We took along my father's Andrew Kopp rifle for Mark to look at. He is going to use the cheek plate on my father's rifle as a template to recreate the missing cheek plate on my rifle, so he took several macro close-up photos.
Mark examined my rifle closely and said the metal work on my rifle indicated it was actually an earlier rifle than my father's Andrew Kopp rifle, based on the trigger guard and butt plate. He also checked the bore; this rifle is a 38 caliber.
However, as
hurricane pointed out in the previous thread, the stock architecture has a higher comb than usual.
Mark thought the rifle might have been re-stocked by George Kopp after he returned to Geeseytown from his ten years of working in Illinois, as the current stock has some western features, like the higher comb, not usually seen in Bedford/Blair/Huntingdon rifles.
My son and I talked with Mark in his shop for about an hour and a half, and we learned more in that time about these Kopp rifles than everything I've learned up to this point. He was a great guy to talk to, and his current work that he showed us in his shop was just spectacular.
He estimates our rifle will be completed sometime this summer.
