Hawken Fullstock Hooked breech?

[redheart]

Hey Guys,

Do full stock Hawken's usually or always have a solid breech?
In other words is a hooked breech uncommon on a full stock model?

[Don Stith]

Yes

[crankshaft]

  It ain't easy to find a solid breech for a big Hawken.

[redheart]

 
Thank you Don & Crankshaft for your responses, but I'm still confused and want to try this one last time.
Does an original Hawken fullstock exist with a hooked breech?
Let me tell you why I want to know. A friend put together a beautiful full stock Hawken from a TOTW kit.
He's a stickler for authenticity and I told him before he bought the kit that I didn't think there were any flintlock plains style Hawken rifles and if there were I didn't think they'd have a hooked breech.
Well he bought it anyway and now that he's done his own research he wants to retro fit it with a caplock and a solid breech. He can drop in the L&R Early English lock with no problem but there's no solid breech with the same wide tang available.
I was hoping he could keep the hooked breech and still be authentic.
We didn't know about the Don Stith kits when he created this problem.

[rich pierce]

Seems complicated. Maybe enjoy the rifle as it is.

You have a hooked flint breech on there?  It is not a patent breech?  Weld it up. There. It's not a hooked breech anymore.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

I've buit only two full stocked Hawken rifles in the past few years:  a .50 and a .62 cal.  Both have 'flint tangs' and were not difficult to acquire.  If you're looking for a patent percussion breech, they are also available.

[Mtn Meek]

Does an original Hawken fullstock exist with a hooked breech?
Let me tell you why I want to know. A friend put together a beautiful full stock Hawken from a TOTW kit...I told him before he bought the kit that I didn't think there were any flintlock plains style Hawken rifles and if there were I didn't think they'd have a hooked breech.
...He can drop in the L&R Early English lock with no problem but there's no solid breech with the same wide tang available.
I was hoping he could keep the hooked breech and still be authentic.

The Kennett Hawken is a full stock with a hooked percussion breech.  The Smithsonian Hawken is another full stock with a hooked breech.  The Smithsonian Hawken may have originally been built as a flintlock with an English style flint hooked breech and later, rather crudely, converted to percussion with a drum.  Both of these rifles are marked "S. HAWKEN" and were likely built in the 1850's.

I suspect your friends kit came with an L&R flint Hawken hooked breech like this one.



His best option to convert it to percussion would be to use an L&R percussion Hawken hooked breech like this one, part #PLUG-LR-16-3 .



It's hard to tell for sure just looking at the pictures, but the tangs on both look to be about the same dimensions.

If your friend just can't stand to have a hooked breech, then do as Rich suggested and weld the standing breech to the hooked part and make it a solid breech.

[redheart]

Rich, D.Taylor & Phil,

Thanks for the great info.
With all of the options you've given, if he can't figure it out now it's hopeless.

[Dphariss]

Hey Guys,

Do full stock Hawken's usually or always have a solid breech?
In other words is a hooked breech uncommon on a full stock model?

There is a fullstock, originally flint, Hawken in the Smithsonian with a hooked flint "patent" breech. It has a drum screwed into the vent now but was very obviously originally flint. Its an S Hawken. The lock still has the fence on the lock plate.

[redheart]

Dan,  

Thanks for the info. I'd heard of this rifle but somehow got the impression that there was some question as to whether the lock was original to the gun.
Also I thought I remembered someone saying that that the conversion is so poorly done that we can't be sure what to think about it or that it may have originally had a brazed bolster that broke or blew off.
Were the first bolsters always forged or cast as part of the patent breech or sometimes screwed in and brazed on?
Was the lock marked on this rifle and nicely fitted?
I'm afraid I'm re-opening a real can of worms here.
Anything else you can tell me will be appreciated as I don't have the knowledge or experience to form my own opinion.

[Dphariss]

John Baird published some photos taken of the rifle with the lock out. Its obvious it was originally flint. However, there are people, more so then, that are invested in there never being a flintlock Hawken plains/mountain rifle. One in particular made some pretty ridiculous statements as a way to cover the extra holes in the lockplate for the FL parts and claimed the fence on the lock plate was part of the tang IIRC.
Given the popularity of the flintlock in the west, the fact that its about as reliable as a percussion and in the early years was more probably more accurate its simply not possible for them the NOT have made FL rifles. Heck the Percussion system was not actually finalized until in the 1830s. The American Fur Company would not even order percussion rifles from Henry till the late 1830s and specifically told Henry not the send any circa 1833.
We have written accounts of travelers going to California in the 1840s being told to not take a percussion due  to reliability issues. These are things to at least consider when people start claiming there were no Hawken "plains" rifles in flint.
Dan

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

Although it makes for excited conversation, I'm happy knowing in my own mind that Hawken made flint rifles.  There's just too much irrefutable evidence;  never mind logic.

[Mike Brooks]

If they were working in St. Louis in the 1820's they made flint guns.

[Don Stith]

Does an original Hawken fullstock exist with a hooked breech?
Let me tell you why I want to know. A friend put together a beautiful full stock Hawken from a TOTW kit...I told him before he bought the kit that I didn't think there were any flintlock plains style Hawken rifles and if there were I didn't think they'd have a hooked breech.
...He can drop in the L&R Early English lock with no problem but there's no solid breech with the same wide tang available.
I was hoping he could keep the hooked breech and still be authentic.

Col Vaughn Goodwin examined and photographed these two guns in the late 1950's and earlt 1960's
 His write up was not published until May 1978 in Muzzle Blasts magazine
  After arguing with himself he concluded the Smithsonian rifle was originally flint.  Both guns were made in the late 1850's and not representative of the early flint Hawken we would all love. The internals of the two locks are nearly identical and both are stamped S Hawken on the locks as well as the barrels
 Both locks also have a hook similar to alate English lock to secure the front of the lock These two rifles have many features not normally seen on other Hawkens. To mention just a couple of these :the nose caps are flared, the ramrod thimbles are held on with flat head screws from inside the barrel channel
 The Smithsonian rifle only has one ramrod thimble that sets well back from the muzzle which makes me wonder if it has been shortened. It is 3.5" shorter than the Kennet rifle but is 12.5 pounds as it sets. The only other one I have seen that I believe to have been originally flint has a 41 inch barrel. Just more of the mystery of these old rifles

The Kennett Hawken is a full stock with a hooked percussion breech.  The Smithsonian Hawken is another full stock with a hooked breech.  The Smithsonian Hawken may have originally been built as a flintlock with an English style flint hooked breech and later, rather crudely, converted to percussion with a drum.  Both of these rifles are marked "S. HAWKEN" and were likely built in the 1850's.

I suspect your friends kit came with an L&R flint Hawken hooked breech like this one.



His best option to convert it to percussion would be to use an L&R percussion Hawken hooked breech like this one, part #PLUG-LR-16-3 .



It's hard to tell for sure just looking at the pictures, but the tangs on both look to be about the same dimensions.

If your friend just can't stand to have a hooked breech, then do as Rich suggested and weld the standing breech to the hooked part and make it a solid breech.

[Don Stith]

I am sure the Hawken brothers both made  flintlock rifles. They just were not half stock plains rifles.
 I like Hansens quote in 'The Plains rifle" book. "  The southern flintlock and Jake Hawken flintlock opened the trappers trails;The J&S Hawken percussion rifle kept those trails in business. The S Hawken rifles and the products of Dimick,Beauvais, Friede and a dozen others furnished the long range rifles for the hunters and scouts who followed"

[Joe S.]

Threads like this get me pondering,I have read more than once about the hawken flint deniers but the things that I don't get.What would be the point,what's to gain to say never or an invested interest in saying no flint was ever made.Am I missing something?I have read and heard that kin to that hawken clan have a original flint yet will not show it.Not sure what's to be gained by keeping that locked in the closet either,kinda cheating folks out of American history to some extent with all the lore and mystery surrounding the Hawken rifle.Perhaps they just sit on the side lines laughing at folks chasing their tales.Better ways to get ones jollys Imho but guess a little mystery in ones life is  a good thing

[Mike Brooks]

Transition from flint didn't happen over night in this country, flint guns were still being commonly made new all through the 1830's. I'm not really up on my Hawken lore but I'm sure they made a pot full of flint guns. Now a Hawkins, there's a whole different story. They were making 1/2 stock percussion guns clear back in the 1720's......

[rich pierce]

Joe S, I don't know any Hawken flint deniers. Everybody figures they made some flint rifles.

There are, as I understand, zero intact flint J&S Hawken "mountain rifles" or "plains rifles". The prestnce of the Smithsonian Hawken rifle which was once flint but is a late rifle has no bearing on this fact.

Most folks' interest in Hawken flint rifles is around having an early flint Hawken rifle. But we don't know what they looked like because no surviving examples exist. Now it's easy to make a reasonable guess. But that is a guess and when kit or parts sets makers put out what is a "flint Hawken" kit or parts set they don't tell anyone, "this is a very reasonable guess about what an early flint Hawken rifle would look like."

Next question:  in addition to Ashley's big rifle, how many flint plains or mountain rifles did they make that went west?  Their production versus repair and other work in the early years was lower. 

So it is easy to deflect the real questions by stating correctly, "Of COURSE there were flint Hawken rifles."
For those interested in re-creating one, or understanding their prevalence among the mountain men, there is not much to go on but good guesses. I have no problem with good guesses. I just like to call them good guesses.

[redheart]

Gentlemen,

Thank you kindly for the awesome information.
The consensus seems to be to fit my friends flint Hawken with the percussion hooked breech and that's what he said he will do.
I hated to run you all through this controversy again but it sure had the desired result and I sure learned a lot in the process.
I'm sure that other beginning Hawken aficionados learned a lot too.