Was parlour target shooting really a thing? Can see it now: after dinner dessert, coffee and brandy, a little concerto on the harpsichord then blast away at the parlour wall. Mais Oui! Magnifique!
It was very much a real thing. When the ladies were over you might have someone play some music and dance/sing and that sort of thing. When the men were over it would often be smoking and target shooting indoors with very low powered pistols and rifles. We are talking like .17 caliber pump guns, .22 BB (look up the cartridge its basically a .22 ball in a flanged percussion cap) and things of that nature. A gallery would be brought into the parlor or if you were particular well to do you'd have a dedicate room setup for it and people would target shoot, drink, and smoke like the well to do gentlemen they were. It was generally a gentlemens thing, but at times ladies could be involved though its rarely recorded and when it is usually as "omg look at becky shooting with the men, what a harlot!" kinda thing. By the end of WW1 this sort of thing had largely fallen out of favor and it was mostly now restricted to things like carnival target shooting and since the peasantry now enjoyed it obviously a good gentlemen must find other pursuits.
Hell I'd be way into that now LOL Bring back parlor shooting I can see it now sitting at Friday's on a Saturday night with a 10/22 shooting all the junk that they have on the wall
Gaupulat used to make the "cartridges" for these. As far as I know, like a BB cap they contained no powder and relied on the priming compound for power. (A gentleman once tried firing a percussion musket with a ball, cap and no powder, and was surprised by how hard the ball came out of the muzzle! Perhaps that's where the idea came from.) When George Orwell was a small boy, there was a sporting goods shop in Henley on Thames which sold "Saloon Pistols"; all the boys aspired to own one, of course, probably because they didn't know any better. Those would have fired flobert rimfire cartridges by Orwell's time, though.
Rudyard Kipling's "Stalky & Co." includes one story where Stalky, Beetle and McTurk go to the dunes to settle a dispute using saloon pistols firing "dust shot" caps (so similar to modern "snake shot" in the US?")...and wearing heavy overcoats to reduce the risk of injury.
@@christopherreed4723 iirc, during that last hurrah of "dueling" they used wax or chalk based pellets. See also Mensur, another time they nerfed the weapons and increased protection until the whole thing became a drunken fratboy episode of Jackass set in the late 19th century.
@@TheB3e3 Almost certain the one in the dunes used dust shot. Beetle's shot nicks McTurk's ear, causing it to bleed. Doubt that would have happened with wax. I think that's the one where Beetle nearly bowls over an elderly pensioner out playing golf. Which, in turn, results (how could it be otherwise) in a summons to see The Head. The incident is also referenced in the last story/epilogue.
i know a guy who reloaded something in that same vein. i think he used 5.56 brass but basically it was a soft cast .22 cal lead ball. maybe all of 10 grains. zero powder. and a primer. neat little target round. could basically shoot all day for pennies. he said getting a crimp to hold the ball in place was a pain in the ass
@@commie4164 One way of doing it was with a .22" Hornet and a .22" air-rifle pellet loaded backwards. I don't think it needed a crimp. You could add a pinch of powder, as it's a small rifle primer, but I don't think it's necessary. .218" Bee and others would work fine with the same method.
It would be interesting a comparison of the performance of the rifle versus the pistol. I expect the hollow bullet to expand like a Minié ball providing a good gas seal but quite a bit of friction, However a longer barrel is only helpful if the charge produces enough gas to maintain enough pressure differential to overcome the friction all the way to the muzzle. If the barrel is too long compared to the charge it might actually slow the bullet down at the end.
This is something where if you had one and ammo for it, you would disassemble the ammo and replace the black powder with a few grains of slow smokeless, that would make them quite potent for what they are.
"So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now where were we... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones..."
19th century caseless ammo eh? Wonder if there's an old 19th century patent out there for an independently targeting particle beam phalanx. Or maybe some sonic electronic ballbreakers.
@@JordonVirtue I was looking forward to that Egyptian rail gun but this gravity gun sounds promising *Like getting a toy as a kid* This isnt what I thought it would be Wheres the gravity? I thought..... Oh I dont know what I thought
@@commie4164 And also no penetration at all. Basically a PVE gun which you can shoot the entire match and never run out of ammo. And for it to do around the same damage as the derringer
I don't collect older firearms, I spend all my money on contemporary guns. But the longer I'm subscribed the more I want to get into it. Almost bought a 91 Carcano, the shortened cavalry one, Ian did a video on it, but the price of ammo scared me off. $4 to $6 per round. Not that I'd shoot it much but I'd want to a bit of course. Idk may have to look for another potential 1st collectible gun.
Would love a demonstration. How likely do you think it would be that this thing jammed or experience feeding issues? It seems to me that more than one rocket ball would flop out of the tube and pile up in front of the breech block without exaaactly the right flick of the wrist and tilt of the weapon. Any ideas?
Really nice looking guns and I can easily see someone with the money to spare sitting in nice little patio plinking away and maybe teaching their kids to shoot with on of these. Can't imagine they have much recoil or range though.
Does anyone know today what the powder charge and weight of the slug was? It would be interesting to guesstimate the velocity, range and energy of such a rifle. You could certainly take hares with it, but could you take those tiny roe deer?
I don't remember any figures for them but there is a story about someone trying to commit suicide with a Volcanic pistol which might give you some idea of it's power. The story goes, that he held the muzzle to his temple, fired and the bullet couldn't penetrate his skull. After a second unsuccessful shot, his wife came home to him sitting in a chair with a very bloody superficial head wound that he survived with no ill affects. Pretty low power I'd say.
Does anyone make reproduction "rocketball" ammunition, because I'm curious as to how it performs? Maybe a subject for a video down the line if the opportunity ever presents itself. This is super cool. Like other comments, I'd be really curious to see what they could do with the same concept today with modern materials, chemicals, and production techniques; and I don't mean a G11 military rifle... like, is it possible to make a small pistol caliber caseless munition that has the powder/primer in the back/hollow area, just for fun / plinking, or possibly home defense, with maybe a P90-style mag? And what performance would you get out of such a bullet?
I can't recall all the details now, but wasn't there a company that tried a modern spin on the rocket ball concept in the 80s? Italian, I think, as a 9 mm replacement.
Could you make a modern day parlor gun using subsonic 22LR or 22 short where the barrel was made to waste some of the propelling gas to reduce the velocity enough to just puncture paper at 10 or 15 feet?
That is what the original 22 BB cap was all about. A 22short sized case with a round ball and only a priming compound for a charge. I don't remember, offhand the velocities but couldn't have been more than a couple of hundred fps. You can still buy 22lr CB caps, I think 29 grn bullet and primer only. Well at least you could prepandemic.
Sorry I was only talking history and a current equivalent, I did not mean to endorse the practice or imply that I thought any shooting inside your home was a good or safe idea.
@@richardelliott9511 Understood, I’m not recommending anyone shoot combustion based firearms indoors other than at a modern indoor range. That said the air pistol is a much safer alternative if you were to build an indoor “parlor” type range, maybe with ballistic fiberglass walls etc?
@@Whitpusmc oh I agree an air gun would be the thing these days and you wouldn't even want a very powerfull one. The more powerfull the more elaborate your back stop needs to be. I did have a basement 25ft air gun range set up at one time. Had a Beeman .177 cal break action cocker. It was rated at 1000fps with the lightest pellets and I was amazed at how much it took to stop those pellets. Back then that was about as powerful as they came but now that's nothing compared to the high pressure air tank powered guns available.
Probably end up with something like this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1OJnNei0MF4.html That one is special due to extremely low cost, primeless (so no shortage on primers affecting it), and still uses black powder so its less restricted. Mechanism is side cocking manipulation though, but I'd say close enough to the radial forward hammer to let that slide. It also holds a similar amount of ammo. Also you can build one without royalties (there is a newer version than his website, but its going to take me a while to make a documentation packet for it), but yeah I think those are pretty cool and I'd call this the closest modern version. No I'm not paid by them nor am I paying him, just think its a cool design.
Question Who is happier than Ian reviewing another French firearm?............................ Well almost no-one except for maybe... .... Ian shooting another French firearm...
Probably about like a tube fed .22 or lever action. It looks like the barrel is extremely heavy and thick, so probably not too bad. I think powder fouling would cause more significant impact shifts, but I haven't really fired any BP stuff yet (besides a few times, but not enough to be familiar)
@@jakegarrett8109 I never thought of comparing it to other tube fed guns. Doh. Thanks. :) I'm guessing that I've never heard it mentioned, it probably isn't a significant thing, but now I'm generally curious about the impact of diminishing ammunition in tube feeds.....
With modern computer design, chemistry and metallurgy this is the sort of idea the CIA dirty trucks guys could do something with, such as a short range v quiet assassination weapon.
Before watching anything gravity gun made me think the Graviton Beam Emitter from Tsutomu Nihei's BLAM!(BLAME!) manga. I'm pretty sure Gun Jesus might know of it and half wish half fear ever seeing such a weapon in reality.
Lack of power. Breech block is the size of Ian's thumb..... I'm sure some reason exists for why they could not make the breech block larger to fit a larger bullet and by extension more powder but this seems like they didn't even try to make this design feasible for more then target shooting.
The question is not "why did you belgians made this weird gun?' Because we will answer that we dont know. Ask us more "HOW did you design this gun?" And we wouldnt be able to answer that one either and just bribe you with beer
@@r.9158 nope I’m not a gamer I’m thinking of the old old 1930s cinema serials with Buster Crabbe. We used to have them on tv in the weekday mornings in the 70s when kids were off school 😊.
@@nigeh5326 yeah, my dad watched all that stuff back in the day. Funny how something like that means different things to different generations. He was born in 62, me in 94.
I'd love to see this revisited in the modern day with better quality metal for using smokeless powder. Would be very interesting to see the performance if just for curiosity's sake.
I suspect the 'magazine' of these things is going to be the weak point. There's no tension from a spring etc and it's obviously enough of an issue that they built in that little manual assist loading lever to push the next round into the weapon. Very interesting historical novelty item though.
Not the only one. I'd also wonder what the maths, ratios are for optimal performance here. If you could make it long enough, you should be able to keep the wall thickness high enough for a reliable, consistent round.
I know, right. I always thought rocketball ammo could work substantially better with modern processes, you just need to figure out a way not to make your gun overheat.
I can hear Rock Island watching this and going "Ooo! Aren't we fancy Ian. 300 year old 'maison des ventes'. You'll be crawling back when she breaks your heart!"
Now that is a work of art. I have to wonder though, if that open slot is a deliberate functional purpose. I'm wondering as well if it's not just for visual purpose. If you get a ball a bit stuck, slow moving, it would seem easy to get a rod, give it tap, wriggle it a bit, you can slide it down. And if it's just screws, so easy to take apart for cleaning, easy to reset too. No specialised tools required. Sounds like an awesome plinking gun. Yeah, I'd buy it.
@@williampratt1066 and yet for over 60 years militaries all over the world produce, test and lug around rocket assisted shells for high caliber artillery. Gyrojet is not a gun, it's the ammo.
I wish my dad was alive so 9 could ask him if he had one back in the early 70's. I remember seeing something like that and my dad said that it holds it's ammunition above the barrel and he had 2 boxes of ammunition for it. One all there like new in the box and one that was looked at a lot. I may be wrong and probably am. One of my dad's log books was destroyed in a flood. It had all the sales and purchases that he made for a years worth of firearms transactions. it was his book for 1974. No joy on that one.i guess I will never know. Happy Safe Shooting 🇺🇸 💪.
@@Bacteriophagebs it was ment to be a play on words and since I'm fat bigger is very fitting plus it's a acknowledgement to the unfair treatment of the African Americans soldiers in Viet Nam. I stand for all that have died in war and not just the popular wars. A hero is a hero.
@@Bacteriophagebs don't want any negative thoughts about my channel name. It doesn't matter RU-vid has pulled all my gunsmithing videos and reloading videos. All that is left is my old junk videos. I spent a lot of money on production equipment that was waisted. I'm going back to the Reloaders Network. They will let me post there
I imagine this makes the .22 Short look hot! Given that Ian keeps a deep reserve of videos and recent conditions, my question is, when did he film this? Just random curiosity.
