• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades

1862 Tower

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Kelpie

32 Cal
Joined
Feb 10, 2021
Messages
5
Reaction score
1
Hey All,
So this looks like an old Civil War gun that was hacked to death sometime after the war. I found it disassembled in my mother in law's basement. Looks like some bloke turned it into a carbine or maybe a shotgun. Sad to see.
 

Attachments

  • 20180630_125433.jpg
    20180630_125433.jpg
    133.9 KB · Views: 128
  • 20180630_125442.jpg
    20180630_125442.jpg
    119.7 KB · Views: 127
If the bore is ok, it may be a great shooter! Failing that, it is definitely worth something for the parts.
 
It looks like a Bannerman's special. His company bought hundreds of CW firearms and made slight modifications to the barrel and stocks.
Sold many of them as smoothbore shotguns like the one in the pictures.
Not any real collector value but they are a part of American history.
 
Think I may work on making a rifle, but not sure. There is a stamp on the buttstock that reads something like

W&C Scott
...ERS
...TH St
Birmingham.
But I cannot read all the characters.

The inside of the lockplate is stamped
JD W&CS
 
I have an otherwise unmessed with P53 that was bored to a shotgun. According to the story it was brought home by a Confederate soldier then turned into a bird gun. For about $800, 10 years ago, I figured I'd buy the Story and the Gun since it's a real P53, and I gave it to my Dad as a wall hanger.

Any thoughts I had of having it relined went away after I found a few Parker Hales.

If you look around, MAYBE you can turn up a Parker Hale musketoon barrel and a EuroArms stock w/metal and use the original lock. Otherwise it's basically a wallhanger.
 
I looked up the information about the stamp on the stock, and its from Webley and Scott in Birmingham, UK. I doubt this was ever a civil war rifle, but an old Enfield that was modified overseas. The barrel has been bored out.
 
Why not just send it to Bobby Hoyt to see how safe it is to shoot as it currently is, and if it needs work, then decide what to do.

For myself, everytime I read one of these discussions where people recommend to take a weapon that has been HONESTLY reworked into something other than what it was when it came out of the manufacturers shop, and to return it to its original specifications; I can't help but think that they are recommending for someone to create an "honest fake". Because, even if the person today attempts to put distinguishing marks on it to prevent the weapon from being identified as a whole original, at some point in the future, an unscrupulous person will probably be tempted to sell it as a fake.

Left alone, it lives on honestly as what it truly is. A Civil War era percussion rifle that has been shortened & bored out to become a smoothbore. Whether this work was done in the 19th Century by a gunsmith for the local trade, or by some firm like Bannerman's in the 20th Century for the burgeoning, rebirth of muzzleloading here in the United States, to me makes little difference. It was honest work performed by honest tradesmen, for sale to people looking for a honest, low cost shotgun that could get the job done.

I think the gun has a simple beauty, similar to an English shotgun, and probably handles reasonably well.

Edit:
Not every surviving example of a firearm that was manufactured in whatever era, needs to be in pristine condition, nor looking exactly like an original. Honest wear & tear, coupled with the vagaries of whatever man & time has inflicted upon it, is what makes our sport so interesting.

Just like Joe Bonamassa wants all of his road guitars to have a story behind them, instead of being pristine examples that got purchased & stuck under someone's bed for 40-50 years; I think that guns like the one in the OP are far more interesting & important, than a high dollar collector's version of the same gun. ESPECIALLY, if there's a documented story behind it.
 
Last edited:
it is a piece of history. it was done a very long time ago, to serve a function. so why not leave it as is? jmho.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top