"A Baker rifle for the House of War!" Topic

Hey all!

Well, I just picked up something I had been waiting for for a WHILE… a Baker rifle!

Oh, and poked around here all day…

Anyway… for more details, come on by the blog, and stay for a video of me shooting a machine gun!:D

link

The photograph is superb and very useful…. saved to my PC!

Even better you got the sword.

and here is the daft thing that never ever occurred to me. The black sling, it was probably only black on the outer face! I have never seen it shown as such in a model, but of course!

Nice – enjoy – you deserve it mate!

Is it a reproduction?

Oh, of course… I'm a teacher, so certainly no originals for me!:)

How much would an original fetch?

An original Baker? Between £6,000.00 GBP and £8,000.00 GBP First thing on my list if I ever win the lottery!

Not as much as I had imagined actually. I guess to some degree they were mass produced and many never issued out of storage.

The reproduction is superb but it is still getting the sword as well that rocks my boat!

Will you try firing it?

As a reproduction? I would fire it. Modern steel is much better (read: more consistent), so black powder causing kabooms basically cannot happen. When you see a black powder firearm that had a kaboom (catastrophic failure), if you get down to the details, the moron loading the thing used modern smokeless powder, which has a far higher working pressure.

For that matter, I'd be tempted to fire an original that had been properly inspected (magnetic particle inspection and eddy current). While it may be a front-loading smokepole, it's still a firearm and meant to be used. Maybe not often, but once a year or so…

I did indeed fire it! A LOT of fun. I have a video… I'll upload it and post it :)

youtu.be/5t90rj6PFXQ

There you go!

Both rifle and sword are things of beauty, thanks for sharing and that's very cool!

That is a great video you have shown. I know what I would have been told, though, "tuck that butt further into your shoulder lad, unless you want to fracture your clavicle!"

I'll never forget the kick of a Mk4 Lee Enfield…ouch.

Now you have to clean it all of course. But it is "broken in"

Hello Milord!

Nice rifle. I still have the hope to find one in some remote corsican attic, but it seems the british ordnance did not allow the RCRs to bring them home…..

Who is the maker of that super repro please?

Cheers.

,

Bloody hell, that's a lot of white smoke.

Yeah, I know my angle wasn't great… I always let my right elbow drop, and allow the butt to wander up. Not sure why! My father in law got on me about it a bit… :)

And I cleaned it that night. Sort of a pain, since I only fired maybe six rounds, but still… it was nice to get familiar with the gun.

Repro is American, from Middlesex Village Trading Company. Wait was INSANE, but the product is nice, and when we went to pick it up the service could not have been better.

And yeah, I put too much powder in the pan there. Before I fired you can hear me mention it (in the unclipped version).

How long was the wait?
Have you replaced the stock smoothbore barrel with a rifled one?

The wait was long… eleven months:(

Unfortunately it is smoothbore…. they don't sell it with a rifled barrel. Considering getting that changed, but we'll see, not sure I want to spend the money:)

Has anyone ever videoed the loading process? I would be intrigued to see the various measures allowed for the Baker. The ready use cartridge, but then especially the DIY measuring out the propellant oneself, from the powder horn and finally the emergency faster-loading round

Here is a good video showing the various methods of loading a Baker Rifle and the results:

YouTube link