Hello all,
I'm starting a build based on the work of S. Miller, who worked around Hamburg, PA in the first and second quarter of the 19th century. There are a few examples in the library, as well as one in Patrick Hornberger's "Berks County Longrifles and Gunmakers", on page 65.
I'm building it for a friend, and in return he will build me a new workbench from the plans that were raffled off a while ago here on the forum.
Should be a real nice to handle, skinny skinny .40 Cal rifle with a 43 inch or so straight tapered barrel.
He is a lefty, and I can't find a left handed Late Ketland (Hint Hint, Jim Kibler.....), so I will use either the L&R Durrs Egg, or the Bailes. I have both, haven't decided yet.
I should receive the barrel from Ed Rayl shortly, and I have a nice piece of curly maple from Allen Martin that I will send off to David Rase to inlet for me.
Meanwhile, I have started on some of the hardware while I wait.
I struggled to find both a butt plate and trigger guard that were already shaped correctly. They might exist, but the only place I could find full size drawings was the TOTW catalog. Anything else was going to be a process of ordering a few candidates and then returning the unused ones.
The best butt plate candidate I could find was an Armstrong, BP-ARM-1-B from TOTW. The max width is correct and the return is of the right width and profile, just too long. It also has a spur off the back, like some Ohio rifles.
Here's what I'm going for:
The Armstrong buttplate has a hollow in it leading into the spur, so I had to be careful cutting it off and filing it to round. This pic shows the spur, and a sharpie marker dot where calipers showed me the end of the hollow:
I cut the spur off with a hacksaw, and then checked the thickness of the brass remaining with calipers.
I continued to file away, and check that there was enough meat left there, then ended up with a rounded top to the buttplate like I wanted.
Next was to round off the sides of the top of the plate and cut the butt plate return to the right length, which left me with just about the right length of round section after the flats.
I trimmed the length of the plate to just over what I think it should end up as. Since I don't have the plank shaped yet, I left a fair amount of length on the toe. Once I have the plank shaped in profile, I will cut the toe of the plate to fit right. I also drew a rough hack on the profile and skinnied it up a bit. Once the stock is profiled, then I will shorten the toe and trim it to the correct width. The butt plate is the right width at the widest point, and at the rear of the butt plate return, so once the toe is shortened, I will trim the edges to the right profile.
After that, here is the butt plate as it sits now.
Close enough for now.
The trigger guard is also from TOTW, but sand cast and very thick. The profile from the side is nearly exact, but I probably need to remove 1/4 to 1/3 of the weight in brass.
Here's a sample from the library of what I am going for:
I failed to take pictures of the process. I'm working front to back, and you can see the sand cast part at the back. I trimmed the front and rear finial to the correct length and then started reshaping the front finial, and the trigger bow. I nearly overdid it with the grinder, but I think I've not cut too much. The post leading to the trigger bow needed to be reduced by at least 30-40% and reshaped. Working on that now.
Here's the progress so far, and it seems to be working. Its rough, but the shapes are working. The transition from the front finial to the bow will be angle filed like the finial and the bow, on a curve, like the picture from the library.
That's all for now,
cheers,
Norm
