If I were asked to choose my favorite firearm among the many I own, there is no doubt I would instantly select my Model 1863 Springfield .58 caliber rifle musket. The gun and I, or at least parts of it, go back a long way. When I was a seventh grader in Newark, N.J., back in 1956, I badgered my father to take my friend Ron and me to New York City’s Polk’s Hobby Shop, an iconic model soldier store. After leaving Polk’s we were walking back up Broadway to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where my father had parked after driving in from New Jersey. Ron and I looked left and suddenly stopped. There, in a store window, was a uniform and a Gatling gun. It was the famed Bannerman’s military surplus nirvana.
After that fateful day Ron and I used to take a bus into New York City and walk down to Bannerman’s to rummage through
Est. 1999 New 20 th Anniversary Artillery Line
Custom and Historical Museum Quality Designs Officer, Infantry, Civilian and Collectibles
hundred-year-old leather goods, buying Civil War percussion cap boxes for forty cents and McKeever cartridge boxes with “NJ” brass plates for half a dollar. Bannerman’s had a bargain table, and one day I purchased, for a hefty three dollars, a M1863 rifle musket lock. I brought it home and kept it for over twenty years as a souvenir.
In the 1970s I worked part time in a sporting goods store, largely because it gave me the opportunity to buy guns, ammo, and fishing tackle at wholesale prices. Around that time, I learned that a guy named Mike Yeck was making stocks and barrels to original specifications for Springfield rifle muskets. I bought a barrel, ramrod, and stock from Yeck, picked up some additional original parts, including a butt plate, barrel bands, and screws, and voila, I had a complete gun.
I subsequently joined the 69th New York, a North-South Skirmish Association, team and shot thousands of rounds through my M1863 over twenty years, even picking up a few team medals over that time. I also took
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it hunting, and it accounted for three New Jersey deer. The gun is in semi-retirement now but holds an honored place in my home.
Last month I mentioned Eras Gone Bullet Molds, a small company dedicated to designing molds to reproduce original bullet configurations of the Civil War era. This month I am returning to the subject, as Eras Gone has announced a new bullet, a copy of the .54 caliber Richmond Sharps carbine design.
Eras Gone founder Mark Hubbs notes that there were thousands of Sharps carbines in Confederate hands at the start of the war, and that these were later supplemented by captures and production of a Confederate version of the classic firearm. These guns needed ammunition, and “the Confederate government was faced with production of its own ammunition…early CS Sharp cartridges were copies of the old ring tail bullet. As the war progressed, however, the Richmond Laboratories adopted more advanced projectiles.” The Eras Gone bullet is “the culmination of that development and is almost identical to the bullet produced by the English cartridge maker, Ely.” The mold is, as with all Eras Gone products, a double cavity one. The bullet it casts is .544. diameter and weighs 510 grains. Its long heel provides surface area for attaching a paper or linen cartridge tube. The original Confederate cartridge was paper with a folded tail.
The photos here, supplied by Eras Gone, show Confederate style cartridges with the Richmond Sharps bullet, made with a regulation sized trapezoid piece of paper and, once assembled, dipped in lubricant. Mark Hubbs says these cartridges “are amazingly easy to assemble. Much easier than a rifle musket cartridge.” He adds that he loads 45 grains of powder although the Ordnance manual calls for 50 grains and the result is a perfect fit in his Garrett reproduction, although he thinks a Pedersoli may permit a bigger charge.
There are lots of videos on YouTube and groups on Facebook. A number are useless, but some are excellent and well worth your attention. One of the latter is the “Rifle-Musket Shooters Club.” In a recent post on that site, John Holland wrote about shooting original Model 1816 muskets and the potential hazard of doing so.
I was immediately engaged, since the first musket I acquired, before the days of readily available reproductions, was a smoothbore M1816. I bought the gun at Karl Krueger’s little gun shop on Day Street in Orange, N.J., with money I earned by picking up and delivering laundry by bicycle for Frank Torchia’s laundry on 6th Avenue in Newark. I shot the gun regularly with no ill effects on either it or myself.
John, commenting on a recent discussion thread that discussed firing original M1816 muskets, noted, however, that “some M1816 Muskets are still being shot with live rounds. Just as a reminder for those who shoot these original U.S. M1816 Muskets: They all have a barrel that was made by wrapping and forge welding a piece of soft sheet iron around a mandrel. Therefore, all of these M1816 Musket barrels have a seam that can be of questionable integrity today some 170 years later.”
He added that “a large number of the M1816 Muskets were rifled prior to and early in the Civil War. When these rifled muskets are fired today with a Minie ball they will have a substantially higher breech & barrel pressure than with just a round ball, be it either a bare ball or patched,” which would potentially pose an additional problem He stated that he was aware of one such catastrophic failure that had injured a shooter.
So, what happened to my original M1816 musket? Well, while a senior in college I sold it for cash to take my girlfriend to her prom. I have not seen the musket or her since. There is a lesson there as well.