Thank you guys for your perspectives and opinions. It’s very much appreciated!
So just a little more about it, and I’ll try not to bore you with too many details, but having this gun in hand was very exciting to me, so once it was decided that the gun should have a decent restoration, I spent a good bit of time talking to friends that I consider far more experienced than myself, as to how to go about doing it.
I also talked to a few guys that own some of the best Dickert rifles, and those guys were a terrific help. For instance, since this gun was missing a big portion of the tang carving, one guy with a gun similar to mine (the carving, and it also has the two moons on either side of the cheek piece star, plus the chip cuts that follow along the butt plate line) took the time to copy and hand draw the carving on his rifle and sent it to me, which was very likely what this gun had originally.
Another friend knew of a Dickert barrel for sale that had some cut off from the breech end, but had the complete muzzle end with its original front sight, so I got it. It was a smaller barrel by about 1/8” across the flats, but I was able to use the front sight off it, as well as the sight placement, and I used the same proportions of swamp for the bit of barrel I had to add to the front of my gun.
Other guys helped me with the correct type flintlock parts for the lock on this gun, and still other guys helped out with muzzle cap types and attachment, etc., so, though I did the work, I had a lot of great help with the details, pictures, and a lot of information, and to those guys, some on this forum and some not, I owe a big Thanks! Plus a special thanks to mr no gold, who seemed to always be looking over my shoulder!
I remember when this gun first showed up on the forum; One guy said it was a nice gun that just needed about $10,000 worth of work.
Yep, it did!
John
