[ Roberts Breechloading Conversion ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
taking a look at an early short-frame Roberts conversion of an American M1861 musket.
This of course dates to the years just after the Civil War
when ... self-contained metallic cartridges, both centrefire and rimfire,
were clearly becoming the new dominant military technology.
And there was a lot of interest in finding ways to convert old, obsolete,
existing muzzleloading rifles to use the new sorts of ammunition.
And there was an interest of course in getting a US military contract.
But then there were also a lot of other potential markets for this sort of conversion.
One right at home was the state militias of all the different states,
all of whom were also looking for their own new arms.
There would be a series of state militia arms trials
that would take place during the 1860s and 1870s in the US.
And then of course there are the whole mass of countries outside the US
who are also interested in this sort of new technology.
So one of the gentlemen who ... decided to try his hand
at inventing one of these systems was Benjamin Stone Roberts.
He had graduated from West Point in 1835, joined the US Cavalry.
Worked his way up through the ranks during the Civil War,
he ended up achieving the rank of Brigadier General.
... Because largely of his place in the cavalry, he'd seen a lot of the breechloading carbines
that were being tested by the US military before and during the Civil War.
And he was interested in firearms design. So with the end of the Civil War
and reduction in ... all the military duties that he had, he turned his hand to that.
He got a patent for basically a falling block or a tilting block style of system,
and went about trying to put it into production.
Now initially he submitted an example to US military testing in 1866.
And it did OK. It wasn't the winner, it did pretty well,
but then they were able to basically blow it up with an enhanced overcharge test.
They crammed I think three projectiles into the barrel
and an overcharge of powder, and they did manage to blow the thing up.
At the end of these tests the Berdan system was recommended for adoption.
But there was some discrepancy in the Ordnance Board and the other overseers in the military,
and ultimately what happened was there was a recommendation to build trial samples
of about half a dozen other guns as well. And the Roberts conversion was one of them.
So despite not getting an actual US Army adoption or contract,
he did get a test report that said the gun was good enough for further trials.
And that was enough to bring some interest and some business from various other clients,
in particular the French, the Brazilians,
[the Japanese] and the Mexicans would end up purchasing these rifles. ...
So let's take a closer look at what exactly we have here.
As with most of these sort of conversions, Roberts' design was compatible
with pretty much any pattern of percussion-fired muzzleloading rifle musket.
This particular one is made from a Savage manufactured
US Model of 1861 musket, its production date was 1864.
This was something that was available as surplus after the Civil War
and was used to convert into the [Roberts] system.
All of these [Roberts] conversions were done by the Providence Tool Company,
probably better known for also doing Peabody rifles and Peabody conversions.
Which they were actually doing simultaneously with this.
And the Peabody conversion was very technically similar to Roberts' conversion.
There are actually some sources that kind of mix up the two.
So the way this works is really quite simple, you take the lever here at the back,
lift it up and that is going to open.
Once it is open there is a spring-loaded extractor right there on the side.
So you push the breech block down, push the lever up a little bit more
and it will kick out the empty case.
And then you've got this basically chute that you can drop another cartridge in.
This was designed for the .58 rimfire Roberts cartridge.
It is worth pointing out that there was one contract made [for] Mexico
for 4,000 guns that did specify a centrefire cartridge.
So there are some short-frame Roberts conversions in centrefire, this one however is rimfire.
There is a neat safety mechanism here that's worth pointing out.
This peg on the side of the lever actually interacts with this curved surface on the hammer,
and what it does is ensure that when the hammer is all the way cocked
the lever is pushed all the way down here,
which means it's all the way up at the front which means it's fully in battery.
Because you would not want to be able to fire the gun if say,
the lever was partially engaged like this, the ... case head would fail and blow out.
Also you have this hook on the back of the lever, that's going to lock in under the tang.
And that will also prevent the breech block from opening up when firing.
The firing pin for the system is right here, and it's spring loaded.
So the hammer is going to hit the edge of this firing pin,
which is just nestled in the side of the breech block.
And it's going to go through and hit the rim of the case right there.
Since this was designed for rimfire ammo, that works quite nicely.
We have a patent marking on the left side of the receiver here, Roberts Patent, June 11 1867.
He did actually submit guns to military trial before he had got that patent.
And it's also worth pointing out that Roberts has actually added
a whole receiver behind the original barrel of his conversions.
Some of his early guns actually just cut a slot in the barrel of the existing gun,
and used that as a space for this breech block.
That proved insufficiently strong, it led to some broken guns.
And so he sort of adjusted the design to add a whole receiver, which was a much stronger solution.
So let's go ahead and pull this out of
... the wood, take it apart, and show you what it looks like internally.
In order to disassemble this I have taken off the barrel bands.
And then I have to remove the tang screw to take the whole action out.
Since I can't remove the breech block until the action is out of the stock,
I have to have some way to access that tang screw in order to disassemble it.
Hence there is a big hole here in the centre of the lever,
so that I can get in there with a screwdriver and remove that screw.
There we go. And then pull the action out of the wood.
With this removed, you can see how the hook catches under the tang of the receiver there.
We now just pull that out.
That's the firing pin right there, so it's got this little flat spring that gives it some tension.
That'll come right off. This is, as I said, the short-frame variety.
You can tell the difference pretty easily because the long frame is about an inch longer here.
And the back end of it is actually curved down instead of having this hook.
And that is part of the change in geometry that allowed it to be disassembled
without having to take this whole thing out of the wood.
I can then take out this front breech piece.
This was done I believe because this piece is going to be heat treated separately
so that it is harder without having to heat treat this whole breech block.
This doesn't really need to be hardened, but the front
that's actually resting against the cartridge does.
We have a serial number here on the bottom of the receiver and the barrel, 3360.
There were four ... purchasers of these short-frame Roberts conversions.
The Japanese got 815 of the guns,
and those were all sent through basically an arms dealer/reseller by the name of Pond.
The Mexicans ordered 4,000 guns, but those are all centrefire so they are easily distinguished.
The Brazilians purchased 5,000, so the largest order by far.
And this is probably one of those Brazilian guns.
But there isn't really any other specific way that we can tell.
Now there were also as many as perhaps 790 of these short-frame conversions
that were sold to France during the Franco-Prussian War.
Basically whatever was left around and available and could be sold
was sold to the French, they were willing to pretty much buy anything.
However the French didn't put any particular marks on the guns.
So unless you have provenance of a gun coming back from Europe for some reason,
it's very difficult to identify one specifically as a French sale example.
One other mechanical little detail here. Pinned in place right in the side is our ejector.
So that rests up inside the receiver like that,
until it's kicked backwards by the breech block coming down.
And of course you can also see Roberts' new rear receiver that he put on.
So this is all manufactured new, the barrel was taken from the existing ... converted gun
and threaded into this new receiver.
One of the shortcomings of the early Roberts conversions,
what are called the short-frame conversions, is that they're a little bit difficult to take apart.
As you saw, we had to take the ... action out of the stock in order to get the breech block out of the gun.
Roberts would go on developing and improving this system,
and he realised that he could change some of the internal geometry
and ... basically keep the same system,
but make it so that you could easily remove the breech block out of the top of the action
without having to further strip it, for cleaning.
So that became the long-frame version,
identifiable by a [keyed locking] pin in the side ... that allows you to take out the breech block.
That would go on to sell actually even a little bit better than his earlier short-frame patterns.
He sold about 12,000 total of the long frame and about 11,000 total of the short frame.
So by comparison with all of the other cartridge conversions around during this period,
Roberts was actually relatively successful.
The guns are fairly scarce today because most of them went out of the country.
But he did get a bunch of contracts. The most notable one in the US
was a contract of long-frame pattern, 5,000 guns for the South Carolina National Guard.
Although even those apparently were used hard and put away wet,
and are hard to find in good condition today.
Now as for the Brazilian contract specifically, which is what this is probably from,
the Brazilians ended up not actually really liking the guns much at all.
They kind of decided they were crap.
They had been purchased because Brazil was at war in the 1860s and needed guns.
They ended up selling off a lot of them to some of their neighbours and taking them out of service.
... And in fact South Carolina wasn't particularly happy with them either.
Despite some sales success, the Roberts conversion
wasn't actually all that effective or good of a system.
So anyway, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
A look at yet another of the breechloading conversion systems of the 1860s.
Thanks for watching.