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AIR GUNS (did you Know) Interesting
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Member Posts: 168,427 ✭
It comes as a considerable surprise to most present-day gun enthusiasts that shooters have used airguns for hundreds of years. The first airguns were lung powered blowguns which date back at least to 125 AD (1), and probably hundreds, or even thousands of years, before that. The origin of mechanical airguns also is by no means clear.
Explorers Lewis and Clark carried a butt reservoir air rifle, apparently of .31" caliber. This is an especially fine specimen of that type, made by a famed London gun maker, T.J. Mortimer in the 1800's. It has two interchangeable barrels, a rifled one of .40 caliber for big game and a 36 gauge smoothbore for wildfowl. Attaching the butt reservoir to a separate hand pump and pumping in about two hundred strokes of air charges the gun. Such a charge may be good for about 20 shots. From the Beeman Airgun Museum.
Evidently more than one early inventor thought of using bellows to replace the human lungs as the power source. The oldest existing mechanical airgun apparently is a bellows gun, in the Livrustkammar Museum in Stockholm, which dates from about 1580. This rifle used a spring-loaded bellows in the butt of the gun to provide a propulsive blast of air to a special dart when the trigger was tripped. Airguns which employed a spring to drive a piston, which also compressed air only at the moment of firing, appeared almost as early as the bellow guns. And, amazingly enough, it apparently was also about 1600 that the first pump-up (pneumatic) airgun appeared - an experimental gun made for King Henry IV of France. By 1800 airguns were among the most accurate, and certainly among the most elite, of large-bore rifles! The modern lack of awareness of such guns is understandable when one discovers that airguns were very uncommon, even then. Good airguns have always cost more to make than equivalent quality firearms. The special skills, knowledge, and great amount of time necessary to make the complex valves, locks and air reservoirs of the early airguns meant that only the wealthy shooters could afford them.
All of the most powerful airguns of yesteryear were pump pneumatics. That is, pumping air into a strong valved reservoir which was attached to, or made part of, the gun, charged them. The pumps were sometimes built into the gun but were more often separate. Charging a reservoir could take hundreds of strokes of the pump, but the resulting air pressure, below 600 psi, evidently was very efficient (2).
The old airguns offered numerous advantages for those early shooters who could afford them. Some could be fired many times per minute - a striking contrast to the front- feeding powder burners. Such rapid fire was further more practical with airguns because they did not obscure their own line of sight with clouds of smoke. And, although the oft-told tale of their silence is not true, they are quieter than firearms of equivalent power and their lack of smoke and flash did help to make it more difficult to spot the marksman's position. An especially appealing feature was the great dependability of the airguns. Other advantages included lack of residual sparks, faster shot time, more consistent power, and extremely light barrel fouling.
The variety of early hunting airguns reflected the variety of hunting. One 18th century specimen in the Beeman collection is a solid .39" caliber carbine, only 40 inches long, perhaps intended for use in heavy brush or on horseback. Another, made by Hass in Neustadt, Germany about 1750, has a beautiful 33" shot barrel, about .33" caliber, which can be unscrewed and drawn out of the gun to reveal a very menacing .46" caliber barrel with seven extremely deep rifling grooves. In just moments, the owner of the gun could switch from doves to deer! One of the fine-cased English air rifles (made about 1850) in the author's collection was regularly used for deer hunting as recently as 1950. It fires a 265-grain, .44" caliber bullet!
Perhaps the most historically important American airgun of all was an air rifle carried by Captain Meriwether Lewis on the famous Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803-06. The most recent research (6) fairly conclusively indicates that this was a .31" caliber, flintlock-style, pneumatic rifle built by Isaiah Lukens in Philadelphia. It served Captain Lewis well, both for hunting and to astonish the Indians.
Certainly one of the most famous of the butt-reservoir guns was the Austrian military air rifle designed by Girandoni about 1779. Its buttstock also is a detachable air reservoir which could be quickly unscrewed when empty and replaced by a full one. Each reservoir held enough air to fire a series of 20 heavy lead balls fed from an ingenious rapid feed magazine. These formidable weapons could put out their 20 smokeless shots in a minute; it is reported that the .51" caliber (13mm) balls were deadly to 100 yards! A corps of 500 soldiers so armed had a potential firepower of 300,000 shots in a half-hour - incredible for military rifles of the late 1700's! During this same period, and for almost a century to follow, big bore airguns were extremely popular with the wealthy sportsmen of Europe. Among the ancient airguns in the Beeman collection are beautiful specimens of air carbines, about .45" caliber, apparently for boar hunting from horseback, long rifles for deer hunting, and especially beautiful English cased sets with richly engraved receivers and interchangeable rifle and shot barrels for mammals or waterfowl. The ultimate in mechanical airgun development was the fearsome air canes with their jewel-like internal locks. Evidently no well-dressed English gentleman of the late 1800's would be seen without one of these weapons-which ranged from almost .30" to .49" in caliber and had perhaps the power of a modern police revolver!
An interesting trans-Atlantic switch in airgun evolution occurred about the start of the 20th century. In America, the spring piston gun had developed to a fairly powerful and sophisticated level - especially in the form of expensive gallery guns popular after the Civil War (4). The pneumatics had reached a high level in Europe with the advent of the cased hunting sets, the air canes, and finally the first CO2 rifle - the handsome and elaborate Giffard. The introduction of the firearm cartridge and smokeless powder killed the development of airguns as powerful guns. No longer could airguns properly be considered as arms or weapons. The evolution of the pump pneumatics and CO2 guns largely left Europe and appeared here as youth-level, low-power, mass-production guns, while in Europe spring piston airguns became extremely sophisticated and accurate target and light hunting small-bore guns. Finally, in the 1970's the Beeman's blended American styling, increased power, and new features with the European developments and made the successful introduction of precision adult airguns and new pellet designs into the mainstream of the American shooting market (5). Now other companies have come into the precision adult airgun market, but the Beeman company's objective is to continue to earn your respect as that market's leader.
"A wise man is a man that realizes just how little he knows"
Explorers Lewis and Clark carried a butt reservoir air rifle, apparently of .31" caliber. This is an especially fine specimen of that type, made by a famed London gun maker, T.J. Mortimer in the 1800's. It has two interchangeable barrels, a rifled one of .40 caliber for big game and a 36 gauge smoothbore for wildfowl. Attaching the butt reservoir to a separate hand pump and pumping in about two hundred strokes of air charges the gun. Such a charge may be good for about 20 shots. From the Beeman Airgun Museum.
Evidently more than one early inventor thought of using bellows to replace the human lungs as the power source. The oldest existing mechanical airgun apparently is a bellows gun, in the Livrustkammar Museum in Stockholm, which dates from about 1580. This rifle used a spring-loaded bellows in the butt of the gun to provide a propulsive blast of air to a special dart when the trigger was tripped. Airguns which employed a spring to drive a piston, which also compressed air only at the moment of firing, appeared almost as early as the bellow guns. And, amazingly enough, it apparently was also about 1600 that the first pump-up (pneumatic) airgun appeared - an experimental gun made for King Henry IV of France. By 1800 airguns were among the most accurate, and certainly among the most elite, of large-bore rifles! The modern lack of awareness of such guns is understandable when one discovers that airguns were very uncommon, even then. Good airguns have always cost more to make than equivalent quality firearms. The special skills, knowledge, and great amount of time necessary to make the complex valves, locks and air reservoirs of the early airguns meant that only the wealthy shooters could afford them.
All of the most powerful airguns of yesteryear were pump pneumatics. That is, pumping air into a strong valved reservoir which was attached to, or made part of, the gun, charged them. The pumps were sometimes built into the gun but were more often separate. Charging a reservoir could take hundreds of strokes of the pump, but the resulting air pressure, below 600 psi, evidently was very efficient (2).
The old airguns offered numerous advantages for those early shooters who could afford them. Some could be fired many times per minute - a striking contrast to the front- feeding powder burners. Such rapid fire was further more practical with airguns because they did not obscure their own line of sight with clouds of smoke. And, although the oft-told tale of their silence is not true, they are quieter than firearms of equivalent power and their lack of smoke and flash did help to make it more difficult to spot the marksman's position. An especially appealing feature was the great dependability of the airguns. Other advantages included lack of residual sparks, faster shot time, more consistent power, and extremely light barrel fouling.
The variety of early hunting airguns reflected the variety of hunting. One 18th century specimen in the Beeman collection is a solid .39" caliber carbine, only 40 inches long, perhaps intended for use in heavy brush or on horseback. Another, made by Hass in Neustadt, Germany about 1750, has a beautiful 33" shot barrel, about .33" caliber, which can be unscrewed and drawn out of the gun to reveal a very menacing .46" caliber barrel with seven extremely deep rifling grooves. In just moments, the owner of the gun could switch from doves to deer! One of the fine-cased English air rifles (made about 1850) in the author's collection was regularly used for deer hunting as recently as 1950. It fires a 265-grain, .44" caliber bullet!
Perhaps the most historically important American airgun of all was an air rifle carried by Captain Meriwether Lewis on the famous Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803-06. The most recent research (6) fairly conclusively indicates that this was a .31" caliber, flintlock-style, pneumatic rifle built by Isaiah Lukens in Philadelphia. It served Captain Lewis well, both for hunting and to astonish the Indians.
Certainly one of the most famous of the butt-reservoir guns was the Austrian military air rifle designed by Girandoni about 1779. Its buttstock also is a detachable air reservoir which could be quickly unscrewed when empty and replaced by a full one. Each reservoir held enough air to fire a series of 20 heavy lead balls fed from an ingenious rapid feed magazine. These formidable weapons could put out their 20 smokeless shots in a minute; it is reported that the .51" caliber (13mm) balls were deadly to 100 yards! A corps of 500 soldiers so armed had a potential firepower of 300,000 shots in a half-hour - incredible for military rifles of the late 1700's! During this same period, and for almost a century to follow, big bore airguns were extremely popular with the wealthy sportsmen of Europe. Among the ancient airguns in the Beeman collection are beautiful specimens of air carbines, about .45" caliber, apparently for boar hunting from horseback, long rifles for deer hunting, and especially beautiful English cased sets with richly engraved receivers and interchangeable rifle and shot barrels for mammals or waterfowl. The ultimate in mechanical airgun development was the fearsome air canes with their jewel-like internal locks. Evidently no well-dressed English gentleman of the late 1800's would be seen without one of these weapons-which ranged from almost .30" to .49" in caliber and had perhaps the power of a modern police revolver!
An interesting trans-Atlantic switch in airgun evolution occurred about the start of the 20th century. In America, the spring piston gun had developed to a fairly powerful and sophisticated level - especially in the form of expensive gallery guns popular after the Civil War (4). The pneumatics had reached a high level in Europe with the advent of the cased hunting sets, the air canes, and finally the first CO2 rifle - the handsome and elaborate Giffard. The introduction of the firearm cartridge and smokeless powder killed the development of airguns as powerful guns. No longer could airguns properly be considered as arms or weapons. The evolution of the pump pneumatics and CO2 guns largely left Europe and appeared here as youth-level, low-power, mass-production guns, while in Europe spring piston airguns became extremely sophisticated and accurate target and light hunting small-bore guns. Finally, in the 1970's the Beeman's blended American styling, increased power, and new features with the European developments and made the successful introduction of precision adult airguns and new pellet designs into the mainstream of the American shooting market (5). Now other companies have come into the precision adult airgun market, but the Beeman company's objective is to continue to earn your respect as that market's leader.
"A wise man is a man that realizes just how little he knows"