Is This a Civil War Era Austrian Lorenz?

[TexasCheesehead]

In a word, no.

Apologies if this comes across as offensive - but what makes you think that it is a) an Austrian M1854 "Lorenz" rifle? b) that it has anything whatsoever to do with the Civil War?

I think it is a "home-brew" built around a carved-up original stock and trigger guard from a Lorenz M/54 "Jaeger". Considering what is obviously wrong for a Lorenz - lock (unidentifiable), hammer (French style), nipple bolster (village blacksmith), backsight.... someone tell me what's right!

The Lorenz had a 13.9mm (.547) bore. Old ex-service BP rifles were often reamed out to make smoothbores for use as shotguns. In which case, one would expect a smooth-bore of around 0.6". Never 0.75 - that would be an enormous waste of effort, and in most cases the original barrel would not be thick enough to permit reaming to 12-gauge. This was probably always a 12-gauge shotgun barrel - it is indeed marked with a 12.

And the XXXX \ / III marking is typical cold-chisel marking for a set of components, to stop sets getting mixed up, in 19th century small-scale (hand) batch production. These were placed where they would not be visible on the finished gun, and were nothing to do with regiments etc, just in case anybody's thinking that!

No offense taken, seriously. I have the grand sum of $50 invested in this. But if you did a little research, you'd see that the model or year numbers on Austrian rifles were marked on the underside of the barrel, in Roman Numerals. This was would have been manufactured in 1848. Another point: The number "12" you see in the pictures, is stamped into the breech plug, not the barrel. It is probably not a number "12", as it looks like there is a third number. And thirdly, why would there be a bayonet lug on a shotgun barrel?

Now the rear sight was of my own making. It was missing when I got it, having only a dovetail slot. I'm guessing that the barrel was probably bored out to be used as a shotgun. As for the barrel not being thick enough to ream, look at the bore of a Brown Bess musket: It takes a 0.71" ball, is smoothbore, and the barrel has very thin walls. You're saying they could ream out a barrel in the early 1700's but couldn't do the same thing in the mid 1800's?