I had a chance to shoot a Hall rifle a few days ago. Manufactured by North in 1833. Definitely an interesting rifle with some novel features. The gun is a 54 caliber breach loading flintlock and the breach assembly pivots up so that you can add powder and ball. Chamber actually takes about 100 grains of powder but I erred on the cautious side and only used 60 grains of 2F. The groove diameter is about .538 to .540 with 16 grooves. I was short of .540 balls so I took some .530 balls and gave them a judicious tap with a hammer, which expanded them to roughly .540. They seemed to be fairly accurate at 25 yards. Almost forgot; filled the gap with corn meal. The breach is restrained from backward thrust by shoulders on the breach assembly and matching ones on the inside of the frame. There is a metal plate under the breach - barrel seam to protect the stock from leaking gasses and when cleaning the gun, it is important to remove the barrel and receiver so that the plate can be cleaned. The gun does seem to be very sensitive to the length of the flint; too long the frizzen does not open, too short and the flint does not hit the frizzen. I think the reason is that in order to make a chamber that holds 100 grains of powder plus a ball, the arc of the flint #### is fairly short. Also because the flint mechanism is almost centered on the top of the barrel, the sights are off center. More or less that is not a problem although I did find the flint mechanism distracting to the sight picture. All in all, an interesting gun
