Grantville Gazette V

by Eric Flint

—, "Considerations Relative to the Nature of Wool, Silk, and Cotton, as Objects of the Art of Dying," Part 3, The Repertory of Arts and Manufactures, Vol. 2 (1795) p. 192.

  —, "Conclusion of Mr. Henry's Considerations Relative to the Nature of Wool, Silk, and Cotton, as Objects of the Art of Dying," Part 4, The Repertory of Arts and Manufactures, Vol. 2 (1795) p. 249.

  Hummel, J. J. and Edmund Knecht, Encyclopedia Britannica, "Dyeing," (11th ed., 1911) vol. ?, p. 744.

  Knecht, Edmund. Encyclopedia Britannica, "Bleaching," (11th ed., 1911) vol. ?, p. 49.

  London Encyclopaedia, "Dyeing," (1829) p. 573.

  Oxford Encyclopedia, "Dyeing," (1828) vol. 2, p. 889.

  Pellew, Charles E. "Mediaeval Dyestuffs," The Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club, Vol. 2 (1918) p. 3.

  People's Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge, "Dyeing," (1895) p. 875.

  Rees's Cyclopaedia, "Bleaching," (1819).

  —, "Colour," (1771).

  —, "Dyeing," (1819).

  What Replaces the SRG?

  By Leonard Hollar,

  Bob Hollingsworth,

  John Rigby,

  Phillip Schillawski,

  Tom Van Natta and

  John Zeek

  The SRG is the standard muzzle-loading rifle of forces allied with USE. SRG stands for "Struve-Reardon Gevar," named after the manufacturer and designer of the weapon. "Gevar" is the German term for rifle.

  It is based on the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle, one of the most common guns of the American Civil War. It uses a hollow based, pointed bullet of the Minié design which can be quickly loaded as it is smaller than the bore of the rifle and it expands to grip the rifling on firing. The original percussion action has been modified to use a modern "French" flintlock such as was in common use at the time of the American Revolution. The rifle is stocked with a hardwood to within four inches of the muzzle and equipped with a steel ramrod for loading and cleaning. The rifle is slightly over 55 inches in length and weighs slightly more than ten pounds. The rifle is equipped with a tangent style rear sight that allows accurate point shooting to four hundred yards and the sight then flips up to be a ladder sight for shooting at area targets at ranges to eight hundred meters. The rifle is issued with a socket type bayonet with a triangular blade over sixteen inches long. There is a shortened version of the SRG in use with mounted troops and others.

  Two things should have stood out in the previous article ("Flint's Lock," Grantville Gazette, Vol. 3) about the SRG, the rifle adopted by the USE army in 1633:

  1) The SRG is a stopgap weapon, better than any other weapon in Europe at the time, but still not the best that can be made.

  2) By its very design the SRG can be copied and maybe even improved by many down-timers, including enemies of the new USE.

  So the question becomes: What should replace the SRG?

  The first answer that springs to mind is to convert it to a cap or percussion lock. After all, the P-53 Enfield on which the SRG was based was a percussion weapon.

  That idea brings up the percussion cap and the action that goes with it. Basically the percussion cap is a simple cup made from any thin metal. Copper is the most common. The inside of this cup is varnished to prevent the metal from reacting with the priming compound. Then a small amount of the priming compound—this could be fulminate of mercury or any other impact sensitive material—is painted in the cap. A second coat of varnish protects the priming compound from moisture.

  [We deemed it outside the scope of this article to get into the identity and performance of those impact sensitive priming compounds—fulminates, styphnates, etc. We know they are being worked on. That's one for the chemistry folks.]

  The SRG rifle replaces the flash pan of the flintlock with a simple nipple or cone and the complex hammer (holding a flint) with one that has only a hollow face. In action, the rifleman loads his weapon much like he would load the flintlock, but instead of priming the flash pan, he cocks the hammer to half cock and places a cap on the nipple. To fire, the hammer is simply moved to full cock position, aimed and fired. Because capping the rifle takes the extra movement of reaching into the cap pouch when priming, the rate of fire will go down slightly. However, the loaded rifle is more windproof and a lot better in rain or in snowy conditions. It is not completely weatherproof, but it is close. In addition, the percussion rifle has a shorter lock time—the period of time between the shooter squeezing the trigger and the weapon firing. A shorter lock time makes for a more accurate weapon. That means there are some real advantages to going to a percussion version of the SRG.

  But are those advantages enough to justify the effort of rearming the whole army? Another point to consider is whether a percussion SRG is that much better than the copies of the flintlock SRG that will soon be in the hands of the enemies of the USE. Remember that the SRG can be made by down-time gun makers, and the French already know about the modern flintlock, which itself was a big improvement on the matchlocks featured in the opening of 1632.

  It should be clear that we feel the gun designers of Grantville should skip a generation of firearms design and go directly to a cartridge breechloader.

  But what cartridge breechloader? And, more importantly, what cartridge?

  As you might imagine, there is a slight difference of opinion among the members of the panel on this subject. Some of us were holding out for the paper cartridge Sharps design that could later be converted to metallic cartridges. Some wanted to use the tipping chamber of the Hall and later Burnside. Both of these, the Sharps and the Hall, could use paper cartridges with percussion caps.

  Other members of the group held out for going straight to a metallic cartridge weapon. Even among the metallic cartridge advocates there are a few differences of opinion. One wants a single-shot dropping block rifle like the Sharps, another wants a single-shot rolling block like the Remington, another wants a tip down rifle based on the single shot shotgun, and one wants to do an add-on hinged-breech to the SRG like the Trapdoor Springfield. All of these actions are strong enough for an effective black powder load and were fairly popular. Examples of each should be in Grantville, since the single-shots are all popular with cowboy action shooters and deer hunters who use single shot rifles.

  All of these single-shot designs confer a major military advantage: they allow effective reloading from the prone position. The troops no longer have to expose themselves to enemy fire by standing upright to reload the SRG from the muzzle. This preserves the lives of veterans and allows recruits a better chance of becoming veterans in the first place. But all of the designs except the Trapdoor have the disadvantage of requiring entirely new tooling to produce, thus delaying their introduction and keeping the troops exposed in the interim.

  Still others of us want to skip single shots and go straight to magazine rifles. But the question arises, which magazine rifle: lever action, bolt action or something else? The familiar Winchester lever action is well known and common in the area. Mauser and Lee style actions are the most common bolt-action hunting rifles. Add in the semi-auto SKS and you have the typical hunting rifles of the area. All of these magazine rifles give the prone reloading advantage, but they all require entirely new tooling (and even more of it than the single-shots), so they would increase the time the troops are exposed.

  First we will look at the Sharps design. The Sharps designed by Christian Sharps in the 1840s is what is called a sliding block rifle. The breechblock, that part that closes the firing chamber, slides down to open the chamber when the operating lever is moved. Since the breechblock is almost totally enclosed by metal it is a very strong design.

  The early Sharps design used a linen or paper cartridge and percussion cap. This cartridge was just a bullet and powder charge wrapped in paper or linen. The paper or linen would usually be impregnated with potassium nitrate for easy ignition and thorough burning. The ignition or priming was provided by a percussion cap on an external nipple, much like any other cap lock rifle of the period. While some early
Sharps used a disc primer, where the primer was thrown forward by the movement of the hammer, making the rifle self priming, most of the reproduction rifles do not. The disc primer system was found to be too "fiddly" for hard field usage. Later Sharps used metallic cartridges and were still in production at the time of the Ring of Fire (RoF). In this latter design, the external nipple is replaced by a firing pin, which is driven by the hammer to strike the primer of the cartridge.

  The advantages of the Sharps design for the residents of Grantville would be its strength, and the fact that it is a percussion design that could be easily converted to a cartridge rifle. The major disadvantage is it requires very tight tolerances in the machining of the breechblock. It also doesn't allow the user to stay as low while reloading as some of the other designs do.

  Another design that has been discussed is the Hall. The Hall is what is called a tipping block action. In this case the breechblock forms the chamber of the rifle and it tips up for loading. In the case of the Hall, the block tips up in the front and is loaded with a paper cartridge, much like that of the Sharps, then the block is lowered to align with the barrel and the weapon is primed, either with a cap or as in earlier versions by priming the pan. The Hall was designed in the 1830s and manufactured at first as a flintlock and later as a caplock rifle.

  The advantages of the Hall are its ease of manufacture and the fact it could be manufactured in both flint and percussion versions.

  Its disadvantages are that it is a relatively weak design and is not easily converted to use a metallic cartridge.

  The third design we discussed was the tip-down. In the tip down, the entire barrel and breech tips out of the action to expose the breech for loading. The most common weapon of this type today is the single barrel shotgun, still about the cheapest hunting arm available. But there are rifles based on this design. The H&R Handi-rifle comes to mind as do a number of survival type weapons. Indeed the Frank Wesson rifle of the 1870s may be thought of as the father of this design. But Wesson based his rifle on an even older design called the Maynard. The Maynard is an oddity in that early models used a metallic cartridge, but had an external nipple for a percussion cap. Later models used a standard style metallic cartridge.

  The advantages of this design are its ease of manufacture and the small number of parts. Another advantage is it could be manufactured as a mixed rifle, like the Maynard, using a metallic cartridge and a percussion cap. Its major disadvantages are it would be hard to strengthen to use a bayonet and it doesn't allow the soldier to stay as low while reloading as some of the alternatives do. Also, while the Maynards had a reputation for accuracy, it is not the most accurate of designs.

  A fourth design is the trapdoor Springfield. This design was developed by the United States after the American Civil War to get a cartridge rifle into service while taking maximum advantage of existing stocks of surplus percussion rifled muskets and the existing tooling that had made them. Existing rifle muskets were converted by replacing the breech portion of the barrel with a hinged breechblock that swung up for loading like a trap door, hence the name. The cartridge was fired by a firing pin that extended through the breechblock and was struck by a hammer only slightly modified from that of the rifle musket. New rifles using this system were produced up through the mid 1890s using much of the same tooling that had been used through the Civil War. Only the breechblock itself and the barrels (for later models built around the more efficient .45-70 cartridge) were significantly different from the parts of the previous rifle muskets.

  The advantages of this design for the USE are its use of most of the existing SRG tooling and the ability to convert existing SRGs fairly quickly and easily. The disadvantages are two:

  1) The action is weaker than the Sharps or rolling block, and thus would be less effective if later converted to smokeless powder.

  2) The easiest cartridges to convert to (.577 caliber with existing SRG barrels or .50-70 with sleeved SRG barrels) are not the most efficient black powder cartridges for longer ranges.

  The final design of a single shot rifle we will discuss in this report is the Remington rolling block. As its name implies, the breechblock in the Remington design rolls back in the action to expose the chamber. The block is hinged on a pin through the walls of the breech. This pin is slightly off center, and thus the breechblock pivots downward when it is opened. At first glance the Remington does not look like a strong design, but it is. The breechblock is locked in a closed position by both the nose of the hammer, which fits into a slight recess in the breechblock, and by an extension of the lower part of the hammer which extends under the block.

  The advantages of the rolling block design are its strength and its simplicity of manufacture. Its major disadvantage is that it requires a metallic cartridge, because there is no positive sealing of the breech.

  Now we want to look at repeater designs. Repeating rifles are another force multiplier, like the organ gun discussed in our prior article ("How to Make a Machine Gun in 1634 with Available Technology; Alternate Views," Grantville Gazette, Vol.4). One squad with repeating rifles will handily out-gun two or three squads armed with single-shot rifles. This is the type of weapon that the USE needs to produce a smaller, better army.

  The basic lever-action rifle needs no introduction. It has been seen in movies and television for years. Also it is very common as a deer rifle in the area of Grantville. Basically it works by moving the lever under the action. This opens the breech, ejects the spent cartridge from the chamber, pulls a new cartridge from the magazine, and chambers it, making the rifle ready for firing. Its speed and ease of operation has been proven by American hunters for well over one hundred and fifty years. But the lever action has its drawbacks. One is that it has many parts that are fitted under very close tolerances. If it has a tubular magazine, it is restricted to round-nose bullets. Round-nose bullets are not as accurate as pointed ones and lose velocity more rapidly. It also cannot be used as well from the prone position as the other repeater designs discussed below.

  Bolt action rifles are another possible repeater. The Mauser-based designs are quite common and Lee-Enfields are common as surplus rifles converted to sporting use. The major difference between the two is the location of the locking lugs. The locking lugs are those projections on the bolt that hold it against the recoiling cartridge case when firing the rifle. Both are very strong actions and both were designed in the time when black powder cartridges were common. As a side note the American Springfield of 1903 is a Mauser-based rifle. They have a lot of advantages. They are strong, accurate, and easy to design to be fitted with a bayonet. And as the later versions of both designs prove (SMLE #4, Springfield 03-A3, and VG-1 Mauser), they can be produced with a minimum number of parts in small shops.

  Another possibility is the SKS. The modern SKS uses a bit of high-pressure gas from the firing of the cartridge to move the bolt back, extracting the fired cartridge; and has a large spring that returns the bolt forward, picking up the new cartridge from its ten-shot magazine on the way. Black powder would foul such a gas system almost immediately, and cleaner-burning smokeless powder won't be available until very pure acids and reagents are available—probably at least ten years from 1632. But if the gas system was eliminated, a human hand could cycle the bolt easily enough.

  A black powder SKS could later be adapted for smokeless powder and semi-automatic operation—not that many of the rifles would be so adapted, but the tooling, design, and machinery would not have to be replaced when better cartridge design and propellant availability would make a black powder straight pull rifle obsolete.

  The SKS uses the classic 7.62x39 cartridge. This relatively small cartridge has plenty of power with the higher-energy smokeless power, but would be underpowered with black powder, so a new cartridge would be needed. It should be about .38-45 caliber, and long enough to produce sufficient velocities with black powder. A straight case about two inches long would be ideal. The base would need to be at least semi-rimles
s because a rimless case starts becoming harder to chamber as black powder fouling builds up, and a manual SKS action doesn't have the camming action that allows a turn-bolt to overcome this resistance. A semi-rimless case could still allow easy feeding while head spacing on the rim rather than the shoulder.

  A shortened version of this round could also be used in pistols.

  The major drawback of any magazine rifle we can think of for the 163x timeframe is that all would require very uniform cartridges. A few hundredths of an inch short or long could jam the gun.

  Which brings us to metallic cartridges.

  The modern metallic cartridge looks simple, but it really performs a complex job.

  A cartridge has three functions:

  1) It acts as a carrier of the powder, primer and shot, keeping them together and protected from the elements.

  2) It acts as a seal for the firing chamber.

  3) It acts as a heat sink and carries some of the heat of the burning powder away from the firearm.