Hello there.
Mine is the shorter 33" barreled Fremont expedition version that Armisport produced.
Observed pro's and con's follow.
The barrels on the Armisport .69 caliber muskets are reported to vary quite a bit from gun to gun.
Mine is 0.6962" bore diameter and 0.7028" groove as best as I could measure, reaching as much barrel as available instrumentation would allow.
Those are bore mikes with three equally spaced points of contact.
The grooves are very shallow which really made me pull hair out trying to get it to shoot round ball. You're better off with a smooth bore than grooves that shallow! My best results are with 0.683" ball (not what it says on the mold blocks), a thin greasy patch and a shotgun fiber wad over the powder that has been soaked in melted lube. Won't bother getting into powder charges because your results will be different from mine, but mine are enough to make that waxy fiber wad function as a bore sealing sabot that transfers spin from that almost smooth bore to overcome the inertial resistance of that huge ball.
My barrel has a place inside the barrel by where the bayonet lug was brazed to the exterior where you can feel a little extra patch tightness. How much? Nada. But if you are very careful you can feel it.
The muzzle has a relatively thin wall thickness. If you want to shoot round ball in a muzzle loader then the thing to do is smooth the entrance into the rifling in order to make a tight patched ball go in easier, right? Uh uh. The thin wall makes that an iffy path.
The lock. Big. Powerful. Correct alignment. Never had a problem... well, except that time that I didn't realize that I'd left a screw not tight and couldn't figure out how come the trigger pull was getting so hard. But I figured it out, now the trigger pull is great. Have had no problems concerning parts hardness.
The stock is very nice wood. The stain on mine from the factory had to go. Gave me a case of shoeshine fingers every time I went shooting. So, I scrubbed down the stock with stain removing stuff (used some alcohol I think), left it air a week and went back with linseed. Now it doesn't rub off and I'm happy. Got no problems with fit of the barrel or furniture. The barrel bands are tight fit. When the interior spring loaded pin on the front band clicks into place it's a micro precision placement with tension applied just right to make it happen.
Besides round ball I have tried this home grown design paper patched projectile.
It's an old Lyman 57730 minie modified to have straight sides and adjustable plug to allow changing the length and weight.
So far when it works it works but I haven't managed to get all the bugs worked out of it. The projectile diameter is perfectly sized to create a nice tight fit to the bore when paper patched. Ok great. But, the paper has not previously been compressed. I suspect the process of compressing the paper with pressure from the powder charge introduces a point of variation, like you were shooting a minie that was just not quite as large as it really should be.
This is a Lyman 68569 minie mold that duplicates some of the .69 caliber minies recovered from Civil War battlefields. The mold has been modified to have an enlarged and captive plug.
It is too small for my barrel and just might get the bands enlarged in the near future. What a hunk. Looks like a partizan with babushka wrapped around her face should be firing it at a panzer.
I want to try it out because it will be interesting to understand what was really used a century and a half ago.
The hole communicating from the barrel to the chamber beneath nipple is a little narrow. Not narrow for black but narrow for some subs. Had some Pioneer powder that I tried in it years ago. Every third shot required the nipple to be pulled because of build up in this area. I haven't opened up the hole leading into the barrel because working around the nipple hole threads just gives me a case of the hinkies. I don't want to go there and it works great with black the way it is.
The sights are great. The tight barrel to band to stock fit on mine means I don't have to worry (so far) about changes in windage. Stuck a thin wafer magnet under the rear ladder when it's laying flat to get the elevation to be where I wanted mine to be. You can't even see the wafer is there and it didn't require any mods to the hardware.
Over all, it's a nicely designed musket. Recently put a leather sling on it that duplicates the originals. And I really, really need to find time to go hunting.
