1879 cartouche.

[Carlsr]

Congrats on your win you lucky dog!!

[Dick Hosmer]

And that's a '61 band - as it should be.

[Lead Snowstorm]

Yep. And to remove all doubt (if it were necessary), the parent gun must have been 1862 vintage, based on the remnant of the date left by the milling:



In that photo, and this, you can see my worries about the tint of the breech block were unfounded. The lighting made the difference.



If I could change one thing it'd be the wood rash on the flat of the stock. But at least a bit of the ESA cartouche was still visible.



Bore is frosty, but there's still rifling. (Not that I could really imagine lighting it up!)

[JimF]

. . . . .Bore is frosty, but there's still rifling. (Not that I could really imagine lighting it up!)

To me, that bore looks to be BEYOND “frosty”!

However, that very scarce rifle is a great find!

[70ish]

A very nice find for you and I certainly am glad that it turned out to be such a fine piece. The ramrod, the only thing I questioned, is clearly correct and the finish is about as nice as I've seen in recent years. The stock is exceptional as well and the notoriously thin area above the lock plate still looks almost new. I don't think you could have done better! Congratulations to you!

[Lead Snowstorm]

Thanks gentlemen! It is nice to get one of the harder to fill holes taken care of. Still have to find (and pony up the dough for) an unaltered 1892 Krag!

[Dick Hosmer]

That's a very nice 1A - much nicer than mine! You did well. Wish I knew the story of the sighting notch - my three-band is square, but my two-band is like yours. I'm guessing the square came first, but both occur on both lengths so there is no obvious pattern.

[Lead Snowstorm]

that has always been one of the paradoxes regarding the 1A - why did they go back a model. My guess would be that since they were essentially "experimental", they didn't want to chip into their newer stock.

Browsing through Dr. Frasca's book, he hypothesizes that Allin started work on breechloading rifles perhaps as early as late 1863, with the paper trail deliberately obscured for financial reasons during the war.

If the development process began that early, perhaps it was a function of the type and amount of weapons predominantly available for experimentation at that time? Obviously there would be plenty of the M1861s in 1863, but the M1863 production would just be getting started. So experimentation would be most expedient on the weapons at hand, which would most likely be M1861s.

Then by 1865, when the project could come out of the shadows, so to speak, perhaps it simply continued to be expedient to keep working with the M1861, with the added benefit of not ostentatiously 'chopping up' the breeches of newer weapons probably playing a synergistic role, at least until everyone was on board that they were obsolete despite only being a couple of years old.

Just a thought...?

[Dick Hosmer]

We're on the same page.