Author Topic: Patch Box Alignment  (Read 8180 times)

gunsports

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Patch Box Alignment
« on: January 01, 2013, 11:49:08 PM »
When mounting a patch box, wheter on a long rifle, English sporting rife or a Jaeger, how is the patch box aligned? Obviously, the box is set to the mid point at the butt plate end, but with what is the front part of the box aligned? Is the front part (point) aligned in a line with the back of the lock, middle of the wrist or where? I've seen patch boxes at all angles. Some seem balanced, others look unblanced and plain ugly.

Advice please ....

Offline WadePatton

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #1 on: January 02, 2013, 12:15:32 AM »
this drives me nutz too.

and I'll bet a lot of it has to do with _if_ you're trying to reproduce a particular maker or school, but i've seen some "alignment" that just makes me cringe. 

MOF I saw a cigar/banana box on an original yesterday at the oddest angle, but hey it's an original so it is therefore right?

That's all i have to offer, but am quite interested in what is said here. 
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Offline D. Taylor Sapergia

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #2 on: January 02, 2013, 12:46:00 AM »
The angle of the box varies greatly in the American longrifle.  You cannot even say that in general, the rear most part is positioned in the centre of the butt plate.  If anything, they are situated a little above the centre, with less wood above the box that below it.  Certainly, I cannot off hand remember seeing the opposite, though I'm sure examples exist.  Likewise, the forward end of the box can be anywhere between running off the bottom line of the butt stock, like Peter Berry was wont to do, to running straight in line with the centre of the wrist.  The pitch of the centre-line of the box is very important in defining the butt stock's architecture.
Because some gunmaker did it one way or another, is neither right or wrong, but there are definitely extant examples that appeal to us more than others do.  I like to emulate the ones that appeal to me.
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Offline JTR

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #3 on: January 02, 2013, 01:09:13 AM »
I've seen patch boxes at all angles. Some seem balanced, others look unblanced and plain ugly.
Advice please ....

I think you've pretty much answered your own question.
Then as now, some guys had an eye for perspective and flow, and well, others just didn't. Just because the gun is an original, it doesn't make it 'right', it simply makes it old. I've seen new made guns on these pages that are simply stunning, and others that are just plain butt ugly. And the same goes for originals as well.

I just looked at two old Lancaster rifles, a Hawk, and a no name Lehigh rifle, and those four guns seem to have the center of the finale pointing more or less at the barrel/breech plug junction.
I'd think if you were building a rifle, look at similar guns by maker or school to get a general feel for how the boxes were situated, then line it up to what you think looks the best within that range.

John  
« Last Edit: January 02, 2013, 01:11:24 AM by JTR »
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Offline Mark Elliott

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #4 on: January 02, 2013, 10:24:57 AM »
In my humble opinion, and I am not trying to be a smart ass,   you position the patchbox where it looks best.   If an original looks horrible to you, you don't build it that way, or not at all.   I wouldn't think you would be building something you didn't like. 

What I try to do is balance the negative space of the unfinished butt stock around the patchbox.    That usually has the patchbox roughly centered on the butt piece and pointing up the wrist, more or less.   Really,   I think what you are doing more than placing the patchbox where it looks the best, is placing it where you don't get that uncomfortable feeling looking at it.   I suggest that you stick the he patchbox on with some double sided tape and look at it from a distance at various angles.   It may help to squint so that you are not seeing the patchbox and butt stock  in focus.   That way,  you can concentrate on the positive and negative spaces where the butt piece and patchbox are the positive space and the rest of the butt stock is the negative space.

This is the way you should compose any image.   You either have a good eye or you don't.   

Offline Randall Steffy

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #5 on: January 02, 2013, 02:10:56 PM »
How do you suppose those who use the Golden Mean apply it here? Just askin.

Michael

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #6 on: January 02, 2013, 02:50:51 PM »
Golden Means AGAIN!  ::)   AAAHHHHH!! Unless your making a bench copy complete with all it's 'mistakes' put the patch box where your eye say's it should go.

Offline Pete G.

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #7 on: January 02, 2013, 05:28:36 PM »
How do you suppose those who use the Golden Mean apply it here? Just askin.


The Hallum book "Seeing Through The Eyes of Yesteryear" has pages and pages of patchbox layouts. Some rather straight forward, but others are a stretch of the imagination. Read it and decide for yourself.

Offline Majorjoel

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #8 on: January 02, 2013, 05:46:21 PM »
Another important thing to remember when laying out your PB on the buttstock. Most longrifles when laying on top of the work bench tend to roll slightly upward on the cheek piece. (toe up) This has a way of changing the way the rifle looks when it is displayed on wall hooks. Seems like a moot point but smallest change in what looks good at one angle can totally go the other way. I like to level the rifles butt an a thick rolled towel when playing with PB placement. I will then tack the box at the point I think it looks right and hang the rifle up on the wall and just sit back and look at it for a while.
Joel Hall

Offline Acer Saccharum

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #9 on: January 02, 2013, 06:09:08 PM »
Mark Elliott has hit the nail on the head. I agree with him completely.

It doesn't mean that it's easy. Some of these decisions are the hardest ones to make.
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whetrock

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #10 on: January 02, 2013, 09:45:20 PM »
I agree with what the other guys have written. But I also want to add that if trying to work out a layout for a contemporary build, I do think it can be helpful to use dividers and a straight edge to see what might line up with what on an antique the build is supposed to resemble. Many of the old smiths whose work we now admire seem to have had some alignment pattern in mind when they did their layout. Some centered the butt of the box in the butt region as a whole. Others seem to have preferred to treat the flat side area of the butt as an independent panel, and so the box is centered in the panel (without regard for the butt plate finial). (This makes the box seem to be below-center in a 2 dimensional photograph, but it is actually centered in the panel of the 3 dimensional rifle.)

Alignment features vary. A few seem to have aligned the top edge of the box panel (or the box lid itself) with the comb or with the top edge of the butt panel, so that the features are more or less parallel. But more often than not, the alignment is not parallel, but rather based on some centering principle (as others have already mentioned).

When trying to get a feel for what sort of alignment is dominating the design, I find it helpful to draw a line along the axis of the box (or the axis of the rectangular box lid). As the images below show, the axis is often aligned with something or seems to point at something. In most cases it seems to be aligned with some feature in the wrist (such as the center line of the wrist), but with some builders it is seems to point at the tail of the lock, or sometimes the screw that passes through the cock into the tumbler, or even the touch hole. But note: It's hard to know how much of such alignment was intentional unless you can compare several examples built by the same hand in approximately the same time period.



« Last Edit: January 12, 2013, 05:47:23 AM by whetrock »

whetrock

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #11 on: January 02, 2013, 09:45:45 PM »
As Taylor mentioned, Peter Berry seemed to ignore centering entirely, and just put his box to the lower edge. If he had any alignment feature in mind, it’s hard for us to understand it now (or maybe it varied over time). The first image shows a box that is aligned somewhat parallel with the comb, but the bottom one seems to have its axis pointing toward the lock panel beaver tail. Berry is hard to analyze. As several guys have said already, sometimes it’s not a matter of math and layout, but just a matter of feel. That may have been the case with Berry. Note that his box final screws are not symmetrical with the rectangular lid. He seems to have been free-handing it. But he was a master craftsman, and so the result seems to work as a whole.



Golden mean as a general principle helps us understand some old art patterns, such as Rocco style scrolls. And it can be very helpful when we try to understand overall proportions, such as why the stock seems to look best if the butt region is only so-wide in relation to the wrist. But there’s a difference between (1) understanding it as an analysis tool when we study why a design seems to work, and (2) assuming that it was always an intentional and restraining design element (which would imply that the builder did his layout with dividers in hand).

It seems to be certain that some gunsmiths, furniture makers and artists, especially those of the highest skill in Europe, were indeed using dividers when they did their layout. But many American smiths seemed to have just been using a more “natural” layout scheme. (An “eye for it” as Mark Elliot commented.) Thus their work is sometimes a combination of (a) “natural” proportions that are often golden-mean-like and (b) folk art (where things are a bit out of proportion). My sense of it is that work that follows the golden mean in every proportion often looks more European (or at least particularly refined), whereas work that follows it more loosely or only in some points (such as in general proportions for a Rocco-style scroll) will usually look more American. (But there are certainly a lot of guys on here who understand that relationship better than I do, so I hope others will add comment to my suggestion.)

If you want to build a rifle that more or less “feels” like a particular old builder's style, without copying the old guy’s work exactly, then I do think it is helpful understand these kinds of layout features. And working with dividers and a straight edge can help you understand those features. For example, if you were to copy an old guy’s box pattern but then do the layout and alignment differently, your work would stand out as being different. Such contrasts are one thing that experts are looking for when they try to decide whether or not this or that unsigned rifle was built by this or that old smith. If the box is identical to an Isaac Haines, for example, but the layout and alignment seems to be different from that used in signed examples by Haines, then they might argue that Haines didn’t build the gun, or that perhaps it is a restocked antique using Haynes parts, etc.

Hope this helps.
Whet

PS: The base files from which these images were compiled were from the “Kentucky Rifle Photographs, Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2005. by The Kentucky Rifle Foundation.” I have simplified the images significantly, and added my own layout lines, etc. If use of these images on the ALR creates copyright issues, then I trust the moderators will let me know.

« Last Edit: January 03, 2013, 12:21:09 AM by whetrock »

Offline WadePatton

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #12 on: January 02, 2013, 11:02:01 PM »
Nice post there Whet.  Pics with pointers and arrows always add to a discussion, like a chalkboard...
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whetrock

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #13 on: March 02, 2013, 12:17:40 AM »
I just noticed that there's a Berry rifle in James Johnson's Accouterments III, (page 18-19). Johnson's caption is helpful. He states: "As on most Berry rifles, the patch box is aligned perpendicular to the butt plate, which give the impression the box is off center."

Here's a tracing of the buttstock from that rifle. (The photo doesn't show the full butt-wrist region.) This particular rifle also seems to have the box more or less parallel to the comb. It is not centered vertically. It is slung low, and does not seem to be "pointing" at anything in particular. But like Johnson says, it does seem more or less perpendicular to the buttplate.


« Last Edit: March 02, 2013, 12:20:22 AM by Whetrock (PLB) »

Danny H.

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #14 on: March 02, 2013, 12:51:03 AM »
  Great topic. A lot of my questions ( I was too afraid of looking dumb to ask...), just got answered. I purchased the "KRA President's display" CD's and started  to study various "originals". I play them on slide show and think to myself, "Nice, nice, & what the H#ll!!!" Sometimes I scroll back, and can't believe the man who engraved and inlet such a beautiful patchbox did THAT tang carving. I understand, everyone is human. Sometimes I'm just taken by surprise.

  I've been wondering can you copy certain aspects of one builder, with the intention of creating MY interpretation of a certain kind of rifle. How much can you borrow from here and there? I have no intention of trying to make an exact copy. I guess my question is, how much artistic licence is one allowed before being considered a "Hack"?

 


Offline flehto

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #15 on: March 02, 2013, 03:11:11 AM »
Here's a Pbox layout that "pleases" my eye, but might not please some others.  It's already been inletted, so I'm sorta stuck w/ it.  It's a Lancaster style. Some of the Pbox placements  on LRs by the "masters" don't look right to me, but.... I'm not an expert on LRs.

« Last Edit: March 02, 2013, 03:21:25 AM by flehto »

eddillon

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #16 on: March 02, 2013, 03:43:58 AM »
Golden Means AGAIN!  ::)   AAAHHHHH!! Unless your making a bench copy complete with all it's 'mistakes' put the patch box where your eye say's it should go.

Totally agree.  I think the makers of olde probably placed them in a manner that pleased their eye.

Offline deano

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #17 on: March 02, 2013, 03:51:20 PM »
Ya'know Flehto when it's all done it's your gun make it look the way you want to make it look. Be sure to share the finished job with us.  Good luck with your build.

Ken

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #18 on: March 02, 2013, 06:50:20 PM »
Disclaimer, I may be totally wrong but, this is how I do it.

The style of gun I build these days have a straight stock top and bottom. Much like Lancaster rifles, not copies I call them Wellsville school rifles. Wellsville being the closest town to where they are made.

The top, bottom and patch box all are centered on the touch hole. As a rule the back of the box is just above center depending the shape of the butt plate. By the way this applies to the cheek piece and moldings.

mjm46@bellsouth.net

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #19 on: March 02, 2013, 08:44:04 PM »
When I place my patchbox I find it important to include any bottom egde moulding lines or line in the equation. You would not want the patchbox to interfere with mouldings.

Offline Dr. Tim-Boone

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Re: Patch Box Alignment
« Reply #20 on: March 02, 2013, 11:43:17 PM »
unless you are building a Peter Berry style rifle........
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