Let me preface this by saying you all know what happened to Frankenstein at the end of the movie, and that's how these guns should end up too.
A few years ago, I shaped a stock from the lock panels back and inlet the barrel for a friend. Forestock left square and no ramrod channel. Barrel was a 48" swamped one that we cut the front 8" off to make it a straight tapered one. It was his first real build.
The tapered barrel screwed him up and it was downhill from there. He put the underlugs on the barrel, measured the thickness and slabbed the forestock off, straight back. Then he cut the ramrod channel and used it as a guide to drill the hole. Ended up hitting the barrel with the drill. In addition, there was no room for the tab of the rear thimble. He moved to other parts of the build, and progressively messed up each operation, not completing it, but moving on to another.
I finally convinced him to give me the gun to try and straighten it out. Have applied various "fixes" to most of the mistakes. The rear thimble will have to be epoxied in place. Just found that the rear underlug hangs down into the ramrod hole. Can you all see any reason why a gun needs 3 underlugs, since the front two and the lock bolt securely mount the barrel to the stock? It will only be used as a hunting rifle, and believe me when I say there is no other solution.
