If you were a black powder fan back in the 1930s into the early 1950s, you were pretty much on your own. You had to either find a shootable original gun or go to one of a few custom gunmakers, and then figure out how to load, fire, and clean your gun using the advice of friends who, if you were lucky, were in the National Muzzle loading Rifle Association, or by consulting the few classic books available.
Then came Dixie Gun Works, founded by black powder entrepreneur Turner Kirkland. Kirkland started by selling gun parts and over the years became one of the largest suppliers of affordable reproduction guns and accessories for the black powder shooter. While other suppliers have come and gone, Dixie is still there, and issues a new catalog every year.
This year’s catalog has some interesting new products, including a reproduction Whitworth Volunteer rifle, and some Pedersoli bullet molds for that company’s more exotic reproduction arms, including the Austrian Lorenz and the German Mauser 1857 rifle muskets. An interesting object in the new catalog is a “Percussion Cap Maker’ which allows the shooter to fabricate his own #11 caps out of aluminum cans
Other new items include an advanced bore light, lamb tallow for the exotic bullet lubricant maker, the Fortieth Anniversary Edition of the classic Blue Book of Gun Values, as well as a new definitive work on Colt revolvers, Robert. M. Jordan’s Colt 1851 and 1861 Navies and Conversions.
The Dixie catalog not only features black powder muzzle loading and breech loading rifles, shotguns, and handguns, but also sells reproduction and original gun parts and accessories, including holsters, scabbards and rifle cases, gun cleaning materials, modern and traditional gunsmithing supplies, black powder reloading equipment including presses, hand tools, and accessories like case trimmers, obsolete black powder and blank ammo, knives, and tomahawks. If you want a Crusader sword to carve up infidels, or a “Brank” to silence a gossipy neighbor, or need a 2/3 scale cannon or a full-size cannon barrel to celebrate the 4th of July, Dixie is the place to go.
Dixie is also a source of reproduction historical and state flags, period clothing, and camp equipment for the reenactor or old-style hunter, as well as specific Dixie Gun Works memorabilia, including shirts, hats, and patches. You can also select from a large selection of magazines, including the
by Joe Bilby
old Dixie Gun Works Annual, in which I have a number of articles, reproduction historic documents, including eighteenth and nineteenth century maps, a large selection of black powder books, music, and artwork, including Native American and Civil War prints. You can even get a set of old timey button suspenders from Dixie; forty-eight- or fifty-sixinch sizes.
Dixie is now also inviting tourists to visit its iconic shop in Union City, Tenn. The company will make hotel or motel reservations for visitors and, if you fly in by private plane, will meet you at the airport.
The Dixie Gun Works Catalog is available for $5 from Dixie Gun Works 1312 W. Reelfoot Avenue, Union City, TN 38261. You can order by phone at 1-800- 238-6785 The Dixie Website is: www.dixiegunworks.com.
In the early months of the Civil War the basics of military life were often difficult to grasp for many volunteers, a situation that caused a Springfield, Mass., newspaper to complain that: “Some stupids down near Boston have been loading the United States rifle muskets with cartridges made of heavy paper, and finding that they do not work well, complain of the rifles as in fault.”
Apparently the “stupids” had been loading their rifle muskets in the same manner they loaded smoothbore muskets in the past, pouring powder down the muzzle and then ramming down the rest of the cartridge, including the paper casing, unaware that with the rifle musket, the cartridge paper was supposed to be disposed of before inserting the Minié ball in the gun’s muzzle.
The newspaper went on to lecture the “stupids” that “no paper should be used in loading these arms. First the powder is poured in from the cartridge, and then the ball is dropped on top, and will go home of itself, but a gentle tap of the ramrod is useful to fill the cavity of the ball with powder, and leave no opportunity for the gas generated by the explosion to escape but behind the ball.” Apparently, there were “stupids” on the other side as well, since a Richmond newspaper copied the article as an advisory to Virginians.
It wasn’t always the “stupids” who screwed up. In the past I have discussed the multiple loaded rifle muskets found on the field at Gettysburg in the battle’s aftermath. Multiple loading did indeed occur, and soldiers probably did not even realize, with all the smoke and noise, that they were doing it. This was not; it turns out, a Gettysburg discovery. The problem existed prior to that battle, and officers knew about it. In May 1861, a USMC lieutenant reported the following after conducting a test with enlisted men firing Sharps breechloaders and rifle muskets: “On the other hand, armed with the muzzle loading rifle, the soldier’s severest trial occurs when he has discharged his piece and during the interval of reloading—hence it is, after an engagement, so many arms are found disabled by the insertion of the ball below the powder or double or treble loading.”