1863 London Armory

S

SlappaDaBass

New member
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Hey Guys,

Brand new to the forum so I'm not 100% if this is the right spot to post this, but I've got an old London Armory Rifle that I know next to nothing about. I would very much like to restore it to a much nicer condition if anyone has any tips or resources they could point me towards. My largest concern is the missing chunk of the stock if anyone has some advice on the best way to approach this kind of repair. Thanks for any help.









 
Hi welcome to the forums! You have posted in the right place.

That's a nice snider you have there, it looks complete from the pictures. To get the rust off the metal there's 2 ways I've done this. The first is putting the small parts in my brass tumbler which gentally polished the rust off but wont hurt the metal. If the parts are too big or you don't have a tumbler, what I do is use some fine steel wool and some gun oil and very gentally polish off the rust. I use oil cause it takes away a lot of the abrasiveness of the wool and protects the parts.

Now as for the wood, it's broken in a relatively easy place to repair. I just did a rather involved wood repair to a carcano and it turned out very nice, I'll be posting pics in the milsurp forum later this week.

How I would fix that break is I would first find a suitable piece of wood to try and match the color of the original stock, but if you can't match it you can alway stain the repair after. Then I would cut off the broken area carefully with a hack saw or band saw. Then mark and drill corresponding holes in the stock and new piece, being very carful not to drill too deep as you don't want the pins you will be inserting in the holes to poke through the repair.

Then get some non shrinking epoxy and glue and clamp the whole thing together making sure the end grain is the part that will end up behind the butt plate. Glue in small brass nails into the holes drilled in both the stock and repair piece. Then carve and shape the piece til it's close and finish with sand paper. Stain and oil to match.

Sounds like a lot of work, and it is but nothing is more rewarding then repairing an old rifle!

Hope this helps, I'm no expert and immsure others will be along to post more detailed info on resto and repair.
 
Last edited:
Thanks very much, that is hugely helpful info for me, and actually doesn't seem as complicated as I thought it may be. Is there a chance you might know what type of wood these stocks were originally made with?
 
Hi, I use extra fine steel wool- but I do it dry. No oil, I'm an amateur machinist and I fear the oil may cut to much. (Like cutting oil taking up the rust and forming a grinding compound) Just my quirk. I polish the area with the wool wipe clean with dry cloth then wipe with oil soaked rag once finished.

You can make cartridges from 24 gauge shotgun shells- with the plastic ones cut them down to two inches.
You can get brass ones from Will Bilozir at bilozir.net (south of Edmonton)
2.5 inches long- cut them to 2 inches, load with 60 grains ffg. They use a large pistol primer. You'll need to take up some internal space in the case because they are ALL too big.Original factory ammo had a paper-and-shellac sleeve inside, .030" thick and 1-1/4 inches long; the modern guys will tell you to use a cotton-ball to take up the space. LEE Precision makes a set of Snider loading dies, sell for $120 in Canada but FSReloading has them for about $90. For a bullet, start with a .578 Minie type and use pure lead.

1863- yours is an early one, mine is 1862.


Welcome to the world of Sniders, These are great rifles. The fist center-fire military rifle- the one that started it all.
jan,
 
Last edited:
Thanks twostream, I've never done any reloading so that'll be something interesting to try when I get this rifle functional. Thanks Tinman, I'll keep my eyes open for some of that wood.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom