Trapdoor Rifles

I picked up an 1873 Trapdoor with the barrel sleeved to .22 caliber and an adapter to fit a .22 cartridge in the .45-70 chamber. Very quiet. I only got one adapter which is inconvenient as sometimes the cartridge deforms enough that it has to be removed with pliers so I'm not going to get a high rate of fire. Anybody familiar with this conversion?

Front sight dovetailed to barrel.

Front sight dovetailed to barrel.

View into the chamber.

No, but that is really neat!

That's a Lee Shaver 22rf liner conversion. A lot of BPCR use it in their cartridge rifles. I have one installed in one of my Trapdoors.

My eyes find the sights difficult but still got a fairly good grouping with the Trapdoor. Fired several rifles today that all hit right of center so the wind may have had some effect. I found that anything more powerful than 22CB deforms the cartridge enough that it sticks in the adaptor and has to be pulled out with pliers. Recoil and noise are non-existent.

Would be fun to conjecture ways to reverse engineer that thing to provide better head support so as to allow use of .22LR, even including knocking the case out with a rod. I'd also think that use of a fencing musket mainspring would reduce the massive overkill of the normal hammer blow.