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Nice Dyson. Shame about the kidney one has to sell to afford it. The ball. Is it Baker (i.e. carbine bore) size? All the balls like this I have ever seen are from the Percy Tenantry who used other rifles than Bakers and in a smaller bore. My poor old €850 original Henry Nock Volunteer Baker...

It's free. Use it and clean more often. Weaker? Then use more. The good is the enemy of the usable.

I have too many things in hand to get a start of my matchlock project (one being actually getting my Brunswick Rifle fore end parts delivered from TRS) but I have been playing with my lock as it has an integral pan and these are my observations. I found that saltpetre resulted in the hemp match...

FWIW my Volunteer has a stub twist barrel.

Looked down on now but the 20th century Belgian South American and African muskets were properly proofed and will be a collectors curiosity one day and treasured by your great grandchildren. They have their own history, which is just as valid as any other and very different.

John Edmond's ''Troopie Songs has some overlap with this. Bembesi being one that stays in my mind.

Another welcome from France Andrzej.

As they say on the Shankill Road: 'No Potpourri'!

Somewhat off topic but I note that SOE Assistant Section Officer Noor Inayat Khan (code name Madeleine), George Cross, MiD, Croix de Guerre avec Etoile de Vermeil 1914-1944. A direct descendant of Tipu Sultan, she has been honoured with a Blue Plaque in Taviton Street, Bloomsbury, London. Under...

Doesn't work like that on my original Baker Rifle. I have to have my head as far back as I can to just about lower my eye enough to line up the sights. The stock needs a little more drop at the butt. I do know that some of the troops complained about this in the later Bakers and the Board of...

Three more of the lock which may help any attempt at reproduction or understanding their workings:

The more I look at the "Tipu' lock the more things I see, possibly..... One is the vestigial steel on the pan cover. I had thought it to be decorative imitating the steel on a flintlock. Then I thought my way through the operation of the lock with it's automatic pan cover. The pan opens as the...

Ah yes. That makes sense.

The wedge inside the scear spring is interesting. Some sort of stop so the whole serpentine head is not smashed into the pan, just the coal at the tip?

Looks to me that the forward linkage just flips open the pan cover (with it's vestigial fake steel) and the tumbler is rotated by the scear being connected forward of the tumbler shaft. So it pulls the tumbler arm down thus rotating the tumbler shaft and swinging the serpentine down to the pan...

Rudyard's photographs:

The British sent some of the original troops to the Crimea (well initially Varna) with Pattern 1842 muskets but did everything possible to replace them with Pattern 1851 rifles including stripping other units of their P1851s and sending them off to the men for Crimea but still a couple of...

Well the Crimean War was from 1853 so the ball of the Belgian Captain Nessler has to pre date that by enough time to be available to the French and Sardinians. The Russians copied them after the war began. As to when it was developed and when it entered French service I do not know, The UK...

Regarding the Belgian designed Nessler Ball. It saw service in the French army as a holding system whilst the rifled muskets got fully converted/made and issued. It saw extensive service in the Crimean War and served to reduce the transonic instability of smooth bore musket rounds whereby the...