Talk:James rifle

Definition is incorrect

While this is a decent start to an article, the basic premise is mistaken. The term "James rifle" encompasses many types, few of them siege artillery. The most respected authorities on ACW artillery prefer to reserve the term James rifles for 3.80" bore bronze field artillery pieces made by the Ames factory (who made pieces for James) firing James pattern projectiles. These are referred to as 14-pounder James rifles; they were not siege artillery. Additionally there were standard 6-pounder bronze field guns reamed and rifled to 3.80". There were also 6-pounder guns that were rifled but not reamed so that their effective bore was still 3.67" and fired a correspondingly smaller projectile. These latter rifles are sometimes referred to as 12-pounder James.

However, there were larger caliber iron smoothbore siege or naval pieces that were rifled to the James pattern as this article presently illustrates. Red Harvest (talk) 18:09, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Reworked to more precisely define the weapons. RobDuch (talk) 23:07, 13 March 2019 (UTC)