What gun would I have in the 1880s? Part 2
What gun would I have in the 1880s? Part 2
Single shot flintlock and percussion (caplock) pistols, rifles and shotguns!
If you have read part 1 you will know that by the 1880s flint lock and percussion technology was old hat, but still a lot of those weapons would have been floating around. Most people could not just go and buy a brand-new Winchester or Colt that took those new-fangled metallic cartridges, not everyone would have trust them and for some it would not have been convenient. If you lived a long way from town a percussion rifle was easier to keep running as all you needed was powder and lead to cast your own balls. Much cheaper and easier than having to buy cartridges or reload your used ones.
Having said that, I think flintlock or percussion single shot pistols would have been very rarely used. Far less where made in the first place and they are very much for defence, not very good for hunting. A rifle or shotgun could put food on the table and money in your pocket! If you felt that you were going to get into gun fights and needed a defensive pistol a single shot gun would not be the answer! But if you do feel your character would have carried one Denix do some budget versions and Henry Krank stock some nice high-end replicas.
Flintlock rifles and shotguns are good both for defence and hunting, easy and cheap to run, so for a lot of poorer folk, farming people and mountain men they could still be a favourite option. They are documented to have been used right into the early 1900s by some famous hunters. However, lots of flintlocks were converted into percussion guns during the Civil War and it is an easy conversion that does make the guns easier to run and shoot more accurately. So again, I’m not sure how common they would have been, but if you need one Denix and Henry Krank give you the two ends of the budget for them.
Percussion rifles and shotguns! I think these are the guns that won the West! Post Civil War they were very cheap and available to buy and cheap and easy to run. For hunting or defence, they just work well. It is also quite an exciting option for us are they are easy to use for LARP, and we do have some original options open to us. A percussion gun, or cap lock as they were also called, uses a cap to ignite the main charge. For LARP purposes we can forgo the main charge and just use the cap to make a nice bang! Real percussion caps are available to buy and are not hindered by the need to get a licence, we can also use toy gun caps in their place so making them go bang is easy! Denix do several percussion replicas, they make Enfield 1853 rifles and carbines, these were used in vast quantities by the Confederates and were perhaps the best musket-rifle of the period. Denix also do replicas of Sharpe’s rifles and carbines plus double barrel shotguns. I think Denix intend these two as replicas of cartridges guns but we can run then with caps as if they were percussion weapons.
Now the exciting thing for me it that we can also get period percussion weapons that we can use! As these are antiques no licence is required to own one. While original rifles maybe out of our budget range cap-lock shotguns are quite plentiful with working antiques from about £200-£250 and non-working projects can be got from under £100. More expensive than a Denix but they will not lose value and in fact may increase in value over time.
In Part 3 I’ll start looking at the revolvers available to us starting with the percussion versions!