJ&dq=w+greener+barrel+patents

I collect antiquarian gunning books and crave the icon, in addition to the information. There are a number of "print on demand" publishers who are doing electronic reprints of just about everything they can lay their hands on, and they tend to charge in the range of $60 to $150. When I search a rare title on AddAll.com (which lists all the other dot-com listings), the proliferation of reprints and copy services is amazing. These "POD" people bid up the real thing and try to make it back retailing the reprints, which is great for availibility. One additional positive is that by possessing the reprint a certain number of purchasers are encouraged to chase down the real thing, thus making for an active collector market (while adding value to existing collector libraries).

I've played this game by reprinting Parker catalogs with my Old Reliable Publishing. But it's a hard way to make a buck. I'm thinking of making ORP a public utility.

I own Greener's 1884 2nd edition in pristine condition, and it is worthwhile to compare his many editions as to what was known at different points of time. By 1907, when his 9th edition came out, the time line for the gun's development was quite muddled; the 2nd edition is an eye opener. Being able to Google the 9th edition has to be hard on the eyes (or printer), especially when the several reprints are always available on eBay for cheap.

The Internet is a great research tool in certain circumstances, but slouching into my leather chair on a cold winter nite, wood burner blazing, and feeling the texture of the boards and pages as I read the one-, two-, or three-century-old words of an original rare old book rings my bell, just like shooting a shotgun of the late 19th or early 20th century. Another benefit of antiquarian gunning books is that no state and federal regulations encumber transactions, and shelved books are an unlikely target for thieves.

By the way, am I missing something: I don't see a spel chezk? EDM

Here is some W. Greener for you, (a real visionary):

"The French system of breechloading firearms (he is talking about LeFaucheux) is a specious pretence, the supposed advantages of which have been loudly boasted of; but none of these advantages have as yet been established by its most strenuous advocates. How it is that the British sportsman has become the dupe of certain men who set themselves up for respectable gun-makers, I know not... There is no possibility of a breech-loader ever shooting equal to a well-constructed muzzle-loader; secondly, the gun [breechloader] is unsafe, and becomes more and more unsafe from the first time it is used; and, thirdly, it is a costly affair, both as regards the gun and the ammunition" "No fear need be entertained that the use of breech-loaders will become general". Writing in Gunnery in 1858

Great reading. One can see that French bashing is an old sport.

JC

Doc, the google books are great and the search feature really works.
Thanks for reminding me of them.

JC

Bunch more digitized books here
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfg2hmx7_190d72b22cr
and
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfg2hmx7_69dxb227c6

Wm. Greener Sr. was talking about pin-fire breechloaders with paper shells, which were somewhat Rube-Goldbergish in their locking mechinism, notoriously leaked at the pin, and consequently were thought to shoot less efficiently than muzzleloaders, loads being equal. Also the paper shells often stuck, requiring the shooter to borrow a ramrod or cut a sapling to push it out of the chamber, while giving him pause to think that his "old reliable" muzzleloader wasn't so bad after all. And the part about being "unsafe," he meant shooting loose at the hinge-pin, which they did.

The Brits looked down on anything frog-like, so the London, Birmingham, and Scots makers were slow to take up on the new-fangled arm, which made its debut in England at the Crystal Palace in 1851. The pin-fire cartridge had been invented by Lefaucheux in about 1836, but it took years to refine it into a usable fowling piece.

Capt. Bogardus wrote in 1874 about his preceived need to use a little extra powder in his first late-1860s pin-fire breechloader. By 1871 he was using and endorsing a Parker central-fire. However, the breechloaders were slow to displace muzzleloaders, and it was common, even as late as 1875-76-77..., for muzzleloaders to out-number breechloaders in the pigeon ring, even at the biggest events.

John Bumstead, author of On the Wing: a Book for Sportsmen (1869) was critical of the new breechloaders, a was Joe Long in his American Wild-Fowl Shooting (1874), although he was willing to allow in his 1879 revised edition that breechloaders had their attractions.

In defense of the elder Greener, Daw's central-fire shell did not exist when he wrote his oft-quoted condemnation of breechloaders. Eley Bro's started making a Daw-like central-fire shotshell ca.1862-63, and the whole shotgunning equation changed "Over There." Meanwhile we were deciding "One nation or two," and after the war had some catching up to do. The Lefaucheux-type tiping breechloaders served as a template for some American makers of cheap guns, but the pin-fire shell never gained any popularity here.

I believe that N. R. Davis was the only American maker that offered a pin-fire in commercial numbers, and it was obsolete even as he started production. The tipping central-fire guns made by Parker (1867) and Whitney (1869) and Wesson (1869) and Ethan Allen (1869) were not the kind breechloaders the senior Greener was denigrating in 1858. I mentioned in my original post how the 2nd edition (1884)of W.W.Greener's The Gun is much different from the more commonly read 9th edition of 1907. Times change, technology changes, often very quickly. Let's not hold a man to what he said in 1858 by showing that he was less than visionary. A tipping breechloader was a bad bet when Greener had his say, however the part about the world being flat, he should have known better. EDM

EDM:

Yeah, for some reason Greener always used 1836 as the date for Lefaucheux's invention but Lefaucheux begin on January 28, 1833 w/ French patent #5525. And the 4th ammendment/addition of March 31, 1835 seems to be the correct date. Greener's works, both W. & W.W., are time sensitive as his opinion changes w/ technology. "Gunnery" of 1858 as well as "Modern Breechloaders" circa 1870, which was to be "Gunnery" of 1868 give great insight to the happenings of the time. What an event all of the Exhibitions must have been, possibly with the Crystal Palace being at the top.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

"There is no possibility of a breech-loader ever shooting equal to a well-constructed muzzle-loader..." "No fear need be entertained that the use of breech-loaders will become general"

Visionary he was not.

JC