- Joined
- Feb 20, 2005
- Location
- South of the North 40
Have you ever wondered what kind of tools it takes to keep a musket or rifle in the field? The mainspring along with the nipple were two fairly common breakages on a musket. As a result there were ample spare parts as well as the right men having access to the right tools to bring a weapon back on line in as short a time as possible.
The small hand held spring vise pictured above made replacing the mainspring a matter of a few minutes. Simple, robust and effective it was a tool that worked and worked well. If you have the proper tool the job is never a job but often a small bit of joy.
The reality is that it really takes little more than the two tools you see above, hot water and a bit of sweet oil to keep a weapon in good order. These tools can easily be kept in the implement pouch of the cartridge box. The wrench is used to remove the nipple for cleaning or as a mainspring vice if you need to do some work on the lock internals. The three turnscrews will work on all the various screws holding a rifle musket together. The worm is easily threaded onto the ramrod with a scrap of cloth or some tow threaded into the teeth. Combine with some boiled water to pour down the barrel and cleaning of fouling is quite easy. Then a few drops of oil on the moving parts and she is ready for service. If it takes a man more than twenty minutes to clean his arm he has a problem and more often than not that problem is of his own making. The kind of problem I or any other sergeant is quick to notice.
There is no excuse for a dirty weapon, none. A soldier trusts his weapon to keep him through the worst times. She had best be clean, serviceable and ready for use. If not that soldier will be noticed by a good sergeant and that good sergeant will rectify the situation in a very loud and notable manner.
The British have a well earned reputation for quality hand tools. This extends to the musket tools they issue to their soldiers. When we took Vicksburg large numbers of British made P53 Enfields were absorbed into Grant's Army. A few made it into our regiment for a while but we opted to keep our M1841 rifles as most thought them as good if not superior to the English offering.
I had the opportunity to see some of these musket tools and thought them a quality tool. The one I was handed was of superb quality with tools that were quite useful when dealing with any Enfield pattern arm. Though experience with the hand made nature of most of the Enfield pattern arms showed me that the threads on ramrods were not always consistent and the worm and ball puller did not fit every ramrod.
During the course of the war I handled at least four different version of this tool. The two versions of the Sergeant's tool were the more complete and generally of better quality. The Sergeant's tool had a removable handle that when paired with the ramrod gave considerable leverage on a ramrod, an oiler, oil bottle, worm, turn screw, ball puller, mainspring vise and nipple wrench as well as a nipple pick. The various privates tools lacked several aspects of the Sergeant's tool but were serviceable.
I found the US M1855 musket tool with it's three turn screws, nipple wrench and mainspring vise to be every bit as useful and considerably lighter and simpler to use. But it required me to also carry a ball puller, worm and oiler as well in a small leather bag. They weren't all contained in one tool. The advantage was that they seemed more robust and had to have cost considerably less to manufacture.
I am a simple man and generally prefer simple things to the more complicated. That said the British Sergeant's tool had almost everything needed to service and repair a rifle in the field in one compact package. I saw a good number of them during the war and as they were good quality tools I expect many made their way home with soldiers of each army as a small keepsake that was also useful with their own civilian arms.
The tools that came in the patch box of my M1841.
The tools of the Lorenz Rifle Musket.
By the end of the war I had collected quite a collection of assorted musket tools and managed to keep a small box of them. They were small and useful. I think today I have perhaps twenty in my box of gunsmithing tools. There are times when the tool designed for the job is superior to other offerings.
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