razeed muskets

[Dave Fox]

Many smoothbore U.S. muskets one sees today have some of the barrel cut back at the muzzle. Those thin tubes must have often suffered damage there. Which raised a question in my mind: if a musket, especially before interchangeable parts, suffered such damage in the field that, say, a fraction of an inch had to be sawn off (not enough to affect fixing the bayonet), what was the protocol? Was the weapon sold out of service? Racked as substitute standard? Returned to the troops?

[Southron Sr.]

The Confederacy sent details of soldiers to recover as many muskets and other battle damaged military equipment that could be salvaged and repaired. Of course, this was only on the battlefields the Confederate Army retained after the battle. Both the Richmond and Macon Armories repaired a lot of battle damaged muskets.

As there was a shortage of cavalry carbines in the Confederate Cavalry both smoothbore and rifled muskets, with "cut down" barrels were issued to the cavalry. These were the "razeed muskets"

Nope, I don't know what was the policy for muskets with damaged muskets in the U.S. Army, but I bet you can find it in the volume below I have linked you to:

https://archive.org/details/cu31924031187887