'The Modern Shotgun', three vols.

[EnfieldLock]

I just found a very affordable set of all three volumes in this mammoth work by Major Sir Gerald Burrard.  Vol. I - The Gun;  Vol. II - The Cartridge;  Vol. III - The Gun and The Cartridge. (first publ. 1931/32, revised 1950, reprinted 1985)

All in pretty good condition, for £29, inc. postage.  Granted, it won't have anything about steel shot, plastic wads, and so on - but, from memory, it really goes into enormous depth on the mechanics and physics of how and why the two are built, and how they interact.  I first came across it when I borrowed it from the man who got me started on shotguns, fifty years ago (Pat Ifold - a damn fine shot and gunsmith, and one of the best friends I ever had).

To give you some idea;  'The Cartridge' alone runs to 315 pages!  And it's good solid factual stuff, not pages of waffle.

It'll give me something to get my teeth into whilst I'm getting my crook knee working properly again (damaged cartilage);  slow progress, but the exercises recommended by the physio are getting me there.

[rbrowning2]

i have the Vol. Ii the cartridge, most information still very relevant today, useful tables. Enjoy the books and get well soon.

Edited yesterday at 07:55 by rbrowning2

[JohnfromUK]

14 hours ago, EnfieldLock said:

I just found a very affordable set of all three volumes in this mammoth work by Major Sir Gerald Burrard.  Vol. I - The Gun;  Vol. II - The Cartridge;  Vol. III - The Gun and The Cartridge. (first publ. 1931/32, revised 1950, reprinted 1985)

All in pretty good condition, for £29, inc. postage.  Granted, it won't have anything about steel shot, plastic wads, and so on - but, from memory, it really goes into enormous depth on the mechanics and physics of how and why the two are built, and how they interact.  I first came across it when I borrowed it from the man who got me started on shotguns, fifty years ago (Pat Ifold - a damn fine shot and gunsmith, and one of the best friends I ever had).

To give you some idea;  'The Cartridge' alone runs to 315 pages!  And it's good solid factual stuff, not pages of waffle.

It'll give me something to get my teeth into whilst I'm getting my crook knee working properly again (damaged cartilage);  slow progress, but the exercises recommended by the physio are getting me there.

A few years ago repro copies of many of the 'great' books were being made and available quite reasonably priced as well as being well done with sturdy cloth bindings.  I bought various works then including a set of 'Burrard'.

The Victorians and Edwardians were great 'experimenters', but I think one does have to be a bit cautious about the figures used for things like pressure and velocity as their ability to measure these things accurately and repeat-ably was limited by the kit they had available.

[Feltwad]

I have found  through personal research that there are parts of well known books  which are  not correct  which  are parts of books  published in the past. . For these reasons I did  20 years research into the traditional gunmakers of the north from the Scottish  border down to  York a total of 300 plus names for my personal use 

Feltwad

[wymberley]

6 minutes ago, Feltwad said:

I have found  through personal research that there are parts of well known books  which are  not correct  which  are parts of books  published in the past. . For these reasons I did  20 years research into the traditional gunmakers of the north from the Scottish  border down to  York a total of 300 plus names for my personal use 

Feltwad

The chap I feel sorry for is another major who burst into print just before the bubble burst and as far as I know was the last author to use some of the information mentioned as highlighted above. Another well known writer who would be instantly recognised by the vast majority - if not all - of us of a certain age remarked in one of his last works that there are things which he would rather not have written. Overall though, it must be said that we do owe Major Sir Gerald Burrard an immense debt of gratitude. My 1960 copy of the Trilogy which was my father's and he bought it second hand is now in tatters simply through use. Perhaps it is a shame that he (Burrard) didn't pay more attention to a Dr Hammond-Smith and also that he would have appeared to miss some of the writing by Gen. Journee relating to Carl F. Gauss.

The bubble referred to is the new research into the performance of lead carried out here and in the USA to ensure its comparison with any of the types of Non Toxic Shot being introduced would be valid. This work - the bulk of which was done in the USA - reflected that we were somewhat ambitious in our ideas for the effective ranges of lead shot. We'd got away with it as back in the day the height of a 'high bird' given in yards would have started with a '3'. Things were about to change.

[EnfieldLock]

10 hours ago, rbrowning2 said:

i have the Vol. Ii the cartridge, most information still very relevant today, useful tables. Enjoy the books and get well soon.

Thank you for your good wishes, RB - and best regards,

Jack

[EnfieldLock]

Re. the comments, above, as regards the accuracy of lack of accuracy in old books, I suspect that there are still authors getting it wrong today - and not just on minor issues, either - and that despite the vastly improved instrumentation we have available.  In my experience, the problems frequently stem not from incorrect data, but during the processes of analysing the data, and then forming conclusions.  We are all only human, and our own pre-conceived ideas and bias are very liable to creep in, both of them leading us to cherry-pick the data to match our own preferred ideas and beliefs.

A few years ago, I read a book based on a PhD thesis about the armaments of the Home Guard used in WWII.  Contrary to statements in many recently written articles and books that it was just a 'Dad's Army', made up of doddering old codgers armed with pikes, the author (who was awarded his PhD on this thesis) found nothing could be further from the truth - yet all the verifiable evidence was readily available.  What struck him the most was the way that even people who had served in the Home Guard appeared to have been taken in by this common belief.

One example was how many of those veterans were convinced that the Home Guard as a whole was very poorly equipped, and only got the Army's left-overs.  Yet the author found documentary evidence to prove that when the first shipment of 5,000 Thompson .50 machine guns arrived in Britain in the autumn of 1940, all of them were issued to Home Guard units in Kent and East Sussex.  Another example came in the form of numerous diary entries from the period, complaining that Home Guard units were given "worn out old rifles left over from WWI" - yet the reality was they were given P-17 rifles made in the US during WWI, but which had been put into store by the US government having never fired a shot! (if you look at photos of Home Guard units taking in 1940 onwards, you can see the painted red band around the forehand of the stock, indicating that they were chambered for .30-06)

As confirmation, the same diary entries complained about Home Guard men having to scrape all the heavy protective grease off the P-17s before they could use them - and that grease had been put on them in the factories where they were made.  The reality the author found was that many of our infantry regiments were equipped with Lee-Enfields which were not only made during WWI, but had been heavily used both then and in between-wars service;  the reason for that anomaly being that the P-17s were chambered for .30-06 ammunition.  If they had been issued to some regular Army regiments with others having Lee-Enfields, trying to ensure that every unit, in every theatre of conflict, was kept supplied with the right ammunition would have been a logistical nightmare.  In contrast, the Home Guard units were all based in Britain, and all in fixed locations - so keeping the supply chain running smoothly was quite easy.

Sorry for rambling on at such length, but I do think it's all too easy, when reading old books, to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[enfieldspares]

1 hour ago, EnfieldLock said:

Sorry for rambling on at such length, but I do think it's all too easy, when reading old books, to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I read the same paper I think. It was very interesting. As to mistakes being repeated that is because of lazy research. Not going to original sources but requoting what other authors wrote.

As an example from what I was once interested in is the nonsense about the cut-off in the SMLE No1 Mk III being used for as a reserve for rapid fire with (at other times) the rifle to be single loaded. That's bunkum as the 1909 Musketry Regulations which were THE manual for the SMLE No 1 Mk III specifically state that it is not to be used in such a fashion.

The 1909 Regulations say that its use is as a means to allow a soldier to fully charge his magazine with ten rounds then slide the cut-off in place and, as it pushed the topmost round under the boltway, to so enable him to close the bolt on an empty chamber. 

Edited yesterday at 20:42 by enfieldspares

[JohnfromUK]

I believe one error in Burrards work (the same in Greener and Akehurst)concerns his description of the Beesley (Purdey) patent of 1880 on which the vast majority of Purdeys shotguns are constructed (and still used to this day).  It concerns the action of the main spring in performing the role of spring for the tumbler and also the self opening function.

MUCH later, Gough Thomas (Gough Thomas Garwood) provided a corrected description of and detailed the errors in Burrard's description.  This is in his article from Shooting Times entitled "The Famous Purdey Action" and reprinted in "Gough Thomas's Second Gun Book" pub A&C Black 1971.