Last winter I purchased a used Lyman GPR from a member of another muzzleloading forum. The member had not been altogether honest in his description of the condition of the rifle before I bought it, as there was damage to the metal on the barrel and barrel rib when it arrived to me, but I used this as motivation to customize the rifle more to my liking. I came to this forum, asked some questions, and a few members generously offered to help mentor me through the process, primarily the excellent craftsman D. Taylor Sapergia.
After receiving some suggestions from Taylor I decided that I wanted to try my hand at doing several things to the rifle:
- file off the lettering on the barrel;
- straighten the tang and lengthen the wrist;
- narrow the width of the forearm and thin the area where the forearm meets the barrel channel;
- reshape the buttstock and beavertail and change the angle of the buttplate;
- remove the 'perch belly' from the underside of the buttstock;
- refinish the metal with a 'brown - rust blue' finish;
- replace the trigger assembly, the front sight and the rear sight.
This was my very first time doing this kind of work, and I wanted to challenge myself by having to accomplish many of the tasks that I would have to do if I decided to undertake a more ambitious rifle build someday. I figured if I messed up along the way that I would still have a rifle that would be functional enough to shoot and to hunt with - hopefully!
I made many, many mistakes along the way, primarily on the stock, because of choosing to work in poor lighting conditions sometimes (like, working by headlamp in the middle of the night because I was inspired!) and because I did not step back often enough to look at the work from all angles. I was also trying to work during a very difficult time due to the sudden death of my wife's dear mother, and although I found it comforting to work on the rifle as I grieved, my cognition and depth perception and focus were definitely not at their best.
So, here is a little journey of the process. I hope it can be helpful to other beginner gunbuilder folks out there who may be contemplating doing the same thing to their factory-issue Lyman GPR.
Here are a couple of 'before' pictures of the rifle:
First I filed off the plethora of stamped lettering, which then led to draw-filing the entire barrel. Boy that was a satisfying thing to do, and not quite as hair-raising as I was anticipating!
I then straightened the tang a bit to approximate a little more of a traditional angle and to facilitate the lengthening of the wrist. This stage also included filing down the thickness of the tang to remove the strange bevel that Lyman puts on it and then re-inletting the tang into the stock, which I enjoyed doing:
Here I am in the process of reshaping the snail to make it look a little more like a snail:
Here I am starting to straighten the line of the bottom of the forestock, which came with a bit of a belly to it:
At this point I begin to remove the perch belly on the buttstock:
Reshaping the cheekpiece and removing some of the bulk of the buttstock:
Changing the angle of the buttplate. The first photo shows the factory buttplate angle and a penciled-in modification, which I think would have been an improvement. However after establishing this angle I later changed it again in a moment of non-clarity related to further reduction of the perch belly and thus I went way too far. The lower photo shows the resulting angle of the end of the buttstock along with a partially fit buttplate. You can see here how I removed too much material and therefore reduced the buttstock height by quite a bit. I thought I was doomed at this point but decided to continue - especially since buying another Lyman stock would have set me back $250. I posted on this forum about this major boo-boo with photos of my mishap and received some excellent encouragement to persevere, and I thank you for that!
Here is the beginning of reshaping the lock panels - another area where I got a little careless and removed too much material without check-check-checking along the way. The final product is not too terribly bad but does not have quite the symmetry and elegance I was aiming for:
After this point I went through a period of discouragement. Rather than continue to make large, regrettable mistakes I took a break from the project for a few months and then slowly reapproached the work (another suggestion from forum members here). I fit the buttplate to the buttstock (very challenging), re-inlet the toeplate and trigger guard, and did the final shaping of the stock. I did not do any photo documentation of the process during this time, sorry about that.
I then sanded the stock to 320 grit sandpaper and refinished it with 6 thin coats of Chambers Traditional Oil Finish - I love that stuff! It revealed qualities to the wood that the factory finish did a great job of hiding.
I prepped the metal parts for browning by sanding to 180 grit paper. I knew I did not want a mirror-finish to the metal, but rather wanted something with more of a texture to it. I also wanted a color to the metal somewhere between a brown and a rust blue. I used Wahkon Bay Tru-Brown solution and let the parts rust in a heated and very humid bathroom. I applied the solution and let it rust four times without carding. Then I carded the parts with a piece of denim and put all the parts in a bath of boiling water and let them sit until they started to darken. I removed the parts, neutralized the browning solution with ammonia, scrubbed everything with Lava soap, lightly carded with a Scotchbrite pad, and oiled thoroughly with something called Corrosion-X. Something to note is that much of the darkness of the color you see in the photos did not appear until after the parts had been soaking in the Corrosion-X overnight. I carded very lightly again and repeated the saturation in the oil solution, then wiped everything down with a soft shop rag.
And finally, here are a few photos of the final product:
I really love the color and texture of the metal and feel fortunate that it came out this way.
My effort was sincere though my results were far from perfect in many ways, but I learned a lot and feel more prepared for my next project, which will be a Jim Chambers Isaac Haines flintlock - when funds allow!
Many thanks again to those of you who provided encouragement and guidance to me - I really appreciate it.
I am now in the process of working up a load for the rifle and am enjoying it immensely.
I plan to take the GPR wild boar hunting in a few weeks.
