Hello! I figured that since I've made a profile on here; I may as well start posting my projects. I am currently working on an early Lancaster style rifle (somewhat, I may mess with a little but stick pretty close), I usually order all of my parts from track of the wolf and work with the rough shaped stocks, but one day I will muster the testicular fortitude to work from a blank! This particular build is curly maple with a lot of nice figure in it.
I'm working with a 36 " 13/16' straight octagonal barrel in 45 caliber ( I kind of wish that I had gotten a longer barrel, but I think it will look fine all the same) I can never seem to find inletting black in my area, so I make my own out of some red strop dressing and an oil of some sort, which hasn't failed me yet. I fitted the barrel into the pre-cut channel to the point where I could just fit the muzzle in. From there, I used the sharp bevel at the end of the barrel's muzzle as a plane and gently shaved it into the channel, which left me with a very nice fit. From there the tang was a piece of cake to inlet and blend into the barrel.
I need to get into the habit of taking more photos, I neglected to take any photos of the inletting process of the lock plate and the locks components! I will generally get an idea of where I want the pan to sit, and take an extra long piece of graphite and trace underneath (disassembled the lock). From there I stamp the traced portion with the lock, slathered in inletting fluid, to get any placement adjustments done. (I have made 7 rifles in my time and I am still learning, if anyone has any input, throw it out there!) Once the pan is set in I can outline the lock plate, I use a skew chisel to cut my outline in, and a medium gouge/skew chisel to take layers off, repeating that process until the plate falls in to place.
Looks good to me! I use a few different sized drills bits to hog out large pockets for the internals of the lock, followed by a variety of chisels to remove even more material. I slowly put the lock back together through out the inletting. The mainspring on this large colonial style lock sure sits deep in the stock, so deep in fact that it broke through into the ramrod channel ever so slightly, no big deal, the ram rod went in with no issues.
Now onto the entry thimble, which for some reason I have always loathed. This one went in fairly easily, some careful shaving/gouging and it was in at the depth that I wanted, I repeated the same for the other two. While inletting the front ramrod pipe, I somehow cracked the stock forward of the pipe, and all the way to the muzzle which then split the stock about 5 inches. I glued and clamped it so I will hope for the best. I decided to flip the gun around and work on getting the butt plate fitted, the below picture illustrates how that procedure is going.
While taking some of the excess meat off, I took about a 2 inch wide by 1 inch long DEEP chip off of the side of the stock, so now that is glued and clamped and the project is at a standstill for the night. I have worked with some pretty crazy curly maple before, but this particular piece is pretty finnicky , but it will look great once its all done. I will post more as I go!
