The first book 2nd printing by shumway of Recreating the Kentucky Longrifle

[Dave B]

I had picked up one of these early editions of Buchele's books and it has stuff in it that is not in the later editions of the book. One of the things that he shows at one point is the way he checks the ramrod hole to make sure the hole is not heading off to hinkys. He took a 16" rod that was the same dia. as the ramrod drill and turned down all but the first 2.5 inches to a smaller dia. the rest of its length.
By sliding this into the hole at intervals the rod will show a displacement of the hole by virtue of the fact the smaller dia section will be displaced out of line. He also shows a trick drilling fixture that uses a slightly bent tube that has a inner section of smaller drill rod soldered to a short stubby single fluted cutter that could be placed into the wayward hole to get it back on track.  I will post a drawing of what this looks like.



Looking back at the illustration of Buchele's he does not have so much bend in his drawing. you only need enough to alow the bit to chew into the direction you want to have the hole move toward.

[J. Talbert]

Hey Dave,

I've got a copy of that book from approx 30 years ago and remember the items you mentioned,  but the illustration you posted caught my attention. 
I see the handwritten "Walton Kentucy '96' "  I live about 20 miles from there and my earliest instructions on gunbuilding came from Jack Rouse who lives there still.

Is there anymore to the inscription?

Just curious...

[Dave B]

Jeff,
Its my note about who gave me the information on the rest of the sketchbooks page. 
I was lucky enough to drop in on Jack when his name was given to me by  one of the Gals at the office at the NMLRA. I had to go to Ohio for a course and had a couple days to kill. I took one morning to drive down into Kentucky to visit with Jack and drew a page of sketches with notes and helpful hints. The man was very gracious with his time and patiently answered all my questions.  He pounded me out a trigger guard for a mountain rifle when I kept asking about how he went about it. It was all cold forged never heated it up. He would braze the rear extention on at the last. He showed me how he used a router to clean out most of the barrel channel even for a swamped barrel by cutting the barrel profile into the scrap wood to the out side of where the final shaped forend would be and the router fence set up on the router its self. One of the other tricks he showed that has been helpful was to use wood wedges in place of the metal ones when shaping and sanding your forestock. You just knock em out when your done and don't worry about dulling your files on metal wedges poking through too far. It was several hours well spent.

[C Wallingford]

I am about 10 miles North of Jack's place. He also taught me, over a period of several years, his method and sequence of building a rifle. Jack is a very good friend and I am thankful that I was fortunate enough to get to hang out in his shop.