Party like its 1853

The British Enfield Pattern 1853 Musket, also called the "3 Band Enfield". If the Brown Bess was the musket that won Britain her empire this is the musket of rebellion.

It was used commonly across India and figured prominently in the early Indian revolts. It was also commonly used by the Confederate army here in the US.

I find it a bit amusing that they are now making reproductions in India, thats what mine is. Its smoothbore and while the vast majority of originals started their life as a rifle there many were bored out. The British lubricated their projectiles with either beef tallow or pig fat. In a feat of social ignorance they managed to simultaneously insult all of their native "sepoy" troops. By boring the rifling out of the guns they could go back to shooting unlubricated roundball.

These reproductions come from India non-firing, to change that you need to drill out the flame channel from the nipple to the barrel. I'll go over that in another post.
I drilled mine last summer but hadn't had much time to shoot it. I took it to the range back around Labor Day but the dang thing didn't go off. It turns out I'd drilled the hole basically straight down and as I only started with a 40gr charge the projectile was in front of the hole. I went shooting again on New Years day and with a 50gr charge it would fire. That said it would still occasionally fail, a 60gr change never did fail me and since it had very little recoil its what I'll continue to use. This is a 58cal gun so thats not an unreasonable charge.

The sights are VERY rough after I took this picture I worked the front sight into a rough triangle "barley corn" sight. The rear notch is quite shallow and I had significant difficulty seeing the front sight.

After a bunch of messing around and nearly giving up I finally got this group from 25 yards. My point of aim is the bottom right side of the paper so while the group is decent it needs direction. The problem is that the rear sight isn't attached square to the barrel and isn't adjustable for windage. The plan right now is to take thin strips of copper and solder then onto the front sight. I'll start with a wedge which should raise everything, then consider how to move to the left...