Brown Bess Photos?

[Artificer]

From a shooter's perspective, is the 46" barrel unwieldy compared to a 42" barrel?

No difference that I have ever noticed.

Thanks Mike, that's good info.

Gus

[Artificer]

They are quite nice... however I don't see any teethmarks on the lower buutt from buttstrokes during hand to hand bayonet fighting    

I couldn't find anyone around here to buttstroke to give  them authentic marks....any volunteers for my next one?

I almost inadvertently volunteered to leave teeth marks on a Brown Bess at Historic Fort Wayne in the 1970s when we had a War of 1812 special events weekend.

A Group of 40 hr a week paid volunteers who did British Military in Canada at one of their historic forts, came down for the weekend.  They were all college kids and they were VERY GOOD as British Soldiers.  MUCH better than our soldiers.  

There was no battle reenactment scheduled, but one just sort of "broke out" in the late afternoon on Saturday.  One of the British lads charged me  as with bayonet (though there was no bayonet on his musket) and I parried it and tapped him on the chest with the buttstock of my Charleville (I was doing Brush's Company of Militia).   Doing close combat in reenactments is NOT usually done unless it is well rehearsed and what I did was something that was normally done and he should have stopped.  Well, the lad was not deterred and he continued coming at me.  I parried two more thrusts and realized the lad was not thinking well and wasn't going to stop.  

Well, I didn't want to really hurt the lad as I was a Staff Sergeant of Marines on active duty and besides bayonet and pugil stick fighting, I had studied bayonet fighting.  So I decided to imitate militia some more and run into the fort.  He followed me and once again tried to use his musket.  I parried it and slammed him up against the wall of the fort until he calmed down.  To assuage his ego, I told him what an excellent job of depicting British Soldiers they were doing and how much better they looked than our soldiers.

We actually planned a small battle reenactment the next day, but NO hand to hand fighting was allowed.

Gus