Puckle Gun

James Puckle's 1718 "Defence": the patent and what it actually says, the bubble company and the 1720 satire, the 1722 trial and the two guns shipped to St Lucia, the surviving guns from Boughton to Beijing, how the charger, screw and tripod worked, care and repair, building a working flintlock reproduction, and US and Michigan law.

Firearms

Puckle Gun · Deep Dive

Puckle Gun

The patent famous for "square bullets against Turks" contains about 150 words, none of them about bullets, and the square-chambered set that one well-known account says was never built is sitting at Boughton House.

James Puckle's 1718 "Defence": the patent and what it actually says, the bubble company and the 1720 satire, the 1722 trial and the two guns shipped to St Lucia, the surviving guns from Boughton to Beijing, how the charger, screw and tripod worked, care and repair, building a working flintlock reproduction, and US and Michigan law.

Photo: Buckler's Hard Maritime Museum 07 - Puckle Gun by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net) · CC BY-SA 4.0

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    Volumes

    1. Vol 1 A Notary's Defence: James Puckle and Patent No. 418 Who Puckle was, what his 1718 patent actually says, why the Patent Office later dated it 1717, and which famous quotations are not in it
    2. Vol 2 Shares, Satire and a Wet Trial: The Company, 1722, and the Guns Sent to St Lucia The broadside and the bubble company, the playing card that mocked it, the one report of the gun firing, and the only documented sale: two guns shipped for the Duke of Montagu's failed colony
    3. Vol 3 The Survivors: Boughton, Beaulieu, St Petersburg, Beijing and the Gun at the Tower Every Puckle-pattern gun with a published record, what each record actually says, how to tell the guns apart, and why \"only two were ever made\" cannot be right
    4. Vol 4 How It Works: Charger, Screw, Lock, Crane and Tripod The Puckle gun part by part from the 1718 print and the surviving guns, the firing cycle, the gas seal, the priming problem, and what nine shots a minute really required
    5. Vol 5 Revolver or Machine Gun? The Puckle in the History of Repeating Arms, and the Myths What came before and after it, why every serious classification calls it manually operated, how the phrase \"machine gun\" got attached to it, and a table of the stories that do not survive the documents
    6. Vol 6 Handling, Care and Repair: Original Guns and Working Reproductions No manual survives, so this volume sets out what a correct field breakdown, detail strip, cleaning routine and repair must account for, for a 300-year-old museum piece and for a modern gun that fires
    7. Vol 7 Building a Working Reproduction: From Parts and From Scratch No kit, no drawings and no published dimensions for a complete gun: choosing a pattern, the two build paths, the chamber set, the screw and seal, the lock, the mount, square chambers that a cube can leave, and proving a home-built gun before anyone stands near it
    8. Vol 8 The Law, and Black-Powder Safety Why a Puckle gun is not a machine gun, why its big bore does not make it a destructive device, where the antique exemption stops, what Michigan still requires, what happened when one was imported, and the safety rules for a gun with nine charges side by side