Reservoir air guns

[art.h]

Does anyone make an air rifles whose reservoir is charged by firing a high powered blank cartridge as a pressure source??????
I believe that some large caliber silent killers used in the 1800's were charged this way using black powder. I think modern high pressure powders would be even more effective in producing high pressure, large volume controlled gasses to handle effectively .45 to .58 cal. hunting arms.

 

[Threemorewishes]

Sounds intruiging. Do you have links or images to to any 1800's examples of these guns?

I have seen old airguns that used a small cartrige looking object that had a built in air reservoir and a breech to hold a pellet. The reservoir was pumped up with a high pressure pump and then a pellet was inserted into the breech. The cratridge was then loaded into the rifle and fired. The cartridges I saw were about the size of a 357 Mag casing and fired a 177 or 20 cal pellet.

 

[art.h]

Came across the references in books on the 100 years war, some from the old baltic conflicts, and some about the old Prussin intregues. Basicly whenever assassinations were involved and considered. I think that I even saw references to a silent killer in my reading of the first WW, I think some Scottish gunsmiths developed prototypes.

 

[leonardj]

Does anyone make an air rifles whose reservoir is charged by firing a high powered blank cartridge as a pressure source??????
I believe that some large caliber silent killers used in the 1800's were charged this way using black powder. I think modern high pressure powders would be even more effective in producing high pressure, large volume controlled gasses to handle effectively .45 to .58 cal. hunting arms.

If it uses gunpowder as a "pressure source", it is not an airgun - plain and simple.

The Zimmerstutzen target rifles used a primer-like charge to fire small lead balls, but while it resembled an airgun, and used ammo similar to airguns of the time, it is still considered to be a firearm.

A few decades back, Daisy brought out their "caseless" ammo that basically had some propellant in a recess at the base of the "pellet". The spring piston was cocked, like an ordinary airgun, and the VL ammo loaded, like a pellet. When the gun was fired, the rapidly compressed air reached a high enough temperature to ignite the propellent in the base of the pellet, and fired the pellet out the barrel at RF velocity. To Daisy's dismay, it was classified as a firearm, because of the propellant assisted ammo. These guns can be shot as strictly an airgun, but the velocity will be very low.

The cartridges that threemorewishes mentions are made by Brocock, in the UK. They range from pistol type cartidges, to their rifle cartridge, which is about the size of a 12ga shotshell. These little cartridges are pumped to pressures as high as 3000 PSI. The Saxby Palmer rifle that I had shot a 14.3 grain pellet at around 1100 FPS with 6 strokes of the pump per cartridge.

 

[art.h]

You are talking about a gun that fires a propellant, when the projectile leaves the barrel. I am inquiring about using the propllan to creat the pressure that is stored to be used at a latter point as the pressure source. How can this be any different than using large bottles of compressed gas to fill the reservoir?

 

[trevj]

Got a link to a cite?

I've been interested in old airguns for a while, and have not heard of this method.

I wonder if it could be that the author of whereever you read it, was not clear on the concept and wrote down what he was told, without bothering to confirm that it was, in fact, true.

Sounds like a heck of a recipe for a pipe bomb.

The large bore air rifles that were used by Austria (?) were charged by either a hand pump (really slow, lots of work) or the reservoirs were charged with a pump that was mounted to a set of flywheels and a hand crank, and were carried forward already charged.
They definitely were not silent on discharge.

There is a bit about thm on Beeman's site http://www.beeman.com/history.htm

And a lot more on Bob Beeman's personal site http://www.beemans.net/

Cheers
Trev

 

[marlin]

Many explorers of the new world used air rifles to harvest small game and conserve powder. The examples i have seen resembled a small bore rifle of the era with a large round metal air tank mounted to the bottom center.

 

[leonardj]

You are talking about a gun that fires a propellant, when the projectile leaves the barrel. I am inquiring about using the propllan to creat the pressure that is stored to be used at a latter point as the pressure source. How can this be any different than using large bottles of compressed gas to fill the reservoir?

Like trevj, I likewise have never heard of anything such as you describe. Using a powder charge to release energy to be stored and used at a later time, sounds like the recipe for disaster, as there would be no way of regulating the pressure, and would likely result in exactly what Trevj states - a pipe bomb.

 

[leonardj]

Many explorers of the new world used air rifles to harvest small game and conserve powder. The examples i have seen resembled a small bore rifle of the era with a large round metal air tank mounted to the bottom center.

These antique air rifles had the ball reservoirs, as you allude to, as well as butt reservoirs, as in the Girandoni action that Trevj mentions. Still others had the resevoir located co-axially around the barrel - the barrel ran up the center of the resevoir. The common denominator with all of these guns, is that they used compressed air.

Having had the pleasure of shooting some of these old ball and butt reserviour airguns, it is easy to understand why, for example, the indians were so awed by the airgun carried by Lewis & Clark.