1837-DATED RIFLED CHAMBERED-BREECH PERCUSSION CONVERSION MODEL 1816 MUSKET

1837-DATED RIFLED CHAMBERED-BREECH PERCUSSION CONVERSION MODEL 1816 MUSKET

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$1,395.00

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Item Code: 2026-857

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A good example of a US Model 1816 Type-III (or the Model 1822/28 in more recent collector terminology) converted to percussion and rifled for service in the Civil War. This is crisply stamped at rear of the lockplate, “SPRING/FIELD/1837” indicating it was one 14,500 fabricated there that year. The lockplate also shows strong remnants of the Springfield eagle forward of the hammer, mostly worn off during the removal of the external flintlock parts and finishing of the screws flush to the lockplate. The buttplate tang is well marked with a “US” and has lighter rack markings, a company letter “B” struck twice and “1” struck upside down, indicating the gun was actually issued. There is shallow pitting in the flash shield around the base of the nipple and a shallow, little salt-and-peppering on the barrel nearby, from the corrosive effects of percussion caps, indicating it was also used. Otherwise the metal is smooth and bright. The barrel is 43” long, and all bands, springs, swivels, ramrod, bayonet and front sight are in place. A mortise cut just behind the lower band indicates it had a rear sight, though the metal looks a little bright in the cut, suggesting someone may have intended to replace it, and there is a short ½” scratch or cut next to it, suggesting a tool may have slipped. The bore has good rifling, showing just some surface rust. The mechanics are good, though the hammer is a stiff in cocking.

The wood has a good fit, color, and good edges to the lock apron, edges of the side flat, etc., but does show some scattered handling marks and dings, with more concentrated small dings to the sideflat, which preserves, however, two visible cartouches, the rearmost clearly the script “EB” of Elizur Bates.

The conversion to percussion was made by the chambered-breech system, which involved cutting off the rear end of barrel to fit a breech piece with integral bolster for a percussion nipple, and thicker walls to withstand the greater pressure created by use of spherical bullets and by rifling, pressure that had rendered unsafe most arsenal cone-in-barrel conversions. In some cases, the alteration was carried out on muskets that had already been modified using the cone-in-barrel method. In either case this eliminated any barrel proof marks, etc., of course. This shows just an upside down “V” on the side of the breech piece, and vise marks on the side of the barrel and the breech, either from the alteration or a subsequent disassembly and cleaning, as might be indicated by the light rack numbers on the buttplate tang as well, though those might indicate the gun had been issued, turned back in for conversion, and then re-issued.

The work of converting these muskets was handed over to contractors and in this case the presence of a clean-out screw on the bolster and high flash shield points to Henry Leman of Philadelphia, who altered 7,993 muskets for the US from 1862 through 1863 and 17,547 for the state of Pennsylvania from 1861through 1863. These numbers, however, include several models of U.S. musket and in the US totals some Austrian muskets as well. Moller indicates some muskets were given m1858 rear sights, but that sighting was not always accompanied by rifling in these conversions, and that while some estimate that 2,000 of the muskets altered for Pennsylvania were rifled and sighted, he feels the total was likely lower, given that a December 1866 count should just 475 Leman-altered rifled muskets had been turned back into the state arsenal at Harrisburg.

This is an interesting percussion altered (and rifled) U.S. musket, a collecting category that offers a wide variety for collecting and any arms display, both in terms of longarms carried during the Civil War, but also in the ways the government tried to keep up with ever changing developments in technology and manufacturing.   [sr][ph:L]

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