I have 2 1861 armi-sport Springfields. Has anyone here ever "sporterized" one of these? have seen a few of these and read an article about how alot of surplus muskets were shortened and made into shot guns. Any info would be great. Thank you
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"sporterizing" 1861 springfield
- Thread starter Sabotdart
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Va.Manuf.06
58 Cal.
Any Civil War period musket or rifle musket that had been "sporterized"used to be extremely common, thousands were so altered between 1865 and 1900. But gradually the parts - locks, buttplates, triggerguards, etc. - became valuable and these were cannibalized for restoring better guns. Even barrels and stocks were stretched and reused.
Following are a couple of suggestions:
Some were well done and others with just the barrel and/or stock cut back. If you want to do what a small farmer might have done at his work bench in the shed with few tools and less talent, leave the barrel full length after removing the rear sight if it had one, and cut the stock about 2 inches in front of the rear band and solder a couple of crude ramrod pipes directly to the barrel using the original steel ramrod. There ya go, you don't need to ream the bore, the shot patterns may suffer a little due to the shallow rifling but the old timers who were strapped for cash didn't worry about that.
If you want to do a better job, throw away all of the bands after shortening the stock and pour a pewter nosecap to the front. Drill the ramrod hole out then add a rib with a couple of well made pipes to the bottom of the barrel by soldering. If you want to be fancy to match the pewter nosecap, make a neatly tapered wooden ramrod. Then have the bore reamed smooth to say .62 caliber.
There are many variations you can do, you are only limited by your imagination and skill or pocketbook if you have someone else do it.
Following are a couple of suggestions:
Some were well done and others with just the barrel and/or stock cut back. If you want to do what a small farmer might have done at his work bench in the shed with few tools and less talent, leave the barrel full length after removing the rear sight if it had one, and cut the stock about 2 inches in front of the rear band and solder a couple of crude ramrod pipes directly to the barrel using the original steel ramrod. There ya go, you don't need to ream the bore, the shot patterns may suffer a little due to the shallow rifling but the old timers who were strapped for cash didn't worry about that.
If you want to do a better job, throw away all of the bands after shortening the stock and pour a pewter nosecap to the front. Drill the ramrod hole out then add a rib with a couple of well made pipes to the bottom of the barrel by soldering. If you want to be fancy to match the pewter nosecap, make a neatly tapered wooden ramrod. Then have the bore reamed smooth to say .62 caliber.
There are many variations you can do, you are only limited by your imagination and skill or pocketbook if you have someone else do it.
That's an excellent description of the type of rework done on many 1000's of surplus civil war rifled muskets and M1842 smoothbore muskets. They're often called poor mans shotguns, selling for about $1.50 to $5.00 in the later part of the 19th century. Places like Bannerman's and Hartley's did the alterations and sold them. Many purchased by immigrants heading inland. There's still an 1863 Bridesburg contract at my wife's farm establish in the 1890's. Allow me to present this idea - many Springfield and contract rifled muskets and nearly 50,000 Colt special rifles were altered to flintlock. This work was done in Leige by various workshops 1870-1890. All were shipped to Africa and points east as inexpensive trade guns. In the early part of the 20th century, Bannerman's acquired an unknown quantity to sell. I had 2 that came out of a theater in Atlanta(stage props). It might be a unique thing to make one from an unwanted repro. If any one is interested, I've got info on how and what parts would be needed. G.S.
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Col. Batguano
75 Cal.
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I have one of those too. Have you found a load combo that gives any accuracy? Mine is only capable of pie-plate sized groups at 25 yards, and I've tried Minie's, and PRB's. To me, only accurate rifles are worth shooting, so for my purposes, that makes it a rack gun, rather than a shooting gun.
Thanks for your interest. These are really neat guns. Once on the bench, the lock and barrel were removed. First, the nipple was taken out, next the bolster was ground off flush to the barrels flats. This also exposed the flash channel, which is now the touch hole. The grind marks were dressed off by filing neatly but not prefect. Each workman was supplied with trays of miscellaneous flintlock cocking pieces, pans, frizzens, springs and screws. Before totally disassembling the lock but haveing removed the hammer , various flintcocks were tried. They had to fit the tumbler and have reasonably good half and full cock geometry. The original tumbler scew is reused. Next, a pan is fit into the notch once filled by the bottom edge of the bolster. An internal screw holds the pan in place. A frizzen is then matched to the progressing assembly. The hole for the screw holding the frizzen is nearly at the edge of the lockplate (they're realy cramped). Finally, the frizzen spring - holes are drilled for the screw and support peg and then installed. What I'm not 100% sure of is did they remove the main spring to do this work. Also, these lockplates are hardened, yet they are drilled and tapped as well as having roman numerial assembler marks filed in each part including the plate. However, they show no signs of having been annealed. Remember these were done quickly at little expense. No two are alike as they were made from obsolete surplus parts yet worked really good. The workmanship of these Liege articifers is easily on par with the modern India repros by comparison. Building one from a repro would follow the same steps. There are no measurement. All this work was done by eye. I do have good 35MM photos but at this time no way to scan. Given time I will. G.S.
50cal.cliff
58 Cal.
hotoSmile:With a .570 r.b. and patch(don't recall patch size)and 40 grains of 2f, I was able to place my shots in the black at 25 yards. Not a tight group but ok for what we're dealing with. At 50 yards about the same. My skirmisher friends suggested switching to minie balls. After trying several sizes, we found .575 ashcans from a Lee mold worked very good backed by 35 grains of 2f. The times I shot these with this load combination I fired at silhouettes about 1 foot square. At 50 to 80 yards, they placed shot after shot on the targets. At 100 yards every 3rd or 4th shot would hit. This was all done off hand. Both of these 61 flinters were in excellent condition including their bores, one was an 1861 Springfield, the other a Providence Tool Co. dated 1863. About 12 years ago, a collector made me an outstanding offer and I sent them on their way. There is one page in Reilly's book "United States Martial Flintlocks" dealing with this subject including a line drawing with incorrectly drawn lock parts. I still think it would be fun to make one from a repro. G.S.
Ok, here's an original 1861 contract rifled musket converted to flint. This one is marked Providence Tool 1863, 58cal. The rear sight is a replacement. Note the poor geometry. Still these worked great. This conversion was done between 1870-1890s. Neat stuff - fun to shoot. G.S.
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GS: Wonderful stuff! Thank you for those photos. Wouldn't it be lovely to find a crate of those in some dark warehouse in Senegal ...
Sabotdart: You probably need go no further than your local or state historical society museum to see genuine "sportered" muskets from the 19th century. One of my favorites here was a Model 1869 trapdoor Springfield with cutdown forend and a deep chunk cut from the right face of the butt. To this was tacked a strip of leather that made three loops to hold .50-70 cartridges. The thrifty pioneer who cooked this thing up used it to kill grizzly bears trying to eat his cattle.
Sabotdart: You probably need go no further than your local or state historical society museum to see genuine "sportered" muskets from the 19th century. One of my favorites here was a Model 1869 trapdoor Springfield with cutdown forend and a deep chunk cut from the right face of the butt. To this was tacked a strip of leather that made three loops to hold .50-70 cartridges. The thrifty pioneer who cooked this thing up used it to kill grizzly bears trying to eat his cattle.
Jason Lewis
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GS- why in the world would they convert a perfectly good musket percussion lock to flint in the 1870-1890's?
Va.Manuf.06
58 Cal.
Native people were not allowed to have "modern" firearms, they could only have flintlock trade guns. In the 1870 to 1890 and later period percussion arms were modern arms and this kept the natives in submission to the white European masters of the Belgian colonies.
It also made the Belgian gunmakers happy, they had thousands of surplus flint arms and locks on hand to make these guns.
Aside from the US converted rile muskets illustrated, far more common were the M1854 Austrian Lorenz rifle muskets converted to flint from percussion.
It also made the Belgian gunmakers happy, they had thousands of surplus flint arms and locks on hand to make these guns.
Aside from the US converted rile muskets illustrated, far more common were the M1854 Austrian Lorenz rifle muskets converted to flint from percussion.
If you watch old movies from earliest black and white silent movies through John Wayne's 'Alamo' pertaining to warfare or stories about explorers or even pirates, you will see some of these. I think there's probably more of these in inventory of prop companies. If I run across an inexpensive used repro, I'll make one just for the enjoyment of the build. G.S.
Va.Manuf.06
58 Cal.
barbarossa said:How about like this
Barbarossa, that is a nice copy (fantasy actually) of a military conversion of a full length rifle musket to a cavalry carbine. Too much work for a civilian sporterization. I do like the looks of it though.
Well, the flint ones are neat. I found some info that's probably more exact to what you're looking for. In the book "Civil War Guns" by William B.Edwards, chapter 33 and 34 deals with what happend to all of the post war guns. There are 4 images in toatl of sporterized rifled muskets with descriptons. One has a nose cap(the stock haveing been shortend) and has been fitted with a barrel key totally dispensing with the barrel bands. The wrist has also been checkered as well as the forarm. The entire book is an excellant resource. G.S.
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