New to me M1842 Harpers Ferry or ? ?

[ToothPick]

Not very familiar with US Muskets so please bear with me. I was at a local gun shop today that usually only deals with modern mil surplus and black rifles but today they had this musket against the wall. I checked it out and it didn't look too bad so I horse traded a few old russian surplus guns that I bought years ago and took the gun home.

Came with a bayonet/scabbard and ram rod.

1st pic shows what looks like a .69 cal smooth bore.

Left side of barrel/breech area looks to be stamped Q 42 as shown in the 2nd pic.

Been researching for a few hours and I am a little confused about the rear sights, The gun appears to be a smooth bore ( 1st pic) but has rear sights. I couldn't find any with the same sight.

I would like to know exactly the Model I have and if the bayonet is correct. Any other info would be great too, like I said I don't know much about these guys.

thanks

Looks smooth to me

Looks like a Q 42 stamp on the barrel breech area

Has a Brass tack in the stock?

Stamped Harpers Ferry 1851

Bayonet blade is 18" 20.5" overall

 

[64Springer]

NICE.....FIND!

That rear sight base is toast.

Contact Lodgewood Manfacturing. They may have a complete rear sight assembly. The head honcho there is as honest and knowledgeable as the day is long.

P.S. Do NOT go out and buy 40 grit sandpaper and stiff wire wheels to "Clean" it up. Give the old girl a gentle cleaning. She's had a rough life, and she needs to show her true age.

 

[Trot]

That sight is totally wrong, it is some kind of postwar addition. How is it held on? If it can be removed without hurting the musket, I would do it. Some model 1842 muskets were officially updated with sights and rifling, but that is not one of the sights.

 

[Stantheman86]

That sight is totally wrong, it is some kind of postwar addition. How is it held on? If it can be removed without hurting the musket, I would do it. Some model 1842 muskets were officially updated with sights and rifling, but that is not one of the sights.

It looks like it was soldered on , and might be a leaf sight that was altered into a fixed notch type sight

 

[maillemaker]

You might want to post this gun on the Original Civil War Muskets facebook page. John Holland can probably give you some insight.

 

[Grayrock Volunteer]

The rear sight is correct for this Miles Greenwood rifled and sighted M1842. This style of rear sight, I call it the small base Greenwood, appears to have been used on guns that he altered for Indiana. Greenwood did not "beef-up" the front sights on guns he fitted these rear sights to like he did on M1816s fitted with his M1855-esq rear sights.

Here is what the sight looks like with its leaves. This particular example is a Springfield M1822/28.



The alpha-numeric stamp on the barrel is textbook Greenwood, and would have been accompanied by the same numbers stamped on the top of the wrist in the area under the musket's hammer usually.

 

[Trot]

The rear sight is correct for this Miles Greenwood rifled and sighted M1842. This style of rear sight, I call it the small base Greenwood, appears to have been used on guns that he altered for Indiana. Greenwood did not "beef-up" the front sights on guns he fitted these rear sights to like he did on M1816s fitted with his M1855-esq rear sights.

Here is what the sight looks like with its leaves. This particular example is a Springfield M1822/28.
View attachment 180828


The alpha-numeric stamp on the barrel is textbook Greenwood, and would have been accompanied by the same numbers stamped on the top of the wrist in the area under the musket's hammer usually.

Thanks! Always something new to learn! Ignore my bad advice in the previous post!

 

[Notchy Bob]

You did the right thing, @ToothPick . That's a nice old musket. I did not recognize the rear sight, but it was obviously a very old modification, and @Grayrock Volunteer told us what it is.

Dan Whitacre makes new barrels for these guns. You could get a new Whitacre barrel to drop in and shoot! The old barrel may not be safe, and even if it is, you probably wouldn't get acceptable accuracy. In my own experience with original American military guns from the 1840's and beyond, the locks are better than anything you can buy now.

That's a nice gun.

Notchy Bob

 

[ToothPick]

Thank guys for all the info. I still don't get why mine is a smooth bore with rifle sights.. As I understand the rifled versions had a thicker barrel and mine appears to be pretty thin walled.

thanks Again

 

[64Springer]

A set of sights adds accuracy to any firearm.

Be it smooth or rifled.

 

[maillemaker]

Thank guys for all the info. I still don't get why mine is a smooth bore with rifle sights.. As I understand the rifled versions had a thicker barrel and mine appears to be pretty thin walled.

thanks Again

The Model 1842 was designed with a thicker barrel because it was anticipated that they would probably be rifled at some point. Your gun was probably rifled when the rear sight was added. If it is no longer rifled the rifling either wore away or was deliberately bored out to make a smoothbore after the war.

 

[Stantheman86]

Thank guys for all the info. I still don't get why mine is a smooth bore with rifle sights.. As I understand the rifled versions had a thicker barrel and mine appears to be pretty thin walled.

thanks Again

It may not be the case with your particular musket, but many of the conversions of Flintlocks to Percussion, or Smoothbore to Rifled-Musket were done by machine shops and gunsmiths contracted by the US Govt in the 1850s-1860s, and there are several examples of .69 Smoothbore muskets with rifle sights added that never received rifling.

Sometimes the contractor didn't have time or production capacity to rifle all of them, didn't have a rifling fixture or machinery, the musket was inspected and seen as having a barrel too thin to rifle and they slapped sights on anyway, or the contractor was just sketchy and threw sights on them to "sneak them in" to a batch so they could still get paid, and by the time the Govt realized these weren't rifled they were probably already issued , the contractor was paid already and it was someone else's problem. It is documented that one contractor received boxes of the solder-on ladder sights but they had no way to rifle anything, so they just Sighted hundreds of smoothbore muskets and shipped them out. It was just the confusion of wartime production and industry.

There was lots of grift with the Govt contractors. Also lots of logistical issues. Entire Regiments armed with 1842 Springfield smoothbores were issued .69 Minie cartridges by mistake, instead of Ball or Buck and Ball cartridges and still had to use them. It must have been a supply chain nightmare to have to figure out who has .69 Smoothbores, who has .69 Rifled-Muskets, who has a mix of both. It would be impossible.

We'll never know why a lot of this happened or why your musket was "re-smoothbored" or if it was ever rifled. Or was just that heavily used it wore the rifling out which would be a lot of rod wear and shooting. It may have been smoothbored as required by law in the South after the war, or bored smooth to use as a shotgun. Or never was rifled.

 

[Stantheman86]

A set of sights adds accuracy to any firearm.

Be it smooth or rifled.

I had a ladder sight soldered on to my Pedersoli 1816 Springfield smoothbore .69 and it's dead nuts to 50 yards. I could never shoot like that with no rear sight. It even does ok to 100.

 

[maillemaker]

It may not be the case with your particular musket, but many of the conversions of Flintlocks to Percussion, or Smoothbore to Rifled-Musket were done by machine shops and gunsmiths contracted by the US Govt in the 1850s-1860s, and there are several examples of .69 Smoothbore muskets with rifle sights added that never received rifling.

Sometimes the contractor didn't have time or production capacity to rifle all of them, didn't have a rifling fixture or machinery, the musket was inspected and seen as having a barrel too thin to rifle and they slapped sights on anyway, or the contractor was just sketchy and threw sights on them to "sneak them in" to a batch so they could still get paid, and by the time the Govt realized these weren't rifled they were probably already issued , the contractor was paid already and it was someone else's problem. It is documented that one contractor received boxes of the solder-on ladder sights but they had no way to rifle anything, so they just Sighted hundreds of smoothbore muskets and shipped them out. It was just the confusion of wartime production and industry.

There was lots of grift with the Govt contractors. Also lots of logistical issues. Entire Regiments armed with 1842 Springfield smoothbores were issued .69 Minie cartridges by mistake, instead of Ball or Buck and Ball cartridges and still had to use them. It must have been a supply chain nightmare to have to figure out who has .69 Smoothbores, who has .69 Rifled-Muskets, who has a mix of both. It would be impossible.

We'll never know why a lot of this happened or why your musket was "re-smoothbored" or if it was ever rifled. Or was just that heavily used it wore the rifling out which would be a lot of rod wear and shooting. It may have been smoothbored as required by law in the South after the war, or bored smooth to use as a shotgun. Or never was rifled.

US Government inspectors were pretty rigorous and I've read lots of rejection letters.

The only purposefully sighted but left smoothbore US-made smoothbore muskets I am aware of are the roughly 12,000 made by the firm of Hewes and Phillips as part of a federal contract to convert flintlock 1816-1840 muskets to percussion, rifle, and sight them. They were sighted, but never rifled.

If you have documentation for others in quantities greater than 100 I'd be interested in seeing it as it would open up other possibilities for sighted smoothbores in N-SSA competition. I would in particular love documentation on M1842s done that way.

 

[Stantheman86]

US Government inspectors were pretty rigorous and I've read lots of rejection letters.

The only purposefully sighted but left smoothbore US-made smoothbore muskets I am aware of are the roughly 12,000 made by the firm of Hewes and Phillips as part of a federal contract to convert flintlock 1816-1840 muskets to percussion, rifle, and sight them. They were sighted, but never rifled.

If you have documentation for others in quantities greater than 100 I'd be interested in seeing it as it would open up other possibilities for sighted smoothbores in N-SSA competition. I would in particular love documentation on M1842s done that way.

I downloaded an E-Book about 2 years ago that went super in depth about the whole 1850's Ordnance Dept effort to inventory and convert Flintlock muskets. I read it when I bought my Pedersoli 1816 percussion conversion, and was deciding what sight to add. I'll have to see if I can find it.

Hewes & Phillips of NJ converted muskets are covered heavily in this book. Also all the random manure that was found in various state Arsenals, muskets that predated the F&I War that were totally inoperable and used for drilling, Brown Besses that were forgotten about and left to rust for almost 100 years, it was interesting.

The seperation of muskets into 1st, 2nd and 3rd Quality and this is when they cover how basically the muskets that were too flimsy to rifle sometimes just had sights put on anyway and were given back to State Militia Units to use as Home Guard or whatever they had, regiments made up of old men. Basically the sights made the men "feel like they had a modern weapon" and were put on just because there were sights available and it was easy to solder them on. I distinclty remember the book saying that one machine shop received a shipment of Harper's Ferry ladder sights and applied them to smoothbore muskets. This may apply to State Militias that had local gun smiths rework their weapons , we'll probably never know 99% of what was done during this mid 1850's effort to inventory the entire US Gove State Militia and regular Army arsenals.

So much is lost to history. I just recently found out a Union LT was murdered one town over from me in a shootout over a prostitute or something. It was just word of mouth history, none of this is written down. Only that "My great grand dad went to court in 1870 for killing an Army Lieutenant in 1864 that was drunk and trying to burn a barn down after a fight with a woman and great grand dad was found not guilty" like OK, this is the stuff that you don't read about in books.

 

[Notchy Bob]

I can't comment on why the subject musket is smooth bored and sighted. I do know that a lot of rifled military small arms were later made into smoothbores. Some were professionally reamed smooth, but there were some that got a different treatment. My dad, born in Alabama in 1907, knew some Civil War veterans and survivors of Reconstruction when he was growing up. He was told that some of these muskets, maybe battlefield pickups, were made smooth by putting in a powder charge with wadding, followed by a handful of gravel. The gun was loaded and fired this way repeatedly until the rifling was sufficiently worn that it would not have a detrimental effect on a shot load. Most of the big game in the south, deer and bear, had been killed out by that time and shot loads were most often used for birds and small game. Hogs were semi-domesticated and in any event could be trapped, so large-caliber balls or bullets were not needed.

I bought an old "beater" Springfield (dated 1864) earlier this year. The barrel had been bobbed to about 25" and the forestock was crudely cut back. The dealer described it as a "smoothbore." However, after I cleaned it as well as I could, the rifling was still faintly visible at the muzzle. I haven't tried to scope the bore farther down. Anyway, some guns that appear to have been bored smooth at first glance may have gotten something like the gravel treatment, or they may just be so worn or rusted or even dirty that the rifling is not clearly visible.

Again, that old musket in post #1, whether rifled or smooth, is a really nice piece, and I'm glad it's in the hands of someone who appreciates it.

This thread is fine where it is, but it would have been a good fit in the Original Antique Firearms section of the forum, too.

Notchy Bob

 

[ToothPick]

Again, thanks a lot to all you guys sharing your knowledge!

 

[maillemaker]

I downloaded an E-Book about 2 years ago that went super in depth about the whole 1850's Ordnance Dept effort to inventory and convert Flintlock muskets. I read it when I bought my Pedersoli 1816 percussion conversion, and was deciding what sight to add. I'll have to see if I can find it.

I would love to read it if you find it. Thanks!