Does anyone make a breech loader kit for a muzzle loader?

[Brutuskend]

If not, I wonder why.
Do you think there would be a market for such a thing?

 

[Bill Raby]

Rifle Shoppe makes kits for Ferguson rifles and Hall rifles. Both are breech loading. The Ferguson rifle is a flintlock and the Hall rifle comes in either flintlock or percussion. These are not beginner kits and they are not cheap.

 

[AlexanderA]

Perhaps the OP is thinking about a cartridge breech loading kit for a muzzleloader?

The idea would be similar to the drop-in cartridge cylinders for cap-and-ball revolvers.

Actually, there's a historical precedent for this: the conversion of Civil War muskets to Model 1865 breechloaders (Allin conversion).

This wouldn't be feasible for a home gunsmith, for a number of reasons.

 

[Jim Watson]

The Allin conversion here, the Snider in England were just the two best known.
It would take an ADVANCED home gunsmith, but it could be done.
An 80% Allin? Why not?

 

[Loyalist Dave]

If not, I wonder why.
Do you think there would be a market for such a thing?

Technically, the conversion cylinders for revolvers (or revolving cap-n-ball revolvers) are such kits.

As for a long gun, there are several reasons why.

First, the whole point of the muzzleloader is just that...load from the muzzle. It fits into a shooting niche, and into a hunting niche. Conversion to a cartridge or simply to a breech loader negates that very qualification. Most people for example don't realize that even though you must use black powder, the Ferguson, Hall, Sharps, Burnside, Gallager, Smith, Spencer, etc breech loading rifles and carbines cannot be use for muzzleloading season, and in some states not even for modern cartridge rifle season. The latter season for example in my state, has minimum "power" levels that the modern cartridges will meet but the black powder breech loaders that use fixed cartridges do not.

Next, there is a BIG difference between "machining" a polymer receiver and machining metal. One reason why I've never taken the parts from my old Colt Officer's Model 1911A1 and built them into a new, aluminum 80% frame is there is a lot more to it than completing something like a Glock Poly80. I submit that if a person can install something like a Snyder kit on an ACW repro rifle then they don't need to buy the kit, other than to simply save time. Not to mention anytime you do that to an expensive repro (sorry that's redundant) you void any warranty.

Finally the steel used in muzzleloading barrels will simply not hold the pressures of modern powder. The aforementioned conversion cylinders require no actual modification of the barrel, but only a minor filing of part of the frame that does not alter the revolver from being returned to cap-n-ball status. This is not the same case with converting a black powder long gun or rifle barrel to breech loading. So you have even greater potential in the conversion of a black powder rifle to a fixed cartridge, of some person using smokeless powder. Now WE know that such is unlikely, that one of US would make that mistake, but the manufacturer of the kit simply could not run that risk. I can tell you that I've run across about dozen black powder only repros over the past 30 years that the knucklehead who had the repro, had loaded with smokeless powder.

I know that the folks that sell conversion cylinders dread the day they have to deal with somebody putting a modern made .45 Colt cartridge into the cylinder, and it fails.... assuming that day has not already come. Depending on the state..., all the warnings in writing and stickers won't protect the company.....

LD