Guy, the nosecap is a piece of sheet iron bent around the stock. The end is filled with lead, which also flowed into a couple of holes at 4 and 8 o'clock on the sheet metal to hold it in place.
On another note, I got to digging around in a box of m/l parts and found a bag of lock parts that I had forgotten about. According to my daughter, since my hair has gone silver blond (not gray) I can now have blond moments instead of senior ones. At any rate, I had pulled the lockplate off of the rifle, and looking at the contents of the bag, found that the bridle and plate wear matching numbers, and the mainspring, sear spring, sear and a couple of screws also match up to the plate. I'll have to make a tumbler, or sleeve one to fit the 3/8" hole in the plate, and I have a blank hammer from that box that will work.
I pulled the barrel from the stock and ran some Kroil down the bore to help loosen any interior rust. After a couple of minutes, I noticed that it was leaking out of the breechplug thread area, and was able to pull the plug with finger pressure only. Not good! The drum appears to be in tight, but the nipple is battered and rusted in place. Oh, yeah, the bore is going to be very shootable!
Guy, the tang inletting shows no signs of having been redone. The inletting is shallow to match the tang, and there are no extra chisel marks that would indicate either a shorter or narrower tang had been there.
More later,
David
