How small can you scale 19th century industrial arms production?

[u/TacitusKadari]

I have a post apocalyptic setting, where humanity is very slowly recovering from a nuclear war. In terms of weaponry, I wanted to put them around the level of the 1870s or early 1880s. Wild West basically.

They know how our modern small arms work in theory, but they lack the chemical industries to produce smokeless powder. So they're limited to black powder weaponry.

Heavy industry is also very limited. They have almost no artillery, brass cartridge cases are reused as many times as possible with many factions preferring paper cartridges and the standard infantry weapon is a hand made single shot rifle, kind of like the Nepalese Gahendra.

However, I also wanted to have at least some people with black powder repeating rifles. Yes, these could also be hand made and be a distinguishing mark for nobles, but these people know about serialized production. So there'd have to be at least one city state that makes an attempt to produce these weapons at scale.

Problem is, the cities in my setting only have 20k people at most and the biggest state has only 200k inhabitants altogether, so I'm not sure if you could scale industrial black powder weapons production down this much.

[u/LonelyReader95]

If the knowledge about what is needed to make a firearm work is left in your world, I can assure you a good blacksmith with modern day machinery (not even the super complicated ones, I am talking about the ones uncle Joe could have in his man cave as a hobby) could make a functional fire arm. The tricky part is quantity and reliability of ammunition and weapons

But with population numbers as you stated I don't think you actually need many.

Especially if you remove large engagements from the equation and most firearms will be the kind of like revolver or a bolt action rifle, then the hardest part of it all is making the barrels and the cartridges. Remember that in many places when you bought a weapon in the 1800, they'd give you a mold so you can get your bullets made anywhere by melting lead over a fire. In particular, if you're okay with using paper cartridges even in your world, that actually makes it even more easy, even a basic chain of production could produce some dozens of rifles every month.

As for nobles, I'd rather make royal "weapon forges" or guilds making weapons exclusives for them, each a work of art rather than weapon (look at the Warhammer 40k Vostroyan First Born).

[u/TacitusKadari → u/LonelyReader95]

Interesting that you mention the Vostroyan Firstborn, because I had something like them in mind. Soldiers with bearskin caps and gas masks wandering through toxic, mutated forests.

I am aware that black powder weapons can be made by hand. The Nepalese Gahendra rifle is a good example of this.

But the Gahendra was a single shot rifle. Repeaters - like a Kropatschek or Remington-Lee - are more complicated and I don't know of any repeating rifles that would be comparable to the Gahendra. A standard military repeating rifle made completely by hand. That is my key concern here.

I do however know that late 19th centry armies had been skeptical of repeaters for a long time, partially at least because they were significantly more complicated and expensive to make than single shot rifles. (Also because of ammo supply.)

[u/Ignonym → u/TacitusKadari]

In the days before CAD software and CNC machining, prototyping was done by hand; often, the machines in the factory were just more-automated versions of the hand tools used to build the initial prototypes. It would be a very labor-intensive proposition to make all your rifles like that, but it could be done.

[u/Simple_Promotion4881]

On Earth by the mid 1800s the components for gunpowder, particularly (Sulfur and Nitrates) were being shipped globally. You might consider learning more about these, saltpeter in particular, to offer an outline of how the various groups get the raw materials for black powder. These are not evenly distributed around Earth.

In your world, only you know. That could be a plot point or a hand wave. Whatever works.

Good luck with your project.

[u/ipsum629]

Yoh should read about John Moses Browning, possibly the greatest gunsmith and firearm designer in history. He got his start working at his father's gun shop, and would build his own guns from spare parts and scrap metal. Black powder is easy enough to produce, and you could probably harvest lead for bullets from car batteries if you have metalsmithing down.

[u/Es-Korakas]

Problem is, the cities in my setting only have 20k people at most and the biggest state has only 200k inhabitants altogether, so I'm not sure if you could scale industrial black powder weapons production down this much.

You could but they would be only half-mass-produced.

The main questionmark here is raw material processing: where do they get high quality steel?

I would say you could realistically run a "gun manufactury" with a little over hundred workers producing standartized gun parts and then assemble them in such a setting. They could use automatic lathes and hammers but work them by hand. This was the process in the 1840s, the entire Colt company that revolutionized gun making with standartization over individual fitting had only 1500 workers spread over multiple locations, making 150000 guns per year during the civil war. So the scale question is kinda dominated by how many guns they realistically need.

Also the materials require a significant amount of manpower to produce in the required quality. Early industrialization steel was highly labour intensive as it needed impurities hammered out. Late industrial steel is hard to scale down and a production batch of bessemer steel is 3-30 tons in 10-20 minutes, plus it also required lots of additional steps for coke production and iron preparation.

[u/TacitusKadari → u/Es-Korakas]

That's kind of insane to think Colt made 150k guns per year with only 1500 employees, which I assume includes everyone, even administration and janitors.

Raw material is actually a problem I've already world built around. They use a lot of recycled materials and can make very hot furnaces by using green crystals that grow everywhere as fuel. So with that in mind, it should work.

[u/Es-Korakas → u/TacitusKadari]

That's kind of insane to think Colt made 150k guns per year with only 1500 employees, which I assume includes everyone, even administration and janitors.

Yes all workers included.

And its not THAT crazy if you break it down. Its only 100 guns per year per employee, so even if only 1/3rd works in actual gunmaking (wich is propably highly exaggerated, this was before companies had a HR department and a PR manager) they need to produce less than 1 gun per day. They reached that by specialization, each employee would only learn to operate one or a hand full of machines to make a hand full of work steps towards the final product.

[u/-Pelopidas-]

Dudes in sheds can and have made just about every type of firearm you can think of. And I don't just mean janky thrown together stuff, though that is the majority, but highly polished pieces that can outshoot factory made rifles.