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Trapdoor rifles

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peterk123

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I am watching American Shooter and they had a short section on the old trapdooor rifles. Interesting history. Originally these rifles were muzzleloaders used by the military. The cartridge type ammunition was developed but the government did not want to go through the expense of replacing the military's rifles so somebody had the idea to modify their existing rifles. Pretty neat idea, although Custer would probably disagree. The soldiers were still using the trapdoor while the Indians had some slick lever actions.

I knew the story about the Indians having the lever actions during the Last Stand, but I had no idea of the history of the trapdoor rifle and its use by the military. Pretty cool.

Pete
 


apparently it was the result of having a lot of muskets left over after the civil war, Washington not having money to buy modern carbine rifles to shoot cartridges, and coming up with the trapdoor conversion! I did not know this, when you said trap door, i mistook it to mean rolling block, which it is not
 
Awesome rifles for sure. One of my favorite in one of my top 3 favorite cartridges.
45/70 that is.
If you check into cap and ball on YouTube and some others like forgotten weapons mentioned above this was a common theme back in the day. The Snider rifle pops into mind also.
Using up old muzzleloaders instead of making whole new actions.
awesome stuff.
 
Part of it, is that arming an army costs a lot money.

In times of transition, jumping too quickly may be a bad choice, when you're buying a lot of one item. This is how we kinda got burned on the Krag. Nice, smooth action, but not quite strong enough to properly exploit the new smokeless powder ( that's why it's .30-40 Krag - the "40" is the grains of black powder). Also not a great magazine.

We kind of dodged the bullet (pun intended as always) with the .30-'06: the Springfield was originally chambered for the .30-'03 cartridge, that had a round-nose bullet (I found one of theses cartridges in a box of random ammo, once, with, IIRC an '05 headstamp). When the Spitzer-point bullet made its debut, we switched to that, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The list of military arms choices that turned out to be less-than-ideal is larger, I'd bet, than the list of winners! [laugh]
 
MisterHappy said:
The list of military arms choices that turned out to be less-than-ideal is larger, I'd bet, than the list of winners! [laugh]
Click to expand...

Forgotten Weapons goes into rather a lot of these. Some of the failed design choices are fascinating. Some of them leave you scratching your head and asking "WTF? Why would anyone do it *that* way?" Others are excellent designs but lost out due to reasons of cost or complexity, or because the manufacturer couldn't furnish adequate numbers of the guns to fulfill need.
 
Arto said:
If you're ever out in Eastern Montana, be sure to stop at the Little Bighorn Battle field - it is quite moving Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)

also, The Buffalo Bill museum in Cody Wyoming has an unbelievably awesome firearms collection! even Liver Eatin Johnson's rifle! & they just re-did it all:
Cody Firearms Museum | Buffalo Bill Center of the West
View: https://youtu.be/HWBu2FF5S1k
Click to expand...

I have been to the Cody Museum. Crazy collection. I believe they have 4,000 guns. We made it through 2,000 of them :)
 
I believe the guy who designed the conversion was Allen. I have an 1873 trapdoor that was made in Springlield in 1874. I also have a Krag carbine and the 40 in .30/40 is for 40 grains of smokeless not black powder. The dual numbers like .44/40 or .45/70 carried over into the smokeless era for a short time which explains calibers like .30/30 and .30/40.
 
Fritz the Cat said:
View attachment 320010
Click to expand...
I am going to make a trip there just to see this rack.

gerrycaruso said:
I believe the guy who designed the conversion was Allen. I have an 1873 trapdoor that was made in Springlield in 1874. I also have a Krag carbine and the 40 in .30/40 is for 40 grains of smokeless not black powder. The dual numbers like .44/40 or .45/70 carried over into the smokeless era for a short time which explains calibers like .30/30 and .30/40.
Click to expand...

you sir are correct. They wanted to keep using the designation that people were familiar with and would understand the cartridges power based off its name.
 
There is a beautiful, mint, repro 1873 trapdoor by H&R up at Shooters in Hooksett for sale. If it fit my budget it wouldn't be there.
 
C. Stockwell said:
The rack is nothing in comparison to everything they have. The words "real, honest to God FG42" come to mind. But yes, Springfield Armory NHS has a ton of Trapdoors and other American military rifles.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah for sure. I’ve seen the video walk throughs. It just always amazed me how efficiently stacked those rifles were and the old sketches of the storage room with countless rows of those rack as far as the eye can see. Just amazing.
 
That rack or 'Organ of muskets' currently holds 647 M1861 Rifled Muskets that never made it to the conversion process to Trap Door...the 'Allen Conversion. In 1873 new Trap Doors were being made and converting the M1861 stopped. I believe the rack can hold 1100.

'This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;'
Love, peace, guns bad, etc., ad nauseam.... (Longfellow)
 
gerrycaruso said:
I believe the guy who designed the conversion was Allen. I have an 1873 trapdoor that was made in Springlield in 1874. I also have a Krag carbine and the 40 in .30/40 is for 40 grains of smokeless not black powder. The dual numbers like .44/40 or .45/70 carried over into the smokeless era for a short time which explains calibers like .30/30 and .30/40.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that. I learned something.
 
A lot of the blame for the defeat at Little Bighorn rests squarely on Custer's shoulders. He exceeded his orders and divided his forces in the face of a numerically superior enemy, without knowing their whereabouts. Sadly, his troops paid the price.
 
peterk123 said:
The cartridge type ammunition was developed but the government did not want to go through the expense of replacing the military's rifles so somebody had the idea to modify their existing rifles. Pretty neat idea, although Custer would probably disagree. The soldiers were still using the trapdoor while the Indians had some slick lever actions.
Click to expand...
Apparently, some of the reasons for failure (besides the abovementioned leaving the Gatlings behind and splitting his forces) was that the .45-70 the troops was using was copper cased, not brass. The cases expanded too much from the rapid firing and got stuck in the chambers of the rifles, and extracting them tore some cases apart, leaving pieces stuck in the chamber. At least from what I've read. I'm old, but not old enough to have been there!
 
Since everyone else wants to kiss the trapdoor Springfield ring, I'll be the one who doesn't; these were terrible rifles. Sure, they look nice, they have that cool breechloading action, they don't recoil much with certain black powder loads, but there were much better rifles available at the time, specifically the Remington Rolling Block, that could have been chosen as an infantry weapon.

I mean, let's look at it this way: in the years after the Civil War, who was the US most likely going to have a conflict with next? It wasn't going to be a European country, they all figured it out by then that they could not fight a war in the Americas against forced as well armed as they were. Mexico? Mexico was more interested in building railroads and telegraph lines than fight a war with another country, especially after they had just dealt with the French. Thus, there was no one other than Indian tribes that the US was preparing to fight.

Yeah, Indians, who tend to prefer close range combat with melee weapons and maybe some gun fights for those who had the arms and ammo. A lever action would have been a much better rifle at the time for most troops, maybe you throw in the Springfield for some designated marksmen use for longer range shots. The biggest benefit of the lever action rifles tho was the Army could have deployed troops with rifles and revolvers chambered for the same round in .44-40 or maybe .45 S&W. You can't tell me that Winchester and Smith & Wesson couldn't have come up with designs in the early 70s to create a rifle and revolver combo that would have beat the snot out any competition.

But the goal at the time was to not spend much money and the result was ill equipped troops for 40 years.
 

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