Early firearms were invariably smooth-bore weapons because, initially, no one understood that putting grooves in the barrel of a gun to make the ball spin would increase its accuracy Even after this discovery was made, a rifled barrel was not very easy to make by hand and it was not until the beginning of the 16th century that rifled weapons began to appear regularly in Europe. These first rifles were of either Austrian or German manufacture and although they were accurate and popular with the sporting shooter, they never gained general acceptance by the military. The problem was loading. If the designer increased the size of the ball so that it was a tight fit in the bore, forcing the ball down the barrel past the rifling made it difficult to load and, if the ball was looser, the accuracy of the weapon was reduced to barely that of an equivalent musket. Very-early rifle shooters used a wooden mallet to knock the ball down the rifling, but this was not totally-satisfactory and rifles did not become really popular until their loading problems were partially overcome by the development of a process called 'patch-loading'. This involved the use of a patch of paper, cloth or even leather which was wrapped around the ball before it was inserted into the barrel and forced down to seat on to the charge. The patch gripped the grooves in the barrel sufficiently to impart the required spin to the ball and so rendered the rifling effective.
No comments:
Post a Comment