After building a number of Lancaster County school rifles, I used my time in the Jacobsburg Historical Society longrifle gunsmithing class to work on a Lehigh Valley style rifle. The combined knowledge of Rich Hujsa, Jim Correll, and Carl Landis at Jacobsburg was a huge help in getting it approximately right.
Subsequently, Rich Hujsa and Joe Flemish presented a seminar on Lehigh Valley rifle characteristics at the 2011 Dixons Gun makers Fair.
I have accumulated the following characteristics from a number of referenced sources, and I hope others with a better background in the material will add to the list. The characteristics are grouped by the person who mentioned them. Many of the characteristics (such as the “Roman nose”) are repeated in the sources, but I do not repeat them here.
J W Heckert (jwh1947 on ALR)
List of identifying characteristics of Lehigh rifles.
This list is neither necessary nor sufficient to identify all Lehighs, and period of manufacture makes a difference, but here are some things to consider:
• May have had extreme drop
• Sheath butt plates, does not come out to side of stock. Inlet down
• Two-piece, wide patch box with Fleur-de-lis finial and engraving,
• Classic curvilinear butt stock profile with double radius at bottom (lost on later examples),
• Spade trigger,
• Trigger guard with wide bow and pronounced stud forward of the bow, looking like a sling rivet could have been put there.
• Wider than high wrist. (lost on later examples),
• Thimbles with 16 facets and a thumbnail in rear thimble (later examples sometimes lack a rear pipe),
• Tiny sights,
• If present, the nose cap should have an open front and be formed to accept part of the ramrod shape.
• V-shaped contour to forestock.
• If patchbox is present, release normally is at rear,
• The presence of the "Allentown Indian"
• Prayer hole in the cavity if there is a patch box.
E Kettenburg (from his website)
• Fore-stock only 1/3 of the way up the side barrel flat
• “Stepped wrist”. Second curve on bottom of butt stock starting at the junction of the stock and rear trigger guard extension, and extending to the front of the trigger guard bow.
• “Stepped Wrist” may be above the bottom line of the forestock at its highest point (hence wider than high wrist)
• Ramrod grove extends only 1/3 of the way up the ramrod diameter.
• The buttplate carries a somewhat short upper extension which is usually let into the comb rather than spanning it completely
Ron Gabel (Early Pennsylvania Gunsmithing talk before American Society of Arms Collectors Bulletin # 80, Copyright 1999.)
• The rifle has a unique stock profile curved top and bottom with a double curve on the bottom beginning at the trigger-guard.
• Rear of side plate is an arrow-head.
• Rear trigger guard rail almost parallel to stock.
From Dixon’s 2011 Fair Seminar by Rich Hujsa and Joe Flemish
• Rear sight cross piece is in the middle of the sight base.
• Two lines in fore-stock molding
• Three lines in cheek piece mounding – not parallel – pointing to tail of lock
• Two molding lines on bottom of butt stock.
• Straight barrels
