Mad Mondays: 5. The Ferguson Rifle

The disadvantages of a muzzle-loading firearm at this point were quite clear. They were slow to load, inaccurate and could not be easily re-loaded on horseback. 

The solution would be to switch over to a breech-loading option. This allows for faster re-loading, the ball does not have to be squashed down the barrel or patched (for accuracy) or loose fitting for speed of loading.

The trick was finding a suitable system that could be batch produced. Interestingly, for a time when thread standardisation was a major difficulty in manufacturing, a tapered, 11-thread screw provided a possible solution.

The inventor was Major Patrick Ferguson, modified from an earlier design by Issac de la Chaumette. Ferguson acquired a patent in 1776 and was permitted to take an Experimental Corps of Riflemen to fight in the rebellion going on in the American Colonies.

The only actions these rifles saw that can be seriously verified are the Battle of Saratoga and the Battle of Brandywine, in which Ferguson was wounded and while recovering, his Corps was disbanded.

 

So, how did this work?

At the back of the chamber, there is a brass plug. This has a tapered thread. The tapering was important, as once it had been fired fouling would build up on these threads, the tapering would allow free movement of the action once the initial break was made.

The 11 parallel threads meant that instead of a number of revolutions, the breech could be opened in one fluid movement.

You can then insert the ball into the breech (remember, you’re loading from the breech, not the  muzzle now!), followed by your powder charge. Screw the action closed, clear loose powder off the barrel and prime the pan.

Although this sounds like an involved process to modern readers, it is significantly faster than reloading a musket correctly, as demonstrated by the rate of fire being 6-10 rounds per minute. Even a very well trained infantryman may only manage 3-4 shots per minute with a muzzle loader.

The Ferguson is widely recognised as being the first breech-loading rifle ever adopted by a military. Although it only saw limited service, it paved the way for other breechloaders to be tried and used. In the US, the M1819 Hall Rifle was adopted and used in the American Civil War, though the first military to adopt a breech-loading rifle as the standard arm for infantry was Norway (the Kammerlader).

The Kammerlader

 

You can watch a great video on the Ferguson over at Forgotten Weapons here.

 

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Mad Mondays: 4. Lorenzonis

Sadly with the missed opportunity of the early reusable cartridge, designers went down more complicated routes to achieve multi-shot solutions.

 

One option mechanised the reloading procedure from the back of the gun. One type, the so-called ‘Lorenzoni’ system from the 1680s used a rotating lever to rotate the breech past hoppers that would fill it with a ball, then a measured charge of powder. The example pictured also primes the pan, so after each shot all you need to do is drop the pistol, pointed down; half cock, close the frizzen and turn the handle 360 degrees.

This is by far the best system for auto-reloading loose powder, due to the angles of the cylinder a flashback into the powder reservoir is unlikely, if not impossible. The complexity and limitations of the use of this meant there was no military adoption, though at this time most militaries did not issue pistols as they were privately purchased by officers anyway.

And so, the search for repeating firearms keeps going…

The pistols featured here are part of the Royal Armouries Collection:
https://collections.royalarmouries.org/…/rac-object-15211.h…

You can see more over at Forgotten Weapons here:
http://www.forgottenweapons.com/lorenzoni/

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The Webley review

I thought it was about time that I took a look at the new Well Webley. Having owned a Wingun for some time and having seen the incredibly low price point of the Well I had to see what it was like.

First impressions:

Side by side, these two guns look very similar in shape. It’s clear that the Well is a plain clone of the Wingun, differing in a few small details, other than the obvious differing finish. Although the Wingun is available in a black finish, I’ve never had one to compare to this.

The Well finish is thick, when you first get it it needs breaking in a bit to make the action smooth both in the hammer, trigger and break-action.

The Well lacks the detail of trademarks, but in use these are not things you will realistically notice. It does however have some seamlines which would need filing off for the optimal aesthetics.

Weight-wise they are very similar, with similar heft and balance. On the scales, there is only 10g between them. It is quite clear that the Well is a direct clone on the basis of this. Aside from the finish and trades, the only clear identifier of the Well is the screw that controls the cylinder lock. This is a Phillips head rather than a flat head. I have no idea why they chose to do this as they use flat head screws elsewhere.

 

The shells appear to be interchangeable (however see below for more detail on this), I can drop Wingun and Well shells into each revolver with both cycling absolutely fine. The Wingun shells are better fitted and finished, with the heads of the Well shells being a little more rough and a little softer. The Wingun shells also have ‘Webley .455’ written on the back, which may seem to make them more authentic at first glance, this is disregarding the diameter of the shells being .38.

In terms of feel, both are pretty much identical. The Wingun is perhaps a little smoother, but to be fair it has seen heavy use ever since I bought it, meaning any rough edges have long since worn off. The break action is slightly easier on the Wingun, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. I have had this revolver open on me in the field: resulting in either spilt shells or a delay while I close it in order to fire. The Well appears to have a little nodule on the action lock which gives a slightly more positive lock-up.

The Well, on first opening the revolver, had a very loose fitting cylinder. The cylinder lock does not work like the original (which is very well replicated on the Wingun), but appears to be entirely reliant on the two screws that hold the locking piece itself. These were initially far too loose, meaning that the locking piece did not grip the cylinder. On tightening, the cylinder no longer fell out, however it became unreliable to cycle in double action. Loosening the cylinder lock slightly allowed the cylinder to remain locked in place and cycle fairly reliably.

The auto eject works well on both guns. The Well is perhaps a little heavier, but again this could be due to wear on the older Wingun. The barrels, on all airsoft revolvers I have experience of, move forwards and backwards with an attachment that interfaces with the cylinder to provide a seal and reduce gas loss. On the Wingun, this is aluminium. On the Well it is some kind of rubber. I’m yet to see if it actually makes any difference in wear over time but it does seem to make single action use slightly heavier for the Well. Not so much that you would notice in anything other than a precision shooting environment, which these replicas are really not designed for.

On the note of precision, the Well has a feature the Wingun is seriously lacking. The Well comes with a fixed hop pre-installed in the barrel. Although it is not a majorly difficult feat to install a fixed hop using either the o-ring method or a flat hop, it is nice to be saved a job, especially given it would not have been a difficult thing for the original manufacturers to do.

Testing

Conditions of testing:

Chronoing and accuracy testing will be with .25g BBs. The Wingun is not in stock configuration, it has had an o-ring hop added. The temperature outside hovered around 1 degree Centigrade. It was probably colder in the workshop.

 

Time for the fun bit. Firstly, I loaded a new CO2 cartridge into each gun, fired off 12 shots from each to take the edge off (good practice when you are shooting at people!) and loaded the shells. I started with the manufacturer provided shells, then shot some of the Vintage Airsoft single and shot shells

The results were… interesting and somewhat unexpected. To the point where I will probably retest at a later date. It was VERY cold in the workshop which will account for some of the results but not the inconsistency.

After firing off a couple of batches of shells it felt like the Well was low on power, so I put it aside to run the same tests on the Wingun. When I finished two Wingun tests, I picked the Well up to continue testing and it was back up to strength. Interestingly it seems like the Well suffered from cooldown much more than the Wingun, which considering their build is near-identical is surprising.

Accuracy:

Accuracy tested at 5m, obviously you will generally be further than this. I may come back and do further testing on this at a later date.

On these Huns head targets, the bull is 30mm, the second ring is 70mm.

The Well:

The Wingun:

In this test, the Wingun produced a significantly smaller group. In fact the first Well group was largely not on the paper. Further testing is definitely required.

Notes on use:

The extractor of the Wingun is a a bit more positive. The Well sometimes fits the shells and sometimes does not. It seems random as to when it does or does not, I presume this is due to cylinder movement as described in the first part of this review.
It is hard to see the spacing issue with the VA shells due to their being white, in the picture below you can see that the rims sit proud of the cylinder. It’s no more than a millimetre but it prevents rotation and even lockup.

How it should look:

Also, when loading the CO2, the Well grip panel did not click back into place easily. I had to bend the spring clip a few times to try and get the correct angle for it to fit into the lock and hold the grip in place properly.

Another issue I had with the Well was that it did not always cycle reliably, the hand would push the cylinder but not push it all the way around somehow.

 

After using the Well for a bit, this happened:

The extractor snapped. Hence having to come back later.

Summary

In summary… if these revolver were the same price, from my experience of these two samples, I would say the Wingun edges it. It is more consistently reliable and hasn’t broken in my extensive use of it whereas the Well example I have broke in the testing phase.

The Well does have a more positive lockup, which is nice. Also the ready-fitted hop is a good thing, though when firing the shot shells it appeared to have very similarly tight groupings to the Wingun with its o-ring hop.

So the difficult bit is that they are not the same price point. The Well is, at the time of writing, 1/3rd of the price of the Wingun (on a good day). It is hard to say that you should spend so much more even when out of the box reliability is such an issue.

 

I am sure that the Well could be made reliable, but it will require time and effort. The Wingun is a pick up and play gun with minimal maintenance required to keep it going.

 

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Done in 2016/New for 2017! Part 1

This article will look at two things, what Vintage Airsoft has done in 2016 and what I’m releasing and doing in 2017!

In 2016 I have:

Made rifles!

GaSMLE

G98

G43

Modified some pistols…

CO2 KWC P04 Luger

Nagant spindle replacement/repair

Webley Buttstock

Not to mention of course producing those extremely popular single shot and shotgun shells for Webley and Dan Wesson revolvers:

I have started making some very popular Sten MKII conversions to other classic SMGs.

MP28

Sten MkI

Sten MkV

T100 SMG

And begun production of the surprisingly popular Tank Crew Spatter Masks.

I have also started on anti-tank and heavy weapons due to popular demand, staring with the LAWncher:

And followed up by the SMBL2″ Mortar.

And of course introduced the pre-production prototype of the FG42.

 

This has been one heck of a year: VA has moved to South Wales, which it turns out is a great place to do airsoft! Orders have gone through the roof and there’s now a good range of ready-designed and made products on the Etsy store. 

 

In Part Two, I’ll outline what will be coming in 2017!

Done in 2016/New for 2017! Part 2

In the last piece, I looked at some of the new things done in 2016. Now, it’s time to look ahead to what 2017 has in store!

One of the first jobs is to finish the first example of the FG42 Type 2 production version. Once a few of these have sold I may also look into producing a Type 1 FG42 if there is some interest.

Work has already begun building an HPA Browning M2 heavy machine gun. I hope to be doing more work on heavy weapons, expanding on work and lessons learned in 2016.

 

I have been modifying this 3rd-party replica knee-mortar to fire MOSCARTS and TAG rounds. This and other models of mortar will become central projects this year.

Anyone who has a Webley loves it. There’s not much you can do to make these more awesome, but adding a bayonet may actually do it. Vintage Airsoft is working on an airsoft-safe replica and hopes to release it by March.

Those of you who follow the Facebook page will know I am playing with new materials for the revolver shells, as well as shells for new revolvers: The Colt SAA and the Mosin-Nagant.

 

Flintsoft is getting slowly more popular, and I can see why. I’ve been wanting an excuse to start making muzzle-loaders for a while and at last a client has given me the excuse I needed, asking for an 1861 Pattern Springfield rifle. I hope to have this completed by May at the latest and produce a range of other muskets over the rest of the year.

Of course, I hope to produce a good few more bolt-action rifles! Rifles I have my sights on include the L42A1 (pictured), T99 and T38 Arisakas once I have completed the current SMLEs.

Everyone loves the Ares L1A1 SLR. I do too, but the price is a bit higher than I would like to pay for an AEG. I hope to have, by the end of the year, a Gas Blow-back SLR. Although this won’t be a perfect replica, it will have the kinetic feedback of GBBRs.

The BC-41 has proven popular of late, so I have made some improvements to the mould to add some detailing on the back side.

And at last have a rubber Fairbairn-Sykes to offer you! Like my other rubber knives, this has been stiffened to hold their shape better than most rubber knives, which flop about rather unthreateningly, while still being safe to use on someone. It is the Second Pattern F-S, and I believe it is the only one of its kind.

I’ll also be selling targets for various guns, including airsoft. Some more traditional, shapes, some more modern.

Last but not least, this beautiful beastie has taken up residence in the office. This year I intend to start a range of custom pouches and sheaths where replicas are not readily available.

If you are interested in the projects shown above or have an idea of your own, don’t forget to drop us a line on enquiries.vintageairsoft@gmail.com to discuss. ‘Like’ our Facebook page or follow the blog to get regular updates on projects and interesting videos and articles. 

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Mad Mondays: 3. Henry VIII Carbine

Many of you will have looked at the last Mad Monday post and thought… How did it take someone so long to invent the cartridge? Surely it would have made faster to reload/repeating firearms advance massively.

Well, somebody did. Someone at least as early as 1537. Henry VIII of England possessed this ‘carbine’ in his collection, which is breech loading using a re-fillable steel shell. In fact the breech of this is very similar to Georgian and Victorian early cartridge guns and musket breech-loading conversions of that era.

Sadly this seems not to have been caught on by industrial designers for about another two hundred years. A similar system was used in some canon, but no-one seemed to click that much the same technique could be used for individual firearms.

One can only suppose that the fairly close tolerances required to make a gun like this work would make them cost-prohibitive to produce on the large scale required for military issue, not to mention the impossibility of interchangeable or standardised parts when made by hand.

 

 

You can see this piece in the Royal Armouries Collection here.

 

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MP18 and family.

During the stalemate of the Great War, both sides took to the laboratory to try and get an edge on the battlefield and level the massive attack/defence discrepancy in their favour.

To this end each side ended up using to varying degrees: tanks, poison gas, aerial bombardment, advanced artillery spotting, mining, aerial reconnaissance, indirect machine gun fire, mortars… the list is pretty endless.

One area that was somewhat neglected in spite of its potential was small arms development. Repeating, smokeless rifles were still a relatively new thing, and commanders expected to make use of them in a similar way to the way they were used in the colonies. Blocks of men firing into an attacking force while the attacking force tried to get close enough to shoot back. Unfortunately this idea was put paid to by the enemy having very similar ballistic capabilities and ability to hit targets at quite the same ranges.

Although massed rifle fire at range did play something of a part in the early days of the war, especially at Mons and in the defence of Paris when both sides ground to a halt and entrenchment began volley fire became almost useless.

Of course in defence soldiers would line up on the parapet and shoot those missed by the machine guns but once the enemy was in the trench, your rifle that could shoot accurately somewhat further than you could see with the naked eye was only useful when you spun it round and used it as a club.

What soldiers needed was something with a high rate of fire that could deal with the high number of targets at close quarters experienced in trench conditions that didn’t necessarily have the range of a full rifle cartridge and certainly didn’t come with the weight of a typical machine gun of the era.

There were ready-made options. DWM already produced a carbine Luger with the infamous ‘trommel’ magazine for the German Army and a shorter Luger that could be fitted with a stock for the Navy.

Mauser produced the C96 for both the Austrians and the Germans and was used internationally. This frankly was much better with a stock used as a carbine than as a pistol.

Mannlicher had designed a carbine that, although it looks very C96-esque, operates differently and used a very early form of intermediate cartridge. These were never produced in large numbers and as far as I know never saw service anywhere.

For some reason, the Imperial Army decided to introduce a new firearm instead. There are a few plausible reasons for this, the Luger series and C96 pistols fired at extremely fast rates. Though this could be fixed (especially for the C96) they decided a new design would be cheaper and easier to achieve a desirable result with.*

Thus the MP18/I was born. This is the first dedicated infantry sub-machine gun, though some will cite other early SMGs, the MP18 was the only one widely used and issued in WWI, anything else used at this point really only featured as a footnote in the fighting.

It saw extensive use in the Spring Offensive of 1918, where the Germans took huge (in WWI terms) swathes of territory, exhausting their country’s war effort in the process.

Post-war, MP18s saw use in the Weimar Republic, especially in urban fighting between the  German State, Freikorps and the German Red Army during various uprisings in Munich, Berlin, the Ruhr, Saxony and Hamburg. There was a good deal of rebellion and fighting, especially in the inner cities in between various political factions. During this time, the MP18 saw extensive use, showing a distinct superiority over conventional rifles and pistols in close quarter urban fighting.

 

Around the same time, these submachineguns saw use in South America, China and the Spanish Civil War. These things really got about.

During the early Weimar Republic, MP18s underwent some improvements: the Government took existing MP18s  and modified the magazine wells to take stick magazines rather than Luger magazines and drums. During this later service they were issued with 20, 30 and 50 round magazines. There were also many licensed and unlicensed versions produced, with SIG and Haenel (under Schmeisser) each producing their own versions. Haenel developed it into the MP28 which the Spanish copied, having converted it to 9mm Largo.

There are dozens of descendants of the MP18, the most significant are the MP34, MP28, Sten and the Lanchester. These and their relatives were used internationally all through the late 20th century.  

Although the open bolt submachine gun has fallen out of popular use with militaries and police forces, due to so many being produced you will still find descendants of the MP18 still in service in some parts of the world.

 

Notes:

*This said, the Imperial Army did experiment with a form of the C96 with detachable 40 round magazines. Few were produced, very few survive today.

 

Identification notes:

MP18/I: Slanted magazine well, takes Luger magazines (standard and Trommel). Two-option non-adjustable rear sight. Hooked Op handle

MP18 (type two): An MP18 in all respects except that the magazine well has been changed out to take a straight magazine. These should also have ‘1920’ stamped on the magazine well and on the receiver.

MP28/II: An MP18 but with perpendicular magazine well, box magazines and either the MP18 or a straight, tapered op handle with a ball end. Adjustable tangent rear sight.

Mitraillette 34: An MP28 made in Belgium. Cannot find pictures but expect Belgian markings and proofs.

Sig Bergmann 1920: Rounded Op handle, with bead on end. Collar at front of barrel shroud. Tangent rear sight. perpendicular mag well. Stick magazines.

Tsing Tao: Chinese characters, vertical magazine well. It looks like they also produced direct copies of the MP28.

MP34: straight sides, magwell angled around the circumference of the receiver. Vented foresight guards. Bayonet lug on side. Adjustable rear tangent sight. Hinge behind magazine well to lift top cover. Unusual as has magazine charger at 90 degrees built into the mag well.

Lanchester MkI: Brass magazine well (though if still finished this may not be visible). 50 round magazine. Hooked op handle. Vented front sight guards. Tangent rear sight. Bayonet lug for SMLE P07 bayonet. Stock similar in shape to a P14 Enfield.

Lanchester MkI*: As MkI but straight op handle, fixed rear sight with two very large sight guards. 

Bergmann MP35. You can take a look at the picture to ID this oddity.

 

The majority of decedents from beyond this point (Stens, Sterlings etc…) are for another article really. This is a rough guide, due to their extensive re-use and circulation there will be variants on variants I am quite sure. I have tried to give you the best chance of identifying different models, sometimes using original and sometimes applying my own nomenclature to differentiate between models. If you see anything that you can prove is incorrect with quality sources, please do get in touch on enquiries.vintageairsoft@gmail.com.

 

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Mad Mondays 2: Multi-shot madness

The standard struggle for firearms designers during the age of flintlocks was to improve the shot count of each firearm. In an age where the sheer number of shots that could be fired in a minute had as much effect on the outcome of a battle as any tactics this really mattered.

 

One solution was to strap a bundle of barrels together, fired by a single lock to create a ‘volley gun’. Although this was a devastating weapon the recoil was ferocious, it took a long time to reload and it still did not have the same effect as the same number of shots aimed and fired separately, not to mention the sheer weight. The most famous example of this is the Nock volley gun, used by the British Royal Navy.

The next step was to equip each barrel with their own lock to fire them individually. The trouble with this is you end up with a very unwieldy weapon with lots of moving parts that require maintenance and is expensive to produce. You also still have the massive weight of all those barrels, plus the extra lockwork. It’s OK up until about two shots, but gets worse after that.

One example in military service was the Austrian Jäger ‘double-rifle’ (though it was in fact a rifled barrel over a smoothbore).

Harder than you thought this business!

Another option that caught on was to have a set of revolving barrels that you rotate to line up with a lock, which you prime for each shot. Still a bit of a faff but still faster than reloading a musket. Some were produced with self-priming pans (but more on that in a later post) to speed this up.

Mr Nock produced a variant of his gun on this principle, with six barrels rotating about a centre pin.

Finally someone had a really bright idea. Why not ram several loads down one barrel and set them off one after another? What could possibly go wrong?

Well if you fired the locks in the wrong order the gun would blow up in your face, but apart from that not much.

This terrifying concept was used experimentally, but as far as I know it was never adopted by any military force. There was too much to go wrong.

There’s quite a bit more to this story, this is just the beginning!

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Revolvers, giving you hop. Colt Single Action Army stripping.

Our willing volunteer to have a hop added is this gorgeous blued Colt Single Action Army.

First step, remove the side plate.

Then take out the spring and the hand (the part which pushes the cylinder round).

You can then pull out the centre pin and the drum.

There is a pin at the top of the barrel in the frame, push this out with a punch and a second pin that holds the ejector unit in place.

With both of these removed you can take the barrel off.

You can then slide the inner barrel out. At this point get out the o-ring and round needle file. The o-ring should be 1-2mm thick.

Then, start working on the barrel. Keep the channel the file produces on one side, by the time you work through to the inside you want about 3-4mm of the circumference removed from the inside. You may wish to give yourself a little extra space on the outside to hold the o-ring. Use a very sharp knife to cut the rubber roughly to size.

Once in situ, use the knife again to chamfer the edges of the o-ring so that it sits fairly flat against the barrel. There should be minimal space between the rubber and the barrel to preserve the gas seal. Through the barrel you should see just a flat, small line of rubber across the top. It doesn’t need to be much, just enough to catch the BB as it passes. If you can’t see it, file away a little more but go slowly, you can’t add material back on.

Use the collar at the back of the barrel to hold the o-ring in place. Check inside the barrel to make sure the o-ring hasn’t slipped in. It should be firmly wedged in place by the collar, depending on the pistol you may wish to seal it with electrical tape or PTFE.

Some pistols have a locating lug on this collar, which keeps the barrel oriented in a specific way. This gun does not, but if yours does then make sure the hop window is oriented correctly to the top.

Put it back in place, make sure the hop window is at the top.

Re-assemble the gun, there aren’t really any specific tips to put the SAA back together. While you have it open however, oil the moving parts with a little light oil (3-in-1 is perfect) and if you haven’t a CO2 cartridge in, put silicone oil into the cartridge pin and on the seal. Revolvers don’t need a lot of maintenance, but a bit of oil every now and then keeps them going nicely.

 

If you are so inclined, you could use a flat file and install a flat hop instead, though this fixed hop is quite adequate. 

 

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Mad Mondays!

Facebook followers will be familiar with the Mad Mondays, in which we are taking a look at some of the more crazy and cutting-edge firearms in a rather bumpy history through arms development. I’ll now be hosting it here as this is a better platform for such articles!

I thought we would start off with something you don’t see every day.

If you thought being sliced by an axe would ruin your day, try this for size. Although the axe face is blunt, it conceals five barrels lit by several methods, which begs the question of how practical it would be to use.

The top barrel is lit by a matchlock, the mechanism for which is under the brass lion. The second barrel via the wheel lock and the rest by a hand-held slow-match. There is another barrel in the handle lit by this match. The wheel lock has an attachment to light this match as it is fired.

 

 

You can see the entry for this item at the Royal Armouries Collection here.

 

 

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