gun dimensions in books

[scooter]

I have read this criticism of those books, like mine, that have no dimensions shown. At same show that Dr Shumway could photo say 5 guns with all those dimensions I could do several dozen. At many shows I took over 600 exposures in my Hassy or Bronica ETRS. I just did not have the time.
Now why the dimensions. Hear this story.
A man wrote me saying he wished to recreate a certain gun from my York Co Gunsmiths book. I knew the gun so I went back and took the dimensions, measured the drop, etc., sent to him. I received the nicest letter back. How helpful those dimensions were! But he had to change length of pull, too short for a contemporary client; altered caliber to .50 so man could hunt big game; changed drop to accommodate his client; and even added some additional carving.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

Jim, I suspect that there are very few of us who recreate rifles exactly like the originals....as if we could.  Speaking for myself, regarding the dimensions in books, even just a precise barrel length is all I need to scale a full sized drawing.  This gives me the flavour of the rifle, and then I can tweek the profile to satisfy my personal needs.  Any additional information is always welcome and serves to verify my drawings.  As you said, we're not going to duplicate the rifle anyway.

[ronward]

 hello,
    i am brand new here and brand new to muzzle loaders, as well.  i have been lurking for some time and though i would ante up considering i'm planning a build.  this site absolutely awsome!. i had no idea that these guns were being made in replica as they are... my knowledge of muzzle loaders consisted of the  CVA and LYMAN  rifles you see at Gander Mountain! i have alsways been interested in the civil war era, so my plans are to build a vincent as close to original as i can, given the parts and information available . i have been a woodworker for 30 yrs and have a well equiped shop, plus a machine lathe and an old drill press that was from a pattern makers shop. it has a cross slide/vise  and is heavy enough to mill if i take small bites, slowly, so ishould be in good shape there. i have built several centerfire rifles from mausers and have a reasonably good variety of starrett tools to go along with it all.... and i know how to use them!
   this particular thread sparked my intrest as i've read here allot about original guns being "copied" (for lack of a better term) and the exact same thought came to me. it's nice to see the dimensions, but it seems, other than barrell dimensions and caliber, one isn't really going to build a rifle so closely that it won't fit, anyways.....kind of a shame.....
   then,  after a bit of time i started to think that maybe it's not so bad that the issues of dimension aren't adhered to so strictly.... weren't the majority of these guns built to order to begin with? each one built to fit the user, or did the builders all try to produce clones to speed production and profits. did someone who wanted a rifle, go from maker to maker until he found a smith that built a gun that fit closely, similar to how we might pick a store-bought shotgun today
   i realize they are surviving relics and there is some respect involved in reproducing them as close to thier originality as possible, but if they were built to fit an individual who for obvious reasons, isn't the same physicly as you or i, wouldn't it be fitting to build the rifle maintaining the same style or school, but built to fit the intended user, just as they were, back then. every builder had his own style or built within a school's design characters, but built the gun to fit the user at the same time , or so i would think(?)
   sorry for being so long winded, but i have allot of questions!

[Don Getz]

Ron.......I built my first gun back in 1970.    I built a Lehigh rifle,  copied a Herman Rupp.  But...I used a 7/8" straight 45 cal. barrel.....it was the easiest barrel to get at the time, and the gun looks good.   No one really shunned me because
it had a straight barrel.   Too many of the new builders are getting hung by trying to be "period correct".....it isn't necessary.   You can build a J. P. Beck with a straight barrel.....it will be muzzle heavy, and won't feel like an original, but,
if that's all you can afford at the time, go ahead and do it.   What this forum does, to a degree, is giving you help in building it well.   By being able to look at good guns makes you want to strive to do it better  As you evolve into a better
gun builder, you will want to start with a barrel that is closer in dimension to the original you are copying, maybe even only worrying about the breech dimension and length.   Hope this makes sense...........Don

[G-Man]

I agree about the concept of not trying to build a gun from exact original dimensions.  Every one is different - these things were not stamped out on an assembly line.  You could measure everything exactly from the original and still miss the boat if you don't get the feel of the gun as a whole.  I think its more important to capture the spirit of the original than the precise dimensons as long as you stay within reasonable limits for the time and style in which the gun was made.

For me, the thing I like the most about Dr. Whisker's books is the chance to see the variations in a large number of the guns/gunsmiths within a certain region or style, over a period of time.   It helps you get a feel for what are the important, common elements, but getting to see the variations also keeps you from getting stuck in the mindset of assuming too narrow a definition of a particular school or style.

Guy

[jwh1947]

Jim, good points.  I have seen some builders use calipers, rulers and micrometers on just about every feature, prior to the build. Nothing wrong with this, but then they revise, say, the pull and or cast-off, to suit the customer.  Also, seems that good builders regularly come out with good guns, and the less skilled with lesser quality, calipers or not.  

After considering this thread, you may find the one above on stretched barrels to be useful. Then put our words together... with added details, you could be getting precise measurements on some recent work mixed in with the original, which would add to the confusion.

[Artificer]

Gentlemen,

I've truly enjoyed reading this thread.  Thank you all.

I'm with Guy that I value seeing more representative pieces and variations of work by a maker than a host of measurements and very few guns.  However, I'm also with D.Taylor on wishing for a barrel length to get the scale of the rest of the gun and parts.  Maybe I'm asking for cake, ice cream and sprinkles all at the same time. Grin. 

If you use a Jim Chambers lock, for example, the distance between lock plate holes is going to determine where you drill the holes in the sideplate.  That could or would throw off using exact measurments from many original sideplates.  If we can't or don't cast our own triggerguards and buttplates, we often have to make what we need out of something that is available and that will lead to differences as well. 

I truly envy many of you all who have studied these rifles enough to know what is in "the flavor" of the original rifles and what would set something out from the norm - even figuring in all rifles were built for individual customers.

Got a kick out of Don Getz's post.  My dearest friend won a flintlock rifle in a raffle in the early 1970's.  He bought one ticket for a dollar and hence the gun has been called "The Dollar Rifle" ever since.  Mike is shorter and with shorter arms than me, so he can often shoot many of his original rifles, but they were just too short for me.  That rifle also has a straight barrel and is muzzle heavy, but I like muzzle heavy rifles for offhand shooting.  This rifle was drastically different in that it fit me with my "Organgutan Arms and knuckles that drag the ground" as Mike likes to joke.  However, that rifle really fit me and Mike loaned it to me for years to shoot.  Finally talked to the rifle's assembler about it and when I told him I didn't know why it felt so good, he responded, "Well, Gus, it should.  I copied the pull and drop from an M1 Garand!" 

[Dennis Glazener]

I received the nicest letter back. How helpful those dimensions were! But he had to change length of pull, too short for a contemporary client; altered caliber to .50 so man could hunt big game; changed drop to accommodate his client; and even added some additional carving.

Jim, I suspect that there are very few of us who recreate rifles exactly like the originals....as if we could.  Speaking for myself, regarding the dimensions in books, even just a precise barrel length is all I need to scale a full sized drawing.  This gives me the flavour of the rifle, and then I can tweek the profile to satisfy my personal needs.  Any additional information is always welcome and serves to verify my drawings.  As you said, we're not going to duplicate the rifle anyway.

I like seeing dimensions in books but I know from my own experience it is very time consuming for an author to obtain these dimensions and properly format them into the book.

Having built rifles from photos with dimensions and without. I have to say that I have always modified the dimensions to fit what I like. I normally use my LOP to modify a photo to give me the same scale as seen in the photo. i.e. photographed rifle may have a 13" lop and I may use 14.5" but the template I use is scaled for the 14.5" lop. In other words increasing the lop slightly increases ALL the dimensions equally. Sometimes this works fine for the rest of the rifle and other times I have to "tweak" the rest to make it look or feel right. I do like to know the barrel length.

I think this works fine unless someone is trying to make an exact copy of a rifle and if that is the goal they need to have the rifle in hand. No way they could do that using dimensions given in any book.
Dennis
Dennis

[ronward]

 just a thought on dennis's post.... if you don't mind the mindless ramblings of a newby
   if,as dennis states, and i don't mean to be argumentive, just inquizative, all of the dimensions proportionately increase with an increase of length of pull and vise-verse, wouldn't it be "correct" for the suppliers of buttplates and other castings to offer them in a few incrimental dimensions. typicly, the height of a buttplate would gain height when going from 13-1/2 to 14-1/2 inch pull, as, in order to increase length of pull and not proportinatly change the lines of the stock, the top and bottom lines of the butt would just be extended resulting in more distance between them at the plate? it would aslo increase drop proportionatly, something that i am pretty sure is not necessarily proportinately associated to pull length from individual to individual
     in that we are ssentially rationalizing modern day people's sizes vrs. those of 150 yrs. ago, do you think that was done on original guns(?), that the builders had maybe several different sizes of plate cast for different lengths of pull, or do you think they used the same plate and changed the angles of comb and bottom to meet the casting/forging they are currently using. if each casting was different for each different length of pull, then there is absolutly no "sin" in altering dimensions to fit a current user because any gun that is deemed  an "original survivor" is most likely not like any other from the same builder, so it's particular dimensions are  coincedential and the only thing that can be "copied" is the particular style of that builder, which has very little to do with an individual's physical dimensions from 150 yrs. ago
   again, i don't mean to be argumentive, as i really don't have any substance ,here on this forum yet, but i have done allot work on stocks of all kinds and i see no valid reason why all dimensions will change with the increase or decrease of just one parameter, paticularly in the case of pull length.

[Tom Currie]

Maybe I'm against the grain here but in a situation where originals are not available to you , having dimensions of originals does assist one in developing architecture of a rifle. Maybe you don't need them all, as Taylor states, but they are helpful to a builder like myself who is trying to be as accurate as possible with what they are doing. Measurements help.

That being said I own several of Jim's books and enjoy them.

[Mike R]

one reason I like to see dimensions and calibers for the originals is to get historical data on them--what was a  typical LOP or caliber, for example, and did they change with time?  That sort of stuff.

[James Rogers]

one reason I like to see dimensions and calibers for the originals is to get historical data on them--what was a  typical LOP or caliber, for example, and did they change with time?  That sort of stuff.

Same here. I always check drop at nose of comb on originals. This is probably the most important measurement on a gun stock as far as fit today and it seems to be the most ignored. Measurements can be figured out but it's a nice addition to the information.  I believe most of the old guns were made off of repeat patterns instead of being fitted. The measurements give a quick idea if a particular gun could be tweaked only a little to actually fit a human. Some, although beautiful in their own way as far as design won't fit worth a tinker's dam and such a radical change in architecture would render it useless to re-create for shooting.

[ronward]

 most likey, and that's about as specific as one can get here, the stocks wer made off of a pattern, a simple profile that allow quick removal of stock so time wasn't wasted getting to the real work. at the same time, from this pattern and during layout, typicly small changes in drop and pull could be adjusted to fit an individual. i would assume each gun and customer was at least given that much attention as the vast majority of these guns were built by individual order and from what i can glean in the written documentation that i have seen, the order and project took on the customers' name, further supporting the idea that few builders made generic guns for the common market. in fact that each gun is essentually hand made, it doesn't take much to alter a standard layout to fit and individual before the chips fly. once again supporting the idea that all we can do is try to make the most hones representation of a particular school's or individual builder's style. exactly reproducing any particular surviving gun is ( no disrespect intended) only doing exactly the same thing as making the stock fit us while conveying the builder's style. it is the style or "architecture" that makes one gun different from the another.... dimensions of drop and pull would be expected to be different and not necessarily connected to the architure of any gun that is still around. i don't think there is any "disrespect" involved by not stringently copying a particular specimen, providing every effort is made to make the most honest tribute to a builder's architecture. if you deviate from that, you might as well go buy a CVA hawken kit. i don't mean to be little them, just to state that they are pretty generic, and if you don't do the most you can to relay the small details that many times go unoticed, you are just building another generic gun.