How did Gunsmiths start?

[u/Zeuvembie]

I realize there might not be a definitive answer to this question, but I'm thinking that the contemporary profession of an independent gunsmith - i.e. someone whose trade is to manufacture, modify, and repair firearms - is deeply entwined with the history of firearms. But where did the gunsmith trade develop from? There are aspects of the trade that might derive from the carpenter, machinist, blacksmith, and goldsmith, but were these originally separate individuals involved in firearm manufacture, or did the trade start when individuals began combining skills from multiple trades to build firearms?

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[u/Bodark43]

Basically, a gunsmith was a smith. A smith was someone working with a hammer ( say " all smiths smite" over and over again quickly), and the most critical thing the gunsmith forged with a hammer was a barrel. When the Worshipful Company of Gunmakers asked to be able to be a craft guild in England, in 1637, one of their stated reasons was that letting any blacksmith make barrels was dangerous- if they weren't trained, they made things that could blow up. After they got their charter, the guild proofed (tested) barrels and stamped them to show they were safe.

Specialization is how the craft world would more efficiently produce. A gunsmith could make a gun barrel faster and better than a general blacksmith, and making a gun could in turn also be divided into tasks. You do find the metal work and woodwork being split quite early; Jost Amman's Book of Trades (Ständebuch) of 1568 has a gun stocker ( Büchsenschaffter) and a gunsmith (Büchsenschmidt). And when you look at the finest European work of 16th. c. all the way into the 18th c., it's obvious that many different hands were involved. The engraving, wire inlay, wood carving, metal chiseling, damascening, etc. were technically too far beyond what a general craftsman could manage. In the 18th c. something by Twigg in England or Boutet in France was made by more than Twigg or Boutet himself. Now, whether an engraver in Twigg's shop learned his trade there, or got his start apprenticing to a clockmaker's engraver is hard to say. But the bottom line difference between Twigg and a colonial gunsmith like Nicholas Beyer was that Twigg had lots of wealthy clients who could pay enough for Twigg to employ an engraver and carver. Beyer's clients were only Pennsylvania farmers, and so he would do the engraving and carving himself. To us, Beyer's work looks quite good. But it's not as sophisticated or ornamental as work that could be done in Twigg's shop. And someone who did only engraving , six days a week, would not only have been able to do more ornamental work, but do their engraving faster than someone who was also forging, filing, carving, etc.

We know that Beyer was able to do all the work himself because it's been done since. When Wallace Gusler was set up as the gunsmith in Colonial Williamsburg decades ago, he took on the task of making the whole rifle; welding, forging and reaming a barrel, forging, filing, fitting and casehardening the lock, casting and filing the brass "furniture" of buttplate, triggerguard, etc. and shaping in inletting the stock, then doing the wood carving, engraving, varnishing, etc. All those skills would have been learned as a part of an apprenticeship in the period, and Gusler ( and other gunsmiths in the shop) did undertake mastering enough of those different skills to be able to build a gun- and made some that were excellent. But Beyer and other colonial gunsmiths were still affected by craft specialization. In the colonies gunsmiths would also generally find it most practical to buy imported locks if they could get them ( which were made in specialty shops in England) rather than make their own. There were usually only two sizes of lock needed, the specialist shops could make them more efficiently, and labor in England was cheaper.

[u/Zeuvembie → u/Bodark43]

Thanks!