Numrich Arms Muniteman 45 cal.

[Urban Coyote]

I've never seen a hard copy of the Minuteman rifle but as a youth I yearned long and hard for one with each annual edition of Gun Digest. This was long before guns like the T/C Hawken hit the market. A T/C Hawken would become my first muzzleloader, I still have it 47 years later.

In the early 1980's I lived across the street from gun builder Joe Corely. Joe and his wife Pat were wonderful people and I'm fortunate enough to have three guns built by him. Anyway, as I recall Joe though the lock mechanisms of the Numrich Arms Minuteman left much to be desired and while I can't recall the specifics I do believe he'd told me about rebuilding the lock on a number of these guns.

I'd be curious to know what experience others have had with the locks on these guns.

 

[rickystl]

I'm recalling some more about these guns. I remember the flintlock locks were a real problem for most. In fact, for a short while during the 1970's they offered a replacement lock based on their own Dixie lock that was basically a drop-in replacement. This seemed to solve the problem.
The percussion variations seemed more reliable. And I remember they came out with a half-stock variation for the percussion model for a short time. Can't remember if it also retained the patch box ? They likely came out with this variation during the early Hawken craze in the 70's.

Rick