Famed American frontiersmen such as Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, and Lewis Wetzel were proud owners and accomplished users of this new American work of art, which decades later became known as the Pennsylvania Rifle, and then the Kentucky Rifle.Īs a military weapon, the long rifle was slow and awkward to reload, even for an expert. Beck, Abraham Schweitzer, Christopher Kline, and John Graeff were just as well known and their products equally valued.
But he was only one gunsmith among large numbers of equally adroit craftsmen. He and his assistants turned out hundreds of guns. Fancy silver trimmings and engraving were added to the taste of individual woodsmen.ĭickert, whose name was initially attached to a school of gunsmiths, was exceptionally productive. Dickert” on the barrel and often included an oval touch mark that contained an Indian tomahawk crossed with an arrow.
#Long riffle Patch
Dickert’s early models contained a rifled barrel of 40 to 46 inches long containing seven spiraled grooves a curved, curly maple stock and a brass patch box. Jacob Dickert, a Moravian from Lancaster, Pa., became noted as the developer of a superb gun that combined strikingly effective firepower with a design so simple and yet attractive as to denote his craftsmanship in wood, iron, and brass. Production rose and gunsmiths hired apprentices and assistants to keep up with demand. Shortly after the hybrid weapons were offered, American frontiersmen heard of their effectiveness and clamored for them.
#Long riffle full
The result was a uniquely American weapon of German and Scotch-Irish lineage with a lengthened grooved barrel that allowed full burning of the powder charge and markedly increased range and accuracy. They cleverly married two concepts: the short-barreled rifled guns they brought from central Europe, and the long-barreled, smooth-bore English fowling pieces favored by their Scotch-Irish neighbors. A substantial contingent of immigrant German gunsmiths, who had debarked in Philadelphia, set up mills and gun shops virtually on the frontier.
The muzzle-loading flintlock long rifle was developed in the first half of the 18th century, primarily in an area southwest of Philadelphia. Terrain and tactics were factors in the battle’s outcome, of course, but the most critical determinate was the distinctive weapon employed by the colonists. Thus this decisive engagement provided a distinct and undisputed test of 18th-century European close-order, volley-fire tactics against the precision-fire, open-order techniques favored by colonial frontier riflemen. The battle at Kings Mountain in October 1780 was the only clash of the American Revolution in which the entire colonial force was armed with American long rifles.
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