Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Rock Island
taking a look at the very last pattern of Hall breech loader
in American military service.
This is a Model of 1843 Side Lever Hall carbine.
It's a smoothbore as well, which we'll get to in a moment.
Now, if you didn't see my original video on the Hall system, I would strongly recommend checking it out.
The Hall was a tremendously influential system in not just military affairs,
but really in the whole of the industrialisation of the United States, and in turn of the world.
It was ... a critical step in the development of all systems of interchangeable parts.
Really much more of a milestone than I think a lot of people appreciate it for.
At any rate, the Hall would be in service over many decades with the US military.
And it would go through a lot of changes during that time.
So, one of these was that a second contractor was brought in to manufacture Hall rifles and carbines.
Rifles and muskets actually, I suppose.
And this was a guy named Simeon North of Connecticut.
And he had been manufacturing guns for the US literally back into the last years of the 1700s.
Long experience, his son would go into his business after him.
It's a well-renowned company, a skilled guy, and he was able to actually
duplicate the interchangeable parts that Hall himself pioneered at the Harpers Ferry armoury.
And one of the things that Simeon North would do is develop a percussion system for the Hall.
So the original Hall rifles are flintlocks.
They've got a big ol' flint mechanism on here, because of course they were developed
before the advent of the percussion cap.
But the percussion cap is a more reliable, cheaper, easier, just a way better system in general.
So if we're going to keep making these things, let's make them percussion.
Simeon North introduced that in 1833.
Now he would follow this with another improvement meant to address another issue of the original Halls.
If I bring this guy back out, one of the problems you have is with this hook.
Which is the central component used to open the breech block of a Hall.
The problem is that hook tends to hook on things, it gets in the way, it gets caught, it gets snagged,
and there was a desire to have an improved system.
So what North did first was develop what was called the "fishtail" lever system,
which basically keeps the opening lever down on the bottom,
but makes it something a lot ... more low profile.
And then improving on that came this, the Side Lever pattern. So let me show you up close.
So we have here a US Army carbine marked S. North, Simeon North, out of Connecticut, dated 1844.
So relatively early in the production. This is, remember, a Model of 1843.
We also have these two really remarkably clear cartouches in the stock just behind the action.
On the right side here is w-a-t, that's William Anderson Thornton,
he was a captain in the US Ordnance Department who was inspecting guns.
And then on the opposite side on the left, we have a J-H cartouche,
and that is Joseph Hannis who was a sub-inspector for the US Ordnance Department.
This is a new production percussion gun.
A lot of the flintlock patterns would be later converted over to percussion,
but these guns were made from the ground up as percussion guns.
Notice that this is made for dragoons, so this has a big ol' sling bar on it.
You can hook your single point sling to that ring to keep control of the gun,
or keep from dropping the gun while you are on horseback.
And then the fundamental improvement to the system is this lever.
And all I have to do to open the breech is pull this lever
out just slightly to bypass that locking stud,
and then I pull the lever down, and it cams the breech block up.
Notice that the underside of the gun is much cleaner now.
In fact, in addition to not having the hook on the bottom here, they've also got rid of
what I thought was really a pretty nice extra pistol grip on the bottom of the trigger guard.
Here is a standard pattern of earlier Hall as a comparison.
So you can see that the trigger guard has changed, has been simplified dramatically.
And of course we don't have the hook on the bottom.
Now in addition these carbines were all smoothbore guns, .54 calibre.
That seems weird to me, because really one of the advantages of the Hall
is that you can have it rifled without suffering the slower loading of a rifled muzzleloader.
I suspect what was going on was simply a combination of wanting reduced cost
and less machining involved in making the guns,
and also having them a little less susceptible to powder fouling.
Without rifling it's easier to clean the guns, ... you don't have those
nooks and corners of the rifling for fouling to accumulate in.
A few other quick elements to look at. We have our cleaning rod secured up in that lug in the front.
A little small front sight there.
The rear sight is a V-notch that is centred on the receiver,
where the earlier flintlock guns the sights were offset to the left to accommodate the larger flint system.
This, the percussion hammer, is narrower and so it doesn't interfere with a centre mounted sight.
Although just barely: your sights are very close along the side of this hammer when you're aiming the gun.
Now I've taken the breech blocks out of both so that we can compare these as well.
And what really jumps out at me is how they're basically exactly the same.
North didn't change anything he didn't have to, so the firing mechanism is identical.
On the left side, the locking surfaces are identical up here.
Obviously the top is much simplified, but the basic hammer structure is the same between the two,
just instead of having a flint in here you just have a simple percussion hammer.
And the percussion cap has taken the place of the entire priming pan and frizzen assembly here.
Now it is important to point out that on the right side of the breech block,
the ... early Hall has a locking shoulder just like on the opposite side,
where the 1843 Side Lever has this rounded lug instead of a square one.
That is of course done to accommodate this opening lug on the inside of the receiver.
So the idea here, by the way, is that this leg is just a flat spring
that's always pushing this lever down to keep the gun locked.
And when this lever is in this position, this lug does in fact hold the breech block
in place by this, and it will act as a locking lug.
But when you push the lever down, it cams the whole thing up.
So it's a very clever design.
You can see the original locking lug style is still here on the left.
If we compare the interiors of both of these guns,
you can see that the back end again is pretty much identical.
The inletting in the stock for the triggers is the same.
The 1843 adds a metal base, sort of recess, to the entirety of the front of the receiver.
That's going to help protect the wood from the ... unsealed blast around the side of the breech block.
And of course the shape of the locking lugs has changed.
Up here we also have the inletting for the locking hook, which you don't need on the 1843s.
Instead all they have is one little hole down there that's going to act as a drain hole.
So that if water gets into the action it has a way to get out,
and not just sit in there and soak into the wood and rust the metal.
When Simeon North developed this side lever system,
he was already in the middle of making a contract of percussion Hall carbines that dated to 1839.
And he proposed this side lever system to the Secretary of War in 1843 as an improvement, like,
"Hey, how about this version?" And they went ahead and adopted it,
and ... gave North permission to fulfil the rest of that 1839 contract with this pattern of gun.
So that would be the first production of these starting in 1844.
And then the US military would continue to order the guns in batches of a thousand every few years,
until the final order placed was actually for 3,000 guns in 1850.
By February of 1853 that order had been fulfilled.
And in total some 10,500 of these Side Lever pattern 1843 Hall musket carbines were produced.
Making them actually the ... largest production pattern of the Hall.
These would be used by US dragoons in the Mexican-American War.
And then a lot of them would actually go on to be used in the Civil War.
They would have the barrels bored out and rifled.
... It's really, I think, a shame that the Hall went to a smoothbore system,
because that really obviates one of the real benefits of the breech-loading Hall
is that you didn't have to engrave bullets down the rifling.
You loaded the breech and the gunpowder does it for you.
At any rate, this one retains its original smoothbore barrel, .54 calibre.
And frankly it's a gorgeous example of the pattern.
So, hopefully you are continuing to enjoy this intermittent look into the development of the Hall rifle.
We'll have some more interesting versions as I get my hands on them.
Thanks for watching.