Navy Arms

[Muley Gil]

I was looking at the Navy Arms website and they show the Parker-Hale muzzleloaders. They are described as having barrels made by Parker-Hale and assembled using the 1860s gauges.

Has anyone looked at one of these?

The only other military long arm listed is a Brown Bess musket. Glad I have my 1803 Harpers Ferry in the safe. :)

http://www.navyarms.com/ph_enfields.html

[Southron Sr.]

Back in the 1970's the Birmingham, England firm of Parker-Hale introduced their line of repro Enfields. Yes, they got hold of an original set of Enfield gauges and according to their advertising, their parts would interchange with the parts of original "fully interchangable" P-53's as made at the Enfield Lock Armory in the 1860's.

Unfortunately, P-H chose to repro the 4th Model Enfield that utilized the Badderley Barrel Bands. Most Enfields imported into the U.S. and C.S. during the Civil War were either the 2nd Model or 3rd Model Enfields.

My understanding is that Parker-Hale built a special barrel making machine that literally swaged their Enfield barrels around a mandrel that imparted the progressive depth rifling and finished the bore during the swaging process. At the same time, the exterior dimensions of the barrel was formed.

Obviousley, this barrel swaging machine is a rather large and expensive piece of industrial equipment. My understanding also is that when P-H went bankrupt another company purchased their plant building and machinery, including that barrel swaging machine.

Basically, the barrels are still made at the old P-H plant in Birmingham and then the finished barrels are shipped down to Italy where they are assembled into finished firearms.

So, you might say the P-H Enfields that Navy Arms sells have British barrels with all the other parts "Made and assembled in Italy." Of course, this is opposed to the "totally Italian" made Enfields that Euroarms and ArmiSport makes and sells.

For my money, the P-H Naval Rifle is one of the most accurate repros out there. Of course, it is also one of the most EXPENSIVE repros out there also.

Like I have said, this is my understanding of how the current production P-H Enfields are made. Hope this helps.