Guys. I picked up an old original Gallager at an auction down in Italy recently and first up just wanna show it off, but also wonder if anyone out there can help me with a rather major Q i´ve got on it.
For those not in the loop, indeed a so called capping breech loader. I "trial" dropped in one of the rounds i developed for the Maynard out of 50 Beowulf brass and.. SHOULD do the trick, albeit in more modified form.
Slugging the thing though i ended up at .530" major, which i guess can attest to why many claimed bad accuracy out of these guns using Smith style boolits.
Anyways.
Gun came with this little hand written note telling that the "new" owner (after the war) picked it up on june 17th 1865, and how it followed him along later on a journey from sea to shining sea.
Kind of a neat provenance.
Yeah. Fireformed these to fit the elongated chamber of that Maynard i did recently. Works da bomb to be honest, works very very well and is thus in my book a cheap n effective alternative to "off the shelf" brass for the Maynards.
Chamber of the Gallager is slightly larger though, but i presume the brass will take that fireform too. It´s not a massive difference and we´re after all talking black powder.
Future will tell but if it falls through i plan to revert to either 50-70 or 50 Alaskan that i cut down.
Yep. That patch box is no doubt the original.
...in turn a rather late serial. Now. This is my major Q cause this is a cap n ball gun right..
The Gallagers caught a bit of flack from being hard to eject the shells from. To the point where a kind of "beer bottle opener" was deviced to go over the shell and then you pulled straight back to eject the casing.
In the case of THIS little carbine though it sports an extractor. A claw type setup that runs the entire bottom end of the receiver and screws in from the rear of it. One attachment screw in other words.
That claw is tapered running from rear to front and the groove cut into the receiver is approx 0,1" deep. Actual claw was broken off so since i´ve repaired that and although it seems i made it a tad stiff (it dents the rims slightly) it sure seems legit in itself.
Now. That groove and the extractor in itself is NOT a "bubba" jobbie but no doubt it was either there from day one OR it is an arsenal job. No two ways about that.
There´s also a relief cut in the underside of the barrel for the claw, and to follow suite a similar cutout in the thrust area of the receiver.
So?
What gives here? Do we have any member that deep in the loop on Gallagers?
Sights i´d say are "generic" carbine sights of the time. Marked for 100/300 and 500 yards.