aged look

[lew wetzel]

ihave been studying some of eric kettenburgs work.i have tried to emmulate the the look on my lock that he did on his jonn rupp rifle.i used w.b browning solution and some steel wool and really nailed that old used look.its easier to take something brandnew and make it look 200yrs old than it is to take something brandnew and make it look flawless...lol

[Lucky R A]

 Lew,Sez you, which is one way to say that I totally disagree with your statement.   There is a whole lot more involved in correctly aging a lock or an entire longrifle than browning and rubbing it back with steel wool.  I am sure Eric Kettenberg had a few chuckles, if he read your statement.  Eric and others have spent a whole lifetime studying how to get the correct look.  I can't speak for Eric, but I would guess he would tell you that he is still learning, as are the rest of us.   You have taken but one small step down a very long, and never ending pathway.  I don't wish to dampen your enthusiasm, but I don't think any of us have ever "really nailed the correct antique look."  close, but still room for improvement.    Best wishes   Lucky

[jerrywh]

I treat my guns the same as my wife. I don't want either one of them to look old. I do like some of the old ones you guys have tho. Guns I mean.

[Tom Cooper]

I have to agree with Jerry on this, If I were to try an create a 200 year old rifle I would want it hanging on the wall, where a 200 year rifle belongs  . To go out an play MountainMan and Natives, such as I do, I would want a rifle that fit the time period that I am living, in 1780 my flintlock looks like it has a couple years on it.

Just my thoughts.

[lew wetzel]

my personna when trekking is lew wetzel,who lived on the w.v.frontier.spent most of his days in the elements,hunting. tracking two and four legged game.in trying to perfect my personna i can see lew having a grundgy rifle.im sure he took very good care of the bore but i bet the outside was heavily tarnished and the lock area excessive fowling.im very sure the buttplate was banged up due to him reloading on the run.the sole reason for this rifle is to outfit my lew wetzel personna and to drag around in the woods,practice reloading on the run,sleeping under fallen trees,in caves.frontier rifles im sure looked brand new when they left the gunsmiths shop but i bet ya they didnt stay that way very long.especially when your life depended on having a shiny lock and brass or not.the only fools that went out hunting indians with new shiny arms was the regular military.you can bet no scouts or militia polished there arms.
  though i love a new shiny rifle and really appreciate comments,others mileage will very!!! 

[Leatherbelly]

Hmm? Would Lew Wetzel have toted a 200 year old gun? Not likely, but maybe a 10 year old gun,maybe even a five year old gun. My rifle and gun get "antiqued" as I use 'em.LOL! But,what ever stiffins your pencil!

[lew wetzel]

l.b....im sure your guns dont get half the use as l.wetzels guns did.he lived in the elements.pretty much 24/7.how much patina do you think a 5-10 yr. old gun would have on the frontier.most of the surviving guns today only look that good because they were high end guns and taken care of.do you really think the lowend guns were kept up that good.these guns were hauled out everyday and used.you couldnt even go fetch a pail of water without toting your rifle.so i am happy for you that your guns get antigued because you use them and im sure who ever built them that the quality is good.

[Leatherbelly]

 I think that L.Wetzel and all frontiersmen looked after their guns first, as they survived with them. They most likely cared for them like we do,keeping them clean so they functioned properly. They had to,or they died. Yes,I believe their guns got more wear from the elements.They abused themselves more then their rifles. I imagine they slept with them tucked into their bedroll, with knife and hawk handy also. Just camp out in grizzly country, and you'll know what I mean. I can tell you some griz stories that will curdle your urine, LOL!

[hyltoto]

I read in one of the draper letters where a fellow was using his rifle butt for a pillow! It would be interesting to only use water, tow and olive oil for maintenance for a while...

By the way, I used to live beside Wetzels cave, just outside Marietta OH. He hid out there after gunning down a peacable Indian. It was a large sandstone cave just off the Little Muskingum river.

[lew wetzel]

hyltot,wheeling and marrietta are great places for history.man i need to spend some time in the woods.cant wait to finish this rifle up so i can go out and play. 

[Clark Badgett]

It would be interesting to only use water, tow and olive oil for maintenance for a while...

I only use natural type products for the maintenance of my BP guns. Olive Oil, Tow when I can get it, cotton when I can't, clean lard, beef tallow, boiling water....

[Pete G.]

I think one thing that a lot of folks miss is that we're all "gun guys" and to some extent are fairly conscientious in care and maintenance. I have hunted with folks that saw a gun as nothing more than a tool, and didn't give the piece much more care than a hammer. I've seen modern guns that look like they could be 200 years old. One older gentleman used to talk about his "Brown Browning" , which although only twenty years old, had almost no finish left on the stock, mostly from using the gun to push briers aside while rabbit hunting. I doubt if the gun had ever seen a drop of oil in it's life. I'm sure that there were people like that in the older days also, which is why a lot of the plainer working type guns have not survived, whereas the more ornate have.

[jerrywh]

 If you pay $20,000 for a gun , it is a lot more likely to be in good shape in 20 years than the gun you payed $500.00 for.   
 

[cal.43]

a rifle was and is a tool and people take different care of it, some look about the hole thing and the finish and some only for the funktion.
Motobiker say chrome won´t bring you home

[Robby]

Lew, Wetzel lived an extraordinary rugged life, even by the standards of the day. Having had a taste of that life for only about a year, I would have to believe that, in all circumstances, he would have delayed or even sacrificed his personal comfort to insure that his rifle was clean functional, and could be counted on when needed, and if anything, would show the wear from someone that was obsessive in that effort.

[lew wetzel]

i am sure he kept his rifles in top working condition.but i believe he didnt shine his rifles furniture but kept them patinad.he did live a rugged life and his rifles seen more day to day wear than most peoples rifles on the frontier.he also went through quite a few rifles in his lifetime.being able to reload at a full run took its toll on his rifles.he had to bounce the butt end off the ground.he opened his touch holes up so he didnt have to prime the pan but simply hit the side of his rifle with his palm to eject powder into the pan via the charged barrel and rolling naked round  balls down the barrel and you really think he had time to stop and clean his rifle after being trailed and hiding out in caves and in marshes and under logs.im sure he did what he could under his circumstances at times but pretty much i bet his rifles looked grungy.i have spent alot of time emmulating lewis wetzel at our property and living out in the elements and practicing while reloading and i only can do it a couple weekends amonth and my rifles get banged up and very dirty and i have good cleaner and solvents i keep in the truck.i have studied lew wetzel for years and to really immerse yourself into the life style he lived and to really master everything he did you would have to live it 24/7.try keeping your shiny new rifle clean with just a hank of tow and some warm water you heated in your tin boiler.i presume the grundgy look through my own experimental archeology.not because i read a book.

[Robby]

Try leaving your rifle grungy, I don't mean dented or nicked up, after a day of humping about eighty pounds around, up, and down mountains, in the middle of a typhoon, and in the fading light, bone tired, and knuckles swollen and sore with jungle rot, knowing there are people out there who want to kill you, for real, not pretend. You'll clean it, and not because you read a book.

[Roger Fisher]

Try leaving your rifle grungy, I don't mean dented or nicked up, after a day of humping about eighty pounds around, up, and down mountains, in the middle of a typhoon, and in the fading light, bone tired, and knuckles swollen and sore with jungle rot, knowing there are people out there who want to kill you, for real, not pretend. You'll clean it, and not because you read a book.

@!*% well said!

[Tim Hamblen]

I guess to each his own but I never got the "old" look anyway. Seems to me if you have a 200 yr old looking rifle and are trying to "recreate" a 200 yr old time period, you had better be carrying a matchlock.
 .If we were trying to recreate the Elliot Ness time period would the Model As be all dinged up and rusted out ? No because they would have been new or at minimum not very old and not old enough to be rusted out.
 Read the part of the book The Frontiersman. Kenton was quite proud of his rifle and took great care of it. At least till he lost it.We shoot more shots in a weekend shoot than Kenton would have fired in a year. We have basically an unending source of powder and ball. We just go to the truck or shoot box and get more. They had a limited supply. How dirtied up would a gun get if you shot it maybe once a month or even 10 times a month ? Not very I'd say. If they did not take good care of their guns, why would they in the same vane not just go ahead and let their knives get dull and nicked and the point broken off ? Their knives and guns stood between themselves and death. Generally speaking our do not.

[rich pierce]

Somehow, despite these factors, Lewis and Clark has to re-fresh the rifling on their rifles during an expedition of less than 3 years and they were under military order.  We can speculate based on what we know and think now, but they had 3 year old rifles where the rifling was shot and they no acceptable accuracy.  I think we should go on period reports when available.

We do know that almost all gunsmiths had a dozen "freshing sticks" for refreshing barrels.  And we know that Roger Fisher has tens of thousands of shots through a single Getz barrel w/o needing re-cutting.  Put it all together and what can we conclude from the scant evidence?  Rifles often took more of a beating back then, even if they were shot less.

[lew wetzel]

robby,if we were discussing automatics and vietnam i would agree with you,but since were NOT.and this is site dedicated to flintlocks and a thread on "aged" looking flintlocks and how we speculate lewis wetzels rifle would have looked.

[t.caster]

I've said it before and I will say it again. If I am woodsman like Kenton or Wetzel (in my dreams) it is about STEALTH! That means I don't want shiny brass steel or silver sparkling & flashing like a mirror for hostiles to see a mile away.
There is also the pilgrim thing, but to a lesser degree. Yes, I age my rifles, but not to 200 yrs. for God sake, that would be like falsifying a document and very unscupulous. I make mine look a year or two old at the most, the rest will come naturally. That basically means bluing or browning steel and tarnishing the brass. Yes, I keep them clean,oiled, greased and waxed like my life depends on them for survival.
There is another reason that has crept in to my thinking over the years. I've heard so many people say "why, that's too beautiful to take out in the woods and get dirty" So I started to dull them down some, so they wouldn't feel scared or guilty about taking them outside. They are built to be used!

[tg]

I have seen this topic many times and believe ego is a driving factor many feel that one must start with a new gun and ket the wear come naturaly thus wearing it as a badeg of sorts to show their participation in the sport, oters prefer to start with a gun  that is not new and may be 20 years older than theri impression, a bit of aging seems logical here, I think all should do as they wish but none should claim any higher ground on the issue, and we do need to keep in mind that we know what the 200 year old guns look like now, but we do not know how they looked when 5, 10, 15 25 years old.some may have looked much the same as they do now depending on use and post use storage.

[Robby]

Well Lieu, somehow you managed to miss my point entirely.......I'm not surprised. Case closed.

[Leatherbelly]

  LOL!! Some like it hot,
           Some like it cold.
            Some like it in the pot,nine days old!