Fascinating to learn that the British penchant for "emergency pattern" weapons, that persisted into the Cold War with the 7.62 Sterling, stretches so far back.
@@gerrywoody4301 that was the well known smg. There was also a 7.62 version derived from that that used FAL magazines, as a potential emergency substitute for the Bren/SLR.
@@ironanvil1 i stand corrected thank you sir i have leaned something i am glad i didnt have to fire it taking the recoil of a nato stadard 7.62 using the thin folding stock Of the smg or to have that round banging off so close to my face added to.in the event of a stoppage one would probby need to carry a vice and a crowbar into battle. 7.62 /SLR a marriage made in the heaven it sent folk to
Reminds me of that French "rifle" that was adopted as a smoothbore because they decided on a cartridge and gun, but not bullet weight and twist. That was done under the idea they could make the gun now and do the rifling later.
Is it just me, or right at the start when Jonathan says "Hi guys, Jonathan here again in the room full of guns", he's looking awfully smug ... admittedly, if I were there doing the same thing I'd be looking awfully smug. He's got the sort of job I'd love to have. Keep up the good work JF :)
This is absolutely fascinating. I have a Pattern 1800/15 Baker that I absolutely love and it would be fantastic if you could do an episode on the 1815 Baker conversion.
Thank you for making this video anout the Baker rifle! I can hear Sharpe’s intro theme song and Over the Hills and Far Away playing in my head again and again! 😄
@@tarmaque So what was "a rifle musket", I always thought it was to distinguish the mode of ignition. That is a flintlock on a firelock or musket or even a rifle musket, and a percussion cap on say an Enfield Rifle.
This and the Nock volley gun episode have this weirder introduction for anyone else? It's like an electric guitar solo with swelling orchestral music. And the ending is just Jonathan singing about some valleys and hills far away......
Unfortunately I can't contribute; but I appreciate that You are doing Your research so somebody out there might come up with some documentation or know something, that can supplement. You never know where in the nitty gritty detail the decisive information might rest. I just might be able to set the famous raid on the Shell-House in Copenhagen in perspective - it takes a very long time to get all the pieces of the puzzle and even longer to see how they fit together. This is partly due to the fact that the persons knowing the critical information don't know how that it is - in fact - critical.
Very interesting insight into an amazing weapon. I did own a smoothbore baker for re-enactment purposes, on a shotgun licence. And was luck enough to attend Waterloo in 2006 where my baker saw much use.
An alternate theory: This is a parade weapon, not needing some of the accouterments of a field weapon but still needing to be capable of firing in salute? It needs to look like the field weapon but not function as such.
I don't know enough about firearms manufacture or the history of parade ground usage in the British forces, but while that does make sense, it seems like a lot of cost and effort to have a sealed pattern version of a weapon like this, based on what a sealed pattern version is (something to control serial, and therefore presumably mass, production), for that extremely limited purpose, given how cheap production line guns already were, and given that Britain was in a state of near-permanent war during the period the Baker was in service. In short, why would they need this specific model to produce rifles that would be of extremely limited numbers and of no practical military use, when Enfield could simply churn out a few parade variants based on the full sealed pattern version, but simply leave off the extra bits? There's also the issue that British gun salutes tend to involve artillery pieces (due to the whole Naval tradition), so there'd be even less need for rifles that were of limited military use, and even less when you consider that it would be more likely that line soldiers with muskets, rather than riflemen, who would be performing salutes. Far more likely that this is an outsourcing rifle, as Jonathan suggests, so less skilled manufacturers can produce it in bulk (and presumably get paid less) and leave the final finishing to Enfield. I think the other thing to consider would be the omission of the functional bayonet lug. Parade grounds were all about the show, and even today, British Household Guards tend to have bayonets affixed. I don't know if this was the case in Victorian times, but I'd be very surprised if it wasn't and we adopted it at a later date. I can understand the omission of the sights and rifling, but the bayonet lug seems a strange one if it was going to be used, essentially, for show. But as I say, I'm absolutely not an expert on any of this, and I do think it's a solid idea. Would love it if Jonathan shared his thoughts on it!
The British military do not do small arms salutes, we only do gun salutes. We also don't typically have parade weapons, current SA80s used as parade rifles are the exact same as ones used in combat, bar the pic rail frontend being removed and a cover for the plastic cover used instead (to prevent snagging or damage to parade uniforms). I believe this has been always been the case, regardless of rifle pattern. As Jim points out, British parades almost always have bayonet attached and this does not.
No, definatly not.. You need to understand the times that these guns were being made. This precedes the the work of Robbins and Lawrence and Joseph Whitworth in the development of engineering measurement and precision. The traditional method of government procurement was to have a model item made up and examined by a board of officers. When the model was deemed satisfactory, a wax seal was attached and the item held as a pattern for contractors to copy. It was not just guns, all sorts of items were produced like this, including components and sub assemblies. None of the items were identical, as each manufacturer would have their own measurement methods and would only be able to work to fairlyy loose tolerances. In UK practice, firearm components such as barrels, stocks and fittings were procured from a large number of small contractors, intitially sited around Soho in London in the 16th and 17th Century until land prices forced them out and much of the trade moved to Birmingham. Parts were sent to the Tower of London, where they were fitted together by Artificers and Fitters as the parts would need to be filed and finished before assembly. Most parts would be made in wrought iron which would be supplied in the soft state. After filing up and fitting, they would then be case hardened in sets and assembled. None of the parts would be exchangeable. One of the factors that moved production to Enfield, and prompted the move to the percussion 1853 rifled musket was a fire in the Tower of London, which destroyed a large proportion of the reserve stock of Brown Bess muskets. Much of the tooling that went into the main Enfield production line came from the USA in the 1850s, by which time measurement and guaging methods worked out on both sides of the Atlantic had solved the exchangable parts problem and the need for sealed patterns disappeared. Enfield and the main arsenal at Woolwich were able to send out guaging sets to allow quality control of contracted items as the whole science of engineering tolerances was now understood.
Out of curiosity, what's the internal diameter of the barrel on the sealed pattern example? Is it adequate to allow for rifling to be cut? Surely that would be considered a reasonable indicator for it being a sealed pattern for an unfinished example meant, as you very logically say, for larger scale production by other manufacturers? It wouldn't be the last time the U.K. "peddled" and subcontracted major component manufacturing to maximise production.
@@gwtpictgwtpict4214 rifling is not good for shot patterns for birds and rabbits and such. If memory serves some Trapdoor 1873 Springfields were made as such for foraging. I thought maybe the Brits might have done a similar thing but it was only a guess.
@@TrainmanDan I see your point, but at the time anyone carrying a Baker rifle was effectively a marksman, birds on the wing maybe not, but I suspect capable of hitting small game at close range.
The Master General of the Ordnance would work for whoever currently buys weapons for the British Army, alas. (The "General" part doesn't mean the Army rank, either, it means that the person works for the whole Army and not just a specific Regiment. That is, the title means "Master of Ordnance, in general.") I'd not be suprised to learn the post still exists, though; Attorneys General and Surgeons General are still very common, so why not Masters General? Anyway, "Keeper of Firearms" seems like a pretty cool job title already!
Makes sense. A controlled standard part for calibration of tooling and/or inspection equipment. Not too long ago before the advent of scanning systems in aerospace an inspector might have a 'standard' version of a particularly complex contoured tube for instance to use as a comparison to release a production part. This inspection tool might be painted blue or red perhaps so it didn't actually get used.
Fyi; the 'British Infantry Rifle' (Baker) was built with the sights and 7:56 bayonet bar brazed onto the barrel BEFORE the barrel was finish reamed and then rifled. This is because red heat in a furnace was required. There was no gas torch tech avail then. Red heat would screw the rifling. THE END. Builders of modern versions ( i have built 4x) should bear this in mind. I solder these parts on. SV. NZ.
So when you got the 'rifle' in this state, assembled but missing the rifling - would it be disassembled again an then the rifling cut at Enfield? Wouldn't it have made more sense to make the barrel there and only get the rest from outside?
Remember that this vastly predates viable interchangable parts. The barrel and furniture would have been hand-fitted and you wouldn't want to take it apart again. Especially on a rifle where the sights had to be reasonably zeroed. My guess - and this is ONLY a guess - is the plan was to take the mostly finished rifle, clamp it down, bore out the rifling, cut off the excess length, and fit sights to suit the bore and barrel fit. That, of course, is assuming Enfield had a process to drill out the rifling once the weapon was assembled. An alternate guess would be that, if this was ever used, factories were told "here's all the bits. Here's how they fit together, so you know what you're working towards. But just make the bits and send them to us, and we'll do the hard parts and put it all together." A variation on that would be "You make these bits, we'll make these other bits, and then we'll send everything to this third company to assemble." But that comes back to the "need to be precise for zeroing sights" so I'd think 3rd party final assembly is less likely? All just speculation. Don't overlook the possibility of people thinking this was a good plan until they ran into the very issue you describe. People in the 1800s weren't any better at seeing all the ramifications of a plan than we are now. :)
Were any of the later Baker rifles modified to the percussion system, or did they all remain as flintlocks? Seems simple enough to do that. I know that in the US, some armory stored military guns were changed over to percussion fairly easily (several models of US muskets numbering in the hundreds of thousands) starting in the 1840s, with many of the newer models being rifled in addition to the percussion modification.
I haven’t had an opportunity to take a good look, but you might consider doing a piece about the first breech-loading black powder a cap and ball that nearly killed George Washington, the Ferguson Rifle.
I wasn't sure how to parse "Sealed Pattern Baker", but it seems to be that it's Sealed as in Confirmed correct by official stamp, Pattern as Example of Baker model, a particular type. All sorts of other meanings might be constructed, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Before the production-line era, for all manufacturing that was done for government contracts or for some other enterprise that needed standardisation, the various workshops were given a "Pattern" of the thing they were making. People involved in manufacturing normally had no ability to read working drawings. Families had home-workshops and did piece-work and every family member was involved. And so they were given a "Pattern" to take their measurements directly from.
I have done steel fab, and I can read blueprints now, but honestly I think the Idea of the sort of blank pattern like this is brilliant, because you can see how it is suppose to go.
Why use plans when they could have patterns. They would have needed even higher precision measuring devices that need to be to pattern too, the imperial system only starts in 1824
@@2adamast The good thing about using a pattern is you don't need a measuring device with accurate graduations. You can just use a calipers or compass.
We all do! They have done quite a few videos together, as Jonathan's book on British bullpups was published by the same company that did Ian's book on French small arms, and Ian has been to the Royal Armoury to look at a few of their pieces over the years. ru-vid.com?search_query=jonathan+ferguson+forgotten+weapons+
But a gentleman uses guineas at £1-1-0, one pound and one shilling or 21 shillings. FWIW that is 1,016 farthings….. Can’t imagine why they decimalised it.
Well Army bakers real job is baking bread, so they’re only armed as a stock gap in case of an emergency (like what the M1 Carbine was made for), so the powers that be felt they didn’t require rifling.
Though I feel a bit cheeky offering a contradiction to your theory of this weapon, I'm sure I recall either yourself or "Forgotten Ian" relating a tale of how Britain used to issue sort of second class weapons to their colonial troops, as a precaution against them rising up against British regular troops. In that account they were issued with muskets instead of rifles and given shorter range sighting? Maybe it was one of those nights when I got into what my daughter calls a "deep dive" - getting sucked into one You Tube after another until your face hits the keyboard - and I imagined that?
Anyone capable of making safe muskets could make unfinished Bakers and the precision work would be done by better gunsmith to achieve a higher production of good finished product than top-tier manufacturers could produce on their own. That at least makes sense.
Spitballing here, but could it also be that those things that there were left off the pattern, were things that could could be custom ordered? There different types of sight, rifling, muzzles and bayonets, could this just be the absolute base model of the gun like a car has a base model and those things were options that were decided upon later to tailor the gun to the needs of the military branch at the time? Like say the Army wants just the sight like on the second model but the navy wants a different type of sight and different style of bayonet. So they leave those features off the pattern so that they can be decided upon later as needs warrant.
The other thing is, the smooth bore military musket was the normal weapon of the day. That any one could be taught to shoot, and load quickly. A Rifled Musket was a bit harder to learn, and slower to reload. That's just my two cents worth.
In any manufacturing process the pattern only needs to cover the parts made or assembled by a particular unit or factory. Why send complete rifles to people who are only manufacturing the lock or the butt plate or the ramrod? Presumably this pattern relates to a certain stage of manufacture or assembly - before it is passed on for the next stage. The people who attach the sights might just have a barrel with the sights since the rest of the assembly would have been checked and approved before they got them. The mark on the bayonet lug puzzles me. it might mark the point where the dimension is critical so that the bayonet fits snugly - the rest being less critical. If the pattern was passed along as manufacture and assembly progressed - perhaps because it was held by a government inspector who followed several stages of the process - it might contain all the parts and dimensions for several stages.
2:50 I assume here is when you realise you're about to go into a whole bunch of legal technicality. I think you remembered that S58 only applies to guns made pre 1939?
Not quite, one backbench MP is calling for ban on pump action shotguns in the home unless you need it for your job, this after 5 people including a three year old were killed in his constituency.
@@richardparker1490 Really? That's awful - I hadn't heard about this, got buried under the Ukraine stories I guess. Sigh... because it was the _shotgun_ that killed those people, not the man holding it. 🙄 Pump guns are already limited to a 3 round capacity here in the UK, so a similar amount of damage could have been done in a similar amount of time with a side-by-side or over-under. Banning pump shotguns would only penalise those who legally hold them, and do nothing to prevent crime. You'd think they would have better luck making murder illegal... oh wait, it already is. And murders still happen? Further gun control is just knee-jerk gesture politics. 😞 Edit: No I did hear about this, in Plymouth last year, my mistake.
@@RoganGunnI think the bill was more about where weapons would be kept rather than banning them outright. I'm no politics expert but apparently being a back bench bill it's less likely to become policy.
@@richardparker1490 Ah thanks for the clarification, Richard. I managed to read the article you linked though it has mysteriously disappeared - perhaps comments with links are held for review on this channel? As a '10-minute rule bill' you're right it may not become policy, but the virtue-signalling midwits in Westminster will probably wave it through 'to be seen to be doing something.' When will they realise making things 'more illegal' doesn't work? I'm pretty sure we have sufficient legislation covering the situation of a crazed gunman murdering 5 innocent people, without the need to make life more difficult for those who happen to own a similar implement to that which he chose for his rampage. I guess if you're a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Meanwhile me in Germany with strict Gun Control: wait you need a licence for a Muzzleloading singleshot flintlock musket? Laughs and can buy flintlocks and singleshot percussions with 18, no licence needed
Not quite correct. I could buy a flintlock musket tomorrow, no licence required. I could buy a Martini Henry rifle tomorrow, no licence required. The licence is only required if you want to fire it. For a smooth bore that's a shotgun licence, for the Martini Henry it's a firearms licence as it's rifled. A shotgun licence is considerably easier to get and I believe quite a bit cheaper than a firearms licence, hence the production of smooth bore Baker replicas for re-enactors and the like.
@@gwtpictgwtpict4214 Thanks for your explanation, still weird to me, that you need a license for muzzleloaders. In germany you only need your ID that confirms that you are 18 Years old to buy them, as long as they are based on a historic gun design or is an actual antique gun (except percussion guns that hold more than one round) A license is only required for the Black Powder and ypu can shoot it also without permission, as long as you're doing it at a shooting range that is approved.
In 1970, I had to apply for a shotgun licence in the UK, after which I was allowed to manufacture a flintlock carbine with a 26 inch barrel, a matchlock musket with a 42 inch barrel, and a 2 1/2 pound cannon on a field carriage. All were „shotguns“ as they had smooth bores. .Being allowed to buy black powder to fire each of them was a lot harder. I actually fired them all at the Rhine Army Show in Germany during the 1970/1980´s period, uncertain as to the exact date after all this time. We were around a hundred „soldiers“ displaying, including one Royal Performance. Mo.
You do not need a license if it is an original and your intent is not to fire it. A modern reproduction and you need a shotgun certificate if smoothbore, firearms license if rifled. Yes, identical items made at different dates are treated completely differently. The law is usually an ass, but sometimes it is a mule.
Sensible interpretation. Time honoured practice across more than one trade. Be nice to find the proof thereof but … what with rodents munching on documents and the occasional fire at places like the Tower of London, I doubt that it will ever turn up.
This was really informative! Never knew what a "sealed pattern" was, and always thought the Enfield Rifle of the 1853 was the first -very neat to learn something new.
I was actually thinking it maybe a pattern sent to armouries like Peshawar, Pakistan Indian, Canadian, Australian for making local versions, allowing for different possible variations of locally produced/ supplied sights, muzzle length and rifling capabilities.
Then a random finished rifle would be just as good as there is no interest in sizes and standards and just anything can be modified, lock, stock, barrel, ...
I work in a subcontract manufacturing company, and we get samples to build to that are similarly unfinished. IMO J. F. And his speculative thinking ring very plausible
