Single-Shot Rifles

New York: William Morrow and Company, 1947. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good. xi, [3], 385, [1] pages. Illustrations. Technical data. Cover has some wear and soiling. Minor signs of moisture at bottom edge. Some endpaper wear and soiling/discoloration. Frontis illustration. Introduction. Chapters on: The Ballard Single-shot Rifle, Stevens Arms, Remington Single-shot Rifles, The Sharps Rifle, Winchester Single-Shot Falling-Block Rifles, F. Wesson Rifles, Wurfflein Rifles, Peabody and Peabody-Martini Rifles, Whitney Rolling-Block and Phoenix Rifles, The Maynard Rifle, Bullard Single-Shot, Hopkins & Allen, and Farrow Rifles, Foreign Single-shot Rifles, and Remodeling the SIngle-shot Rifle. Appendix and Index. Single-shot firearms are firearms that hold only a single round of ammunition, and must be reloaded manually after every shot. The history of firearms began with single-shot designs, then multi-barreled designs appeared, and eventually many centuries passed before multi-shot repeater designs became commonplace. Compared to repeating firearms, single-shot designs have no moving parts (other than the trigger and hammer/firing pin or frizzen) and thus do not need a sizable receiver behind the barrel, and are much less complex than revolvers or magazine/belt-fed firearms. Although largely disappeared from military usage due to the slow rates of fire, single-shot designs are still produced by many manufacturers in both cartridge- and non-cartridge varieties, from zip guns to the highest-quality hunting and match guns. Almost all of the early cartridge-fed rifles were single-shot designs, taking advantage of the strength and simplicity of single-shot actions. A good example is the "trapdoor" or Allin action used in early cartridge conversions of 1863 Springfield muzzleloading rifles. The conversion consisted of filing out (or later milling out) the rear of the barrel, and attaching a folding bolt, the "trapdoor", that flipped up and forwards to allow the cartridge to be loaded in the breech. Once loaded, the bolt was closed and latched in place, holding the round securely in place. The bolt contained a firing pin that used the existing percussion hammer, so no changes were required to the lock. After firing, the act of opening the bolt would partially extract the fired case from the chamber, allowing it to be removed. In 1866, the United States standardized on the .50-70 cartridge, chambered in trapdoor conversions of rifled muskets that had been used in the American Civil War. The trapdoor mechanism continued with the adoption of the Springfield 1873 rifle, chambered in the new .45-70 cartridge. The Springfield stayed in service until 1893, when it was replaced by the Krag-Jørgensen bolt-action rifle. Another muzzleloader conversion similar in concept to the Allin action was the British Snider-Enfield, also introduced in 1866, which hinged to the side rather than forward. Unlike the US Army, which kept its trapdoors for decades, the British soon moved beyond the Snider to the more sophisticated dropping-block Martini action derived from the Peabody action. Martini-Henrys were the standard British rifles of the late Victorian era, and Martini-Enfield conversions continued in second-line service until the Second World War. Single-shot rifles were the preferred tools of big-game hunters in the later 19th century. The buffalo hunters of the American West used Sharps, Remington and Springfield single-shots; ivory and trophy hunters in Africa and Asia used Martini and break-action "express rifles" and "elephant guns." These rifles were designed for very large black-powder cartridges, from military-issue .45-70 on up to the enormous .50-140 Sharps and .500 Express; early repeating actions were not capable of handling rounds of this power and physical size. The single-shot big-game rifle would only be displaced by bolt action repeaters firing high-velocity smokeless-powder cartridges in the early 20th century. After the advent of high-powered repeating rifles, single-shot rifles were primarily used for target shooting matches, with the first official match shooting event, opening at Creedmoor, Long Island in 1872.