Just picked up an iron framed 1866 carbine...

[Driftwood Johnson]

Just an arbitrary question, were they delivered as shiny as the modern ones?  It is just hard for me to imagine anyone of a practical nature wanting a real world gun that shines and reflects like a madams doorbell under Friday nights street lamp!  I am thinking that polishing brass is a modern infatuation, and lure.  I always figured that the older gun metals would not even shine up like that anyway.

Howdy

That is an excellent question. First off, I have no definitive answer for you. I pored through my books about the Henry and the early Winchesters, and I saw no reference to the amount of polish given to the brass frames when they left the factory. I can tell you the barrels and other steel and iron parts were highly polished and deeply blued, that much was stated in one of my books.

I have only seen original Henry rifles that are now at least 150 years old and they all have a patina of age. I can tell you that the Henry was available silver plated or gold plated for an extra charge. These were highly polished and very shiny. To tell you the truth, I don't think shooters back then worried so much about shiny guns. All the old nickel plated guns I have ever seen have always been very shiny.

There are dozens of color plates of original Henry rifles in Les Quick's excellent book about the Henry rifle. Many of the brass framed Henrys were later engraved by their owners, and these would have been polished up to remove any patina before engraving them. Judging from the photos of the un-engraved rifles in the book, it appears to me that they would most likely have had a polish on them no different than the high polish of the blued barrels. But from a purely practical standpoint, I doubt the effort would have been made to highly polish the barrels of these rifles, and then leave the frames dull.

[Mogorilla]

 I am a huge history buff and beyond the old west, I love the bronze age.   Bronze in 2000 B.C was copper 93-88% and 7-12% Tin, sometimes lead was thrown in as it made it easier to cast.   Some areas excelled in Bronze casting, many Irish swords are 10-12% tin, which was difficult to cast, but gave for harder blades.    Truthfully if Tin was more plentiful the Iron age would never have occurred as readily available steel did not match bronze until the middle ages, just iron ore is WAY MORE PLENTIFUL.   The Chinese, that had huge kilns developed for ceramics were masters of bronze as well.  Examples of swords for royalty indicate a double casting, a core of bronze with ~7% tin, and outer edge of 15% tin.  These swords have the same properties of the pattern welded swords of the Vikings, softer core for flexibility, harder edge for sharpness.  Really the 5th century B.C. Chinese swords would have gone toe to toe with any middle ages steel sword.   Gun metal Bronze is way stronger than most modern, dyed in the wool steel users would give credenece to.   Modern steels are amazing but prior to the besemer process I might go with bronze.  just my $0.02, now I want to go shoot my Henry (but hey that is every day.)

[matt45]

I had a history professor once that would give the stock answer or solution and then pause and say "It just ain't so"- this being a case in point.  So if I'm following, it was inferior bronze (lack of tin?) and not a closely guarded forging secret that gave the Hittites the edge (oh, that's a bad one )?

[Professor Marvel]

 Gun metal Bronze is way stronger than most modern, dyed in the wool steel users would give credenece to.   Modern steels are amazing but prior to the besemer process I might go with bronze. 

Certain varieties of the bronzes do have remarkable qualities. As you noted Proper Gunmetal Bronze is surprisingly strong, but even stronger are Aluminum Bronze, Silicon Bronze and  Nickle Silver Bronze coming in with a tensile strength of 85,000 psi compared to mild steel at ~ 55,000 psi. Strongest Bronze is Manganese Bronze with an ultimate tensile strength of nearly 120,000 psi.

And Bronze is quite pretty, too!

Unfortunately our Italian replicas are all made of Common Brass (not that we are likely to ever wear them out...)

yhs
prof (metallic) marvel

[Capt. Jack McQuesten]

They do look pretty interesting......can't wait for a range report and pics.....