Baker blog

[robinghewitt]

I keep a monthly blog on shooting a Baker as Baker intended. Think I'm nearly there but I've been thinking that for some time

Just updated if for yesterday if anyone's interested in that kind of stuff Blog link

[RichardH]

Fascinating Robin, have you considered the other possible issue with your groups.....

Can I also applaud whoever created "Stumpy's Moose Snot"

Rich

[AD_K]

Just read your blog Robin, Interesting read!

Good luck with further experiments mate. Fingers crossed for you.... Ps I think you where the guy distracting me on short Siberia in October 2007. Green fleece? with a chap with a large moustache? I remember some chap down there with a Baker blowing smoke everywhere!!!!

(I was the guy with AR15 and a deck chair....)

ADK

[David]

Fascinating stuff - I have always had a hankering for front stuffers and clouds of smoke

[silva]

What a fine old rifle and a fascinating tale.
Was your Baker taken directly out of honourable retirement, or had it been shot in recent years before you owned it. That first shot must have been a nail biting affair. I wonder how many have survived the years as well as yours. Unlike the later ml British service rifles, you never seem to see them sporterised for civilian use.

Have you read "The Recollections Of Rifleman Harris", edited by Christopher Hibbert. Its the biography of a private soldier in the 95th rifles during the Peninsular war. He had a Baker rifle and reckoned it accurate up to three hundred yards, as opposed to the eighty yards of the musket of the day.

It might be a gun collectors myth, but were all the surviving Baker rifles sold off out of service to the Mexican army in the 1830's and used in a battle against the Texans, possibly the Alamo. There was a commissionary error in the heat of battle and the wrong size balls were issued. Many of these rifles were ruined by the unfortunate soldiers hammering these balls down the barrel, whilst the rest were used as clubs or abandoned in the battlefield.

Best Regards Morgan