new find

[mainiac]

Just picked up a rifle in really good condition. Half stock kentucky type,with steel underlug,a very tight .40 bore(possibly 38-39),,no maker marks anywhere,except on the lock it has,"H PRATT',,want to know more about this gun.Will have to try to post some pics,,if i can figure it out.
Barrell is hook breached,31.5 inches long,,tapers from .900 at breach,to .860 at muzzle.Think the wood is walnut,but is hard to tell with all the black covering the grain.Am gonna try to clean it up a little.

Could you fellers tell me anything about this gun,or at least about the pratt lock?Thanks,,,,,

[mainiac]

heres one pic....

[mainiac]

and another,,,,

[JV Puleo]

NE rifle by Massachusetts maker Henry Pratt. He had a very long career beginning around the War of 1812 and ending after the Civil War. I think he was born in 1787 and died around 1867/68. His brother, Alvin Pratt, was also a well known NE maker and also very long lived. The lock is typical of his percussion guns made around the mid 1830s although it is very unusual to have his name on the lock, usually it is etched on the top of the barrel. I have two of his rifles, one flint and the other quite late and percussion. I've also had at least two more - again one converted from flint and a percussion militia rifle, with a lock almost identical to the one you show here. The percussion militia rifle had to pre-date 1842 since that was the year that the enrolled militia was replaced by the volunteer militia, the requirement that everyone supply his own gun was allowed to lapse and the State undertook to arm the militia with arms in storage supplied under the various militia acts.

Thats a very nice rifle... I'd have gone for it in a heartbeat.

[mainiac]

Thank you very much for the info. Ol henry sure knew how to inlet metal into steel!!! First class workmanship.

Any way you could give a wild guess on the rifles value??

[Curt Larsen]

That patchbox clearly looks like New England.  I have a similar lock marked J. Dana & Co, Warranted.  I assume that this is about the same vintage.  I would guess New york for a Dana but I'm not sure.

[Roger Fisher]

Take it for what it's worth; I would not 'clean' it up

[JV Puleo]

Dana is a Massachusetts maker also. I've had several of his militia muskets, also marked with his name which is (as in the case of the Pratt rifle above) really quite unusual for a NE maker. I don't believe any of them actually made the locks, which is why its so unusual to see their names on them. In the case of the British made locks, they are believed to have been imported fully shaped and case hardened which is a good reason why the names seldom appear on them. "Lane & Read" or "Wm Reade & Sons" is much more common and has no significance as to maker because they were big hardware & sporting goods dealers. I have a H. Pratt rifle by me now of about the same period as the one shown here and it has a lock marked "William Reade / Boston." In the case of Reade, the company name changed several times so the marking is useful for general dating.

I am not entirely about Belgian made locks, which are probably all post 1816 and most that I've see are percussion. I had a new, unused Belgian percussion lock many years ago but gave it away... foolish I suppose, because now I would love to be able to test it to see if it came in hardened.

[mainiac]

Im thinking that this barrell isnt the original barrell to this gun.The bore is in very nice shape,smooth,and bright. I pulled the breechplug,and it looks very nice,threads are nice a sharp,and clean/shiney.

As soon as i can find the right size ball,im gonna shoot this old jewel.Think im gonna need a .375 ball.....

Hope i dont need a new nipple,as this one is pretty much non-standard.It is .275 diameter od,across the threads,,,

[JV Puleo]

Of course I haven't seen it so this is a shot in the dark but the condition you describe isn't all that unusual on NE guns and its what I would expect from that one. (I've been actively looking at and collecting them for 40 years). It probably has hardly ever been shot. Percussion NE rifles are almost always between .38 and .42 caliber - nominal "40s" suitable for both hunting and target work although in Massachusetts even the deer were mostly gone by about 1810. Quite a good part of Ned Roberts memoir, the Muzzleloading Caplock Rifle, is about farm life in northern Massachusetts in the 1870s and is devoted to hunting bear in New Hampshire... he uses a .42 caliber double rifle and his uncle uses a .45 caliber double rifle, both firing "picket" or "sugarloaf" bullets. The second shot was much more important than a knockdown 1st shot. Actually, the use of large bore guns (bigger than .45) for hunting is very much a product of recent magazine writers and modern muzzleloading "lore" - much smaller calibers were commonly used in the 19th century and, more important, bores larger than .48 are almost unknown on surviving examples of percussion rifles from either New England or New York.

Earlier, flint NE rifles are almost always .52 to .56 caliber (a nominal .54 to use government ammunition) because they were nearly all carried by members of volunteer militia rifle companies. A few (I have one) are much bigger - around .65 to use musket balls. Flint disappeared at almost the the exact time that the state undertook to provide arms to the militia. After that, rifles were purely civilian items and the bore size was immediately reduced.

One of my rifles is a .54 caliber NE flint (converted) with straight grooves. It looks very good good (although very plain)... when I unbreached it to look at the bore I discovered it was virtually unfired. Also, NE was the birthplace of machine tools and machine technology. Think "silicon valley" of the 19th century. You can expect to see much more "modern" looking work much earlier in NE guns.

[mainiac]

Thanks for the info!!!!
Do you suppose this barrell was handmade by the builder,or was factory barrells available,by this time??

Is there anyway at all to tell who made the barrell,maybe bt rifiling styles??

Also, it is 31.5 inches long,,,does that sound common to you?  thank you,,,,,

[JV Puleo]

The maker certainly didn't make the barrel. There is some question if any NE maker ever made a barrel or a lock. Its a matter of dispute in some quarters but I come down on the side of purchased out... The locks are all imported and the overwhelming majority are English-made though some Belgian locks did come in during the percussion period. I saw one only last week with a spurious British maker's name on it. The barrels, if made locally, were made from imported metal. The "cast steel" that Remington made famous was an English product - no American company was able to equal the English quantity or quality until the 1870s, well after muzzleloaders were on their way out. (They were certainly still in use, but I suspect that not many new ones were being made.) Personally, I suspect that all of the locks and most of the barrels and hardware were imported going back to before the War of 1812 and (as far as barrels go) that this situation continued until at least the late 1830s when Remington and a couple of their competitors entered the "gunmaker supply" business. This would go a long way to explaining the strange uniformity of NE rifles between many different makers. But, that is a theory yet to be proved, though I am working on it.

I have a .50 caliber barrel from what must have been an exceptional English-made half-stock rifle. It tapers from about 1 1/4" at the breech to abut 7/8" at the muzzle - with platinum bands and a beautiful hooked patent breech. It could easily be contemporaneous with your rifle. Engraved on the top flat is "Lane & Read, Boston Massachusetts" - on the bottom are B'ham proof marks. I'm certain the entire rifle was B'ham made and the name added for the retailer.