1865-66 50/70 trapdoor

[Kragrifle]

Have you taken the carbine apart yet?

[Belling10]

image.jpgimage.jpgimage.jpgimage.jpg

[Dick Hosmer]

The plot thickens. Inletting (1866 type) looks good. Forend is apparently homogeneous, but, in side view the profile is *WRONG. Action is an early 1866 with latch screw at left side. Thumb latch is STILL funky. Counterintuitively, the early action is not necessarily a bad point - SA would use old stuff on mock-ups.

*on REAL carbine stocks, when viewed from the side, the down curve is VERY nearly the same as the up curve, and actually appears to form a point. That one has the typical Bubba shape, nicely rounded up from the bottom but only lip service paid to curving the top.

Can you show that thang to Al at Baltimore? I'd really like to get his take.

I GUESS there might be a TEENY TINY chance that it is some sort of prototype. Al would know, he's spent a LOT of time in the back rooms at SA.

[Belling10]

I also noticed the 2 s stamps on the barrel I didn’t notice beforeimage.jpg

[Belling10]

I’d love for him to take a look at it to have some questions answered, but I’m unable to make it. Hopefully someone some day can figure out what it really is. I probably won’t have it long I go to these estate auction for the thrill of the hunt and move on to the next one. The problem with selling this one is What is it?

[2399Whit]

A few things about that 66 carbine raise caution flags. As noted, that stock nose has the wrong shape. It’s more like a Smith carbine. I think the sling bar is too thick as well. It looks like it is modeled on the late production 45-70 bars. The flat in the stock just above the rear lock bolt appears to be shaped wrong, but that may just be the picture angle. The bevel along the barrel should continue around the corner at the breech, or be the “Ski Jump” shape introduced when Springfield ran out of M-1863 stocks to modify. The flat muzzle crown went out with the M-1861 musket. You’d expect the crown to be cut like the 66 though 70 rifles and carbines if this was armory work.

However what got my attention was the comment that someone named Garrett had a carbine like that for sale at Baltimore a few years ago. If that was Frank Garrett, he was a skirmisher in the N-SSA from Va. In addition, he built skirmish guns and had a business importing Italian repros. His ’59 Sharps was probably the best non-US made Sharps repro. It had a chrome bore and even the Lawrence primer worked. He also sold a Mississippi and Zouave rifle. He quit selling repros about 1990. One of his Mississippi’s was my first N-SSA skirmish musket. Although the wood was the usual Italian second quality, it had the correct cartouches. I ended up replacing that stock with a real US walnut stock from the same shop that made stocks for Frank’s (and other builders) custom guns, Guy Owen in Winchester, Va. Guy had a Blanchard lathe in his garage and unlike most stock makers, would do custom work. If you wanted a little cast off in the butt, or a short musket stock without a rod channel for an 1870 carbine, no problem.

Back in the early 1980s, when 50-70 brass was almost impossible to get, you could pick up a cut down 66 barrel with breechblock at the N-SSA nationals for between $20 and $50. They were very common. I built a similar carbine on a cut off ’66 action back then, but mine didn’t turn out as nice as the one here.

Frank died almost exactly 3 years ago, in April of 2016, so we can’t ask him if that carbine is his. Guy crossed the river about 10 years ago, so can’t give him a call either.

Bottom line, it would not surprise me if that carbine is a Frank Garrett special, or possibly from another of the N-SSA custom builders of 40 years ago. There were half a dozen guys in Va., Md. and Pa. doing that kind of work, and some of them were very good.

[Belling10]

I did confirm with the auction house this week it was the estate of Frank Garrett. That answers a lot of question.

[Kragrifle]

To put matters to rest, that is the carbine on Frank Garret’s table from 8-10 years ago. I had seen the carbine a year or two before and it really looked good-except for the nose of the stock. My bet would be that Al might even remember that piece. I’ll ask him this WE in Baltimore.

[Kragrifle]

The ghosts often reappear. One of Frank Garrett’s Sharps carbines is now on Gunbroker.

[Dick Hosmer]

Speaking of ghosts, that's apparently all that's left of this forum.