In some cases, like with the arm shown above, a one-piece combined dummy flintlock hammer and flint piece was soldered onto the hammer, and the immovable frizzen was screwed into the lock plate. Enjoying a fantasy world is what movies are all about.
Movie making is all imagery, or as Hollywood calls it, “movie magic,” or the “suspension of belief.” After all, you don’t really think the actor you see on the screen is actually flying through the air, hurtling through space, or making bad guys bite the dust, do you? Of course not! While watching the film, you suspend your thoughts regarding real life, and in order to enjoy the movie, you put reality aside to happily enter a world of make believe, accepting such feats as part of the story. Flintlock Images Courtesy Phil Spangenberger Collection/ The Alamo Movie Still Courtesy United Artists. A cast dummy brass or pot metal flintlock cock (hammer) and frizzen (strike plate) assembly was fitted, via the Springfield’s original lock screw, over the original hammer and lock plate. 30-40 caliber.For decades, studio prop houses relied on the plentiful 1873 Springfield trapdoor rifle to emulate a flintlock firearm, including in this scene from John Wayne’s 1960 epic, The Alamo. A number of modifications and improvements were made until the Springfield trapdoor model was phased out in 1892 and replaced by a smokeless powder, bolt-action rifle, the Krag-Jogensen in. In 1877 the first improved model featured a new sight and a compartment in the stock to hold a three-piece cleaning rod and a ruptured cartridge case extractor. The Henry at $42 each, cost four times that of the Springfield. 45-70 cartridge was good for longer-range shooting.
A cost-conscious Congress considered the lever-action rifles too expensive and fragile for campaigning and a feeling that the more ammunition given to troops, the more they would use, plus the trapdoor’s. The infantry rifle had a 32 5/8-inch long barrel, while the cavalry carbine had a 22-inch barrel.Īt the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, the Sioux, Lakota and Cheyenne warriors had them outgunned that day with some 700 Winchester, Henry and Spencer repeaters while the Army was using single-shot breach-loading Springfield carbines. It served as a model for the Model 1873 which became the standard long rifle for the Army for the next twenty years. 50-70 and some 50,000 rifles were manufactured.
To remedy the problem the Model 1868 used a new barrel that was four inches shorter. However, in the field the lining tended to separate from the barrel. The barrel was relined to convert from a. The percussion lock was replaced by a breech-loading mechanism. They were created as a low-cost way to convert the Model 1863 musket into a breech-loading rifle that would take the new self-contained cartridge. I ran this by True West Firearms Editor, Phil Spangenberger to make sure all the facts on the Springfield trapdoors were correct and he added some helpful additions.
In the West they saw action at Washita, the Fetterman fight on the Bozeman Trail and Beecher Island.
Fortunately, Christopher Spencer’s bosses, manufacturers, Frank and James Cheney were politically connected and got the Army and Navy to adopt the Spencer’s and 200,000 rifles and carbines were manufactured by the late 1860s. Army Chief of Ordinance, James Wolf Ripley, rejected saying Spencer saying it was an ammunition-wasting, a “newfangled gimcrack” that could not be loaded with loose powder, ball and caps if the soldier ran out of metallic cartridges. The Spencer rifle fired seven rounds in about 12 seconds.