Trapdoor Rifles

On several occasions, including somewhat recently, our discussions included the head separation of early copper cased cartridges. Generally these conversations center around the legends of this issue as it pertains to the Little Big Horn fight. Additional discussion includes soldiers using leather looped prairie belts and the verdigris caused by them, and their sticking in the carbines. This issue was indeed caused by the verdigris and the usage of the leather looped cartridge belts, but that wasn't the only cause. It appears that the copper cased cartridges themselves were a problem, and the incidents of head separation didn't go away until the army changed over to brass cased cartridges. The problem was big enough that the Ordnance Dept. tried to remedy it in a variety of ways to include cartridge belts made of various types of fabric such as the Model 1876 series of cartridge belts, the Model 1880 woven cartridge belts of the Mills pattern, as well as two patterns of headless shell extractors during this period. Both remedies, the fabric constructed cartridge belts as well as the headless shell extractors continued to be issued to the private soldier until the Krag arms were finally issued. Even then, the fabric constructed cartridge belts of various patterns continued to be issued.

Artifact evidence isn't all that common of these cartridge case head separations, probably because the left over cases were considered trash and thrown away on the spot. I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a separated cartridge case on the site of "Cantonment on the North Fork of the Canadian River". This was an infantry post in northwest Oklahoma fairly in the middle of the old Cheyenne Arapaho Reservation and was only used as a full time post in 1879, 1880, and 1881. It was placed there to help regulate that reservation a year after the start of the Dull Knife flight of the Northern Cheyenne back to their homeland in the north. It was garrisoned by six companies of the 23rd Infantry. At this point in time, they would have been using the M1876 prairie belts and the original copper cased .45-70 rifle rounds. The latest dated cartridge case I have found there was 1879, and I have found a couple dozen. Attached is a couple photos of the separated cartridge case and other cartridge cases found there. Unfortunately, the head of the separated case was not found. As you can see, it appears the the separated case had to be gotten out using some sort of awl or small, square nail to pry it out. Anyway, I found it interesting to find such an artifact. I didn't immediately recognize it for what it was, and it finally dawned upon me what I was holding.

Nice collection. Odd they would use that method to remove the stuck body and not the available arsenal tool? If An NCO say that being done by a ranker all hell would have been raised.

I would have thought that as well, Tom. Of course, the only tool available at the time would have been the first pattern tool, and I am not the least bit convinced on how effective that particular tool was. I've never had to use one, so I don't know from personal experience, but it looks fairly crude. The edges of the spring tip would have to be very sharp to be effective. This tool was quickly replaced by the M1882 tool, and obviously, for a reason. Though nothing much has been written about either tool, I suspect the earlier tool didn't work well. If that was the case, it would explain the crude manner in which this headless case was taken out. That being surmised by me, the written Ordnance instructions also say that if this tool failed to extract such a case, to consider that particular weapon as damaged and to be returned to an arsenal or depot. Those instructions can be found in the Dorsey book on gun tools.

I have used both over the years and they do work. As a side note the groove in the body is way to neat for a knife or pick, I cannot explain the rest of the body missing but as you know and see in most of yours they have been flattened as per general orders to prevent native reloading. I have many with that same grove in them and had thought that to render them useless a pair of farriers tongs were used on them rather that stomping? Just a thought.

Great Topic. And interesting photos.

Hello
I, also have used both and found the 1st model worked very well
Blunt mentioned separation in his "Rifle and Carbine Firing"

Case head separation is a common phenomenon and to this day tools are issued to soldiers to remove headless cases. The old copper benet primed cases were definitely troublesome in this respect, I believe the internal primer has a lot to do with this, they seem to separate at the primer crimp maybe due to over working or weakening of the copper due to the crimp? We will never know. The brass casings mostly solved this issue but if y’all follow bpcr forums, you will find lots of posts on case head separation in black powder loaded casings that seem to be caused by leaving excessive moisture in the chamber. This is with modern arguably much superior brass casings and not all were reloaded many times. I suspect soldiers and civilians of the time poured water down their bores or swabbed them with water when shooting to maintain accuracy just as folks do today. So people make a big issue of it but it is a common occurrence in centerfire cartridge arms period, even to this day, but of course it was probably more frequent with copper internally primed cases but it was the material they knew from the beginning of making cartridges so that was the natural progression of things.