percussion heyday??

[kybackwoodsman]

ok, im not sure this is the right place, but here it goes.. i know the percussion rifle was developed around 1830-1840s but when did the full stocked percussion rifles see the most use by everyday men not army.. im looking for pre cival war time frame, i know the end of the trapper era was most fond of the st. loius hawkin rifles, im a eastern mountain man, more of a later longhunter... any hints or help please..

[Hanshi]

Interesting subject and I for one don't know the answer.  I sure would like to know more about it.  I do know many Kentucky/Pennsylvania were converted from early on and then there were the full stock Hawkens and Lemans.

[old salt]

So far this is what I have been able to find. Will keep looking to see if I can find more.

http://muzzleloadermag.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/20610091/m/4251068391

[Watauga]

Thanks old Salt Another Great link

[mongrel]

The percussion system was actually developed in the early 1800's and in fairly common use by 1830 at the latest. The flinters of course hung on -- a book I own about the old west has in it a photograph of a Canadian trading post in the 1890's, and a very obviously white man is holding a trade gun in such a way you can distinctly see the flint cock and frizzen, even with the pic having been taken at some distance.

A lot of folks who are focused on the fur trade tend to regard the percussion system as a later development, or as later to be commonly adopted, than is actually true if you take into consideration what was being done back east. Guys far from a regular source of supply for goods they couldn't fabricate or substitute for, themselves -- like percussion caps -- tended in many but still not all cases to stick with their flintlocks. They knew they worked and their lives depended on them working, and while anyone could see the merits of the percussion system I suspect they took a wait-and-see, if-it-ain't-broke-why-fix-it attitude toward it.

In the east, even for hunters who stuck to what wilderness was left, both by preference and to make a living, supply issues weren't so critical. Finding a trading post or actual town within reasonable travelling distance was do-able for them, whereas a Rocky Mountain fur trapper of the precise same time period might at any given moment be over a thousand miles from either supplies or help if he ran short of caps.

You also need to consider that if a man had a decent longrifle, either converted from flint or built new as a caplock, if it got the job done he'd likely hang onto it till either it or he wore out.

So to answer your question, being as how you're specifying an eastern hunter sometime in the 19th century -- it would be within reason to carry a percussion fullstock pretty much any time from roughly 1820-25 on. Late-period eastern builders and factories wouldn't have made fullstocks their primary piece of merchandise, but by the same token at least some of them would still have been making them long after halfstocks became their best sellers. And, like I say, a man with a fullstocked gun that still did what he needed it to do probably wouldn't have discarded it just because a new style had come into fashion.

[Thumper]

Nice post, thanks, mongrel !!