Lone Wolf Barrels Capabilities  

Screw grooves in the lone wolf barrels greatly expand the capabilities of the firearm. Their invention is one of the most important milestones in the history of military affairs. After all, even the most ancient of the surviving ones, made by German craftsmen at the beginning of the 16th century, threaded fittings placed nine bullets out of ten in a 45-centimeter circle from a distance of 140 meters. Click on here to get m ore information about the lone wolf barrels.

The best of the smoothbore rifles showed the same accuracy at a distance of 50-60 m from the force, and the privates - at all about 30. Nevertheless, for about three centuries from the moment of their appearance, rifled rifles were practically not used. The reason for this historical incident today is considered to be the low rate of fire of rifled weapons of the wick-flint era - no more than one round per minute versus four or six for smooth-bore rifles.

In fact, there was no noticeable difference in rate of fire. The root of the error lies in the wrong comparison. As the results for smooth-bore weapons, the normal rate of fire of a rifle with record rates for smooth-bore guns is usually taken, and also obtained under ideal conditions (cartridges and a seed horn lie on the table, the ramrod between shots does not retrace in the stock, you do not need to aim). In the field, an ordinary gun did not fire five or six, but only one and a half shots per minute. Statistics from the era of the Napoleonic Wars showed that soldiers with conventional guns fire only 15-20% more frequent than rifle shooters.

Loading a rifled rifle from the lone wolf barrels was not easy. To do this, a plaster (oiled rag) was placed on the muzzle, and a bullet was placed on the plaster, which was then driven into the barrel by blows of a wooden hammer on the ramrod. It took a lot of effort to imprint the edges of the projectile into the grooves. The plaster made it easier to slide, wiped the barrel and prevented lead from clogging the rifling. It was impossible to overdo it. Entering too deep, the bullet crushed the powder grains, which reduced the power of the shot. To prevent such cases, the choke ramrod was often equipped with a cross-bar.

The service life of the fitting was also short. Usually it withstood only 100-200 shots. The rifling was damaged by a ramrod. In addition, despite the use of the plaster, they quickly became lead and filled with scale, and then rubbed off when cleaning the barrel. To preserve the most valuable samples, the ramrod was made of brass, and a tube protecting the rifling was inserted into the barrel during cleaning.

But the main defect of such guns was the imperfection of the rifling themselves. The bullet was held in them too tightly and the powder gases did not immediately manage to touch it, since the charge was burning in a minimum volume. At the same time, the temperature and pressure in the breech of the rifle were noticeably higher than that of smooth-bore guns. This means that the barrel itself had to be made more massive in order to avoid rupture. The ratio of muzzle energy to mass in rifled weapons was two to three times worse.

Sometimes the opposite situation arose: the bullet held too weakly in the rifling and, gaining speed, often fell off them. An oblong cylindrical-conical bullet (experiments with this type of ammunition have been carried out since 1720), in contact with the grooves with the entire lateral surface, was too difficult to drive into the barrel from the muzzle side.