[DL] Re: Double Rifles

[Michael Robert Blair <pellinoire@yahoo.com>]

Double rifles (and shotguns) are expensive to make.
The barrels have to be carefully fitted by hand to
make sure they both have the same point of aim. Single
barrelled rifles, even repeaters require much less
work and can be largely made by machine using
unskilled labour - the American way (this is not
sarcasm, America mostly invented the whole modern
production line way of doing things because they
lacked skilled labour).

Hunting rifles could be huge, Baker had a single
barrelled 2-bore - it could fire a ball weighing half
a pound - that could fire explosive shells. This was
because rifling was not properly understood and they
assumed that the tighter the turns in the rifling the
better. The soft lead bullets of the time would strip
- ignoring the rifling and going straight out so they
decreased the velocity to prevent this. To keep the
energy and terminal effects up they had to make bigger
projectiles.

When rifling and propellants improved, combined with
the emergence of the jacketed bullet the guns could
come down to a more manigable size and become more
powerful. Nitro-Express cartridges date to the
nineties or later with the introduction of smokeless
powders.

Real America lacks the really big, really dangerous
game of Africa so there was no need for the really
monstrous cartridges British gunmakers developed for
the imperial trade.

Because of the Mahdist insurrection in the Sudan .45
rifles were banned by the British in Africa (to
prevent anything usable by the Mahdi from reaching
him) this led to the introduction of .500 rifles while
the .450s were used quite happily in India.

Makers (off the top of my head):
W. W. Greener, Holland & Holland, Westley Richards,
Purdey, Manton, Rigby, Anson & Deeley...

Michael

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