1863 Trenton Rifle

[Patrick Chadwick]

Incidentally is the tang plug/screw supposed to come out of the barrel easily?

Most definitely not! The experience with pistons - which should be removed for cleaning after every shooting session - is that if they are left in place for some time, hot gases, combustion products, carbonized lubricants etc will normally ensure that the screwed thread is more-or-less fused shut, and it can take a bath in really hot water to be able to remove them with a well-fitting T-handled key. A tang plug is even firmer, and can even require the application of serious heat to remove it.

So if the plug comes out without any effort, I suspect one of two things:
1) The rifle was never fired after initial assembly. Theoretically possible, but highly unlikely, and after 150 years I would still expect any threaded joint to have seized up.

2) At some time, the barrel + plug was dismantled and cleaned, and not fired since then. This is the more likely explanation.

As it is already apart, inspect the plug and barrel very thoroughly - there may have been some problem/ damage which required the dismantling - I once lost a wire brush down the "patent breech" of a percussion rifle, and a gunsmith had to apply heat and a sizeable torque to unplug it and extract the broken-off end of the brush. If it seems OK, reassemble plug and barrel with a smear of copper-paste, as used for high-temperature piping. There is usually a scribed line across the joint somewhere (often on the bottom) to help align plug and barrel when reassembling.