(Wild West Magazine) In 1865 master armorer Erskine Allin of Massachusetts’ Springfield Armory proposed a simple means of improving on his firm’s .58-caliber Model 1861 percussion rifle musket without excessive rework or expense: “All that is necessary is to cut away the barrel on the top at the breech and add the block and shell extractor, cut the recess in the breech-screw and modify the hammer,” Allin wrote. “All other parts remain the same.”
To a U.S. military just emerging from a devastating civil war to resume a relatively small-scale pursuit of “Manifest Destiny” in the Western frontier (or so it hoped), cheap and simple held immense appeal.
Continued
No comments:
Post a Comment