I read somewhere that in the early 1840s, the ordnance department surveyed all the model 1816s that were still in service in armories around the country to see how many would be considered in good enough condition to be converted to percussion. About 700,000 had been produced by that time, but of course, many had been scrapped or sold off as surplus due to battle fatigue or other conditions. I'm quoting these numbers from memory, so don't hold me to them.
Of course, most early Type I's were either out of service or not considered worth it and had been sold off as surplus. However, I think the number worth converting came back at around 400k. The conversion work was done by multiple contractors and that's why one comes across several different methods of conversion.
The article went on to say that nobody knows for sure how many of these conversions were done because most of the work was contracted out, but it was estimated to be from 300 to 350k. Also, some units that were not considered worthy of conversion were in southern armories which got confiscated by the South when the war started. Some of these older models got converted anyway by the non-industrialized South since they were always in desperate need of manufactured longarms. That's why one even sometimes sees converted M1795s and M1812s.
For my particular example, I don't think the conversion was done to deceive. I mean they did a great job and even hardened the frizzen so it throws a nice shower of sparks. However, they could have easily stamped all the new parts with an assembly letter and added a date on the tang to match the lock date
but they left those clues for someone in the know to find.
Cheers
Of course, most early Type I's were either out of service or not considered worth it and had been sold off as surplus. However, I think the number worth converting came back at around 400k. The conversion work was done by multiple contractors and that's why one comes across several different methods of conversion.
The article went on to say that nobody knows for sure how many of these conversions were done because most of the work was contracted out, but it was estimated to be from 300 to 350k. Also, some units that were not considered worthy of conversion were in southern armories which got confiscated by the South when the war started. Some of these older models got converted anyway by the non-industrialized South since they were always in desperate need of manufactured longarms. That's why one even sometimes sees converted M1795s and M1812s.
For my particular example, I don't think the conversion was done to deceive. I mean they did a great job and even hardened the frizzen so it throws a nice shower of sparks. However, they could have easily stamped all the new parts with an assembly letter and added a date on the tang to match the lock date
but they left those clues for someone in the know to find.
Cheers
