The Girandoni Rifle....

[Uncle Russ]

Very good post from Captchee,  well written, and extremely interesting!
You pointed out no less than four things that I had personally never given thought to.
Sooo much to learn, sooo little time!

hawkthrower....that was just plain awesome!

Thanks!

Uncle Russ.....

[Captchee]

Yes you can make one with updated internals . Ill have to look  and find my contact but there was a fella out of Montana that produced a action similar to the one  used by Samuel Evens.
  I would have to look and see if he was still offering  the  receiver or not . There was word that  he was stopping production do to no real interest . The one time I talked with him  he said that   99% of his business was  more modern  bolt type designs
 
I  some years ago made a ball  cylinder rifle in 36 cal  for a customer . Unfortunately  I cant show you that rifle as part of the agreement .
 However I can tell you that  what I used was a modern paint ball  gun  internals .   I never could find someone to build me a ball cylinder . Thus we had to use the air gun tank . Because of that I have never  made another .
 It should be noted that  most  of the better paintball guns  have air systems that  provide far greater pressures  then the original 200 year old designs could ever withstand .some will hold action pressures over 3000 psi
 Through the crono  that rifle  easily produced 1400fps   with a 36 cal ball.that was with a 1800 psi tank
 Which by modern air gun standards is  very slow as they are often putting  pushing  center fire type  velocities.
Anyway , here are some of the photos I collected as part of my  research for the build I did .

As I stated earlier , there were many different air gun makers  through out the later 19th century . Most  from what I have read were vying for military contracts of one form or another .  Girandoni  is the one we know mainly because L&C carried  at least 1 . so ill skip photos of that rifle .

Samuel Evens








 this is another  butt stock cylinder rifle   made by Lukens IE air tank is actualy the butt stock


Ball tank/ cylinder  rifles
Blaisdell


S Jover

[Riley/MN]

Thanks for posting those Captchee! I think you showed them here before a long time ago, but it is a fun topic to revisit.

[rhshilling]

Not too sure about the Lewis and Clark gun being "deadly accurate" as a woman was shot in the head with it at Brunot's Island and lived to tell about it.
If I remember correctly, there was an argument as to whether the Smithsonian has the actual L&C air rifle or whether it is at the Virginia Military Institute.
When the Heinz Museum put together the 200th anniversary exhibit in conjunction with the Smithsonian, they commissioned a replica to be built. The builder, Jeff Roberts, was a friend of my brother when they were in high school together.