Remington-Lee 1885 Shortened to Trapdoor Length?

[Hammer]

When I was doing online research last week on the Remington-Lee 1885 rifles I read somewhere that the US Navy had to shorten some of them to the length of their Trapdoor rifles in order to get their new Remington-Lees to fit inside some of their weapons storage lockers on US Navy ships. I cannot find where I read that now.
Has anybody else heard of that?

I found an early SerNo USN Remington-Lee 1885 rifle that had its barrel shortened from 32.5 inches down to 31 inches, and its fore stock was also shortened on the end and it has these cartouches stamped into the wood. Does anyone recognize these cartouches?

[Hammer]

Shortened barrel and fore stock

[Dick Hosmer]

Best thing to do is get Gene Myszkowski's book, theough I do not recall ever having heard of that mutiliation - not on the RL, or anything else. To be very honest, the ONLY thing that keeps me from screaming "Bubba" is the stamping. As I said on the phone, I will disassemble mine and take pics of the parts you are missing, plus any meaningful measurements - but I suspect there will be a LOT of "hand-filing-until-it-fits" involved, before your friend can temper it. Give me a few days, though.



UPDATE: Found MY copy of the book - looks like someone just sawed off the barrel on yours - I cannot see any attempt to crown it? And, your front sight is much closer to the muzzle than the virgin shown in the book. Is your cleaning rod threaded? If not it should be. My rifle is buried just now.

[Hammer]

Thank you Dick. I will look to get a copy that book.
It was the stock cartouches on the fore-end that made me wonder as well if this may have been done by the Navy, or by Bubba, or by Bannermans or someone like that.

Its bore does have a crown bevel at the very end which looks like it was done after the 1.5 inch end of the barrel was sawed off.

The old gentleman that let me look at this rifle said he’s fine with me returning it to him if I wanted to because of its short barrel and missing it’s extractor, and that’s what I’m going to do and I will begin a search for a better example And complete Remington-Lee.

[Dick Hosmer]

I believe you made the right decision. Sum Ting Wong there . . . RLs are not under every bush, but they can be found. There are several very good Youtube videos on the subject.

[Hammer]

Yes, I watched every YouTube video that I can find over the weekend on this amazing early first ever US magazine fed rifle.

I’m actually doing this research now in order to help the old gentleman that I’ll be getting the rifle back to this week. I want him to know what he has and I want to try to help him search to find an extractor for it.

The fore end stock cartouches are really interesting to me because those don’t look like they were been from Bubba or even from Bannermans.
And interestingly, I think the stock was reduced the same length as the barrel was in order to allow for the trapdoor style bayonet to try to fit on this rifle.

I even wondered if maybe it was a former trapdoor 40–70 barrel that was used on this, but the barrel does have the H inspector stamp in the right location on it for the Remington-Lee barrel.

[Hammer]

Does anybody recognize this stock cartouche, script H ?

[Hammer]

USN Issued early in block. Number 387 out of the 3400 that were made for the US Navy

[Dick Hosmer]

Well, 1387 anyhow. The barrels are entirely different - NOT interchangeable with TD.

[Hammer]

They started their serial number block with 1001.

I’ve also heard that the Navy used Trapdoors for a number of years as line throwing guns up through World War II but those were smokeless rounds, and this one still was still black powder.

There is external pitting at the end of the barrel on this rifle, but that would not have affected it functioning because the metal was so thick, and I don’t think they would’ve cut an inch and a half off just for unsightliness.