Nipple not drilled - Euroarms Patt 1853

[bones92]

I recall reading about this before, but I noticed that a Euroarms Patt' 1853 I have has a nipple that is not drilled. It's odd, because it has a lead nipple guard (chained to the trigger).

What purpose did these dummy nipples serve? Perhaps some kind of re-enactor requirement for certain events?

Is there any reason I can't drill the nipple out myself? It looks like a typical steel nipple in every regard.

[R. McAuley 3014V]

Just replace it with a new vented cone and keep that one for "show and tell". Actually, it might come in handy if you ever wanted to re-blue the barrel and needed to seal the vent. Being it already has the correct threads would save you having to make and thread a new vent plug. If you do a lot of shooting, you will need to change the cone out on a frequent basis to maintain accuracy because they do grow larger inside after a while.

[bones92]

That's probably a good idea. I'm just curious as to why a nipple would be made without a flash hole drilled through.

[MR. GADGET]

Some of the guns at the Shot Show and NRA have a solid nipple so there is no way to fire.
Could have been one from there or a deal where they did it for display and to snap caps.

[Muley Gil]

OR, it could have been a boo-boo. While I was a police trainer in Afghanistan, we armed the local police with S&W Sigma 9mm pistols. One of my instructors was having trouble with his Sigma. IF it hit the paper, most of the rounds were keyholing. We field stripped his pistol and found that the barrel only had ONE land and it was a faint one.

Mistakes happen.

[bones92]

Very possibly, Gil. It looks like it was drilled a bit on the bottom end. As I have no use for a dummy nipple, I think I'll just drill it out.

[Don Dixon]

One of the complaints from the field during the Civil War regarding both Austrian and Enfield rifle muskets was that some of them were issued to the troops with nipples that had not been bored through. One’s initial reaction to this is that the manufacturer was either incompetent or duplicitous. However, the author of the contemporary book Das deutsche Wehr- und Schüßenwessen [German Shooting for War and Sport] writes that a training objective for a soldier was that he could mount a loaded rifle musket to his shoulder and accurately fire it from the standing position within 30 seconds. The author suggested that to save ammunition in initial training, percussion caps be used on nipples which were not bored through. Although the author did not mention it, this would have had the additional advantage of insuring that a musket in the hands of a recruit was completely safe until he had reached a point in his training where his instructors were willing to trust him with live ammunition. This raises the possibility that some rifle muskets which had been set up for training purposes had been sold out of war reserve stocks without having the training nipples replaced. In any case, the fact that rifle muskets with nipples that were not bored through reached troops in the field illustrates serious failures on the part of the Federal New York Ordnance Office’s inspection procedures and in the Federal Army’s ordnance supply chain.

It may be authentic. I wouldn't drill it out.

Regards,
Don Dixon
2881V

[bones92]

Don, this is a Euroarms Patt' 1853...

[Don Dixon]

Completely missed the "Euroarms." Advancing age and inability to read....