Quote Originally Posted by DT Fletcher View Post
In a sense, you are right. The original Girardoni was a mess in that it was unreliable in the field. There was a follow-on model to the original Girardoni designed by professor Nemetz. It is this Nemetz model that is seen so much of today. The Nemetz was produced in England, or at least it's parts were, and it was widely distributed, including the air rifle carried by Meriwether Lewis. These "G" marked Girardoni's often seen are of the Nemetz design.

Just about everything written by Bob Beeman on this subject, I've been saying for years, is wrong. Mostly a product of confirmation bias in that Beeman wanted to prove that the air rifle he owned was a legit Girardoni and, of course, carried by M. Lewis. This "Girardoni invent et fecit" example, if we can confirm it, would be the ultimate proof of my contention that Beeman is in error.


Assumptions and simple maths. It would seem reasonable to assume that the “English” copies of the military Girandoni are of similar proportions to keep the overall look. If this wasn’t the case then why bother to make them look similar. They could have just put the same mechanism in one of their own design air rifles. The tubular ball magazines on the side of the rifles being the same length, for appearance sake, the accepted military calibre of .51” Girandoni had a stated capacity of 20 and Lewis and Clarkes had 22 as described by Rodney when shown it. Why? A good guess would be that the Lewis and Clarke rifle was a civilian copy of the Girandoni which are usually of smaller calibre.
20 .51” balls in a row equal 10.2”.
22 .46” balls in a row equal 10.12”.
Probably just a load of balls but the thought occurred to me as I was having a good long soak in the bath. What do you think?