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A photo taken in the back of my car , I had to take the Musket to work with me since I picked it up at the shop on my way in.
I bought one of those "solder on Harper's Ferry" repro sights from S&S firearms. I've done way more reading about 1816 conversions than I'd ever have thought......
Numerous rear sights were used, when they were used, by the countless machine shops who converted 1816's in the 1850s. Whether they received rifling or not seemed irrelevant to whether they were sighted. It seemed more relevant whether the shop had sights and they just used them to satisfy the contract.
1855 style rear sights, H&P type sights, "Long Range" sights like the ones used on 1842 conversions were applied. Some were dovetailed and screwed on, many were simply soldered.
Since the facing of the sight didn't seem to matter and large batches were done with "backwards " 1855/1861 type leaf sights, and soldered on Long Range sights were applied based on, I guess, whichever way the shop worker applied them.... I didn't give the gunsmith direction on which way to apply it, just where I wanted it. He put it on backwards which is kinda what I wanted anyway, to give it some character and give it that "small shop conversion " feel to it. The range graduations on the sight don't matter since it's a smoothbore so I'm just using the lowest sight setting to help point the musket anyway.
I love how it looks, in my opinion the sight completes this Pedersoli conversion musket and gives it a little more historical accuracy. There might not have been conversions done with this exact type of sight and the Colt drum conversion but it's a repro, I'm willing to work with what I have and if its "Historically Possible " then it's good enough for me.
I need to try those Nessler balls through this now.