Step Wrist Rifles

[Cory Joe Stewart]

Who can tell me about step wrist rifles?  Where are they from, time frame etc.  I like early rifles and am trying to decide what to build and I was looking at Mike Brook's Klette rifle kit.  I believe I spelled that right. and it struck my curiosity about why the wrist on those styles look so different. 

Coryjoe

[G-Man]

Hello Cory Joe - some of the earliest surviving longrifles from both Pennsylvania and Virginia are stepped wrist guns - at least as early as the 1760s on American longrifles and since it was an early Germanic stock style it was probably used here even earlier than the 1760s.  Wallace has theorized it was probably used by early Moravian North Carolina gunmakers as well, which is logical given its use by Moravian gunsmiths in Pennsylvania and also by Virginia gunmakers at the same time.

The style is believed to have migrated through Virginia and eventually over into Tennessee and Kentucky where some gunsmiths like Jacob Young (Tennessee/Kentucky) and the Honakers (southwestern Virgnia) continued using variations of it up into the percussion era.  

Guy

[Benedict]

Wallace calls it step toe.  He wrote an article in MuzzleBlasts some time ago about the step toe group.

Bruce

[Cory Joe Stewart]

hhmmmmmmm!

Interesting Guy, this peaks my interest more.  I live in western North Carolina piedmont and I want to build a rifle that someone woudl have migrated into the region with in the early 1770s, and there is a big Moravian influence in my particular region.

Thanks

Coryjoe

[Larry Luck]

Have you visited Old Salem Village and MESDA?  You might find some additional information for your project.

http://mesda.org/images/MesdaHomePage.jpg

Larry Luck

[RifleBarrelGun]

Coryjoe,

How about an early Lancaster?  Since there are examples to copy/emulate (as opposed to documented NC rifles that early), and since thousands of emigrants to that region traveled from PA to the NC backcountry carrying rifles made in Lancaster (noted as early as the 1750s), that might be a better choice than inventing a fantasy of what a 1770 North Carolina rifle looked like.

Just a thought.

[Tim Crosby]

 Try this one for MESDA. There are some intersting articles in back issues of their journals.

 http://mesda.org/

 Tim C.

[G-Man]

There are a number of examples of stepped wrist or stepped toe American longrifles that date to the early 1770s or earlier, whether from Pennsylvania, Virginia, or points unknown.  So you have a solid basis to go from there, as much as anything else, for something that might have been used or brought into the region in that era. 

Guy

[HIB]

CoryJoe,  There are 4 grand examples of early Moravian 'step wrist' rifles pictured in the new Kentucky Rifle Foundation book 'MORAVIAN GUN MAKING of the American Revolution'.  One is attributed to the Moravian N.C. community of Bethabara [near Salem].

The book has just been introduced to the public in the last several weeks. Take a second and review the release at the top of the Antique Gun Collecting section of the ALR site.

I believe you'll find what you are looking for in this book as well as from all the other sources mentioned above.  Good luck with a great project.   HIB

   

[Cory Joe Stewart]

That is perfect news.  Bethabara is not far from where I am sitting right now. I will definately have to check that out.  Thanks

Coryjoe

[flintriflesmith]

The info on the article on step toe rifles and two articles on the RCA #42 attribution to NC in Muzzle Blasts are below:
“The Step Toe Group,” May 2004, p. 6;
 “An 18th-Century Moravian Rifle Gun from North Carolina, January 2005, p. 4.
 “An Eighteenth-Century North Carolina Moravian Rifle Gun,”  continued from January issue, March 2005, p. 53.

Gary