"Perry metal AWI Riflemen - A mix of Rifles?" Topic

I bought several Perry AWI riflemen in metal. Most had long guns, but some poses had short guns.

At first I thought I got damaged casts, but the Perry website shows the same casts with short guns. Is the sculpt a goof? Hard to believe for a Perry product.

I always thought American riflemen carried the famous long rifles. Am I missing something? Did several carry jaeger or other shorter barreled rifles?

I always found the Perry sculpts to be meticulous, so I am assuming there was no unintential error here.

Individually made, so sure. The first website I searched said:

A typical Dickert rifle was 54 to 65 inches in length, with a 42 to 44-inch barrel. They weighed between seven and eight-and-a-half pounds with a caliber of .44 to .55.

So could be up to ten or eleven inches difference in barrel length?

I'm with doc mcb on this. No standard-issue rifle, so lots of personal and personalized weapons. At least one of Morgan's riflemen is known to have used a double-barreled weapon--very handy when people tried to rush him while he was reloading. I'm sure they were on average longer in the barrel than the ones carried by their cousins from the old country, but Perry would have been wrong to cast them all carrying the same weapon.

Since British Loyalist and German Jaeger riflemen carried short rifles it wouldn't be that surprising if some American were armed with short barrelled rifles.

You have to realize that the "American rifle" wasn't a mass produced weapon, it was an expensive weapon made by experienced Craftsmen.The Pennsylvania rifle could be ten different rifles made by ten different gunsmiths.

True that – especially for Continental rifle units, a lot of individuality- must have driven the quartermaster mad – - -

No such thing, Frederick. Each of those riflemen would have had his own bullet mold. All the QM needed was a supply of lead, flints and cartridge paper.

Might have driven the NCO's mad during inspections, except that Continental rifle units were raised from the edges of Indian Country. They may have heard of uniformity, but it wasn't something they practiced.