Converting a muzzleloader to cartridge.

[w_houle]

I wonder how hard it would be to convert a muzzle loading rife to load from the breech. I don't know how well modern reproduction rifes would fare after such a convertion or which particular ones would be a more ideal candidate.

 

[Hawg]

It can be done but it would be expensive. It would be cheaper to take an existing breech loader and make it look sorta like a muzzleloader.

 

[Jim Watson]

I wonder at your incentive for the job, your capabilities to do it, and what you want to end up with.

Certainly the US Trapdoor Springfield and the Britsh Snider were serviceable conversions of muzzleloaders, and not the only ones, either. But they had the guns, the equipment, and the manpower to do it.

 

[w_houle]

I don't have the gun, equipment, or the skill to do the work so I guess it was more for the sake of curiousity that I ask. I hadn't read any other threads on the subject and just figured I would bring it up.

 

[sundance44s]

Back in the 1800`s they converted flintlocks to cap lock ..then cap lock to cartrdge ..would have loved to have lived durning the industrial years of the 1800`s ..nessissity is always the mother of invention ...born in the wrong century .

 

[Jim Watson]

I don't have the gun, equipment, or the skill to do the work so I guess it was more for the sake of curiousity

Well, look for books and websites on things like "Trapdoor Springfield," "Allin Conversion," and "Snider." After that it gets weird, but there are such things as the Lindner and Merrill Alterations, the Miller , Morse Centerfire, Mont Storm, Needham, Peabody, Phoenix, Remington, and Roberts Conversions.
All of those are for conversion of the large inventories of rifle muskets left over after the Civil War, except the Snider which is the British equivalent.
There are probably some one-off gunsmith efforts here and there, but I haven't seen anything on them.

Hawg has shown what are commonly called Gemmer Conversions. Kind of a backwards conversion for traditionalists in the late 19th century, breechloaders made to look like muzzleloaders. The first set of pictures is a Trapdoor Springfield action with barrel and stock in the style of a Hawken, the last is a similar but less elaborate Gemmer Sharps.