Cannon from the War Between the States to be restored

[Embalmer]

that dont look like a breechloader, just someone needlessly cut the end to perm demil a perfectly good muzzle loader..

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[John Kepler]

that dont look like a breechloader, just someone needlessly cut the end to perm demil a perfectly good muzzle loader..

No sir, as the other poster indicated, it's a relatively common post-war conversion of a M1861 3" Rifle to breach-loading. In the conversion, the original 3" rifled bore was reamed out, a 3.2" rifled steel sleeve pressed-in hydraulically, and a sliding steel breech block fitted into the milled slot you see in the breech.

The 3" "Ordnance Rifle" was a "natural" for this type of conversion since the breech in the original muzzle-loading configuration was a threaded plug....the M1861 3" Rifle wasn't cast, but was rather a forged/milled wrought-iron/steel composite tube.

FWIW, the conversions were apparently NOT very successful...the guns weren't well thought of by the Ordnance Bureau, and all of the conversions were removed from service by 1881.

[Embalmer]

No sir, as the other poster indicated, it's a relatively common post-war conversion of a M1861 3" Rifle to breach-loading. In the conversion, the original 3" rifled bore was reamed out, a 3.2" rifled steel sleeve pressed-in hydraulically, and a sliding steel breech block fitted into the milled slot you see in the breech.

The 3" "Ordnance Rifle" was a "natural" for this type of conversion since the breech in the original muzzle-loading configuration was a threaded plug....the M1861 3" Rifle wasn't cast, but was rather a forged/milled wrought-iron/steel composite tube.

FWIW, the conversions were apparently NOT very successful...the guns weren't well thought of by the Ordnance Bureau, and all of the conversions were removed from service by 1881.

learn something new every day knew was an ordnance rifle, but never heard of such a conversion of them after the war. Only civilwar breechloaders I knew of, are those whitworth cannons like the ones on Oak hill in Gettysburg today.