??'s about antique 'LB' rifle on Contemporary blog

[JB2]

From Oct. 15.  Hope somebody can help me out here.  I like this rifle.  Well, almost everything about it.  It seems to not fit, flow, 'be right' around the breech area.  I can't put it into words, and thought somebody with a better vocabulary could help me get it into my head why I don't like that part of the gun.  All the pieces parts look great to me, with just that little 'inconsistency' at the back of the breech.  I think I'm trying to avoid such an issue on any SMR I ever finish, I just can't tell what the problem is, exactly.

[Dave B]

Jim, I agree with you on this rifles  transition from the breach into the wrist area. The Tang transition? It is a critical area for the particular school of building to get this right if one wants to get the same feel as the maker your emulating . What appears to have happened is the person that inlet the tang did not look at the profile while inletting. Once this type of tang is inlet you don't have any room to wiggle. the prevention would have included the bending of the tang at the breach a few degrees is all. The importance to have the profile established first then inlet the tang. This rifle has a fairly short transition from  the barrel plane into the wrist plane creating the unsightly hump. if you were to draw it out on paper and compare it with the rifles you like in the transition it becomes very clear where the problem lies. It makes me wonder if the maker was working from a blank still in the square and inlet the barrel with the tang first then did the rest of the rifle parts and painted him self into a corner as it were with that horrible transition. this exemplifies the importance of the drawing out of the project to get the essence of where you are going first, then proceed with attention to detail

[bama]

I liked this rifle and i think it is well done. I wish to offend no one and not having the rifle in hand it is hard to tell but it appears to me that the tang and wrist of this rifle has had some work done at some point in its life. There appears to be a soldered joint after the back screw where the tang turns up. At the point where the tang transitions from wide to narror there appears to be a long "s" joint. In one of pictures looking at this area from the cheek rest side the metal in this area appears to be a different color. The wood of the wrist in this area is flat and not rounded up to the metal of the tang. All of this leads me to think that a possible repair was made after the rifle was originally built. I see this as a very possible happening especially if the rifle was dissasembled a few times by someone that was not careful with this fairly delicate area.
I personally feel the original builder did not do this work, regardless it is a nice rifle.