Muzzleldrs 2 Band Enfield - Original?

stannie1950

Cadet
Joined
Feb 2, 2021
Hello There!

A Quaker friend of mine (irony not lost, lol) is interested in selling me a two band enfield rifle that he believes to be original. He says he used to reenact with it in the 70's and 80s, but it has been gathering dust since.

Having reenacted for many years, I am familiar with some of the differences between reproductions and originals in newer weapons, but am less familiar with rifles from that era. I've posted some photos to this thread, would anyone with more experience be able to take a look? I took pictures of what I remember were key differences between armisport/euroarms and originals, they are attached here.

For the record, he's only asking $600. For a 2 band used reproduction in rough shape, that seems high. For an original, that seems great. I'd love to have your opinions there too.

And THANKS!

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Interesting Enfield and with the lug on the barrel it is a naval model. It does have the BSA (Birmingham Small Arms) stamp on the stock but I have seen repops that are defarbed so lets see what our Enfield guru's have to say. Paging @Craig L Barry and @Lanyard Puller
 
This is an original shortened P1853 Rifle-Musket based on the position of the rear sight. It has been neatly shortened into rifle length with a presumably 33 inch barreled rifle. It is possible that this is a war time alteration. I have seen a few guns like this that have also had bayonet lugs relocated on them that were advertised as Confederate arsenal shortened muskets. Since there hasn't been anything published regarding Confederate Arsenal modifications such as this it won't bring CS gun money, unless the gun shows viewers markings that are Confederate.
If you have any photos of the area in front of the buttplate and the area behind the trigger guard please post them. For what it's worth, the barrel bands are on backwards.
 
I don´t usually wade into this sort of conversation, because collecting isn´t my thing - but I´m gonna stamp it as original. In the 70s and 80s, a lot of original guns were still on the reenacting field so that part of the story is plausible. The ¨defarbing¨ movement didn´t exist, so you didn´t find period inspection stamps on repro guns. And there were only a few models to choose from back then, best that I can recall ¨Enfield naval model¨ not being one of them. I´d buy it and give it a new home to retire to.
As an aside, there is a story about a Quaker firing during the American Revolution. The question of how he could fire at someone came up, to which he replied: ¨I was not aiming at thee; thou wast standing where I was pointing my gun.¨ :smile:
 
isn't JS,ANCHOR a CONFEDERATE acceptance stamp?
Yes, it shows that it was viewed by someone hired by a confederate buyer to inspect the arm, and so marked. This happened in Britain, and some arms so inspected were paid for by the South, and shipped there, but some were so inspected and not paid for and so not purchased by the anticipated Confederate buyer and offered and sold to someone else (aka the Union), or the arm might have been intercepted during shipment to the South, and sold to some other buyer (aka the Union).
 
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