The project begins...

Not too long ago, my father started giving me some of his firearms.  This was partly a need due to storage concerns, but also a realization that he wasn’t using them anymore.  I soon developed the opinion that a rifle hanging in a rack isn’t really worth much if you don’t use it on occasion.  This is an ongoing saga of my quest to make a Trapdoor Springfield shoot, and maybe shoot well.  It will be a way for me to document my path, series of failures, and occasional successes so I can remember them, and others can learn from them.

The gun is a model 1873 in the then newly created 45-70 cartridge.  It was actually built in 1877, one year after Custer’s last stand.  There appears to be no good way to know the real history of this particular US military rifle as they made gazillions of them for 20 years and continued to use them through the Spanish American War.  They continued in service in the Reserves past WW2.  I do know, from the lack of a “cartouche” or inspection stamp on the stock, that the stock was probably replaced somewhere in the mists of time.  I also know that despite having a bayonet, it was not originally issued one.