Rebuilding an old Indian made 1756 Brown Bess Musket

Hi everyone,

I thought I'd share this project that I've started recently for my brother. He picked up this older Indian made (Stamped 1979 on the underside of the barrel - I wasn't even aware that Indian gunmakers were making replica Besses back then) in a trade a few weeks ago, and I've taken on the project of "defarbing" it as a bit of a challenge!

I'm not a professional builder at all, so any suggestions are welcome as I go! Dave_Person's thread: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/threads/building-the-kings-muskets-and-a-bit-more.167825/page-4 has been super helpful as well.



As you can see in the pictures, it's pretty chunky. There is a TON of excess wood around the lock and the rammer seems quite a bit low below the barrel.



The biggest issue, is that the rammer was drilled off center, and actually intersects with the front lock screw - so a groove was filled into the screw in order to let the rammer slide into it. This has caused the screw to... well... not actually screw into anything! In addition, if the screw is slightly out of position to the left or right, it holds the rammer down without any ability to draw it.

Last week I started the project by cleaning up and filing the lock a bit (I'll take a second pass at that on a rainy day) and re-filling all of the brass components.

I've also started cutting down the excess wood on the stock - I had to take about 3/4 inch from the bottom of the stock near the lockplate! This meant that the trigger guard would need to be re-inlet.


The top of the buttstock comb was brought down to be a bit more parallel to the barrel and a banister rail was carved in, hoping to give the illusion of a bit more height in the buttstock.



The thumbplate that was originally on this musket was far too small, luckily I had another one in a bin of excess parts which was a more accurate size, so I lowered the top of the wrist a bit and inlet the new one in (my first time inletting one of these - so definitely not perfect!). The beavertail moulding was also adjusted quite a bit.


Next steps will be re-drilling the rammer hole and adjusting the rammer channel. This part I've left off for now, since I'm a bit unsure of exactly how to correct the issue. If anyone has any information regarding these measurements, that would be super helpful!
a. How much wood should be left between the rammer channel and bottom of the barrel? About 1/8in?
b. Does the rammer pass above or below the lock screw?
c. Does the forestock and rammer channel taper at all as it comes to the lock? If so, by how much?

Thanks for viewing!

I do not have any specific answers to your questions but I would think that there should be more than one blue print of that online as it was/is a very important arm in history. As to your re-aligning the ramrod hole, I am very interested in knowing how you intend to prevent the drill from wandering back into the original position. I am thinking something with the grain of the wood may have caused the problem to begin with unless they were on their umpteenth such hole and did not sharpen their bit.

This looks like a great project. The shape of the butt stock looks good from your picture- much better than what most repros look like.
As for the ramrod hole- have you considered milling out that hole from the barrel channel above? This way you can determine exactly where you want the hole to go. Afterwards if you want, a piece of wood could be spliced atop to seal the groove opening, though that may net even be necessary.
I believe Dave Person did this and has posted his work in one of his tutorials (sorry I forgot which one).
Keep us updated! Will be following this

Thanks guys,

The shape of the buttstock is still about a half inch shorter than the originals, but from a distance it does look a bit closer! Thankfully, these Indian made muskets tend to have a lot of excess wood to work with, but I assume that they copied other repros (which explains why the proportions are similar to the Japanese or Italian ones).

As for cutting the ramrod hole... I'm not 100% sure yet! I was thinking of either plugging the hole with a dowel rod, and then re-drilling from scratch (going super slowly in 1/4 increments to hopefully stay straight) cutting in from the bottom of the barrel channel and spicing in a repair. I may try the first option and then the second option if that fails.

I have an old gun with a notch in the forward lock bolt to clear the ramrod. The rod passes under the bolt, which requires removing the rod before the bolt. Yours has an authentic quirk. I'd just live with it.

Hi,
The rammer channel and hole on a real Brown Bess are about parallel with the bore, which is why some holes break into the barrel channel right at the breech. A real Bess barrel flares a lot at the breech so the distance between the barrel and ramrod is very small at the breech. However, out as far as the forward lock bolt, the web of wood is sufficient to fit the forward lock bolt without blocking the ramrod. It is OK to have the forward bolt hole break into the barrel channel a tiny bit. Just file a shallow groove across the bottom of the barrel to accommodate it. It is also OK to turn down the center of the bolt shaft so the ramrod clears. Ramrods always fit below the lock bolt.

dave

Hi guys,

Well, I found a solution to the ramrod hole issue - a friend with a 4ft long drill! We were considering routing out from the bottom of the barrel channel, but thankfully re-drilling the hole (a little more carefully) did the trick. It was only off by a little bit.

The forestock is still way too think and tapers towards the muzzle, so today I tried to get that channel to be more parallel with the barrel and re-inlet the thimbles. Unfortunately I don't have any fancy tools, let alone the skills to use them yet - so it's definitely not going to be pretty (but still will look better than the inletting that was done at the factory, somehow).

First, I deepened the chanel with a chisel. This wood splinters really easily, so this was only done when I needed to move a lot of wood.


Next, I used a small bar of scrap steel wrapped in 60grit sandpaper to round out the channel and keep things as level as possible. This actually worked pretty well.



You can see here that some of the pieces had to be re-inlet as much as a half inch from where they were before.


Again, you can see here just how much wood from this old Indian made musket had to be removed! I still may go a bit further and lower the rammer even more.


Next will be to fill all of the drill holes in the thimbles and trigger guard so that they can be reset in their new positions. Once I'm happy with the depth of the thimbles, I'll still need to reshape the wood of the forestock a bit.

it’s coming along- looking good!
A couple questions-
Will you inlet the rear entry pipe a bit more at the tail? It looks from this camera angle to be nearly flush with the stock surface already. (I nearly ran into major issues when I almost removed too much wood there to shape around that area.)
Also, did you plug the old rr hole before redrilling?
Your making-do with the tools you have and improvising well, as needs arise, is really being creative. I think you got this one

Hi guys,

Just a minor update from this afternoon. I had moved the nosecap away from the muzzle about a half inch last weekend (it didn’t leave enough room for a bayonet to be properly fitted before), but after looking again, I realized that the was a bit of a taper to it that i don’t really see in photos of originals. Seems like a lot of the original nosecap are more square. I also wanted to reduce the distance between the barrel and rammer. There is currently about 1/4 of clearance (which looks to be OK), but I want to bring the forestock down to the slimmer side to help give the illusion of a larger buttstock.



The first thing I did was square off the bottom of the nosecap at the depth I wanted. Then, I rounded out the rest.

Finally deepened the rammer channel (in the front only for now, the rest will wait until next time) to fit the new depth. Final wood shaping will be done once the rest of metal pieces are in place where I want them.

The rammer is nice and tight to the barrel now, with enough clearance for the bayonet.

Hi everyone,

A few updates on the musket project:

Since the ramrod channel was lowered into the stock between 0.2in-0.5in and the brass thimbles had to be re-inlet, I had to fill the original drill holes in each to accommodate a new pin location. I just peened in some brass rod and solver soldered them in. I also had to fill in both holes in the trigger guard - the placement of the thumbplate screw was wrong before, so this needed to be re-drilled.



The next step was getting the trigger guard, thumbplate and screw all drilled and aligned. That took quite some time to measure!


After looking at the overall shape again, I noticed that the comb of the butt needed to come down a bit more, so I took off about 0.5in from the front end to make it more parallel with the barrel. The top of the buttplate tang had to be bent in a little bit to help this too. Unfortunately, was a bit overzealous when carving in the banister rail, so it goes about an inch too far toward the buttplate. Not something I can fix now, but I'll live with it.



I cleaned up the area around the lock a bit, especially the beavertail shape too:


Next steps will be sanding, cleaning the brass and adding stain and finish... hopefully!

This came from Access Heritage (Military Heritage) their version of the Potsdam Prussian cavalry pistol. While every part received attention, I will explain my finish process on the wood I happen to have a gallon of the now banned methylene chloride stripper and that made quick work of the paint like finish. There was lots of inletting and carving defects exposed after the finish was removed and these were corrected. Then lots of wood removed along the barrel and some other areas. Then final rough in sanding using special made sanding sticks to get close in to places without rounding things that should be sharp in contrast. Next , I used the fiebings light brown leather dye which works great for this kind of wood. Areas that needed fill around inletting and re-aligned pin holes was done with artists chalk pastels which can be obtained in any shades. This was crushed and used with epoxy as a paste to take care of this stuff. Next was a coat of epoxy for table tops thinned with acetone as a filler for the coarse grained wood used. After this cured all rough areas were clearly exposed and a second sanding was done, wet. Areas where there was break thru fiebings was applied again. Again the thinned epoxy only in areas that had break thru. After this a final dry sanding was done. A fine spray job with satin poly thinned with Nason automotive reducer and more sanding followed by a final coat. This is a highly durable, easily repaired translucent finish that allows grain highlights to show while hiding the fact that this is undesirable wood. The goal here is to have a stock that is a dead ringer for the walnut stocks originally used on these pistols. A ton of work but there is no way I could have done a traditional finish on this.

Oops

trackpin said:

This came from Access Heritage (Military Heritage) their version of the Potsdam Prussian cavalry pistol. While every part received attention, I will explain my finish process on the wood I happen to have a gallon of the now banned methylene chloride stripper and that made quick work of the paint like finish. There was lots of inletting and carving defects exposed after the finish was removed and these were corrected. Then lots of wood removed along the barrel and some other areas. Then final rough in sanding using special made sanding sticks to get close in to places without rounding things that should be sharp in contrast. Next , I used the fiebings light brown leather dye which works great for this kind of wood. Areas that needed fill around inletting and re-aligned pin holes was done with artists chalk pastels which can be obtained in any shades. This was crushed and used with epoxy as a paste to take care of this stuff. Next was a coat of epoxy for table tops thinned with acetone as a filler for the coarse grained wood used. After this cured all rough areas were clearly exposed and a second sanding was done, wet. Areas where there was break thru fiebings was applied again. Again the thinned epoxy only in areas that had break thru. After this a final dry sanding was done. A fine spray job with satin poly thinned with Nason automotive reducer and more sanding followed by a final coat. This is a highly durable, easily repaired translucent finish that allows grain highlights to show while hiding the fact that this is undesirable wood. The goal here is to have a stock that is a dead ringer for the walnut stocks originally used on these pistols. A ton of work but there is no way I could have done a traditional finish on this.

Click to expand...

Hijacked thread

Millford_P said:

Hi everyone,

I thought I'd share this project that I've started recently for my brother. He picked up this older Indian made (Stamped 1979 on the underside of the barrel - I wasn't even aware that Indian gunmakers were making replica Besses back then) in a trade a few weeks ago, and I've taken on the project of "defarbing" it as a bit of a challenge!

I'm not a professional builder at all, so any suggestions are welcome as I go! Dave_Person's thread: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/threads/building-the-kings-muskets-and-a-bit-more.167825/page-4 has been super helpful as well.

View attachment 334413

As you can see in the pictures, it's pretty chunky. There is a TON of excess wood around the lock and the rammer seems quite a bit low below the barrel.

View attachment 334419View attachment 334420

The biggest issue, is that the rammer was drilled off center, and actually intersects with the front lock screw - so a groove was filled into the screw in order to let the rammer slide into it. This has caused the screw to... well... not actually screw into anything! In addition, if the screw is slightly out of position to the left or right, it holds the rammer down without any ability to draw it.

Last week I started the project by cleaning up and filing the lock a bit (I'll take a second pass at that on a rainy day) and re-filling all of the brass components.

I've also started cutting down the excess wood on the stock - I had to take about 3/4 inch from the bottom of the stock near the lockplate! This meant that the trigger guard would need to be re-inlet.
View attachment 334430

The top of the buttstock comb was brought down to be a bit more parallel to the barrel and a banister rail was carved in, hoping to give the illusion of a bit more height in the buttstock.

View attachment 334428

The thumbplate that was originally on this musket was far too small, luckily I had another one in a bin of excess parts which was a more accurate size, so I lowered the top of the wrist a bit and inlet the new one in (my first time inletting one of these - so definitely not perfect!). The beavertail moulding was also adjusted quite a bit.
View attachment 334432

Next steps will be re-drilling the rammer hole and adjusting the rammer channel. This part I've left off for now, since I'm a bit unsure of exactly how to correct the issue. If anyone has any information regarding these measurements, that would be super helpful!
a. How much wood should be left between the rammer channel and bottom of the barrel? About 1/8in?
b. Does the rammer pass above or below the lock screw?
c. Does the forestock and rammer channel taper at all as it comes to the lock? If so, by how much?

Thanks for viewing!

Click to expand...

Great project! I have an India Udaipour made Bess from the 1980 era; It's very high quality for an India gun, and I did strip the stock and take some wood off, but it looks great. It was in the estate sale of a guy that did the Washington impression of Crossing The Delaware for many years. Has a bayonet, too. Good luck, this is of interest to lots of guys, I think. Keep us updated!

PathfinderNC said:

Hijacked thread

Click to expand...

Was the stripper too toxic? I use the Orange stuff, and it's pretty good.

PathfinderNC said:

Hijacked thread

Click to expand...

What is hijacked thread mean?

springfield art said:

Great project! I have an India Udaipour made Bess from the 1980 era; It's very high quality for an India gun, and I did strip the stock and take some wood off, but it looks great. It was in the estate sale of a guy that did the Washington impression of Crossing The Delaware for many years. Has a bayonet, too. Good luck, this is of interest to lots of guys, I think. Keep us updated!

Click to expand...

Thanks! Yes, it seems that the older Indian guns are much more solid than a lot of the newer ones I’ve seen. Honestly, the lock is pretty great - with some work, functions just as well as an Italian made one. Barrel seems to be pretty good too.

It’s a whole lot of work to get this to look “better”, especially for a novice without a shop like me, but a fun project with lots of good learnings. And definitely cheaper to make mistakes on an old used $500 musket than a new $2500 Rifle Shoppe kit!

trackpin said:

This came from Access Heritage (Military Heritage) their version of the Potsdam Prussian cavalry pistol. While every part received attention, I will explain my finish process on the wood I happen to have a gallon of the now banned methylene chloride stripper and that made quick work of the paint like finish. There was lots of inletting and carving defects exposed after the finish was removed and these were corrected. Then lots of wood removed along the barrel and some other areas. Then final rough in sanding using special made sanding sticks to get close in to places without rounding things that should be sharp in contrast. Next , I used the fiebings light brown leather dye which works great for this kind of wood. Areas that needed fill around inletting and re-aligned pin holes was done with artists chalk pastels which can be obtained in any shades. This was crushed and used with epoxy as a paste to take care of this stuff. Next was a coat of epoxy for table tops thinned with acetone as a filler for the coarse grained wood used. After this cured all rough areas were clearly exposed and a second sanding was done, wet. Areas where there was break thru fiebings was applied again. Again the thinned epoxy only in areas that had break thru. After this a final dry sanding was done. A fine spray job with satin poly thinned with Nason automotive reducer and more sanding followed by a final coat. This is a highly durable, easily repaired translucent finish that allows grain highlights to show while hiding the fact that this is undesirable wood. The goal here is to have a stock that is a dead ringer for the walnut stocks originally used on these pistols. A ton of work but there is no way I could have done a traditional finish on this.

Click to expand...

Nice job, and thanks for the tips!

trackpin said:

What is hijacked thread mean?

Click to expand...

When someone posts things about their own gun (or whatever) on your thread. It’s extremely rude.

PathfinderNC said:

When someone posts things about their own gun (or whatever) on your thread. It’s extremely rude.

Click to expand...

I don’t think that was his intention in this case. I think he meant to explain his staining process, since that will be my next steps.

No offense taken on my end!