help identifying this musket

[kentop]

Hi, The great guys over at MyArmory.com have been helping me try to identify this rifle. They referred me over to you.  Here is my original post:

Hi everyone. My doctor has this old flintlock that he says is a revolutionary war flintlock given to him by one of his patients who pickedgrov it up a long time ago back east. To me it looks like a contract rifle. let me know what you guys think. The barrel is at least 42 inches long. It is swamped and has odd looking seven groove rifeling that only goes into the barrel about 1 to 2 inches. The pan is pitted from use and the frizzen is worn. The cock is flat with a beveled edge. there is a name engraved just to the right of the base of the cock (where a crown would be on a brown bess) that says "S Johnson". There's no date on the buttstock but this is the most worn part and pretty rusted. The barrel is pinned to the stock with round pins. The cleaning rod is all wood, tapers outwards and has a pigtail cleaning jag on the other end. The cleaning rod is "two toned". The exposed part of the rod is dark and the unexposed part is much lighter in color. Almost as if someone stained it while it was still in the stock. But it's probably just patination. You can see a gap between the lockplate and the stock on the lower left hand side of the stockplate. The trigger looks a lot older and more fragile than the rest of the gun, but seems "right" to me. The trigger plate is hand forged and is pointed on both ends with a wide area over the trigger. The neck is round, not oval, and the whole gun is in very good shape except for the rusty buttplate that has actually rusted through to the wood. Can anyone help me with this rifle? Especially that odd rifling? Is it worth getting it appraised?

I've got high res pics of the gun plus measurements. First off, I looked down the barrel with my trusty Hoppes bore light and found that the "rifling" goes down only about 1 inch! The rifling then becomes shallower and melds perfectly with a smooth bore after that. The grooves look just as old as the barrel. Here are the dimensions: 50" from the end of the barrel tang to the muzzle. 47 1/2" from breech to muzzle. The lock plate is 5 1/2" long. The entire rifle is 63 1/2" from muzzle to buttstock. The bore is 5/8" wide from peak to peak (not valley to valley), which I make out to be about .62 caliber. The barrel is swamped and it looks like it has an octogon breech that tapers very rapidly to a round barrel.

Stay tuned for more high res pics. One other note. This gun was purchased at a Minnesota gun show back in the forties.

[Mike Brooks]

I just posted my opinion of this gun over on the Muzzle Loading Forum. I forgot to add that it has a Brown Bess side plate. ...pretty obvious but just in case you didn't know.

[Dan'l 1946]

The lock appears to be a poor fit in the mortise. Is it a later replacement or just the way the light is striking the piece?
                                                                Dan

[Mike Brooks]

It is a poor fit. It is a french lock so it could be legit for this gun. Years of taking the lock in and out could have wallered out the mortice to it's present size. But then again, it could be a replacement put on it anytime in the past 200 years or so. The pan lines up nicely to the touch hole which leans me towards it being the original lock.

[Michael]

Trade Gun/ Restock/ Parts Gun??

Michael

[RobertS]

I am naive about these things, but what is it about that lock that implies it is French?  (All jokes about the French aside!)  To my untrained eye, my first impression was that it looks a lot like a Siler, which would have made me think Germanic, as that is what I have read before on this forum. 

[kentop]

It very well could be a germanic lock. But a 1717 or 1728 french military musket has a lock similar to this musket's lock. The barrel and stock have a lot of similarities too.

Here's a replica of a 1717 french musket:

http://www.militaryheritage.com/images/1717_1.jpg

[JV Puleo]

This is a perfectly good, and very typical assembled NE musket using a side plate from a Long Land Pattern musket and the barrel and lock from a 1728 or 1742 French musket. It probably dates between 1765 and 1785 - it could be later but I think it is one of the unusual "Revolutionary" assembled muskets that is actually old enough to have been around at the time of the Revolution.
The name on the lock and the false rifling at the muzzle are almost certainly the result of it being "doctored" back in the 1930s or early 40s by one of the dealers who specialized in putting the names of known makers on otherwise genuine unmarked guns. The name on the lockplate refers to a supposed "Committee of Safety" gunsmith from Rutland, Mass. Unfortunately I think that the faker may have cut about 3 inches off the barrel in order to get enough thickness to file his dopey false rifling - which is why it no longer has a bayonet lug or enough length ahead of the stock to accept a bayonet. The result is that the gun appears to be a fowler, not a musket which, of course, negates the whole idea of a "Committee of Safety" musket. If the nitwit had just settled for the lock marking and not tried to make a "rifle" out of it the result would not have been as obviously bad.

Altogether a perfectly good American musket/fowler showing the ill effects of greed and the fraud.
Its been discussed at some length over on the Muzzleloading forum.

Joe Puleo

[GrampaJack]

Joe, what is the "muzzleloading forum" you refer to? I'm always looking for different sources of information and I'm not sure where this forum is. Thanks, Jack

[JV Puleo]

I'm not sure what the protocol is here regarding listing other forums, possibly construed as competing (although the focus is very different) so I'll suggest you just google "muzzle loading forum" as one word. That should get you there.

Joe Puleo

[oakridge]

http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/

[JV Puleo]

By the way, Mike Brooks makes a very good point above that is almost always missed by all but experienced collectors. When a lock was replaced in period the touch hole and pan invariably line up correctly no matter how arkward the rest of the inlet looks. They were, after all, interested in function, not appearance.

When is lock is a modern replacement it is almost always lined up as best it can be with the inlet and the pan/touch hole relationship can be way off since the modern faker is working on appearance and often knows nothing about function.

This is, however, a sort of negative proof. Most British export locks were made to standard patterns and sizes as were military locks so if a gun was fitted with a 1728 pattern French lock, another lock of the same pattern will likely come very close. I have the wreck of a very long fowler (51" barrel) that almost certainly had a lock from a 1717 French musket at one time. The gentleman who gave it to me had a loose 1717 lock that fit the mortise almost perfectly but unquestionably did not come from the gun.

The most telling thing to look at is the relationship between the pan and the touch hole. If the touch hole is far at the bottom of the pan or stuck off in the front or back corner you can be pretty darn sure the lock has been fooled with or replaced after its working life was over.

Joe Puleo

[GrampaJack]

I found the muzzleloading forum, thanks everyone for the link. Jack