Percussion pistol shotgun

[Erik550c]

I couldn't justify putting this in the long arm smoothbore section because what I seek to acquire has to be something more handheld. I want to keep a bug out pistol/revolver... shotgun... ready for hunting in a bag. I'm familiar with the Howdah line which is exactly what I'm looking for, but it is too expensive for the 20 gauge double barrel pistol. I read about a traditional revolver with one smoothbore barrel in the center. Whatever it was, it probably wasn't much of a hunting gun. I wouldn't mind just having a tube or two with a simple design that is purely functional, you know? I need a compact and usable smoothbore for small game/upland hunting. Any tips?

Thanks

 

[FishDFly]

The NMLRA has a match for smooth bore pistols, minimum caliber is .433 and they must be flintlock. These are custom made pistols for the most part, might try to find one them.

Buy a Kentucky pistol and send it off to Ed Rayl and have the rifling removed.

Call Joe at the Gun Works to see what he has or what he can have one made for.

 

[Calum]

"I read about a traditional revolver with one smoothbore barrel in the center."

It sounds like you're talking about a LeMat. I can say that it would not be a good hunting gun. The chambers are .44, and while there are 9, they are shorter than any other .44 black powder pistol I've handled. I believe the max load I could get in them was 20 or 22 g of 3F.

The shot barrel patterned nicely with bird shot at about 15 yards. In my opinion, it is also fairly under powdered. Mine, the hammer doesn't seem to build up enough velocity to reliably ignite the cap for the shot barrel (it's a flip down striker off the main hammer, if you're not familiar with it).

Mike

 

[nkbj]

When I lived in Alabama in the late 80's the fella I was renting from was a retired machinist. One day he showed me the revolver he had made. It was absolutely beautiful, stainless and based upon a 1858 Remington design. The frame and cylinder were elongated and the chambers .41 diameter. The 12" barrel was smoothbore. It was a percussion "snake charmer".
He said it shot fine with round ball as well as bird shot.

And no, he wouldn't sell it dabnabbit.

 

[Kansas Jake]

You could try to find a replica Tower Flintlock 69 caliber pistol. I don't know if anyone is making a new repro, but used ones are out there.

 

[Many Klatch]

Check out Pedersoli's website. They have a lot of smoothbore pistols.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

a smooth bore pistol as a shotgun is next to worthless. Better off with a shortened long gun. I had a 24inch 50 cal extra drop in barrel for my Italian Hawken. Even 24 inches was so short it was dismally poor. If you want to shoot small game when SHTF, you are far better off with a small caliber rifle or even an air rifle. OTH if you want a hail Mary shot at clearing a hallway, a smooth bore pistol may be the ticket.

 

[Erik550c]

The NMLRA has a match for smooth bore pistols, minimum caliber is .433 and they must be flintlock. These are custom made pistols for the most part, might try to find one them.

Buy a Kentucky pistol and send it off to Ed Rayl and have the rifling removed.

Call Joe at the Gun Works to see what he has or what he can have one made for.

Thank you for the contacts.

 

[Erik550c]

I found this .54 fairly inexpensive smoothbore pistol:
https://www.dixiegunworks.com/product_info.php?products_id=17135&osCsid=kugi2b1cuc8c4kr4n0r9jo8330

Thinking about getting shot wads and cards... Is this closer to 28 gauge or 32 gauge?

I want to be able to hit moving birds and rabbits, otherwise a pellet gun is enough.

 

[Wes/Tex]

That's interesting...never saw an new percussion conversion of the regular M.1805 U.S. military pistol. One way to overcome the badly styled "basher" type flintlock design, interesting. 28 gauge is .550 so that'd be the way to go with wads and cards.

 

[m-g willy]

BREAK OPEN PERCUSSION SXS SHOTGUN THAT USES SHOTGUN PRIMERS MADE FROM SXS CARTRIDGE FIRING SHOTGUN

(1)Old side hammer sxs shotgun,,
(2)Piece of brass bar stock of correct dia. to fit chambers..
(3)Two fired plastic shotgun hulls..deprime,
Heat plastic with tourch and pull out of case head.
(4)FILL CASE HEAD WITH SOLDER
(5)Cut two pieces of barstock to 3/4" length
(6)solder bar stock to case heads.
(7)CHAMFER BRASS ON END OF BAR STOCK
(8)remove shell extractor from barrels.
(9)solder case heads into chambers.
(10)drill 1/8" hole through barel and into brass barstock from bottom making sure you stay below center of bore
(11)EPOXY 1/8"BRASS ROD IN HOLE AND CUT OFF AND FILE FLUSH
(12)CUT BARREL TO DESIRED LENGTH.
(13) MELT 36 CAL LEAD BALL
(14)HEAT CHAMBER FROM BOTTOM OF BARREL
(15) HOLD BARREL UPRIGHT AND POUR LEAD DOWN BARREL ,,LEAD SHO ULD SEAL BRASS BAR STOCK AND FILL IN THE CHAMFER YOU PUT ON BAR STOCK IN 7#
(16) Repeat 15# in other barrel
(17)Drill out touch hole in case head using same size drill bit as original hole.
(18)DRILL OUT PRIMER POCKET WITH SAME SIZE DRILL BIT AS THE PRIMER POCKET This will enlarge the hole just enough for a new primer to fall into pocket and still fall out after firing.
(19)cut butt stock at pistol drip to desired shape
(20)Refinish whole shebang..
I also used dremmel to put a small thumb nail cut out on edge of primer pocket to help to get and stubbern primers out.
BTW-I left the front sight AND RAM ROD up to you,,I just used a brass bead front sight and a ram rod I carry in my shooters bag.
Cost with gun and everything else was right around $200

 

[AZbpBurner]

a smooth bore pistol as a shotgun is next to worthless. Better off with a shortened long gun. I had a 24inch 50 cal extra drop in barrel for my Italian Hawken. Even 24 inches was so short it was dismally poor. If you want to shoot small game when SHTF, you are far better off with a small caliber rifle or even an air rifle. OTH if you want a hail Mary shot at clearing a hallway, a smooth bore pistol may be the ticket.

My experience exactly. I had a 20 ga / .62 cal flintlock pistol built for being able to use roundball and also shot. In a pistol, the barrel is too short to get any reasonable shot performance, whether using wads or shot cups, and killing energy dissipates rapidly. Add in the reduced powder charge required for pistol vs musket/fusil/shotgun & you've got an entertaining fun toy with not enough punch to penetrate both sides of an empty milk jug at 15 yards. Roundball does a little better and has a longer effective range for accuracy.

 

[Erik550c]

a smooth bore pistol as a shotgun is next to worthless. Better off with a shortened long gun. I had a 24inch 50 cal extra drop in barrel for my Italian Hawken. Even 24 inches was so short it was dismally poor. If you want to shoot small game when SHTF, you are far better off with a small caliber rifle or even an air rifle. OTH if you want a hail Mary shot at clearing a hallway, a smooth bore pistol may be the ticket.

My experience exactly. I had a 20 ga / .62 cal flintlock pistol built for being able to use roundball and also shot. In a pistol, the barrel is too short to get any reasonable shot performance, whether using wads or shot cups, and killing energy dissipates rapidly. Add in the reduced powder charge required for pistol vs musket/fusil/shotgun & you've got an entertaining fun toy with not enough punch to penetrate both sides of an empty milk jug at 15 yards. Roundball does a little better and has a longer effective range for accuracy.

Great, no sense wasting money on it. Either howdah dual 20 gauge or round ball pistol for me because of the size limitations I specified.

 

[coloradoclyde]

a smooth bore pistol as a shotgun is next to worthless.

Yep...

It's also un-economical for a survival/bug-out situation

 

[sidelock]

I saw a friend kill a mouse with a .44 mag. super black hawk using shot shell at about 25 yards. And another with same cal. kill a blue grouse about the same distance.

 

[tenngun]

Middelsex village arms imports and reworks two double smooth pistols. One in flint one in cap. 24 or 20 gage. I have never delt with the company and can say nothing as to the quality of his work, the price is in the $400 range. It may work for you.
As these are historic repos they are not covered by the sawed off shot gun rules and in my way of thinking are more less toys in a modern setting... but, you can find bushwackers sawed off shot gun repos via WTBS (civil war) sites. Many are 12 or 20 gage with twelve to sixteen inch barrels. You may also try a blunderbuss most are in the 12 gage range with fourteen to eighteen inch barrels. They are very historic as can be seen that Brandon Frazier had one in the history channels movie about the Texas revolution :blah:
That aside a blunderbuss is a quick handling little gun that should turn Thumper in to stew if you don’t push the range.
Lastly at risk of being kicked off the forum ther is the dreaded canoe gun :redface: sawed off fusils with twenty to twenty four inch barrels. Such guns were invented by the Fucawe and the Wannabe tribes in the ”˜70s. They too are handy hunters.

 

[hawkeye2]

Descendants of the Fucawe and the Wannabe tribes are still practicing their dark arts to this day and can be heard trying to cloud the minds of pilgrims around the fires late at night by the continual chanting of their mantra "if they'd a had it they woulda used it" :grin:

 

[Wes/Tex]

Descendants of the Fucawe and the Wannabe tribes are still practicing their dark arts to this day and can be heard trying to cloud the minds of pilgrims around the fires late at night by the continual chanting of their mantra "if they'd a had it they woulda used it" :grin:

Sure they woulda...but they didn't! :wink: :haha:

 

[Darkgael]

A number of ideas here. I have an old Savage 430 O/U. Some years ago the barrels were damaged and sawed off to 22”. I wanted to be able to use it with longer barrels.i eventually found a set in the white and unfinished at Numrich Arms. I bought them with the intention of finishing them. It was a job beyond my skills, so the barrels sat for years until one day i found an ad for a breechplug that used shotgun primers to turn any twelve gauge into a muzzleloading shotgun.
The idea light went on. I bought two of them. I fished the unfinished barrels out of the back of the closet and cleaned it up. To my pleasant surprise, the bores were bright and shiny. I
I carefully machined the breech so that the adapters would seat properly. Then i had to fit the barrels to the breech.
That process (called “jointing”) is a slow and tedious business. It did get done though and the barrels fit tight against the breech (no light through through the joint). The forend was fitted and an all weather finish (ceracoat, iirc) applied to the exterior. There is no place for a ramrod which thus is carrled separately (suggestions welcome). My standard load is 70 grains of FFg, a ballof newsprint forced down onto the powder, Hornets nest atop that and then a half a hard card, 1 1/8 oz shot and an OS card.
The gun shoots and patterns nicely - cylinder bore.

Middlesex Village double barreled smoothbore pistol, percussion .....about 18 gauge. It does shoot more powerfully than described, certainly well enough to be used for squirrels and rabbits close and grouse even closer. Two drams of FFG or 1.5 of FFFg, two cardboard OP cards, 3/4oz of shot and an OS card.
Problem....yes.....the gun had absolutely the worst triggers that i have ever tried. They had to be over 30 lbs pull. It took two fingers and a lot of straining to get it to fire. After extensive work, i have them down to a manageable 10 lbs.
Blunderbuss - a 14 inch barrelled flint gun and a hoot to shoot. 14 gauge.
Very quick handling though the stock is a bit short for me. For working the thich huckleberries up on North Mt., it is an easy gun to carry. At 10 yards a buckshot load is about the size of my spread hand.

 

[AZbpBurner]

I'd think twice about dealing with Middlesex - if they are even still in business. A few years ago I ordered a .62 cal smoothbore. I was also impressed with the lifetime lock warranty. I had been in e-mail contact with Pete's wife, who provided good answers to my inqueries ... Pete was always too busy rebuilding/servicing locks t do much communicating.

What I rec'd. was an assembled (barely) musket that needed extensive fitting, strip & refinish, in addition to lockwork. Although the frizzen sparks like the 4th of July, and after hundreds of rounds fired, shows no gouging or wear, the internal lock parts were inferior quality, non had been hardened, and the sear end where it engages the tumbler notches, bent after firing about a dozen rounds.

I can see why Pete has no time to himself - he's busy "working on" all those lousy, soft locks.

I returned my lock to Pete, and about 3 months later it was returned. Another dozen rounds fired & the lock froze up with the same bent parts. There was no evidence that anything had been hardened.

Communications between Mrs. Pete suddenly ceased, and my offer to harden his sear & tumblers for him remained unanswered. Largely conjecture but, someone said that his staff all bailed out & apparently he took away his Wife's internet access (or maybe she also left town?)

My musket is a showpiece after reshaping the stock & refinishing it. The lock is now reliable with properly hardened engaging surfaces.

I was unable to get any responses to further inquiries about availability on some of their other products, so even waving money at Middlesex with more offers to buy, all went unanswered.

Their website is still live, but I'd be hesitant to buy from them; there are other importers, who communicate better and have the actual feel and response of a legit & concerned retailer.