Thorn rifle
The thorn rifle is a special rifle design . It is a muzzle loading rifle with a rifled barrel.
The construction was proposed by Colonel Thouvenin of France in 1844 as an improvement on the system by Henri Gustave Delvigne . The long bullet is driven with the ramrod on a steel spike attached to the bottom of the tail screw. Characterized the caliber of the projectile lead increases so that it during firing, the trains increases and is thereby rotated. The French Army introduced this system in 1846, followed by Sardinia , Denmark and Norway .
Thouvenin's design was an improvement over Delvigne, but it did not work well either. For one thing, the bullet was unevenly deformed by the ramrod blows, which led to poor precision. It was also difficult to clean the chamber around the mandrel, which encouraged rust . The rust, together with the high temperatures during the launch and the repeated blows of the ramrod, led to frequent breaks of the mandrel.
The pin rifle was replaced from 1849 by the Minié rifle with expansion bullets.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Oyvind Flatnes: From Musket to Metallic Cartridge: A Practical History of Black Powder Firearms . Crowood, 2013, ISBN 978-1-84797-594-2 , pp. 245–248 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).