Lastly, the iron barrels were mandrel-wound and lap-welded, technology that most of the rest of the world had moved away from decades earlier. Breech blocks have been found with inclusions and the sub-frame that holds the breech block as well as most other internal parts has been known to be undersized and would stretch, causing serious head space issues. The main culprit is the action itself, which was technologically a bit more advanced design than the Nepalese were able to produce properly given the state of the art in Nepal at that time. If you are buying the Francotte and have plans to fire it, don't! The Nepalese Francotte is known for being potentially unsafe to fire. The other was a parts gun that I turned into a floor lamp. One of my Francottes is perhaps the nicest one I have yet seen. I'm late to the party on this thread, but I have a fair bit of experience with the Nepal Cache rifles, having two Francottes, one Martini Mk.IV, one Gahendra, one P-1853 Three Band Enfield and two P-1864 Snider-Enfields. I ended up selling it to help fund the purchase of my 1st m1 carbine.
![martini-henry francotte martini-henry francotte](https://s3.amazonaws.com/mgm-content/sites/armslist/uploads/posts/2020/09/30/12611089_01_australian_martini_francotte__640.jpg)
It was a really fun summer project to clean it up and make it respectable looking.
![martini-henry francotte martini-henry francotte](http://nitroexpress.info/ezine/CptCurlFiles/Single_Shot_Rifles/Mannlicher1903/Martini_Henry_MkII_actions/006.jpg)
I got to handpicked it which was fortunate since some of the untouched ones can be rough. I had the opportunity to go to the Atlanta Cutlery warehouse and looks around at everything and I picked up one.