Girardoni Air Rifle

Bartolomeo Girardoni's repeating air rifle: the secret contract of 1779, Austrian service from 1788 to 1801 traced in the army's own files, the air gun Lewis and Clark carried and the Girardoni-or-Lukens debate, how the flask, valve and gravity magazine work, the contested numbers, surviving examples with comparison plates, and a reproduction build that treats the reservoir as a pressure vessel.

Firearms

Girardoni Air Rifle · Deep Dive

Girardoni Air Rifle

The Austrian army's 1788 regulation says a full flask 'holds 40 shots', the same 'forty shots out of one load' a fur trader saw Lewis's air gun fire on the Missouri in 1804–05.

Bartolomeo Girardoni's repeating air rifle: the secret contract of 1779, Austrian service from 1788 to 1801 traced in the army's own files, the air gun Lewis and Clark carried and the Girardoni-or-Lukens debate, how the flask, valve and gravity magazine work, the contested numbers, surviving examples with comparison plates, and a reproduction build that treats the reservoir as a pressure vessel.

Photo: Girandoni Windbüchse HGM Wien noBG by Haklc (from a photograph by M11rtinb) · CC BY-SA 4.0

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    Volumes

    1. Vol 1 Girardoni, the Emperor and the Secret Contract, 1779–1787 A clockmaker from Ampezzo, the air gun before him, Joseph II's letter of July 1779, a workshop sworn to secrecy, what the rifles cost, how slowly they came, and what a set of five hundred weighed when it was packed for war
    2. Vol 2 In Service, 1788–1809 — the Turkish War, the Tyrolean Sharpshooters, and the Legends Twenty-two air riflemen to a battalion, a regulation that warned against lowering the hammer, a third of the rifles still working after one campaign, a new emperor's special corps, 141 rifles left after the Rhine, 1,091 back in the arsenal in 1801, and what is true in the stories about silence and Napoleon
    3. Vol 3 Lewis and Clark's Air Gun — What the Journals Actually Say Every dated passage found in the expedition journals, quoted as written: a woman wounded at Brunot's Island, a judge's description at Wheeling, 'great medicine' from the Missouri to the Columbia, a broken mainspring, knocked-off sights, a signal for a lost man, a wounded captain's last resort, and a box sent east
    4. Vol 4 Girardoni or Lukens? The Attribution Debate Two rifles in two museums each said to be Lewis's: a Philadelphia single-shot at VMI and an Austrian repeater at the Army Heritage Center. The 1847 sale notice read from its photograph, the Rodney passage, a farrier's-file mainspring, American walnut in a European stock, and what each piece of evidence actually proves
    5. Vol 5 How It Works, and How the Army Said to Keep It Working The flask, the valve, the striker and the three-click lock; the gravity magazine and the sliding bar; the 1788 regulation as an owner's manual, with its spoonful of water; and what is known about taking one apart, the faults it develops and what can be repaired
    6. Vol 6 The Flask, the Pump and the Numbers Calibre, pressure, strokes, shots, range and energy as each source gives them, side by side and never averaged; why Haller's six to eight atmospheres cannot be right; what the army's own regulation implies; and how the flasks were made, proved and lost
    7. Vol 7 Surviving Examples, Markings and Identification Where the military rifles are, what the G and the numbers mean, how to tell an Austrian service rifle from a Viennese or London sporting gun on the same system, a Lukens, a museum copy or a resin casting, and what the auction rooms have asked for them
    8. Vol 8 Replicas, Building One, and the Law What can be bought (a resin casting, and big-bore descendants), what was made by hand (four museum copies), a lab build path in which the reservoir is treated as the pressure vessel it is, why the original riveted and brazed flask must not be copied for charging, and what federal and Michigan law say about a big-bore air rifle