Unmarked Whitneys

[BBurkett]

Display set up. Humble but hey, I'm a novice…

 

[Lanyard Puller]

Look forward to seeing you in Richmond {Doswell). I'll be Tim's unofficial "table watcher".

 

[BBurkett]

Look forward to seeing you in Richmond {Doswell). I'll be Tim's unofficial "table watcher".

Puller, are you a member of our FB musket group? If not, consider joining. A lot of big name dealers, collectors and long time historians are members. Please stop by and introduce yourself!

 

[Package4]

Look forward to seeing you in Richmond {Doswell). I'll be Tim's unofficial "table watcher".

Then what do we call Russell?

 

[Lanyard Puller]

"Grand Wizard of the Undecided"

 

[BBurkett]

Simply put, veterans purchased muskets in mass for various reunions and GAR parades, most of these came from Bannerman and Stokes Kirk. These were weapons that went home after purchase and not stored in a GAR Hall.

Get in touch with Yale and find out where the 1864 guns went, quit messing with collectors and supposition. I still contend that the goop on the inside of the lock was for sea service and these were Plymouth rejects. 1864 no states or governments needed rejects, Colt was having issues finding homes for perfectly good inspected and interchangeable muskets. There are so many 1864 perfectly conditioned Colts around today it's incredible; I have a completely unfired one with grease still in the nipple.

Since you have three of these, there is no doubt you want to justify what you paid, but sometimes you just can't fit that square peg into the round hole. I learned the hard way many years ago and jettisoned pieces that I just knew had a tremendous story, not......

Colt was having the issue because he (including Whitney) was using steel barrels imported from England long before it was accepted as standard practice. That's one reason Colt dumped 4000+ barrels on the market and Whitney being friends with him, Whitney snatched them up. Whitney wrote to Colt saying he'd take them, even though some were "short in the breech" and length. Those defects were utilized in his "flush plate derivative" musket and his 2nd Connecticut Contract. Evidently we here in the US at the time had not introduced the Bessemer process AND did not have sufficient quantity of good quality steel as the Brits had at their disposal.

 

[Rhea Cole]

There have been several references to "gages" in this informative thread.

Here is an example of the gages used for this French musket. Sorry about the image quality, best I could do under the circumstances. In any case, you cannot but be impressed at the precision with which these gages were made.

French Military Museum Paros

 

[vmicraig]

Last year I was able to pick up an unmarked musket, lock plate date 1864, utilizing a lot of condemned parts, ie: barrel, tang, stock, lockplate, etc. 2 weeks ago I procured a second from an astute dealer friend. This same pattern '61 with a stamped date was identical to the one I purchased earlier with exceptions of a Whitney '55 style open sight, no proofs on barrel. Last weekend, a major dealer had one for sale at the Richmond show in the same condition. The story on it matched the others, coming out of New England area, NY, Mass, Connecticut. My thoughts are that these were purchased by the states since they didn't gauge correctly as per Federal guidelines for contracts. I'm also thinking these were crated up and sold at one point after the Govt or state cleared their arsenals of muzzleloaders and they quickly went into private collections never to be seen again (or at least sparsely). Because of the old time collectors passing away, these are seeing daylight again. Any opinions from the fellas here on hypothesis?

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The original ghost guns