A Slightly Different Somerset Dunmeyer

[Bob D]

This willl be my first post with pictures.  It will be my fourth time to try and do this.  If it is any consolation, with each try I get just a little smarter.  I have always been a "Computers for Dummies" candidate but they didn't publish a primer for that course.

I was lucky enought to find a nice Dunmire rifle at the last Houston Gun Collectors show.  Don't give up your tickets to Baltimore though as it is unusual to see any Pennsylvania Rifles at this show.  This rifle has the standard incised carved stock seen on nearly all Somerset Dunmeyers r. The furniture is all original to the rifle as its fit  to the stock is exellent.  The rifle is well put together and its brass appears to have never been cleaned with the exception of one of the cleaning rod pipes.  The butt plate is Dormayer, as is the unique one bolt lock bolt plate. The main parts that are not Dunmeyer are the lock which I believe is Parker, and the unusual for a Dunmeyer circular patchbox and the trigger guard.  While they were usually fairly consistent on their Somerset rifles, this one shows that they were not above using up what they may have had lying around the shop.  Both the lockbolt plate and the patchbox have minimal Dunmeyer engraving.  There is deterioration around lock bolt on the lock bolt plate.  Overall the rifle is in nice original condition.  The barrel is 35 inches and the caliber is 40. 

Henry Kaufman stated that the circular patch boxes came into use in the 1850s.  I could use some help on when and where that unusual trigger guard came from.  I went through my books and the closest I could come were in Whisker's Vol II of Ohio Long Rifles.  The rifles were by John C. Ralph and Benjamin Sells.  Guars by George Kopp, Samuel Meier, and John Nicholas Matthiesee are similar but not as close as the two from Ohio.









 

[Buck]

Bob,
Nice rifle.
Buck

[Don Stith]

You might want to compare it to the New York state trigger guards.
 My old friend Don Newcomer told me he believed Dunmeyer used a pantagraph for the incise carving. He might have been right.

[Bob D]

Thanks Don  I will see what I can find on the New York trigger guards.  I think the pantagraph theory is out since a close inspection of Dunmeyer rifles will show that no two of their vine carvings are exactly alike.  The one thing that is nearly constant is that the closed circle is almost always there and it is in the lower quadrant of the cheek side.  Early in my study of the Dunmires someone suggested that the vine pattern was traced.  I compared many Dunmeyers and came out with the above result.  That general pattern is on nearly every rifle made by the Dunmeyers except those that are heavily inlaid on the cheek side.

[Don Stith]

I appreciate the info on the carving. I never owned more than one Dunmeyer at a time so could not validate nor refute Don's claim.