OK I have the rifle in my gun safe pending its sale. Its about 38 caliber at the muzzle 40" barrel fairly long breech tang with two screws. Will take some better photos and post them. Rifle appears to have a period replacement set of triggers, they were obviously on another rifle at some time and do not fit the stock well. They work well. Given the quality of the rest of the stock work I doubt this was done by Bettis. The lock is full cock only as I would expect and is also functional. The nipple is a fairly recent addition while it matches the the drum in color it is modern in form and other than the coloring etc could have come in the mail last week.
The buttstock still has pretty good condition darkened oil varnish in the low wear areas. Under the varnish are a lot of tool marks. Scrapers and maybe some file marks. The scrapers were coarsely sharpened. Toothed almost. I am sure these are from original construction then varnished over with a viscous varnish that would make them less obvious.
Overall this is a nice old rifle with good shaping and nice lines for the most part. The ramrod hole was drilled either with the barrel out of the stock or before it was installed and while it wandered it did not break out until the forearm was struck and a small hole broken into the rod hole a few inches.
Inletting that has not been damaged by subsequent "work" is very good to excellent. The brass parts still all fit very nice to excellent. Since the rifle was made in Georgia, was last purchased in Oklahoma and is now in Montana it bears witness to the quality and aging of the wood and to the skill of the maker. Wood is curly maple which I assume is sugar maple.
This is a dandy old rifle with very well worn rifling at the muzzle. It also shows that the ML rifle was alive and well in the 1870s-80s and still saw a lot of use. They were highly effective hunting arms and were much cheaper to use than the common, by the 1870s, breechloader.
Interestingly there is a plugged hole over the barrel pin where the drill wandered. Its a wonderful insight into the gunmaking trade where even today with all our modern gadgets such things still occur and I can see the maker grouching about it as I have at times.
The trigger guard in nearly identical form is found on Nelson Lewis rifles in the North East to Bach in California. It appears, in iron or other metal, on a number of rifles in "The American Percussion Schuetzen Rifle". These rifles were all made in the same time frame and this part surely came from a catalog which were very common by this time.
Dan
