Reading about 54ball's fantasy rifle reminded me that I never posted photos of the fantasy rifle that Ed Wenger built for me a couple of years ago.
My 4th GGF, Samuel King Sr. was from Bedford County VA and during the American Revolution he served with Col. Daniel Morgan's 11th and 15th Virginia Regiments. I had always wanted to build a rifle based on a very early southern rifle that could have looked like something Samuel King might have carried with him to war.
I talked to Earl Lanning about RCA #124 which is a very early rifle that Earl had come across in Waynesville NC years ago. Earl had told me the story of how he came to own it and gave me an old photo he had made of it before he sold the rifle. Except for the funky looking incised carving it looked like the type of rifle I wanted to build.
On our old ALR board Earl made a comment to Rich Pierce
This rifle (RCA #124) was in the KRA York show many years ago. Wallace wrote the card for the rifle. And it was a great one. He stated that he felt that it was the best example of the type rifle Morgans rifleman would have carried he had ever seen.I always dated it just before or in the early years of the Rev.War. Nice swamp in the barrel.
Well that sealed it for me, this was the rifle I would build.
I started buying parts for it. At one time I had a Colonial Williamsburg hand rifled barrel inlet in a nice walnut blank plus most of the other parts. Bought an Early Ketland lock and had Al Edge copy the #124 engraving on it. In a weak moment I sold the walnut blank/barrel thinking I needed a different profile. Later I bought one of Rice's 54 Caliber VA Profiles (VA barrel for a VA rifle!). At the time I was building a lot of Gillespie rifles and kept putting off starting mine.
After several years I decided to ask Ed Wenger to build the rifle, I had always wanted one of Ed's rifles and it didn't look like I was going to build my fantasy rifle anytime soon so I got with Ed and showed him what I wanted. I knew I didn't want the funky incised carving that #124 has so I asked Ed to come up with some simple carving that would be simple and go with this rifle.
Had a scare in the middle of the project, Ed called to tell me that he had run into a bark inclusion/worm holes while working on the butt/cheek rest area of the stock. I had furnished the Walnut blank and it looked solid but inside was a different story. I told Ed to just make the best repairs he could. Fortunately he was able to clear most of the damage but you can see a couple of worm holes where the inclusion was.
Here is the end result, I love it and think Ed did a great job with it.
Photo by Mark E. Elliott
Photo by Mark E. Elliott
Photo by Mark E. Elliott
Photo by Mark E. Elliott Lock engraving by Al Edge
Photo by Mark E. Elliott
