"Trust in God, but keep your gunpowder dry"
(Oliver Cromwell)
The second direction on the path to excellence …
So, we got acquainted with the first direction of development of the sliding bolt and it turned out that its first samples were created for primer rifles (including rework ones) that fired old paper cartridges with lead bullets glued into them. That is, without changing the cartridge, their authors wanted to increase the rate of fire and ease of loading and nothing more. They could not even think of anything else, for example, about how to protect the cartridges themselves and their charges from moisture. Such is the terrible inertia of thinking in people.
Rifle Dreise M1841 from the exposition of the Stockholm Army Museum.
That is, the first direction in the development of breech-loading weapons was based on the use of old primers and old cartridges, but on the use of new ones, including sliding bolts, that is, locking systems.
The second direction was rifles, for which fundamentally new ammunition was created, and the old bolts are often adapted! Initially - a wide variety of systems!
Samuel Poly's double-barreled shotgun device.
Here we should start with the fact that the Swiss gunsmith Samuel Poli, who worked in Paris, went along the path of creating weapons for a new cartridge. Back in 1808, he was concerned about this problem, and then in 1812 he created and patented an original double-barreled shotgun with a bolt that was lifted up by a lever adjacent to the neck of the butt. Instead of hammers, there were two needle drummers in the bolt, which were cocked by the left and right levers on the stock.
The bolt to the Draize rifle. Its main drawback, typical of all needle rifles, was its very long and thin needle. It was not possible to make it out of titanium at that time, and all other needles, even steel ones, quite often broke at the most inopportune moment.
This weapon was charged with all-metal cartridges, turned on brass on a lathe, which guaranteed them considerable strength and the possibility of repeated use. In the bottom they had a hole for a capsule in the form of a modern children's piston made of two circles of cardboard with a composition based on mercury in between.
Jaeger rifle sample 1854 from the exposition of the Stockholm Army Museum.
The shotgun turned out to be durable, reliable, gas breakthrough in it was excluded by definition. The rate of fire reached 25 shots in two minutes, but … but making such a gun at that time could only be done manually. It was simply impossible to expand its mass production, as well as to establish the supply of cartridges - the level of technology development did not allow.
It was with him, by the way, that the German Johann Dreise worked, who learned a lot from Paulie, adopted a lot, thought of something himself and in 1827 offered the Prussian military the world's first purely "needle rifle" with a sliding bolt, adopted on armament in 1840. Dreise's rifles have been talked about more than once, so here it is important to pay attention only to those points that the authors usually do not pay attention to, although they do matter. First of all, it must be emphasized that the bullet for the Dreise cartridge was not "egg-shaped". It had the shape of a drop, that is, it was bicaliber. Further: it was fixed in the barrel when fired not in the cartridge, but in the folder spigel holding it in the cartridge - the pallet, and when moving along the barrel it did not come into contact with its grooves! Thanks to this, they were not leaded, which was good, but what was bad was that it happened to settle unevenly in the pallet, and flew out of the barrel, having a violation in centering. That is why it had a small firing range, within 500 m, but it had a rate of fire of five rounds per minute - unattainable for capsule guns, and in principle could not explode in the hands of the shooter due to double or triple loading. The rifle did not have an obturator. But due to the conical shape of the breech, on which the bolt was pushed, and the precise processing of the mating surfaces, the breakthrough of gases was excluded.
About this rifle with a magazine, which is at the same time a chamber, we can also say that it has … a sliding bolt, because the magazine simultaneously performs the function of a bolt in it. You charge in advance. You put on the capsules. Then you insert and shoot until it falls out. It was worse with obturation and balancing. And so it is very original. More than once or twice, designers from different countries have tried to create a weapon with such a transverse steel "bar", but nothing came of it.
Another drawback was that the unburned remnants of the cartridge, being in the barrel, interfered with the advance of the bullet, which again affected accuracy. In addition, since the primer was also in the folder tray, the needle piercing the cartridge had to be very long. When exposed to the combustion products of gunpowder, it quickly failed and, although each soldier had a spare needle, replacing one for another in battle was both troublesome and dangerous. Nevertheless, the infantry rifle, and the Jaeger rifle (model 1854) - shorter, and the rifle (М1860) - also shorter and more convenient than the infantry rifle, and even a heavy serf rifle with a piston shutter.
The rifle has proven itself well in the battles of the Danish-Prussian and Austro-Prussian wars. During the Franco-Prussian War, the French Chasspot needle rifle with a rubber shutter of a smaller caliber - 11 mm versus 15, 43 mm, and with a higher bullet speed - 430 m versus 295 m acquired the palm. That is, it had a greater flatness, rate of fire, although in terms of accuracy, as V. E. Markevich, it was inferior to the Draize rifle.
Chasspo rifle device.
All of these rifles, however, became obsolete at once with the proliferation of centerfire cartridges by Potte (1855), Schneider (1861) and especially Edward Boxer (1864) with an all-metal brass sleeve and a long lead bullet wrapped in paper to prevent lead rifling of the barrel bore.
Snyder rifle with folding magazine.
To extract the sleeve, it was necessary to open the shutter and slide it back. And the spring on its axis then returned it back.
However, the very first unitary cartridge with an external primer was created only a little later than the Dreise cartridge, namely in 1837, and it was also made of paper! And a rifle was also designed for it, although it was not accepted into service. This is the Demondion cartridge and rifle, which had almost the same lever locking mechanism as Paulie, but a secret hammer inside the box, which was cocked when the bolt lever was lifted. It seems to be nothing unusual, is there? However, the cartridge itself was unusual, in which the capsule was a paper tube sticking out of it. That is, it was the trigger that hit it - and in fact, the reinforced protrusion of the mainspring, and the bolt itself served as an anvil. Further - everything is as in ordinary rifles with a paper cartridge. When fired, the sleeve burns out, and what does not burn is thrown out of the barrel.
And this is a bolt chambered for the central action of the Albini-Brandlin rifle, model 1867. In fact, this is a chamber bolt of the Mont-Storm system. Only now there is no chamber in the hinged bolt, but only a channel for the striker, and the hammer is connected to the striker pusher, which is at the same time its closure and does not allow it to open when fired!
Very original was the 1854 St. Gardes rifle with the same cartridge and vertical bolt-door. Its lower part, which had the shape of a hook, protruded from the box and rested against the trigger bracket, which was … a mainspring! To load this rifle, it was necessary to pull this hook down until it stops so that the breech opened. Then a hairpin cartridge with two pins was inserted into it, apparently for greater reliability, and … you could press the trigger! At the same time, the "door" moving vertically in the grooves first locked the breech of the barrel, and then, continuing to move, hit the hairpin.
10-shot pistol "Harmonica" caliber 9-mm for hairpin cartridges Lefoshe.
But such cartridges, as well as Lefoshe's hairpin cartridges, were unsuitable for the army. Only cartridges with metal casings remained in military service - first "side" fire, that is, without a primer in the center of the bottom of the case, and then "central battle", that is, with a primer in the primer socket.
But … the bolt action still hasn't dominated in small arms!
Scheme of the device of the rifle F. Wesson.
For example, in the same USA, Frank Wesson in 1862 received patent No. 36,925 "Improvement of firearms with a bolt" for a rifle chambered for central combat with a folding barrel, and more than 20,000 of them were produced during the war between the North and South! The price of the rifle was $ 25, the cost of 1,000 rounds was $ 11! As you can see in the diagram from the patent, the barrel was folded back for loading using a lever located at the bottom of the neck of the stock. But why the second trigger? In fact, the "second trigger" (in fact, at the location it is the first) serves as a lock for the barrel. Only by sliding it back, it was possible to operate the lever and fold the barrel for loading. The system was considered very solid and reliable, and was readily used by the soldiers of the Union.
Rifle W. Soper.
Several original designs were proposed by the British gunsmith William Soper. For example, a rifle with a bolt similar to that of a Snider, but controlled by a lever located on the right slightly above the trigger. Moreover, the hammer was cocked automatically, so this rifle had a good rate of fire. With this rifle, Sergeant John Warwick of the Berkshire Volunteers Regiment at the Basingstoke Exhibition in 1870 showed a record rate of fire of 60 rounds per minute! But since it appeared rather late, it did not receive much distribution.
Soper's patent 1878 # 207689.
Soper's patent 1878 - view of the right side of the receiver.
Photo of the Soper rifle. Right view.
Certificate confirming the award of the Sopera rifle with a bronze medal at the International Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876.
Soper rifle device with a vertical bolt controlled by a lever. As you can see, the control of the bolt with the help of a bracket-lever possessed the minds of gunsmiths not only in the USA, but also in Europe. The Soper mechanism was designed so that when the bracket was pulled down, the shutter was lowered, after which a special lever hit the extractor and vigorously ejected the sleeve. The striker was inside the bolt. Interestingly, the designer equipped his rifle with a hexagonal rifled barrel and a spring-loaded bolt lock, which had to be squeezed out first, and only then lower it down!
