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S & S firearms sells brassware for the M1855 Rifleman's belt in their catalog (p. 67) for $35. Has anyone out there had experience with using it? S&S can be hit or miss on some of their items.
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Re: Hardware for the 1855 Rifleman's Belt
Howdy Rob,
There are two varieties of repros that I know of, the other repro being a very inferior Indian/Paki version. The S&S one is by far the better of the two.
I bought a couple of S&S's Rifleman's buckle and slider sets a few years back. Perhaps the product has changed since that time, but here's how their hardware stacked up against a very sample of 5 originals that I had access to:
1. The sliders (don't know the proper name for them -- I'm talking about the two slotted brass bars that have the connection points for the knapsack hooks in the top of them) are pretty good copies. Cast brass, proper size and shape.
2. Both ends of the repro buckle have vertical bends that throw the outer edges away from the wearer. The originals that I looked at are somewhat flatter than the repros. This can be corrected, of course, with a soft mallet and a couple pieces of wood.
3. The repro buckles are "built up" from components cut and formed from sheet stock, all parts being soldered together. All the original sets I looked at had at least one major part that was cast, usually the body of the hook half, and sometimes the bodies of both hook and clasp parts.
Again, my comments above are based on my observations of a very small sample of originals. In addition, there was quite a large amount of variation in even *that* group. They varied in size, shape of the sliders (square hole, d-shaped hole, round hole, oval hole) the patterns of the buckles, and even the material (red brass, yellow brass). There doesn't seem to be a "standard pattern." In short, I wouldn't be overly surprised if, somewhere, there is an original rifleman buckle that is a closer match to the S&S repros.
In my experience, the hardest thing to find if you are planning to copy the rifleman's rig is the proper little horseshoe-shaped buckle that gets sewn to the frog.
I think I still have one of S&S's sets hiding somewhere around back home. If you want some pics, I could post or send you some.
John Tobey
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