before .22 rimfire

m1978

m1978

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historical question: what type of rifle rounds were used before the .22 came along (for similar purposes). i know there was some smaller caliber muzzleloaders.
 
Your question is more profound than it first seems. What consumer-quantity cheap-shooting rifle existed before the .22LR? Nothing. There were other rimfires (but not very good ones), pin fires which were just bizarre and centrefires. But IMHO, the .22LR and its earliest brothers, was the equivalent of broadband internet of the day. Do as much as you want, it's cheap and more where that came from.
 
The classic squirrel gun is a .32 or .36 muzzle loader but that was probably more for the privileged class.
I suspect that many middle class or below had a family all purpose gun which was a 20-12gauge smooth bore.
 
There really wasn't much out there before the 22 cb in the Smith and Wesson for pistols. They were more of a parlour pistol meant for shooting in the house like a game of loud darts.
Then after a few years during the American Civil War there were some 32 rimfire pistols and in rifles there were the Volcanic and the Spencers, neither one of those firing a very impressive load, compared to today.
There were pinfire cartridges, and a few paper or linen cartridges that were used in the 1869 (iirc) Sharps rifles.
I've heard mention of some experimental rubber cartridges in the 1830's or 40's, but with the technology of the day they weren't successful.
It was after the American Civil War that self contained cartridges started to become popular and the loose powder and ball muzzleloaders began to be replaced.
In Europe I think that a style of cartridge and gun called the "Flobert" was in vogue around that time.
I'm going off of memory, and am too lazy to go look up the exact facts, but this should get you close with a bit of Googling.
Hope this helps.
 
Flobert rounds were fairly popular in Europe, and were used for such things as garden guns, and indoor parlor shooting. I have a barrel insert for my Swiss 1889 rifle which was intended for one of these Flobert rounds (many different types of Flobert rounds existed). That particular one was essentially just a .17-.20 caliber (I can't remember the exact diameter but it is smaller than a .22) bullet propelled by a primer, for shooting at less than 25m indoors (literally they would set up a target down the hallway and the round had just enough power to penetrate paper but not the wall).

Before the .22 the reality was you learned to shoot whatever it was you had. It wasn't like today where you had tons of rounds of target practice, you were very limited in how much you could shoot. Most would have had a smoothbore musket/shotgun (treated essentially the same at that point in time), and that was it.
 
Small bore ML or shotgun was probably used as stated earlier. Snares and bird lime basically filled the role of the 22lr in common practice is my suspicion.
 
as noted above, the 22 BB cap was first but during or by the 1860s there were a number of rifle rimfire shells, the biggest I can think of being 57 cal and used in an Austrian rifle (Wenzyl I think). Because the rimfire shells had to be relatively soft (to be able to dent the rim with its priming) most of the rifle shells were fairly weak although the Vetterli was probably one of the better ones. My impression is that from the 1870s or a bit later and on into the early 1900s, 32 rimfire rifles were at least somewhat popular and ammunition still easily available although there were also 25 and 38 rimfire shells in both rifle and pistol

cheers mooncoon
 
I have read that Merriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame carried an air rifle on the expedition that really amazed the native people he encountered. I don't know how common these were in the era before the .22 RF but if common perhaps they would have filled the need for small game hunting.
 
norseman1867 said:
I have read that Merriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame carried an air rifle on the expedition that really amazed the native people he encountered. I don't know how common these were in the era before the .22 RF but if common perhaps they would have filled the need for small game hunting.
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they would have been very expensive and also required a pump to pump up the air reservoir. Also they were somewhere around 40 caliber or a bit bigger. Only thing close that I have seen was an air cane which looked like a walking stick and shot about a 30 caliber ball. I think they may have been used for poaching in England around the early 1900s

cheers mooncoon
 
norseman1867 said:
I have read that Merriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame carried an air rifle on the expedition that really amazed the native people he encountered. I don't know how common these were in the era before the .22 RF but if common perhaps they would have filled the need for small game hunting.
Click to expand...

It's called the Girandoni air rifle and was issued to Austrian skirmish troops as the "Windbüchse" as well as being taken by Lewis and Clarke on their expidition. A damn marvel of manufacturing! I'd love a repro. Air rifle development at that time was somewhat stunted by gun control (at least in some German cities) as they were thought of as assassin weapons and very dangerous! Sound familiar anyone?
 
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