Metal Finish for Mississippi Rifle

[adamandnicole]

I have a .58 cal Mississippi rifle that I had converted to a Harper's Ferry model with the shortened nose cone,bayonet lug and ladder type site by James River Armory a few years back. They did great work, but two items from the defarb concern me. 1. the finish was left bright on the barrel 2. the ramrod supplied was the brass tipped style. I was told by John Zimmerman that the finish should be browned, but Mark from James River said they were left bright. As for the ramrod, the m1841 pictured in EOG and another Harper's Ferry conversion that I saw at the Union Drummer Boy both have the brass tipped ramrods, but I've read elsewhere that they should be the tulip headed steel versions. Does anyone have any concrete answers for either of these questions?

Thank you,

Adam Dickerson

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Metal Finish for Mississippi Rifle

Hallo!

In brief and to over generalize...

Precise documentation is lacking...

NUG, the altered M1841's were struck bright to make them on par with the M1855 Rifles. (This is a bit complicated due to the lack of documentation as to what was done at the (limited) time that the M1855 Rifles initially had browned barrels. I believe few or none though as the majority of the work was done either before 1857 or after...)

IMHO, lads are seeing 150 plus years of patina brown, and want to make it a browned barrel. To date, I have never encountered an altered M1841 with a browned barrel.

Altered M1841's will either have the M1841 brass tipped trumpet shaped ramrods OR those replaced/redone with tulip headed .58 versions. That is also comlpicated by owners, collectors, and dealers replacing missing alteration ramrods with the trumpet M1841 ramrods.
My opinion is that, in the absence of evidence, that sometimes alteration contractors shaved, er saved, a little time and expense off the process by not replacing the ramrods. ideally, one would want a recessed or concave tipped "tulip" headed ramrod, for Minie bulelts, but if the inspectors were not fussing about the ramrod, why bother.

;) :)

Herr Zimmerman can be be.. well.. he likes to focus on the heat colored "blue" (black) screws found on some armory guns, that somehow were not struck bright with the rest of the gun- still a mystery today. He (often) makes all of his screws and barrel band springs colored. He also does, or used to, to blue the ramrods on P1853 Enfields.

Curt