#MosesBabcock

About five years ago we published an article telling about a 19th-century 8-bore muzzleloading percussion shotgun designed by a gentleman named Moses Babcock. What sets this firearm apart is its extremely simple and ambidextrous action/lock mechanism. Marek, a TFB reader from Poland, recently contacted me and told that after reading the TFB article about the Moses Babcock shotgun, he designed and built a percussion rifle with a similar action. I thought our readers would love to see his project and Marek kindly allowed me to share it with you.

When I first saw the images of this mid 19th-century muzzle-loading firearm, I thought it is probably missing the side plates covering lock mechanism. But then I noticed the hammer spur which, as you know, is designed to make it possible to manually cock the hammer and you will barely see an internal hammer with a spur. Fortunately, the images were accompanied by a description which revealed some really interesting design features of this gun.