Hall's solution to the production problem was methodical. He transferred water power through leather belts and pulleys to run machine tools at greater than 3,000 revolutions per minute — well beyond what most artisans achieved with hand cutters and files... Nothing passed inspection that didn't fit the gauge.

That last line is the whole thing right there. A gauging system that parts either pass or fail — no exceptions, no "close enough." That's the direct ancestor of every barrel spec, every chamber reamer dimension, every go/no-go gauge sitting in a gunsmith's drawer today.

"One boy by the aid of these machines can perform more work than ten men with files, in the same time, and with greater accuracy." — John H. Hall

Hall said this about his own factory floor in the 1820s. Next time someone at the gun counter tells you CNC-made parts lack "soul," remember a guy was making this same argument against hand-filing 200 years ago — and he was right then too.

The committee described Hall's system as entirely novel and capable of yielding the most beneficial results to the Country, especially if carried into effect on a large scale.

The Ordnance Department's own inspectors admitted they hadn't seen anything like it. For a government committee to call something "entirely novel" rather than bury it in bureaucratic hedging — that's about as strong an endorsement as federal procurement gets.

The gas leakage problem at the breech is worth sitting with for a second. Hall knew it existed. The Army knew. They kept ordering rifles anyway — 23,500 of them — because the rate-of-fire advantage at 100 yards outweighed the velocity loss. That's a real-world tradeoff calculation, not a theoretical one. Sounds familiar to anyone who's argued 9mm vs. .45 at a club meeting for the last forty years.

The fire trial data is what I'd want pinned to the wall at every "stopping power" debate: 38 men, 10 minutes, 100 yards. Hall rifles put 430 hits on target. Muzzle-loaders put 164. Hit rate was basically the same — 36% versus 35% — but the volume was 2.6 times higher. More rounds on target, comparable accuracy. The math tends to end arguments.

What's a tolerance or spec issue on a gun you own that you've learned to work around rather than fix — and at what point did you decide it wasn't worth addressing?

Read the full article in The Handbook → | By The Boise Gun Club Team