Model 1816 Springfield, Rifled But Not Sighted

[VMI88]

I recently acquired a Model 1816 musket (AKA Model 1822) manufactured by Springfield in 1824. At various points in its life it was converted to percussion and rifled, but not sighted. I've been reading as much as I can to determine when and by whom the work was done, but I'd appreciate any input from the experts on the forum.

The percussion conversion is the Belgian, or cone-in-barrel type. I understand that most of these type conversions were done at Harper's Ferry or Springfield in the 1850s, but some were done by contractors. Do any of the markings provide any clues on when or where this musket was converted? There's a "53" stamped on the breech - I don't know if this could indicate a date or if it's just a random number. There's an "A" over "e" nearby. The breech is also stamped with "D - 6", with the D being a Gothic-styled letter. There's a corresponding "D - 6" in the wood near the breech, and a "6" on the breech plug tang. I believe these are reassembly marks placed either during the percussion conversion or the rifling.

The rifling consists of three wide grooves. The only other modification to the musket was to grind a concave depression into the face of the original button-type ramrod to fit a conical bullet. There was never any rear site affixed and the front sight is untouched. Is there any way to determine who performed the rifling?

My musket bears some similarities to muskets rifled by Miles Greenwood in Ohio. Greenwood rifled approximately 16,000 Model 1816 muskets, and installed rear sights on 5% of them. The ones with the distinctive rear sights are easy to identify but the other 95% are trickier. He used an alpha-numeric system of reassembly numbers, but I'm sure he wasn't the only one to do this. He also cupped the original ramrods in a way that looks very similar to mine, but again, others may have done so as well. If anyone has any tips on how to identify this rifled conversion, I'd appreciate it!

Other markings on the musket include the original cartouche opposite the lock (indecipherable), as well as a reinspection cartouche that appears to be "TJ" in script letters with a numeral "3" below, indicating this was classified as a 3rd Class arm. The initials "EA" are stamped behind the trigger guard in small block letters, and there's a cartouche behind that with what appears to be a "&" inside. The top of the stock is stamped "N" over "19" just forward of the buttplate tang, and there's a "2" over "5" stamped behind the breech. Any insight into these markings would be appreciated!

 

[James Brenner]

From what I have been able to determine, the alphanumerics correspond to the manufacturer and assembly of both the original flintlock build and the later conversion to percussion. They don't have anything to do with when/who rifled the musket. As you note, Greenwood muskets are virtually indistinguishable from those rifled at the arsenal. The only truly distinguishing Greenwood characteristic I have ever come across is the checkering on the hammer. If Greenwood replaced the hammer, the checkering is very coarse. I will post a comparison picture later this evening.

 

[VMI88]

As you note, Greenwood muskets are virtually indistinguishable from those rifled at the arsenal. The only truly distinguishing Greenwood characteristic I have ever come across is the checkering on the hammer. If Greenwood replaced the hammer, the checkering is very coarse. I will post a comparison picture later this evenin

Thanks for the information - I recall reading that about Greenwood-supplied hammers. My musket's hammer has fine, detailed checkering so I assume the conversion was done by an arsenal.

 

[James Brenner]

Attached is a comparison of the checkering. Both images are of Greenwood muskets: an 1826 Springfield (coarse checkering) and an 1827 Springfield. The cupping on the rammers is not an indicator because they were often replaced. The Greenwoods and rifled conversions I have are of different types, although two of the rammers are identical to yours. The only other thing I noticed was the lack of a brass "sight" on the front strap of the upper barrel band. Typically/usually/normally/sometimes during the rifling process, the sight was moved from the lower strap to the upper strap. But I have some that are on the lower band and may be replacement bands.

 

[VMI88]

Thanks for the comparison photos of hammers. Mine is definitely the arsenal-type pictured on the right.

When I was reading about Greenwood conversions I wasn't clear whether the higher front sight moved to the front strap applied to all muskets he rifled, or just the ones to which he also added a rear sight. I can't say I ran across any photos of rifled muskets without rear sights that had the modified front sight.

 

[James Brenner]

Here's a photo of a rifled, 1844 dated Pomeroy rifled conversion. It is very similar to your musket; even the cupped rammer is the same. However, I have no idea who rifled it. The odds are that Greenwood did but there's no guarantee. I have in my notes that the US rifled but did not sight 681 conversion muskets and Greenwood rifled but did not sight 16,918 conversion muskets.

I have 4 Greenwoods. Of the 4, 3 have the sight on the upper strap and the 4th does not.

 

[VMI88]

I appreciate all the information. This is an interesting subject - I hope I'm not taking up too much of your time!

I have in my notes that the US rifled but did not sight 681 conversion muskets and Greenwood rifled but did not sight 16,918 conversion muskets.

If I'm understanding you correctly, records show that the national armories only converted 681 muskets that did not also have rear sights installed? That's a very small number. You said Greenwood rifled but did not sight about 16,000 muskets, which is consistent with what I've read. Were there any other contractors performing this work in volume? For some reason Greenwood is the one that always comes up in online discussions, but maybe that's just because his sighted pieces (and the discussion is almost always about sighted pieces) are easily identified. You'd think there would be a large number of companies rifling muskets that had previously been converted to percussion by the national armories. The work would be very simple if all they were doing is rifling the barrels, cupping the ramrods, and possibly moving the front sight, and there wouldn't necessarily be any identifying features to tell who did the work.

I have 4 Greenwoods. Of the 4, 3 have the sight on the upper strap and the 4th does not.

I take it that since you're able to positively identify these four muskets as Greenwoods, they must have rear sights?

I assume the closest musket in the photo above is the 1844 Pomeroy. It's interesting that while the front sight has been moved to the upper strap, it's not the half inch-high sight usually associated with Greenwoods (at least according to what I was able to find online).

Anyway, great discussion and I'm learning a lot! Unfortunately I got the musket just a week after the Richmond CW show, or I would have taken it in to show Tim Prince of College Hill Arsenal.

 

[Jeff in Ohio]

I believe the "3" stamped into the stock shows this was evaluated by some armory as to quality, and a 3 is a low mark. This would have been before it was rifled.

 

[James Brenner]

You're welcome. I am glad to help.

When the Army adopted the elongated bullet, they tried to "modernize" the existing stock of converted 1816/22s by rifling them in the late 1850s. The issue, they discovered, was that, unlike the thicker walls on a M1842, the walls of the converted muskets were much thinner and there was concern that a rifled conversion firing an elongated bullet would increase the pressure, making the musket dangerous. As an aside, it's not uncommon to see chips and cracks at the muzzle of rifled conversions, so there's some validity in their concerns.

But speaking of rifling, that's also an interesting subject. Newspaper accounts of Greenwood's rifling state that it was done in the Enfield style, which means that the rifling was deeper at the breech than at the muzzle. Dan Whitacre and I tried to measure the rifling on three Greenwoods, both 16s and 42s, but the rifling at the breeches were too pitted/worn and the measurements were inconclusive. Conversely, other newspaper accounts state that Greenwood's homemade rifling machines produced straight through rifling, just like the national arsenals. Perhaps most convincing is CPT Franklin Callendar's (commander of St. Louis Arsenal) review of Greenwood's work in which he stated that "the rifling went the entire length of the barrel but was the same depth throughout the bore." Three lands and grooves, by the way.

There are other contractors who rifled smoothbores - Hewes and Phillips and Maynard are the two that come to mind - but they have distinct breeches.

It's curious that Greenwood did not somehow mark his work, if for no other reason than to prove he fulfilled his contract, which was more like a gentleman's agreement than a formal document. His biographer states that Greenwood was at home working with iron, but with paperwork, he was at sea. His credit reports after the war prove that in no uncertain terms.

I had forgotten to mention the front sight. If Greenwood rifled an 1816/22, he removed the sight from the lower strap of the front band and replaced it with a blade on the upper strap that measures .55 inches in length, .19 inches high, and is .15 inches wide at the base. However, later M1835/40 and M1842 muskets already had the front sight on the upper strap and Greenwood didn't mess with them. I'm attaching a comparison picture of the different front sights.

The three muskets in the picture are all Greenwoods. The first/closest one is a M1842 with the standard front sight; the same as on the Pomeroy. The two farther back are Greenwood M1816s and you can see the difference between the two types of front sights; Greenwood's is bigger. The reason the middle musket is shorter is because Greenwood set up a satellite operation in Louisville in early 1862 to repair, convert, and rifle captured Confederate muskets. In this case, the muzzle had been cut back, and the stock had been mortised to accommodate the barrel band. A long-range sight and a front blade sight put the musket back in service. The rammer on the third musket is a foreign one that is cupped to accommodate the elongated bullet.

One last comment, most of my Greenwood's came from Tim, but there haven't been many that have shown up lately.

I hope this helps a bit.

Jim

 

[VMI88]

One last comment, most of my Greenwood's came from Tim, but there haven't been many that have shown up lately.

Funny, because most of the information I found on Greenwood conversions came from the excellent descriptions of past sales on Tim's website. Most of them are probably in your collection now! It's interesting that so many have survived from the estimated 850 that were rifled and sighted.

 

[gary]

I've no comment other than it's sure PRETTY!

 

[James Brenner]

Funny, because most of the information I found on Greenwood conversions came from the excellent descriptions of past sales on Tim's website. Most of them are probably in your collection now! It's interesting that so many have survived from the estimated 850 that were rifled and sighted.

I have sometimes wondered how many rifled conversions I have walked past at gun shows because I did not look at the bore. The sighted ones are easy to spot, but the unsighted ones take a bit of work.

 

[Rhea Cole]

A craftsman's note: There is a good reason for not mounting a sight onto a rifled 1816 musket. The sight was mounted with a "sliding dado joint." The already thin wall of the smoothbore barrel had been scored with the grooves of the rifling, making the walls even thinner yet.

This is obviously a wood, but the same sliding dovetail joint is used to mount sights onto a rifle barrel. The 1816 smoothbore musket barrel was not thick enough to handle the removal of material required for a sliding dovetail joint.

The "skelp" from which a smoothbore barrel was forged is much thinner than that of a rifle.

I am a blacksmith. Take it from me, until you know how musket barrels were made, the reasons for not cutting a sliding dovetail joint into the wall of a smoothbore musket barrel is not going to make much sense.

This demonstration from The Revolutionary Journal is excellent. Read more here.

Link

How Colonial Gunsmiths Forged Musket and Rifle Gun Barrels

From a flat bar of soft iron, hand forged into a gun barrel; laboriously bored and rifled… in a shop long since silent, fashioned a rifle which changed the whole course of world history. …

revolutionarywarjournal.com

After polishing the bore of the musket barrel, a few grooves were cut into its inner surface along the length of the bore that twisted about a full turn from one end to the other. These grooves, or rifling, caused a fired bullet to spin, thereby increasing accuracy.
Harpers Weekly, September 21, 1861

The process for making Civil War era rifles was dramatically different from that of the Model 1816 smoothbore barrel. Instead of a skelp, a solid rod was forged. It was accurately drilled & the bor polished before being rifled. Read more here.

Link

Machining at Springfield Armory - Springfield Armory National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)

Machining operations at the Armory

www.nps.gov

Conclusion: It doesn't take much imagination to grasp why cutting a dovetail dado out of the thin metal over the breech end, let alone the muzzle of a smoothbore musket barrel was a very bad idea. In addition, due to the relatively ductile metal & thin walls of smoothbore musket barrels they were more often than not untrue. After all, nobody had more than a general idea what path a ball was going to follow, so a bit of wiggle in the barrel was not considered important.

Sorry about the quality of the image. This is the Napoleonic era smoothbore musket that armed the Imperial Army. The demo of the revolutionary war era gunsmith may give a mistaken impression that national armories were less than exact in their manufacturing processes.

While the barrel was still made starting with a skelp, the level of craftsmanship can be ascertained by the cabinet of patterns used to gage the finished parts.

 

[VMI88]

Thanks for this information - I knew the barrels of Model 1816 muskets were thin, but I didn't even consider how it might impact fixing sights.

 

[James Brenner]

I never considered sights and thin walls, either. Thanks. I have a question, though. If the dado is a bad idea, any thoughts on why Greenwood both soldered and screwed the rear sight onto his muskets? Wouldn't drilling and tapping a hole also cause problems?

Attached is a picture of the sight mounted on an 1826 dated Springfield.

 

[Rhea Cole]

I never considered sights and thin walls, either. Thanks. I have a question, though. If the dado is a bad idea, any thoughts on why Greenwood both soldered and screwed the rear sight onto his muskets? Wouldn't drilling and tapping a hole also cause problems?

Attached is a picture of the sight mounted on an 1826 dated Springfield.

View attachment 586006

That would be a question for a gunsmith. Silver soldering of sights & other fixtures such as bayonet studs is a common practice. Silver because it melts at a temperature high enough to where the iron will bond with it, but not so high as to cause the barrel to swell & distort as it cools.

My personal interpretation of the screw is similar to that of a finishing nail used to hold a glue joint steady while the glue dries. The sight would be precisely screwed in place & lined up. The solder would then be applied to hold securely in place. Just soldiering to a curved surface without fixing the sight in place would be problematical in the extreme.

Just screws could work loose from the expansion & shrinking inherent to the firing process. The solder wouldn't have that problem.

 

[James Brenner]

FWIW, Greenwood's later block sight was simply soldered on. From his correspondence with Governor Morton and the Ordnance Department, I get the impression that money and time were the reasons for the new sight: less machining and filing = less cost and quicker fulfillment.

 

[Grayrock Volunteer]

I have a question, though. If the dado is a bad idea, any thoughts on why Greenwood both soldered and screwed the rear sight onto his muskets? Wouldn't drilling and tapping a hole also cause problems?

The "long base", if you will permit me, Greenwood sights are only attached with solder. The screw in the base portion of the sight is for holding the spring that allows for the necessary tension for the ladder to stand errect.

Regarding the rifling in the "Enfield style"; I feel that the description is rather ambiguous. Prior to 1858, Enfield's were produced with uniform rifling. Unless the reporter had a truly remarkable expertise in firearms manufacturing we can't be sure which variant he was referring to. It's quite possible the information he was reporting on was related to the Robbins & Lawrence made P1853s produced here in the US, which would have had uniform rifling.



Back to the OP, I think you could make a pretty reasonable argument that your musket is a Greenwood. Though I don't believe that there is any way to claim it with absolute certainty. Finding a 3rd class musket that was rifled is quite uncommon. The US Ordnance Department was supposed to hold 3rd class arms in reserve for emergency alteration and issue. This one being a cone-in-barrel alteration would point to the work of a National Armory or Arsenal, Greenwood, and perhaps Hitchcock (though his hammers have a different profile).

Here is a photo of a 3rd class inspected Greenwood rifled and sighted Standard Model of 1815 (Springfield M1812) type IV I owned years ago.

 

[James Brenner]

You're absolutely fight about the sight screw. I just checked and they do provide the needed tension. I should've noticed that. Thanks.

As for the rifling, I also tend to think that the rifling was a uniform depth. Newspaper accounts report that Greenwood based the design of his rifling machine on the Robbin's and Lawrence pattern and incorporated the latest advances as used by Springfield Armory. That probably means that the machine cut the three rifling grooves simultaneously, rather than one at a time.

 

[VMI88]

Back to the OP, I think you could make a pretty reasonable argument that your musket is a Greenwood. Though I don't believe that there is any way to claim it with absolute certainty. Finding a 3rd class musket that was rifled is quite uncommon. The US Ordnance Department was supposed to hold 3rd class arms in reserve for emergency alteration and issue. This one being a cone-in-barrel alteration would point to the work of a National Armory or Arsenal, Greenwood, and perhaps Hitchcock (though his hammers have a different profile).

Thanks for this information. Between what you, James Brenner, and Rhea Cole have related, I'm gathering that rifled Model 1816 muskets are not very common due to the inherent safety concerns. Since this is a 3rd Class arm it probably wouldn't be the work of a National Armory. I appreciate all the time spent answering my questions!