Timewalker Guide Service

Today in Santa Fe. From the 1598 conquest of New Mexico by the Spanish. Big gun, large caliber

Only hours until the video channel goes live and we are here searching for Spanish colonial fi****ms. No luck but this place is awesome! Founded about 1340 and finally abandoned 1838…so you know early Spanish colonial guns were here. The search continues.

I found another 1873 Wi******er on display in Gallup, New Mexico! This seems possibly connected to a Clark Gable movie production yet I have doubts: movie producers seemed to prefer the Wi******er 1892 carbine to shoot 5-in-1 blanks. Even in movies portraying the Civil War era. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-in-1_blank_cartridge

Examining an India Pattern Brown Bess musket with solid provenance for Mexican militia use in the Bear Flag Revolt and the Mexican American War in California. Then it appears to have been fired thousands of times. Thanks to the MCHS for making this possible!

Bring cash and a container to take home the 3/4 of the steak you can’t eat. Epic leftovers.

In case you really really want to try an 1855 pistol carbine.

Experimental archaeology is a historic approach that “tests historical hypotheses by recreating past technologies and everyday practices.”

In other words, experimental archaeology is learning history by trying to perfectly replicate how they did things in the past.

This is why I endlessly bothered John Morgan until he made me some correct 450-grain pistoI-carbine bullets, to test in the M1855 PistoI-Carbine. Everything was replicated as close as possible to the historic original: the pistoI is original in excellent condition, John’s bullets are precise recreations of the historic ones, the powder load and cartridge were also painstakingly replicated, and even the Maynard primer tape was carefully made using real mercury fulminate, exactly like they were in 1855. Like the famous historian Von Ranke said, this lets us step back in time and experience history „wie es eigentlich gewesen,” or as it actually was.

Experimental archaeology turns a fun range day into a serious historical research project at the same time!

This educational historic research reached a conclusion: the M1855 PistoI-Carbine sucks. Sorry, Jeff Davis.

But really though, this thing was a bad idea. Very cool, and historically significant, but it was obsolete before day one and was a lousy pistoI and even worse as a carbine. Fun to shoot though!

Those 300 meter "A" targets are challenging! This is going to be a great match. https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0218SWx2C1fgqq1ZBqqfj5hRpjJ5B5ihbBc4gUKkz9S2YpmB2wfP1efcdHiSqZ4pSal&id=100057469607170

Today’s range lessons! I studied how to shoot benchrested rifles, I made good video, and I learned that bullet selection is very important with this rifle. My goal with this rifle is to shoot with decent accuracy out to 300 yards.

We went looking for relic rifles on a wilderness ranch, and the owner graciously showed us this. He reached under a bed in a remote mountain cabin and pulled out this Wi******er 1873 and handed it to me. He knows I’m doing a video series on the 1873 rifle.

The carbine was jammed. I removed the side plates and used a Swiss Army knife to extract a relatively modern .44-40 cartridge. There was another cartridge rattling around in the magazine tube. The magazine spring was missing.

The carbine was made in 1891, based on serial number.

My GUESS is that the carbine was left outside or in an exposed place for a long time. It has been horribly rusted and pitted. As you can see the internals indicate that there was a lot of black powder fouling in the gun. The loading gate is corroded so that the edge is diminished.

The carbine was recovered on a ranch in Montana. It wasn’t in the Salinas Valley when it was first found.

Then someone took a buffing wheel to it without dismantling the gun beyond removing the magazine spring. The entire carbine is highly polished.

The stocks suffered some exposure damage and appear to have been chewed. They are now deeply sanded to the point of changing their dimensions. The buttplate is missing.

The bore was too filled with filth to evaluate it. It’s a .44-40, based on the relatively modern cartridge I extracted.

Someone then took an electric pencil and crudely inscribed the ranch owner’s initials and brand on the side of the receiver, added some more electro pencil writing on the underside, and gave it to the ranch owner.

So what now? Can we fix it?