Ferguson Rifle

[PsihoKekec]

Ferguson rifle was ahead of it's time and didn't find the support within the British Army. But what if in addition to being weapon for the light infantry, he also tried to pass it as the weapon for the mounted troops, with Army being willing to carry the expense of arming some of the dragoon regiments with carbine version of the rifle?
How would firearm development continue if the Ferguson rifle, with some improvements, proved to be a viable weapon, worth of it's cost. Perhaps Navy would purchase some for its marines?

 

[Buba]

My layman asspull opinion is that it was a weapon 50 years too early for any sort of widespread use.
And gave too few benefits for the bother of being a breech-loader - still a flintlock.
IMO we saw the first percussion breechloaders c.1840 - which were far from "perfect" - for a reason.

 

[absenceofmalice]

My layman asspull opinion is that it was a weapon 50 years too early for any sort of widespread use.
And gave too few benefits for the bother of being a breech-loader - still a flintlock.
IMO we saw the first percussion breechloaders c.1840 - which were far from "perfect" - for a reason.

It gives huge benefits the only issue they couldn't get around is cost

 

[ATP]

Ferguson rifle was ahead of it's time and didn't find the support within the British Army. But what if in addition to being weapon for the light infantry, he also tried to pass it as the weapon for the mounted troops, with Army being willing to carry the expense of arming some of the dragoon regiments with carbine version of the rifle?
How would firearm development continue if the Ferguson rifle, with some improvements, proved to be a viable weapon, worth of it's cost. Perhaps Navy would purchase some for its marines?

They should do that.And if polish armies buy some,we could repell russian in 1792.We have good ties with England then./Poland/

 

[Buba]

They should do that.And if polish armies buy some,we could repell russian in 1792.We have good ties with England then./Poland/

Plus not enough tax money to raise an army of 100K in a country of 10M.
Barely managed c.60K.
Also - beat back Russia, get backstabbed by the Prussian vulture.
Having 50K Ferguson rifles would not save the PLC.
Sorry for derail ...

 

[ATP]

Plus not enough tax money to raise an army of 100K in a country of 10M.
Barely managed c.60K.
Also - beat back Russia, get backstabbed by the Prussian vulture.
Having 50K Ferguson rifles would not save the PLC.
Sorry for derail ...

One more reason to gave at least part of soldiers Ferguson rifles for Poland - major cost was soldiers and their living expense,training etc,not weapons.

 

[JagerIV]

Eh, watching a youtube video of someone loading it, its still a fairly finicky thing to load. I wouldn't be shocked if you could actually load a muzzle loader faster than the Ferguson, since you can sort of jam the powder and ball in at once, while the Ferguson you have to put in the ball and then pour powder down the hole.

So, your not, by the looks of it, getting a higher rate of fire out of the breach loader (you probably need actual cartridges to do that, which likewise require a different breach mechanism to feed). Thus, the only place your really getting a benefit from the breech loading is accuracy. Which then regulates them to somewhat elite units, since your soldiers often weren't well trained enough to get the full use of the potential accuracy of a smoothbore musket, let alone a rifle.

 

[absenceofmalice]

Eh, watching a youtube video of someone loading it, its still a fairly finicky thing to load. I wouldn't be shocked if you could actually load a breech loader faster than the Ferguson, since you can sort of jam the powder and ball in at once, while the Ferguson you have to put in the ball and then pour powder down the hole.

So, your not, by the looks of it, getting a higher rate of fire out of the breach loader (you probably need actual cartridges to do that, which likewise require a different breach mechanism to feed). Thus, the only place your really getting a benifit from the breech loading is accuracy. Which then regulates them to somewhat elite units, since your soldiers often weren't well trained enough to get the full use of the potential accuracy of a smoothbore musket, let alone a rifle.

Why are you comparing it to other breach loaders when it should be compared to muzzle loaders.

 

[S'task]

Eh, watching a youtube video of someone loading it, its still a fairly finicky thing to load. I wouldn't be shocked if you could actually load a breech loader faster than the Ferguson, since you can sort of jam the powder and ball in at once, while the Ferguson you have to put in the ball and then pour powder down the hole.

So, your not, by the looks of it, getting a higher rate of fire out of the breach loader (you probably need actual cartridges to do that, which likewise require a different breach mechanism to feed). Thus, the only place your really getting a benifit from the breech loading is accuracy. Which then regulates them to somewhat elite units, since your soldiers often weren't well trained enough to get the full use of the potential accuracy of a smoothbore musket, let alone a rifle.

It's rate of fire is lower than a muzzleloading musket like the Brown Bess, but that's in large part because you took a lot of shortcuts when loading smoothbore muskets because there was no reason to carefully load them since they were highly inaccurate.

What you need to be comparing the Ferguson to is muzzleloading rifles, specifically ones like the Pennsylvania Long Rifle as often used in the American Colonies / Early US.

But before we get into that, something to understand is that when it came to smoothbore muskets bullets for them were made smaller than the actual bore of the musket. IE, the Brown Bess was typically a .75 Caliber, but the ball they fired was typically around .65 caliber. This was done so that all you had to do was drop the ball down the barrel and it would slide down easily. This also meant that there wasn't a good seal on the musket when fired which is in part why they were so inaccurate.

With rifles you CANNOT do this, the bullet used in them matches the caliber of the rifle (IE a .50 Caliber PA Long Rifle fires a .50 caliber ball), further that ball is typically set in a small cloth patch that makes the fit even tighter. This ball and patch is then forcefully shoved down the barrel and set against the powder. Because of how tight this fit is, it takes considerable effort and time to ensure the ball is set in place. Oh, and this tightness is necessary for the bullet to grab the rifling in the barrel and so get the all-important spin that makes rifles more accurate.

This is where the Ferguson's breech loading becomes advantageous and does mean it gains in rate of fire against muzzle loading rifles. You still need the tight seal, but instead of having to shove the tight-fitting patch and ball down the entire length of a barrel of the rifle, you only go a short distance. It is still slower than a smoothbore musket, sure, but when it comes to rate of fire, smoothbore muskets are functionally cheating when it comes to the loading and tamping part when compared to rifles.

 

[JagerIV]

Why are you comparing it to other breach loaders when it should be compared to muzzle loaders.

Thanks for pointing out the mistype.

It's rate of fire is lower than a muzzleloading musket like the Brown Bess, but that's in large part because you took a lot of shortcuts when loading smoothbore muskets because there was no reason to carefully load them since they were highly inaccurate.

What you need to be comparing the Ferguson to is muzzleloading rifles, specifically ones like the Pennsylvania Long Rifle as often used in the American Colonies / Early US.

But before we get into that, something to understand is that when it came to smoothbore muskets bullets for them were made smaller than the actual bore of the musket. IE, the Brown Bess was typically a .75 Caliber, but the ball they fired was typically around .65 caliber. This was done so that all you had to do was drop the ball down the barrel and it would slide down easily. This also meant that there wasn't a good seal on the musket when fired which is in part why they were so inaccurate.

With rifles you CANNOT do this, the bullet used in them matches the caliber of the rifle (IE a .50 Caliber PA Long Rifle fires a .50 caliber ball), further that ball is typically set in a small cloth patch that makes the fit even tighter. This ball and patch is then forcefully shoved down the barrel and set against the powder. Because of how tight this fit is, it takes considerable effort and time to ensure the ball is set in place. Oh, and this tightness is necessary for the bullet to grab the rifling in the barrel and so get the all-important spin that makes rifles more accurate.

This is where the Ferguson's breech loading becomes advantageous and does mean it gains in rate of fire against muzzle loading rifles. You still need the tight seal, but instead of having to shove the tight-fitting patch and ball down the entire length of a barrel of the rifle, you only go a short distance. It is still slower than a smoothbore musket, sure, but when it comes to rate of fire, smoothbore muskets are functionally cheating when it comes to the loading and tamping part when compared to rifles.

Sure, but then that does mean again your only talking about an elite unit weapon, like I was talking about before. With how poor many infantry were, rate of fire is more important than accuracy. Accuracy training was often quite terrible, as said above many weren't really trained or used in a way that they could even make full use of a smoothbore musket's accuracy, let alone a rifle.

 

[absenceofmalice]

Thanks for pointing out the mistype.

Sure, but then that does mean again your only talking about an elite unit weapon, like I was talking about before. With how poor many infantry were, rate of fire is more important than accuracy. Accuracy training was often quite terrible, as said above many weren't really trained or used in a way that they could even make full use of a smoothbore musket's accuracy, let alone a rifle.

It's rate of fire is lower than a muzzleloading musket like the Brown Bess, but that's in large part because you took a lot of shortcuts when loading smoothbore muskets because there was no reason to carefully load them since they were highly inaccurate.

What you need to be comparing the Ferguson to is muzzleloading rifles, specifically ones like the Pennsylvania Long Rifle as often used in the American Colonies / Early US.

But before we get into that, something to understand is that when it came to smoothbore muskets bullets for them were made smaller than the actual bore of the musket. IE, the Brown Bess was typically a .75 Caliber, but the ball they fired was typically around .65 caliber. This was done so that all you had to do was drop the ball down the barrel and it would slide down easily. This also meant that there wasn't a good seal on the musket when fired which is in part why they were so inaccurate.

With rifles you CANNOT do this, the bullet used in them matches the caliber of the rifle (IE a .50 Caliber PA Long Rifle fires a .50 caliber ball), further that ball is typically set in a small cloth patch that makes the fit even tighter. This ball and patch is then forcefully shoved down the barrel and set against the powder. Because of how tight this fit is, it takes considerable effort and time to ensure the ball is set in place. Oh, and this tightness is necessary for the bullet to grab the rifling in the barrel and so get the all-important spin that makes rifles more accurate.

This is where the Ferguson's breech loading becomes advantageous and does mean it gains in rate of fire against muzzle loading rifles. You still need the tight seal, but instead of having to shove the tight-fitting patch and ball down the entire length of a barrel of the rifle, you only go a short distance. It is still slower than a smoothbore musket, sure, but when it comes to rate of fire, smoothbore muskets are functionally cheating when it comes to the loading and tamping part when compared to rifles.

Seven shots on the minute is doable with a Fergusson what are you guys even talking about.

 

[Battlegrinder]

While @S'task makes a good point in comparing the Ferguson to the contemporary rifled muskets, it occurs to me that he also hinted at the reason why the Ferguson rifle was a technological dead end. Yes, it was faster to load than contemporary rifles, but it's only going to keep that edge for a shot time. Once someone invents the Minie ball, then the edge will swing back toward muzzleloaders, as they can load just as fast as smoothbores despite being rifled (I think he might have slightly overstated the speed at which you can load a smoothbore as well, though I'm not familar with pre-civil war black powder weapons so I can't be sure. But if it was as easy as just dropping the ball down the barrel, then why do muskets of the period come with a ramrod to push the bullet down into position?).

So in the long run, nothing really changes, as the ferguson's method of operation and design is not really compatible with later firearm designs and advancements, and it remains an interesting offshoot of conventional firearm development.

Sure, but then that does mean again your only talking about an elite unit weapon, like I was talking about before. With how poor many infantry were, rate of fire is more important than accuracy. Accuracy training was often quite terrible, as said above many weren't really trained or used in a way that they could even make full use of a smoothbore musket's accuracy, let alone a rifle.

I'm not sure that's the case, certainly not for this period of time. This was well into the era of long service professional armies, they had ample time to train their soldiers to properly use their rifles. The British army in particular was famous for their musket drill.

Seven shots on the minute is doable with a Fergusson what are you guys even talking about.

Seven completely unaimed shots, yes. Actually stopping to aim, IE, the important thing you have to do with a rifled weapon, would slow him down a fair bit, and from what I can find, contemporary muskets had a fire rate of 3-4 shots per minute on average. Given the increased cost, complicity, and finnickyness of the Ferguson....a handful of extra rounds downrange probably wasn't worth the cost.

 

[absenceofmalice]

Seven completely unaimed shots, yes. Actually stopping to aim, IE, the important thing you have to do with a rifled weapon, would slow him down a fair bit, and from what I can find, contemporary muskets had a fire rate of 3-4 shots per minute on average. Given the increased cost, complicity, and finnickyness of the Ferguson....a handful of extra rounds downrange probably wasn't worth the cost.

So first we compare it in speed to volleys of undersized wadless balls fired haphazardly through clouds of smoke in formation and go "it loads slower" then when I show it actually loads faster in those conditions we say "oh well then it wouldn't be as accurate as a rifle if they did that". Handful also? Handful? The difference between three and four per minute was considered monumental. Four took a great amount of practice and discipline and was considered totally worth it to pursue despite. But three or four going up to seven thats not a big deal I guess.

 

[Battlegrinder]

So first we compare it in speed to volleys of undersized wadless balls fired haphazardly through clouds of smoke in formation and go "it loads slower" then when I show it actually loads faster in those conditions we say "oh well then it wouldn't be as accurate as a rifle if they did that". Handful also? Handful? The difference between three and four per minute was considered monumental. Four took a great amount of practice and discipline and was considered totally worth it to pursue despite. But three or four going up to seven thats not a big deal I guess.

I'm going off of what S'stak has said regarding it's capabilities, since I believe he's got a fair bit more knowledge and experience with black powder firearms than I do. And yes, if you are firing completely unaimed shots (even musket armed troops spent a few seconds to aim, despite the limited value of doing so with their weapons) like guy in that video, then it would be even less effective than a musket, let alone a rifle. From what I've seen elsewhere, from more reputable sources than some random dude, six rounds is frequently cited as what they expect.

And yes, it was considered worthwhile to train troops to the standard of 4 shots a minute vs 3. It was not considered worthwhile to buy an expensive weapon with a habit of breaking to improve that by 2 or 3 more rounds, because regardless of other advantages, being costly and unreliable will torpedo any weapons system that's not a nazi tank.

 

[Buba]

Seven completely unaimed shots, yes.

Not to mentioned not being fired at
And if fired by a formation the shooters would be engulfed a by a cloud of their own smoke any, thus making the rifle lose its benefits - range and accuracy. The extra cost is not worth it, IMO.

Also - fouling - after how many shots will the tight fit (drag your snouts from the gutter, pervs!) Ferguson need a swabbing?

 

[Battlegrinder]

Also - fouling - after how many shots will the tight fit (drag your snouts from the gutter, pervs!) Ferguson need a swabbing?

Wiki says about a hundred. No idea how that compares to conventional muskets, but I suspect that given it's fire rate, there's a decent chance the thing would get fouled into ineffectiveness mid battle.

 

[absenceofmalice]

I'm going off of what S'stak has said regarding it's capabilities, since I believe he's got a fair bit more knowledge and experience with black powder firearms than I do. And yes, if you are firing completely unaimed shots (even musket armed troops spent a few seconds to aim, despite the limited value of doing so with their weapons) like guy in that video, then it would be even less effective than a musket, let alone a rifle. From what I've seen elsewhere, from more reputable sources than some random dude, six rounds is frequently cited as what they expect.

If you take "a few seconds" to aim when in Volley fire you're not getting any four rounds per minute you're firing as fast as you can through a dense cloud of smoke. You're also firing balls undersized for the bore most likely without wadding meaning your accuracy is going to be comparatively dogshit no matter if you aimed for ten seconds and leaned the fucker on a rock. The fact that some random fat hobbyist grandpa can very nearly manage seven shots reliably is not going in your favor as far as the argument goes either.

 

[Battlegrinder]

If you're firing through smoke, your accuracy is going to suck no matter what you do and what gun you have, but you will still have to take a moment to actually point the gun in the right direction or you'll never hit anything, which the guy in the video was not doing. Also, it's not really shocking that a older guy managed to reach a high fire rate. It's not like the gun demands a great deal of strength or dexterity to fire, he shouldn't be meaningfully impeded by his age in that regard.

 

[JagerIV]

I watched someone go through the process, and it didn't look particularly fast, but it does look like he can manage about a shot every 10 to 15 seconds. So, about 6-4 rounds per minute. That is about the range for smoothbore muskets as well.



So, rate of fire is not really all that different. Well @Battlegrinder , on the issue of accuracy, I guess you do admittedly have a big shift in military performance, when it was put into production in 1776, you were in the age of long term armies. However, the next big war after the American Revolution is the Napoleonic Wars, which is the war of massed armies which pushed various militaries logistical capacities to the max, and had great difficulty supplying their battlefield powder needs, and often had to skimp on training use.

Probably the only side who did have the capacity for enough training rounds to do enough training was probably the British, who had the best material to soldier ratio to really do enough training for mass deployment. And even there it probably would not have that much more impact than the existing riflemen did.

 

[absenceofmalice]

I watched someone go through the process, and it didn't look particularly fast, but it does look like he can manage about a shot every 10 to 15 seconds. So, about 6-4 rounds per minute. That is about the range for smoothbore muskets as well.



So, rate of fire is not really all that different. Well @Battlegrinder , on the issue of accuracy, I guess you do admittedly have a big shift in military performance, when it was put into production in 1776, you were in the age of long term armies. However, the next big war after the American Revolution is the Napoleonic Wars, which is the war of massed armies which pushed various militaries logistical capacities to the max, and had great difficulty supplying their battlefield powder needs, and often had to skimp on training use.

Probably the only side who did have the capacity for enough training rounds to do enough training was probably the British, who had the best material to soldier ratio to really do enough training for mass deployment. And even there it probably would not have that much more impact than the existing riflemen did.

Four is phenomenal for a smoothbore with undersized rounds a hobbyist managed almost seven with full bore rounds do you even have eyes.

If you're firing through smoke, your accuracy is going to suck no matter what you do and what gun you have, but you will still have to take a moment to actually point the gun in the right direction or you'll never hit anything, which the guy in the video was not doing. Also, it's not really shocking that a older guy managed to reach a high fire rate. It's not like the gun demands a great deal of strength or dexterity to fire, he shouldn't be meaningfully impeded by his age in that regard.

A few seconds becomes a moment. Carefully aiming becomes "in the right direction" which he absolutely was. God your arguments are shooting around so fast from place to place hows anyone supposed to keep up it's like a magic trick. Reloading and firing is literally a measure of dexterity which you very commonly lose as you get older what are you even talking about.