Well Gentlemen,
I am please you seem to like it, even if it Is a kind of working rifle!
I'd put together a Mark Silver kit, from Jim Chambers, and it 's a lovely and fine handling kit!
Thought I'd maybe short-changed myself so made another, that I showed some time back, but Still bought the lock, trigger-guard and buttplate and of course barrel.
Still thought I'd shortchanged myself, and figured to try again, but as the heart of a flintlock is the lock, figured to get another from Jim, as I could never make one as nice as his locks!
The rest was just a plain challenge.
It snowed on us one harvest, and while we were laid up from combining, I made the rifling bench and got barrel done on the inside. Ordered a scissor mould from Dixie, guessing what I needed and it works fine. (got lucky!)
I see some questions above so will try and answer in order;
C-C Fiddler,
Barrel is 43 " long, and about .44 calibre. I rifled it 1 ~ 45 ". (Don't ask me why, but it seems to work,) charge first shots above , was 55 grs 2F. Goes well between 40 & 80 grs.
Old trav'ler,
Farm has taken up most of my time until now. Always summat to do and all that. Not enough time to build many.
Flehto,
I think I just used Wahakon Bay aqua-fortis. Being red maple it has more figure, Still V hard, but a little softer than the hard maple.
It Did give me a worry, as someone I used to pester with phone-calls at that time, (Maybe Mark Silver, Before I realised how busy those guys are!!)
Suggested I try just scraping and burnishing, instead of sanding. Well! when I did it with Nitric, I got the scare of my life! grain seemed stand on end like a fresh washed rat! ( might have been Frank House) But, just as they said, if you ha dit warm and slopped the oil on, and burnished it, the grain would go lie down and Stay down and it did!
Gave me a real bad turn though, as it took some time to get it to submit.
I like the soft warm colour as well, Flehto.
Little Joe, No , it's not a fine , as in perfectly made and carved and engraved rifle. It's a working gun, made sort of quick and without messing about.
TOF,
In the photo of the open box, you can see a spring that raises the lid when the latch is pulled. This spring is at front of the compartment.
The latch at the back has a lip that goes over the rear of the lid, holding it down.
This latch has a stem, like a square nail with barbs on it, and it is driven into the stock and acts as a spring. When pushed to the rear, (away from patch-box
lid), the lid can pop open under the pressure of the front spring.
Hope this helps!
Kevin/Burnt,
I have built more, but not many. Time was always the problem. made about 9 all told.
Have a cousin in England, and his father passed away suddenly when fairly young.
I have often thought about that;
If he had lived, the lads would have spent their lives farming. (like me).
As it is, they all "blossomed " so to speak. One makes Very high -class violins, and used to deliver them anywhere in the world. Another set records for kayaking across the English channel, and the other one was the first bloke to build racing bicylcles out of carbon fibre. He developed the process.
Now, it they'd been farming, shovelling s*** all their lives, none of that would have happened.
Bigmon,
When the stuff was lying around, it didn't look much like it does now, LOL!
Thanks to all for the kind replies.
R.
