The interesting thing about these guns is how close they were getting to parts interchangeability. A friend called me one day and asked if I would come over and look at a French musket he had just purchased. He had stopped at a gun show in Marin County on Super Bowl Sunday, and bought it for cheap from a vendor that needed gas money. It was a compilation of French musket parts ranging from 1757 to 1777. The more I looked at it the more I came to believe it was not a new assembly. It had no modern material, or signs of modern tools. It’s lock was a 1757 flat plate,with a goose neck cock, and a brass pan, marked Meubeuge. The barrel appeared to have been shortened to carbine length, but on close inspection, showed no signs of having been shortened, and had a wedding band hiding under one of the barrel bands. The barrel bands all used the later step springs, but some bands had holes for the earlier pin versions. The stock was a much later stock than the lock, and had small wood fillers around the buttplate tang, and the barrel tang as well, both having lost small pieces over time. The touch hole, and the bottom of the pan didn’t line up, so the smith simply filed a notch down to the touch hole. I would love to see what kind of ignition time this thing had. My point is there were no doubt many muskets assembled from random parts, either procured from France, or scavenged from the battlefield.
Hungry Horse
