Cartridges need to be strong enough to handle high pressures, and guns designed to use them can't be traditionally muzzle loaded if you run out of cartridges.
paper cartridges didn't really take off until the invention of chemical primers. Flint and steel just isn't reliable enough to set off a sealed charge of gunpowder like that
thats not true, people have been using paper cartridges for quite a while, the difference is just that they always bit off the bottom of it and poured the powder down the barrel, sometimes using the same powder to prime the gun, and then the paper would work as a wad
I mean yeah that seems logical, but why didn't they put these in guns if it was easy? Machining a cartridge to fit perfectly and not get stuck in the chamber just wasn't cheap enough until industrial revolution. Also, I feel like you'd get some serious hangfire since the sparks would need to jump through 2 flash holes.
It might work, but it would suck. I imagine priming would be a serious issue. If you did make the touchole large enough to self prime then you'd have too much gas venting out the side. Its also just clunky. Paper cartridges do 90% of the job at 5% the size.
Austrians had a pattern that self-primed, and it just needed an extra large charge and a flash guard. Apparently the added ROF wasn't important to them because they went back to a traditional loading system after.
It's immensely more convinient to only use one ram rod, less space, less weight, can keep it in hand.
As for the rest, just google "gazyr". Very common in Eastern Europe and Middle East when muzzleloaders were around.
1625 there’s quite a few variations of breach loafers in the period. Also superimposed charges, multiple barrels, self priming and all sorts of fun. Interesting idea but getting the cartridge to detach from the rod reliably would be difficult and not worth the cost of just having paper catridges and a traditional muzzle loading method. A cool thing you might enjoy is looking at early breach loaders of the 1850s/60s after looking at a variety of 17th century examples.
It might work, but it would suck. I imagine priming would be a serious issue. If you did make the touchole large enough to self prime then you'd have too much gas venting out the side. Its also just clunky. Paper cartridges do 90% of the job at 5% the size.
Short answer, no. Not with the technology available at the time.
Mostly, it's because the brass cup wouldn't fit well with the ramrods, muzzle, or ball. Manufacturing tolerances back then were pretty awful so you're more likely to have the cup slip all the way down the barrel, come loose from the ramrod, get stuck on the ramrod, or crumple onto the ball. You also might get wax paper blocking the touchhole.
>Manufacturing tolerances back then were pretty awful
This. Early firearms featured lots of breechloaders because even then they figured it would be less schizo than muzzleloading, but they simply couldn't get any power out of them because the detachable breeches wouldn't seal properly against the barrel
In addition to this there's another problem: it's very hard to push powder down a pipe. The powder spreads the force from the ramrod outward, it would be very hard if not impossible to actually shove it down the barrel.
There's a classic demonstration of this I've seen on one of those old educational science shows like Mr Wizard. They took an empty toilet paper tube, taped a piece of thin paper over on end, then put some sand in it. The goal was then to see if you could push a dowel rod through the sand and break the paper. It sounds easy, it's actually near impossible.
Pouring powder down the barrel avoids this problem.
"witness wires" are a thing in my line of work, and are used for things like ejector seat handles or flip covers for fuel dump switches. They are designed to be strong enough that you wont break them by accident, but will easily snap if pulled with intended force
Yes, the concept makes sense. But the presence of the powder ruins it in this particular case. You cannot push powder down a pipe. The wire isn't the problem, the powder is. Specifically the problem discussed in
https://i.imgur.com/iOt7wNq.jpg
In addition to this there's another problem: it's very hard to push powder down a pipe. The powder spreads the force from the ramrod outward, it would be very hard if not impossible to actually shove it down the barrel.
There's a classic demonstration of this I've seen on one of those old educational science shows like Mr Wizard. They took an empty toilet paper tube, taped a piece of thin paper over on end, then put some sand in it. The goal was then to see if you could push a dowel rod through the sand and break the paper. It sounds easy, it's actually near impossible.
Pouring powder down the barrel avoids this problem.
Could we make Witness Wires with 1750s technology? I don't think we'd be able to make them that consistent.
11 months ago
Anonymous
It's just a thin metal wire, they could do that with 750s technology. I don't see any reason why it'd absolutely have to be metal wire either, get your plant fibre or animal sinew of choice and thin it down until it's as weak as you want it to be.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Easily. But the wire isn't the problem.
The wire has to be made of a specific strength. Too weak and it breaks accidentally. Too strong and the user can't break it when he needs to. The wire is also only as strong as it's weakest section and in the 1700s foundries had trouble making cannons that wouldn't explode if you used them too much.
Plant and animal fiber are worse because nature isn't consistent. Straw might be of the proper strength for one stand and too strong for another.
Yes, that would fix it. And that's exactly what they did rather than using OP's idea.
[...]
The wire has to be made of a specific strength. Too weak and it breaks accidentally. Too strong and the user can't break it when he needs to. The wire is also only as strong as it's weakest section and in the 1700s foundries had trouble making cannons that wouldn't explode if you used them too much.
Plant and animal fiber are worse because nature isn't consistent. Straw might be of the proper strength for one stand and too strong for another.
>The wire has to be made of a specific strength.
that's not difficult to do, and it wasn't back then. Wire was made by drawing it through a plate with ever smaller holes in it. So the process is:
1) test wire by hanging weights on it. If it's good to go, you're done. If it's too strong go to step 2.
2)Draw the wire through the next smaller hole in the plate
3) Go to step 1.
All you've found is the strength of the weakest point on the wire. And then promptly destroyed that point.
You'd also have problems with the hanging weights because the metric system wasn't a thing until 1799 and wasn't widespread until 1850. The units of measurements that were used at the time weren't consistent as there was no agency responsible for ensuring consistent measurements. As a result, we didn't see interchangeble metal parts until 1816.
>All you've found is the strength of the weakest point on the wire
I'm sure it would be good enough.
Standarized weights aren't even required for this, the tolerances are so sloppy. It just needs to be strong enough not to fall apart but not so strong that a man couldn't break it. That's a huge range of tolerances, this is not some super precise challenge. The wire is a negligible challenge compared to making the tubes economically. Heck one could even skip the wire entirely and just use an adhesive. Hide glue would work fine.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Now that I think about it, it would be far more likely for the wire to frick up the cup before breaking simply because the wire was stronger than the gun. Some good tallow glue would also work better than the wire entirely.
I don't think the cuts would be that hard to manufacture simply because brass is castable and handfitting is a thing. Of course, that also means that anybody other than the original maker of the gun wouldn't be able to make speed loaders for it so the user is fricked if he looses one.
This just highlights an issue people have where we want to use modern solutions to solve problems from a time when they couldn't have conceived or produced said solution
>no mass industrialization >no precise machine tools
You think 16-18th century humans didn't think of breechloaders/speedloaders/etc. They just couldn't mass produce anything so complicated
when everything has be built individually by hand basic smoothbore muzzleloaders are the only practical thing to make
This. The idea of a cartridge is very old. The one in the Forgotten Weapons video anon linked is from 1625 but the concept was known from cannons even earlier than that.
It's just that making cartridges before the industrial revolution was incredibly expensive so guns like this were limited to showoff pieces for royalty.
>but the concept was known from cannons even earlier than that.
Well, breech loading with multiple chamber pieces isn't entirely the same as cartridges, but it would be one of the ideas seeds behind them. First appearance of such was likely during the first half of the 15th century, certainly not later as we have solid proof of it from ca 1450.
This and similar mechanisms was very rare on handheld guns, but for cannons it actually appears to have been somewhat common in the 15th and early 16th century. It was then however largely abandoned since the single piece muzzle loader is much stronger and thus allowed for guns to be both more powerful and safer to be around. Perhaps also helped a bit by changes to gunpowder simplifying and thus greatly speeding up the reloading process. The old serpentine powders need a suitable amount of empty space in the powder chamber to go off properly (and so it must carefully be poured in and then have the ball and any wads fixed in place some distance in front of it), "modern" corned powders don't need that.
As other anons pointed out, this design presupposes abundant brass manufactured with good tolerances, which weren't available at that time, and when they do become available, you have the material innovation necessary for metallic cartridge firearms right there, so just do that.
True. You could have the cup made of tin bashed around a dowel instead, I suppose. That could be done with technology and metallurgy available by the time of the handgonne (early 15th century)
Cartridges need to be strong enough to handle high pressures, and guns designed to use them can't be traditionally muzzle loaded if you run out of cartridges.
Not in black powder smoothbores, the paper in paper cartridges is just there to hold everything in place, the barrel contains all the pressure.
The drawing in the post anon replied to has a breech that can hinge open. Such a mechanism requires a cartridge to seal the breech.
paper cartridges didn't really take off until the invention of chemical primers. Flint and steel just isn't reliable enough to set off a sealed charge of gunpowder like that
thats not true, people have been using paper cartridges for quite a while, the difference is just that they always bit off the bottom of it and poured the powder down the barrel, sometimes using the same powder to prime the gun, and then the paper would work as a wad
Hehe, prerolls.
I dunno m8, not sure it'll catch on.
I mean yeah that seems logical, but why didn't they put these in guns if it was easy? Machining a cartridge to fit perfectly and not get stuck in the chamber just wasn't cheap enough until industrial revolution. Also, I feel like you'd get some serious hangfire since the sparks would need to jump through 2 flash holes.
Austrians had a pattern that self-primed, and it just needed an extra large charge and a flash guard. Apparently the added ROF wasn't important to them because they went back to a traditional loading system after.
those are cool
So...a trap door action?
What he drew opens sideways. Like a Snider, or like this:
>overcomplicating a perfectly functional design
Fake
It's immensely more convinient to only use one ram rod, less space, less weight, can keep it in hand.
As for the rest, just google "gazyr". Very common in Eastern Europe and Middle East when muzzleloaders were around.
1625 there’s quite a few variations of breach loafers in the period. Also superimposed charges, multiple barrels, self priming and all sorts of fun. Interesting idea but getting the cartridge to detach from the rod reliably would be difficult and not worth the cost of just having paper catridges and a traditional muzzle loading method. A cool thing you might enjoy is looking at early breach loaders of the 1850s/60s after looking at a variety of 17th century examples.
It might work, but it would suck. I imagine priming would be a serious issue. If you did make the touchole large enough to self prime then you'd have too much gas venting out the side. Its also just clunky. Paper cartridges do 90% of the job at 5% the size.
Short answer, no. Not with the technology available at the time.
Mostly, it's because the brass cup wouldn't fit well with the ramrods, muzzle, or ball. Manufacturing tolerances back then were pretty awful so you're more likely to have the cup slip all the way down the barrel, come loose from the ramrod, get stuck on the ramrod, or crumple onto the ball. You also might get wax paper blocking the touchhole.
>Manufacturing tolerances back then were pretty awful
This. Early firearms featured lots of breechloaders because even then they figured it would be less schizo than muzzleloading, but they simply couldn't get any power out of them because the detachable breeches wouldn't seal properly against the barrel
In addition to this there's another problem: it's very hard to push powder down a pipe. The powder spreads the force from the ramrod outward, it would be very hard if not impossible to actually shove it down the barrel.
There's a classic demonstration of this I've seen on one of those old educational science shows like Mr Wizard. They took an empty toilet paper tube, taped a piece of thin paper over on end, then put some sand in it. The goal was then to see if you could push a dowel rod through the sand and break the paper. It sounds easy, it's actually near impossible.
Pouring powder down the barrel avoids this problem.
I think the wire holding the paper on was supposed to break when you pushed down the powder but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work.
I knew about the Snider but figured it wouldn't count because it took brass casings.
Yeah, that's the intent, but I don't think the wire would break, I think you'd be pushing real hard but nothing would happen.
"witness wires" are a thing in my line of work, and are used for things like ejector seat handles or flip covers for fuel dump switches. They are designed to be strong enough that you wont break them by accident, but will easily snap if pulled with intended force
Yes, the concept makes sense. But the presence of the powder ruins it in this particular case. You cannot push powder down a pipe. The wire isn't the problem, the powder is. Specifically the problem discussed in
Could we make Witness Wires with 1750s technology? I don't think we'd be able to make them that consistent.
It's just a thin metal wire, they could do that with 750s technology. I don't see any reason why it'd absolutely have to be metal wire either, get your plant fibre or animal sinew of choice and thin it down until it's as weak as you want it to be.
The wire has to be made of a specific strength. Too weak and it breaks accidentally. Too strong and the user can't break it when he needs to. The wire is also only as strong as it's weakest section and in the 1700s foundries had trouble making cannons that wouldn't explode if you used them too much.
Plant and animal fiber are worse because nature isn't consistent. Straw might be of the proper strength for one stand and too strong for another.
Easily. But the wire isn't the problem.
Bite off the paper with your teeth, take half a second to dump powder before you ram, and that solves the issue.
Yes, that would fix it. And that's exactly what they did rather than using OP's idea.
>The wire has to be made of a specific strength.
that's not difficult to do, and it wasn't back then. Wire was made by drawing it through a plate with ever smaller holes in it. So the process is:
1) test wire by hanging weights on it. If it's good to go, you're done. If it's too strong go to step 2.
2)Draw the wire through the next smaller hole in the plate
3) Go to step 1.
Wire was being mass-produced in ancient times.
All you've found is the strength of the weakest point on the wire. And then promptly destroyed that point.
You'd also have problems with the hanging weights because the metric system wasn't a thing until 1799 and wasn't widespread until 1850. The units of measurements that were used at the time weren't consistent as there was no agency responsible for ensuring consistent measurements. As a result, we didn't see interchangeble metal parts until 1816.
>All you've found is the strength of the weakest point on the wire
I'm sure it would be good enough.
Standarized weights aren't even required for this, the tolerances are so sloppy. It just needs to be strong enough not to fall apart but not so strong that a man couldn't break it. That's a huge range of tolerances, this is not some super precise challenge. The wire is a negligible challenge compared to making the tubes economically. Heck one could even skip the wire entirely and just use an adhesive. Hide glue would work fine.
Now that I think about it, it would be far more likely for the wire to frick up the cup before breaking simply because the wire was stronger than the gun. Some good tallow glue would also work better than the wire entirely.
I don't think the cuts would be that hard to manufacture simply because brass is castable and handfitting is a thing. Of course, that also means that anybody other than the original maker of the gun wouldn't be able to make speed loaders for it so the user is fricked if he looses one.
This just highlights an issue people have where we want to use modern solutions to solve problems from a time when they couldn't have conceived or produced said solution
>no mass industrialization
>no precise machine tools
You think 16-18th century humans didn't think of breechloaders/speedloaders/etc. They just couldn't mass produce anything so complicated
when everything has be built individually by hand basic smoothbore muzzleloaders are the only practical thing to make
This. The idea of a cartridge is very old. The one in the Forgotten Weapons video anon linked is from 1625 but the concept was known from cannons even earlier than that.
It's just that making cartridges before the industrial revolution was incredibly expensive so guns like this were limited to showoff pieces for royalty.
>but the concept was known from cannons even earlier than that.
Well, breech loading with multiple chamber pieces isn't entirely the same as cartridges, but it would be one of the ideas seeds behind them. First appearance of such was likely during the first half of the 15th century, certainly not later as we have solid proof of it from ca 1450.
This and similar mechanisms was very rare on handheld guns, but for cannons it actually appears to have been somewhat common in the 15th and early 16th century. It was then however largely abandoned since the single piece muzzle loader is much stronger and thus allowed for guns to be both more powerful and safer to be around. Perhaps also helped a bit by changes to gunpowder simplifying and thus greatly speeding up the reloading process. The old serpentine powders need a suitable amount of empty space in the powder chamber to go off properly (and so it must carefully be poured in and then have the ball and any wads fixed in place some distance in front of it), "modern" corned powders don't need that.
As other anons pointed out, this design presupposes abundant brass manufactured with good tolerances, which weren't available at that time, and when they do become available, you have the material innovation necessary for metallic cartridge firearms right there, so just do that.
True. You could have the cup made of tin bashed around a dowel instead, I suppose. That could be done with technology and metallurgy available by the time of the handgonne (early 15th century)
so basically like one of those shotgun speedloaders but rather than a tube of shells it's mostly a rod with one load of powder and a round