A Pedersoli Brown Bess Kit

[dave_person]

Hi,
I am helping a senior in my local high school make a Brown Bess musket from a Pedersoli kit bought from Dixie Gun Works. He is an active reenactor and wants to make as historically correct a musket as he can. What a mess. In addition to the features Pedersoli got wrong like the wrong lock markings, butt plate way too small, poor inletting, wrong stock shape, etc, etc, etc, etc. we add absolutely lousy machine inletting. Gaps around everything including the lock, butt plate, and trigger guard. It gets worse. All the machine inlets for the ramrod pipes are flat on the bottom!!! The pipes are barrel shaped not flat. So when the already drilled pins are installed in the pipes, they wobble side to side because the machined mortises are also too wide. This is junk. The lock looks nice with the polish but the mainspring is way too strong, the frizzen spring is cheaply made and the wrong shape, the sear spring is so stout the trigger pull must be 15 lbs at least. At close to $1200, this is fraud. Pedersoli no longer makes any Brown Bess that can be claimed superior to the India-made versions, which means nobody makes a commercially made Bess repro worth a damn. My student, AcraGlas, and I will salvage this piece of junk and produce a vastly superior gun but it is a shame this kind of stuff is out there for sale.

dave

 

[hawkeye2]

It's so sad to hear their Bess has gone downhill so far. I bought one in 1978 for $175 new and used it in reenacting and competition for years, still have it. The inside of the lock plate was jeweled and it didn't take much tuning to make it work right. I was aware of some of its shortcomings as to accuracy so I had Kit Ravenshear change the lock date and bought his parts kit to modify it. I did make some of the changes but never got around to doing everything. perhaps someday. The inletting and finish were well done and I found it to be very reliable and never had to do any repairs. I guess I'm fortunate to have bought one many years back instead of looking for one today. I'll be looking forward to your posts here and rereading some of your past ones.

 

[2 shots]

seems he has the best on his side. lucky guy.

 

[Brokennock]

Once again your leading the way in helping someone in a way very few can. I raise my pint to you Dave.

 

[PathfinderNC]

This is a job Dave can do in his sleep. Lucky fellow to have his musket in such good hands. The re-build will be stunning.

 

[FlinterNick]

Hi,
I am helping a senior in my local high school make a Brown Bess musket from a Pedersoli kit bought from Dixie Gun Works. He is an active reenactor and wants to make as historically correct a musket as he can. What a mess. In addition to the features Pedersoli got wrong like the wrong lock markings, butt plate way too small, poor inletting, wrong stock shape, etc, etc, etc, etc. we add absolutely lousy machine inletting. Gaps around everything including the lock, butt plate, and trigger guard. It gets worse. All the machine inlets for the ramrod pipes are flat on the bottom!!! The pipes are barrel shaped not flat. So when the already drilled pins are installed in the pipes, they wobble side to side because the machined mortises are also too wide. This is junk. The lock looks nice with the polish but the mainspring is way too strong, the frizzen spring is cheaply made and the wrong shape, the sear spring is so stout the trigger pull must be 15 lbs at least. At close to $1200, this is fraud. Pedersoli no longer makes any Brown Bess that can be claimed superior to the India-made versions, which means nobody makes a commercially made Bess repro worth a damn. My student, AcraGlas, and I will salvage this piece of junk and produce a vastly superior gun but it is a shame this kind of stuff is out there for sale.

dave

Not a fan of the current pedersoli production bess.

The musket has shrunk significantly since the 1970’s, not that the bicentennial pattern was all that much larger but they really screwed up Bob Fricsh’s hand made bess that they attempted to copy.

Dave if the ramrod pipe holes were drilled and mounted to a flat surface, woudlnt’ the pins be too shallow / low? If so that’s an immediate return to Dixie for me.

 

[FlinterNick]

It's so sad to hear their Bess has gone downhill so far. I bought one in 1978 for $175 new and used it in reenacting and competition for years, still have it. The inside of the lock plate was jeweled and it didn't take much tuning to make it work right. I was aware of some of its shortcomings as to accuracy so I had Kit Ravenshear change the lock date and bought his parts kit to modify it. I did make some of the changes but never got around to doing everything. perhaps someday. The inletting and finish were well done and I found it to be very reliable and never had to do any repairs. I guess I'm fortunate to have bought one many years back instead of looking for one today. I'll be looking forward to your posts here and rereading some of your past ones.

My pedersoli bess is from the 1970’s.

Its in great shape.

Had to replace the mainspring, I had a copy made of it and casted, I added some wax to the spring in the bend to make it a little stronger. I also shortened the cock pull on the tumbler slightly.

I had to send the barrel to bobby Hoyt to fix the breech, there were too many open threads, bobby welded them up for me and correctly fit the breech plug.

I added a rammer spring, the ramrod was just too loose and lugged the sling swivel to the barrel. Other than that, the musket is in great shape.

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
I'll post some photos soon. Nick, already fixed.

dave

 

[FlinterNick]

Dave one of the features of a pedersoli bess that always worried me was the trigger guard pin in the front, how its pinned through the bottom lock panel. I’ve only seen one original 3rd set up that way, and it wasn’t a government issued third model.

That pin is in one of the most delicate places it could possibly be in, a wonky removal could easily snap the lock mortise wide open. I’ve seen this happen in my group, consequently it cost a restock, as the epoxy repair just looked terrible. We corrected it by making the trigger guard inlet slightly deeper with a brass shim welded to the top then pinned through the lock mortise.

 

[dave_person]

Hi Nick,
There are so many things wrong with these newer Pedersoli Besses that I lost count. The butt stock has shrunk and now looks like an ugly Potsdam musket. I can no longer in good conscientious recommend one of these to anybody.

dave

 

[glidingdoc]

I am so sorry to read this thread. I have been saving up for a Perdesoli Brown Bess and now find that they are junk. Does anyone make a Brown Bess well? I am in the UK where there is mountains of BS to navigate in order to import a gun. Any advice very gratefully received. Steve

 

[dave_person]

Hi Steve,
If you can find an older one, you should be able to do better. However, this Bess kit is terrible. I am afraid the only way to get a realistic Brown Bess reproduction is to have one made from TRS or Blackley's parts. I took a few photos today but after we did a lot of work on it. The first shows a ramrod pipe mortise after rounding the bottom and filling the sides with Acra Glas. You can see from the fill on the sides how big the gaps were. The pipes all set deeper so I brazed over the existing holes and drilled them again.

The fit of the rear pipe was sloppy, particularly the tang. It had gaps all the way around. So I annealed it, and then stretched the brass with a cross peen hammer and expanded its outline all round. It filled up the gaps nicely.

Look at the fit of the nose cap.

All I can say is "Acra Glas is my friend".
The precision inlet for the barrel lug is remarkable don't you think?
Ah, the lock mortise. I love a lock that can slide around back and forth and up and down, don't you?

Speaking of the lock, Pedersoli made a change. They drilled the hole for the sear screw too low. The black dot on the accurate Bess lock plate casting above shows where the hole should go.

To make this arrangement work, they bent the sear bar up so it did not fall below the edge of the plate.

It works but "what the he....".
When the stock came, there was so much extra wood on the bottom of the stock by the trigger guard that the trigger plate set below the guard 3/16". In other words, there was a 3/16" gap between the front of the trigger plate and the front of the guard bow. It was already pinned and installed. So we shaved off all extra wood on the bottom, then inlet the front of the guard to the proper depth so it rests on the trigger plate as it should. I brazed over the hole in the front tab and we will drill a new hole. The profile of the stock looks much better after it was put on this diet.

You can see how we reshaped the lock panels. Here are some Pedersoli Besses as they typically come for comparison.

Totally incorrect shaping for this pattern musket. We should be ready for stain in a day or two. It will be fine for what it is but the Pedersoli Besses seem to really have gone down hill.

dave

 

[fireman1]

Once more I marvel at your skill set. Way to help out that young man!!

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
We finished the musket. Before showing it I wanted to show you this. I removed the breech plug and found they drilled the vent hole into the face of the breech plug.

That groove, which is most of the diameter of the hole will pack with fowling and cause misfires. So I filed a large and smooth notch in the plug to eliminate the groove and reduce the risk of misfires. I also installed a 1/4" white lightning vent liner. That should keep things going smoothly. Here is the bolster of the plug. These skinny tapered bolsters are a PIA and not authentic.

Moreover, look at the inlet for the bolster in the barrel channel.

Look at how much wider it is than the bolster plus notice the lock bolt across the back. There is no notch in the back of the bolster so it butts against that bolt leaving a gap between the back of the bolster and the back of the inlet. Thank god for Acra Glas.

Here is the finished musket. It was scraped and sanded but we left scratches and some tool marks just like the originals. It was stained with alkanet root infused in mineral spirits but Laurel Mountain Forge walnut stain was added to the the polymerized tung oil finish. I did a little shadowing with bone black. It came out nicely. The lock is reworked, polished, and tuned and the trigger pull is about 3.5 lbs.

dave

 

[Hawk54]

Very, very, nice work.

 

[akroguy]

Simply amazing! Sow's ear to silk purse like a boss! You take the gunsmithing art to an entirely new level of refinement.

 

[springfield art]

Hi,
I am helping a senior in my local high school make a Brown Bess musket from a Pedersoli kit bought from Dixie Gun Works. He is an active reenactor and wants to make as historically correct a musket as he can. What a mess. In addition to the features Pedersoli got wrong like the wrong lock markings, butt plate way too small, poor inletting, wrong stock shape, etc, etc, etc, etc. we add absolutely lousy machine inletting. Gaps around everything including the lock, butt plate, and trigger guard. It gets worse. All the machine inlets for the ramrod pipes are flat on the bottom!!! The pipes are barrel shaped not flat. So when the already drilled pins are installed in the pipes, they wobble side to side because the machined mortises are also too wide. This is junk. The lock looks nice with the polish but the mainspring is way too strong, the frizzen spring is cheaply made and the wrong shape, the sear spring is so stout the trigger pull must be 15 lbs at least. At close to $1200, this is fraud. Pedersoli no longer makes any Brown Bess that can be claimed superior to the India-made versions, which means nobody makes a commercially made Bess repro worth a damn. My student, AcraGlas, and I will salvage this piece of junk and produce a vastly superior gun but it is a shame this kind of stuff is out there for sale.

dave

Thanks for posting. Sorry to hear about the experience you had. Several years ago, Dixie had a sale on these kits and I bought one for only $600 but sat on it years more. Finally assembling it, it turned out quite nice. I guess the later versions are not up to snuff. I've read that percussion revolvers are sloppy, and some blame that on the retiring of experienced workers in Italy, which country got really walloped by the covid. We seem to be in a whole new world of just about everything. You're a good guy.

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
Thanks for looking and commenting. The young owner is a dedicated reenactor with Herrick's Vermonters who were a major factor at the victory on Bennington. It will be used a lot. I've written numerous times about working on these Pedersoli Besses and the basic formula for making them more authentic is to make the butt stock look bigger and the lock area smaller. There is nothing you can do about the butt plate being too short and that 3/8"-1/2" deficit in height makes a huge difference in the proportions of the gun relative to the actual Besses. You cannot add height to the butt but can do a few things to make it look bigger like angling the baluster wrist downward making it get smaller toward the butt plate. Then you can really thin the lock area by removing wood from the bottom. On this gun, I virtually filed off the mortise for the front extension of the trigger guard. All that was left was just a hint of the machine inlet outline. I filled the hole in the tab on the guard, inlet the front of the guard deeper, and then drilled a new hole for the pin. That slimmed down the excessively heavy throat of the Pedersoli Bess and with thinning the lock panels and angling the barrel tang down a little, the whole area was thinned considerably. That brings the proportions of the gun in much better alignment with the originals. Finally, the top of the comb is angled up too much. If you put a straight edge on the comb of a real Bess, the edge will pass through the tumbler screw that holds the flint cock on the tumbler. That is one of the secrets to designing an authentic Bess. So for the Pedersoli, you want to try and angle the top of comb down a little so it is more consistent with the originals but not so much that you reduce the apparent size of the butt stock. It takes a little finesse.

dave

 

[Rifleman1776]

Good on you, Dave for helping another person. With their resources, there is no excuse for Pedersolit not being able to accurately replicate the BB or any other gun from history. A guy in his home shop seems to be doing it quite well, Kibbler by name. And, of course, you and others who are not in the production business.

 

[dave_person]

Hi Frank,
I agree with you completely. It is clear that Pedersoli is using CNC machining to make the stocks they are just not programmed very well. In addition, they have not upgraded any of their design over the the 50+ years they sold these Besses to conform closer to the real muskets. However, on the plus side, the raw materials they use on the musket are excellent and a delight to work with. The brass is soft and yellow, files like a dream and you can bash the snot out of it to stretch it a lot. The steel alloys seem to be very strong and tough. All the screws and bolts are first class and good strong alloys. The walnut stock wood is pretty good, not as dense as I would like but the grain direction is right. I have always managed to turn the locks into good ones because the materials are good and they shape, harden, and temper very well with no quirks. On this gun, I had to make a new sear screw because the hole in the sear was a sloppy fit to the screw causing a spongy, soft, almost glutinous trigger pull. Kind of felt like the sear trigger bar was made from pasta cooked "molto al dente". I made a new screw with larger diameter that solved the problem.

dave