Trigerguard or strap ?

[A.Merrill]

     I'm building a Poor Boy using a Lancaster style stock and just can't makeup my mind if I should use a regular trigger guard or a strap for a TG.
    I know the Boyer guns used a strap but, that's a diffrent county.
   What do you guys think? Or what do you think would look best?        AL

[Bob Roller]

I once examined an original "poor boy" that had a screen door pull for a trigger guard and the ramrod thimbles were soldered to the barrel and went thru the groove in the stock and the rod then tied the gun together.

Bob Roller

[Dale Halterman]

Pretty sure there is a rough rifle hanging in Chuck Dixon's shop with a trigger guard that looks like it was made of sheet tin.

I have also heard of trigger guards being made from old horse shoes, which sounds cool. Never seen one, though.

Dale H

[T*O*F]

Mountain philosophy:

Use it up,
Wear it out,
Make do,
Or do without.

[bgf]

Or you could take the other approach and use a really fancy, older style trigger guard cut down to fit more or less.  Recycle and reuse was invented long before everybody became green.  A real poor boy wouldn't waste strap if he already had something close to what he wanted in the collection.

[Kermit]

I've thought horn would be a good alternative. Certainly available, cheap, and easy to work.

[rich pierce]

When working within a school, I generally try to use features from known examples.  Not sure there were Lancaster barn guns, schimmels or poor boys (choose your label).  Most were Berks county, I think.  So if you do it Lancaster style, you're free to be creative.  I don't see much forged ironwork on Pennsylvania guns in general so would be inclined to use a simple strap of brass, maybe dished a little in the bow.

[okieboy]

 I don't have an answer, but I do have a queston. If you are building a poor rifle, what are the other components? A plain flawed piece of wood? A recycled Spanish barrel? A CVA lock off eBay? I am taking the word "poor" to mean cheap, not plain, as plain would be easy to figure out. I have handled several original cheap rifles and if they were cheaply made, they were cheap from end to end.
 I guess if one wanted to make a cheap Lancaster gun, it would have a Lancaster brass trigger guard (and probably a brass butt plate), but they would probably be the worst castings from a batch and would only be given a quick minimal cleanup with a file. The stock would probably get a hurried scrape and a coat of thin shellac (cheap and dries fast). That would be my idea of a poor Lancaster, but I doubt if many want to build a rifle that way these days.

[Don Getz]

Al.......the approach I always use is to make the gun look like a plain gun built by a known builder, but made without some
of the normal, more difficult parts, for example....no buttplate, sideplate, entry pipe, nosecap.   We also just finished one
where the trigger fit into  nice wood slot, so I eliminated the trigger plate, used a wood screw down thru the tang.   You
wouldn't believe how much this speeds up the building process, but still give you a great feeling gun.   Also, by eliminating
some of these parts it is possible to get a great 44" swamped barrel gun that weighs in the 6 1/2 to 7 pound range.  I
still will not make a gun that looks more like a HOE than a gun........put a brass or steel trigger guard on it...........Don