Firearms

[GianniVacca]

Sorry if this was something you already had a handle on, but I thought it might help you to at least start to track down the details.

Not at all. This was very interesting. Once I have done some research in my Osprey booklets about the Taiping & Boxer rebellions, I may re-use some of your text for a future post on my Celestial Empire blog. Are you OK with it?

[Smoking Frog]

Not at all. This was very interesting. Once I have done some research in my Osprey booklets about the Taiping & Boxer rebellions, I may re-use some of your text for a future post on my Celestial Empire blog. Are you OK with it?

Of course! Steal with impunity.

[Smoking Frog]

Gianni -- I dug through my "Old West Companion," which was my notes for running an old west game and had some juicy tidbits on pistols and repeating rifles. Here are a few significant dates to help spur further research:

1836: Colt introduced the first revolver (pistol with a revolving cylinder)

1857: Smith & Wesson formed to produce revolvers based on a patent for a bored-through cylinder with metallic cartridges (as opposed to the cap & ball revolvers)

The S&W patent expired around 1873, which is when other companies started producing revolvers for metallic cartridges, including the famous Colt .45 (aka Peacemaker)

1892: Colt produced the first revolver with a swing-out cylinder (M1892 in .38); before that the "break-top" model like the S&W was about the best you could do for speedy reloading.

Repeating rifles were used in the Civil War but became more common afterwards:

1860: The Henry repeating rifle and the Spencer repeating rifle were both introduced

1866: Winchester produced its first repeating rifle

Because of the limited size of the action, repeating rifles used rounds that were less powerful than what could be used in breech loading rifles like the US Army's Springfield in .45-70, or the Sharps (which came in a variety of calibers, including the "monster" .50-90). In 1881, Marlin introduced a lever-action repeating rifle that was big enough to chamber the .45-70 round.

One other technological point is that smokeless powder was not invented until 1884. Prior to that, all firearms used the slower-burning black powder, which created a lot of smoke that could obscure vision. The first smokeless powder was 3 times more powerful than black powder. During the black powder era, the basic way to get more powerful rounds was to just use more powder with a huge bullet. Hence the Sharps .50-90, which was developed for buffalo hunting. With the advent of faster-burning, more powerful smokeless powder, manufacturers started using smaller bullets that would have much higher velocity and so a much higher muzzle energy. The first commercial round to use smokeless powder was Winchester's famous .30-30, which was introduced in 1894.

Obviously my notes were skewed to what was happening in America, but this should reasonably reflect the "state of the art" for weapons at the time.

Hope you're finding lots of good stuff specific to China!

[Atgxtg]

There is an unofficial FUDGE supplement, Knuckleduster, that is a nice compilation of US weapons made during the 1800s. It has some good info, and lots of weapons, many of which could end up in China, or are very similar to what was in China.

In BRP terms, you can probably only do so much. Especially since firearms did not have interchangeable parts in those days.