AmericanLongRifles Forums
General discussion => Gun Building => Topic started by: Scota4570 on December 07, 2019, 02:22:59 AM
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I made this to use parts and try some finishing ideas. I also wanted to have a shorter flint target rifle for windy days. It is 40 cal, 34" BBL, 7 1/2#.
Question? Other shooters will ask what is it? Yes, it is a franken-gun but does it actually look like anything from the past? I might say an Ohio rifle that the owner wanted flint instead of percussion because caps were hard to get in his area.
Can anyone make up a story (possibly nonsense) : ) to explain the "school" or origin of a similar type of rifle from the past.
(https://i.ibb.co/YXXVqWB/40ohio.jpg) (https://ibb.co/2SSpf63)
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From my limited knowledge, there were some halfstock English rifles made and yours looks similar to some of them. It’s nice though I bet it’s a great gun to shoot no matter what “school” it is or isn’t!
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Heck, it's a HAWKINS of course! ::) ::) ;D
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When asked what it is, simply reply " Are you blind? It is a halfstock flint lock rifle."
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I would say the style of that rifle is Eastern USA half stock with a flintlock
instead of a caplock. Not too complicated.
Bob Roller
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Never feel like you need to apologize for that rifle...it's very nice. It doesn't matter that it is not a copy of an original. All our rifles, even ones that we think come from our own minds, come from the experience we already have stored. There is nothing new under the sun...except maybe an iphone 11.
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I like this rifle, would be nice to shoot prone on 100 yards
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Looks fine to me in fact I got a GM .40 cal 34" barrel some Siler large flintlocks which I will put to good use building one like it when I get the time ;).
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Looks like a Sharon Rifle that I have only mine is a cap gun.. If I could get the photo to upload, I'd post it for you. Good looking gun. Totally useable.
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I have seen pictures of a Jacob Kuntz half stock flintlock rifle. Although it had a 48" barrel it still looked like a extra fine gun and your looks quite nice also.
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Q: What style of rifle is that?
A: A fine one.
Mike
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I think you have a fine rifle, and no apologies are necessary. I don't see that you specified the type of lock (although it looks like a Siler) or barrel, but I'll bet it's a shooter.
I'm seeing the phrase "Ohio rifle" applied to a lot of half-stocked percussion rifles lately. No offense to anyone here, but I would like to point out that there were individual gunmakers as well as gunmaking centers all over the country in the later percussion era... New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, California... and so forth, all making half-stocked rifles. I believe a number of half-stocks were produced in New England, especially Massachusetts, during the flintlock era. These probably would have had English locks, though.
The rifle in the original post reminds me a lot of the old "Astorian" rifles built by Green River Forge in the 1970's. This is not to be confused with Green River Rifle Works of Roosevelt, Utah. They were a totally separate company. Anyway, I never owned one, but the Astorians were reported to be very nice rifles, and there is an apocryphal report that there is an original in a museum in Vancouver (? Washington ? B.C ?) which the rifles from Green River Forge resembled very closely. The GRF Astorian rifles had Haddaway locks, which were virtually identical to the better known Silers, and they had Sharon barrels. The only really salient visual difference between the Astorian rifles and the one pictured in the original post is that the rifles from Green River Forge had a band around the forend instead of the Hawken-Style nosecap. You can find a very good write-up about Green River Forge and all of their guns here: Green River Forge (http://grrw.org/green-river-forge/).
I would also direct your attention to Granville Stuart's autobiography, Forty Years on the Frontier. Mr. Stuart is generally remembered as a pioneer in Montana, but he spent his childhood (1843-1850) in Iowa. In his book, he wrote, "In our neighborhood was a widow with several children whose husband had been a good hunter. His rifle was a flint-lock half stock, of large caliber for those days, using forty round balls to the pound of lead." Mr. Stuart went on to provide a little more detail about this rifle, adding that his father "... used to borrow it occasionally because its large balls were more fatal to the deer than those of his small caliber rifle." When the elder Mr. Stuart was successful in his hunt, he always gave half of the venison to Mrs. Johnson, the widow who owned the rifle. The point of all this being that half-stocked flintlock rifles did exist on the frontier, and people were still shooting flinters well into the percussion era. Another interesting detail is that forty gauge balls (forty to the pound of lead) would be 0.488". Allowing for a bit of windage, the rifle Mr. Stuart described was probably around fifty caliber, which he considered quite large.
If you find this interesting, I would recommend that you take a look at the book. There is a long excerpt on Books Google (https://books.google.com/books/about/Forty_Years_on_the_Frontier_as_Seen_in_t.html?id=9sJm8gKehXEC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q=flintlock&f=false), and you can read it for free. You won't have access to the whole book, but the information that is probably of greatest interest to most of us is in the first couple of chapters, and the discussion of firearms is on pages 32-34.
I didn't mean to hijack the thread... Sorry. Old guys tend to ramble.
Best regards,
Notchy Bob
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This is valid and welcome information Bob...no apology required, as far as I am concerned.
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The lock is a Siler with a plate I made. The original plate is fine for an early Germanic long rifle but the tail was too narrow for what I had in mind. It is 40 cal with a 7/8" 34" barrel.
Thanks for the insightful replies. I have wanted a half-stock flinter for a while. My firs ML was a TC with the flintlock. It's lock was the earliest type that smashed flints. My first deer with the rifle took two tries to get ignition.
I have one of Jim Kiblers carving kit stocks. The for-end it about 1" too short to short to make a half-stock. To bad because it is fantastic wood. I have a picture in my head of his colonial with a halfstock and a wood rib.
In scale RC modeling they "kit bash" one aircraft into another by changing details. You see original rifles shortened and made into halfstocks. I guess there is precedent. It would be rolling the clock forward on the history of the rifle to a state late in it's life.
(https://i.ibb.co/BzLKFB0/halfkib.png) (https://ibb.co/LkShH1V)
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I guess my guns could be called frankenguns. I don't like copying someone else's work if possible. I don't worry about what I build for myself, and everyone seems to like them.
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During the Western expansion of the 1800's many long rifles were shortened to be better used on horse back or because original fore stocks cracked or broke and shortening them was easier than restocking. Have seen a number with wooden under ribs.