newly discovered, iron mounted W. ZOLLMAN rifle

[cshirsch]

I was lucky enough to find this fine rifle at the Houston gunshow on Saturday.  William Zollman is the maker (Rockbridge County, VA) and I am really happy that it is iron mounted.  It is pretty much an honest old rifle except where someone has done a poor job of adding about a 10" X 1/4" strip of wood to the upper forearm.  I will fix that soon.  I already have a trigger guard started for it and the front trigger will be no problem to fix.  It's a good thing there is another of his rifles shown on this forum to give me a few ideas for the trigger guard.  I will post photos when the restoration is complete but don't worry, there is really not much I will need to do unless I decide to reconvert the lock.  Chris Hirsch

[cshirsch]

I'm having some trouble getting the rest of the photos posted but I will try again later.

Chris

[heinz]

Very nice.  Look forward to more pictures and seeing it repaired.

[longrifle]

That one look's like a beautiful old rifle, I look forward to seeing photo's when you are done with it.

[G-Man]

How cool - another good example of those occasional iron mounted guns that turn up from areas that were a bit outside of the mountains.  From time to time there are guys asking for ideas on iron mounted rifles, but that have taller or wider butts with less curvature than some of the late mountain rifle styles - here is a good example.

Guy

[WElliott]

Good for you, Chris.  Your rifle has very handsome architecture and is well work restoring.  Thank you for posting.

[Tanselman]

That's a very interesting rifle, with its iron furniture. I like the strong "S" line where the cheek and wrist planes meet in front of the cheekpiece...a Zollman characteristic. It's a good rifle and well worth restoring. Shelby Gallien

[flintriflesmith]

If you go back to the earlier thread about the signed brass mounted Zollman rifle you will find that I mentioned that I was surprised to see one in brass because the few I had seen over the years were in iron.
I can't remember how many that is but I believe at least one had a triangular pathbox finial like some of the later John Davidson rifles. Davidson was also in Rockbridge, Co.

It would be interesting to look at the distribution on iron mounts in the central Valley. Off the top of my head, the iron John Sheets (of Staunton) is the most northern one I recall. Most seem to be Rockbridge, Botetourt, Floyd, Wythe and so on to the south and west.
Gary

[G-Man]

The architecture also seems to share some ties to Davidson and Joseph Bogle as well, i.e. the extreme drop to the wrist - but Zollman's combs are a lot higher.

It is surprising to see how many iron mounted guns were made in the southern states in areas outside of the "mountain" regions.  Bill Ivey's book has quite a few iron mounted piedmont North Carolina guns made a good 100 miles east of the mountains.  The guns from these areas generally seem to have mounts that more closely mimic their brass mounted counterparts rather than the highly stylized mountain type hardware.  I guess one could assume that these represent an earlier style of mounts brought into the regions, and thus sort of an evolutionary step toward the stylized mountain rifle guards, although I doubt it is quite that simple...the more I learn about these rifles the more I realize I do not know....

Guy

[cshirsch]

Here's the trigger guard I came up with for the iron mounted Zollman rifle I just acquired.  The top area of the butt plate is round so I decided to carry that over to the trigger guard.  I copied the 'molding' design he used on the butt plate, thimbles, and nosecap.  This is after a day of cutting, welding, reshaping, etc.  I'm sure that it may not be some others idea but it was the best I could come up with without actually seeing another iron mounted Zollman.  So, what do you think?
Chris