I have been restoring a Westley Richards monkey tail carbine over the last little while. Its been a rather challenging experience but also learned a lot about the guns.
I am nearing completion and remain baffled why the gun was ever made for so long. The gun was developed by W R around 1858 near the end of the muzzle loading era. They apparently were made as late as 1878 as well as adapted to shoot centerfire cartridges
The gun is a breach loading muzzle loader in the sense that it took a
paper cartridge loaded into the breach but was fired with a sort of
musket cap. The breach was sealed with a felt washer held in place by a
brass plug. The sort of musket cap refers to the fact that ordinary
musket caps would not reliably burn through the paper cartridge so a
special high power one was used. The gun could also be muzzle loaded
using a felt washer as a seal.
This one I am guessing had some combustible paper left in the barrel
and had two large bulges and splits up near the muzzle. Those I heated
red hot and hammered down using a swage block then welded up the splits
followed by drilling the barrel out and soldering a liner inside. You
will see in the photo links that I pulled a series of D bits through the
barrel to do the drilling.
The stock turned out to be from a different and probably much later
gun. For some reason a big chunk was missing from around the reciever
so that got rebuilt. The barrel that I had was .080" larger than the
one that came out of the stock, so lots of further inletting.
I took the gun up to the range to sight it in; loaded a 420 gr 45-70
slug lubed with bear grease and bees wax into the barrel then 50 grains
of 3F followed by a wad punched from a 1/2 thickness of muzzle loading
shotgun wad and fired with a musket cap. There was surprising little
recoil and the gun so far shoots consistently to the same spot at 25 yds.
HOWEVER there are some drawbacks; originally you were supposed to push
the felt wad down the barrel with the next bullet; I didn't like that
so I pushed it back with a ramrod; trouble is that if any significant
residue is left it jams the breach. Also during cleaning water is able
to leak through a hole in the reciever and soak under the barrel
staining the wood and rusting the metal. It is also slightly awkward to
load from the breach although if you were bouncing around on a horse
(think cavalry) it was probably easier than loading from the muzzle.
The gun is an example of the transition between muzzle loaders and
cartridge guns. In one sense it is better than the percussion Sharp's
in that the breach seems to seal better although I have never actually
shot a perc Sharp's. On the other hand the Sharp's is far better
designed relative to keeping fouling away from the lock work and for
cleaning and loading.
Interesting to speculate if Springfield armory was familiar with the
gun when they developed the trapdoor which was originally a modified
percussion Springfield. Also interesting in that the gun is somewhat
midrange in power between the first cartridges and true muzzle loaders.
Remember that the Springfield used a .58 cal minie and I think roughly
75 grains of powder while things like the Henry and the Spencer had very
anemic little charges because of their rimfire cases. This gun in the
same time period was using 58 gr (I think) of powder and a .45 cal slug.
Certainly within a relatively short time of its introduction, central
priming and more powerful shells had been developed but again remember
the gun was introduced at a time when the only cartridges were weak
rimfire shells.
I am nearing completion and remain baffled why the gun was ever made for so long. The gun was developed by W R around 1858 near the end of the muzzle loading era. They apparently were made as late as 1878 as well as adapted to shoot centerfire cartridges
The gun is a breach loading muzzle loader in the sense that it took a
paper cartridge loaded into the breach but was fired with a sort of
musket cap. The breach was sealed with a felt washer held in place by a
brass plug. The sort of musket cap refers to the fact that ordinary
musket caps would not reliably burn through the paper cartridge so a
special high power one was used. The gun could also be muzzle loaded
using a felt washer as a seal.
This one I am guessing had some combustible paper left in the barrel
and had two large bulges and splits up near the muzzle. Those I heated
red hot and hammered down using a swage block then welded up the splits
followed by drilling the barrel out and soldering a liner inside. You
will see in the photo links that I pulled a series of D bits through the
barrel to do the drilling.
The stock turned out to be from a different and probably much later
gun. For some reason a big chunk was missing from around the reciever
so that got rebuilt. The barrel that I had was .080" larger than the
one that came out of the stock, so lots of further inletting.
I took the gun up to the range to sight it in; loaded a 420 gr 45-70
slug lubed with bear grease and bees wax into the barrel then 50 grains
of 3F followed by a wad punched from a 1/2 thickness of muzzle loading
shotgun wad and fired with a musket cap. There was surprising little
recoil and the gun so far shoots consistently to the same spot at 25 yds.
HOWEVER there are some drawbacks; originally you were supposed to push
the felt wad down the barrel with the next bullet; I didn't like that
so I pushed it back with a ramrod; trouble is that if any significant
residue is left it jams the breach. Also during cleaning water is able
to leak through a hole in the reciever and soak under the barrel
staining the wood and rusting the metal. It is also slightly awkward to
load from the breach although if you were bouncing around on a horse
(think cavalry) it was probably easier than loading from the muzzle.
The gun is an example of the transition between muzzle loaders and
cartridge guns. In one sense it is better than the percussion Sharp's
in that the breach seems to seal better although I have never actually
shot a perc Sharp's. On the other hand the Sharp's is far better
designed relative to keeping fouling away from the lock work and for
cleaning and loading.
Interesting to speculate if Springfield armory was familiar with the
gun when they developed the trapdoor which was originally a modified
percussion Springfield. Also interesting in that the gun is somewhat
midrange in power between the first cartridges and true muzzle loaders.
Remember that the Springfield used a .58 cal minie and I think roughly
75 grains of powder while things like the Henry and the Spencer had very
anemic little charges because of their rimfire cases. This gun in the
same time period was using 58 gr (I think) of powder and a .45 cal slug.
Certainly within a relatively short time of its introduction, central
priming and more powerful shells had been developed but again remember
the gun was introduced at a time when the only cartridges were weak
rimfire shells.
