Thanks Paddlefoot and Bob.
The idea, for me at least, with that rear sight, is to file down the front sight so that I can use the tiny notch in the bottom of the opening for 25 - 50 yds., and then hopefully, centre the front sight in the hole for 100 yds. As the distance increases past 100 yds, the front sight moves up the opening. When the weather gets to the point that I don't need snowshoes to post a target past 50 yds., I'll report on the effectiveness of this sight system.
It is easy to get bad furniture for a Hawken project. Many of the butt plates especially, are terrible. Mine started out as the Bridger plate offered by TOW as it had almost perfect profile matching the image of the original. It is quite thick, and I did a lot of filing until I was happy. The same with the guard. Perhaps those that are available match some original, but not the one I was emulating. So I heated it red, and with a cross peen hammer, lengthened the bow. Thankfully, the casting had lots of "meat", so it wasn't difficult to get a guard whose profile matched the original's.
The hammer was a problem. Apart from sawing and filing one out of bar stock, there is nothing available that matched. When I scaled up the image to full size, I found that the hammer had a 1 7/8" throw. I bought a 1 7/8" hammer from Dixie that appeared in their tiny ancient illustration to be ok, but when it arrived, it was not. ...nearly $50 in the inventory drawer. The lock is a Roller, and the hammer that came with it might have worked on a 15/16" barrel, but certainly not on the 1 1/8" breech I was using. The hammer that Davis uses on their Hawken lock has exactly the same orientation in the tumbler square, and has a 1 3/4" throw, so with lots of filing, I got to to resemble the one in the image of the original. Still, I had to move the lock further forward so the hammer would align with the nipple, so I changed the geometry in the wrist/lock area slightly.
The sear bar in the Roller lock rests right level with the centre of the plate, not down at the bottom edge, as it does in other locks. Consequently, the triggers on the Ron Long trigger set that Tom Curran so generously gave me in '09, were not suitable. I didn'[t like the look of the rear trigger anyway, so I filed one out of a piece of annealed file that was a little over 5/16" thick. The result was a much better trigger that connected with the sear bar properly. I added steel to the top edge of the front trigger to achieve the same, and it worked out well.
So, if you have a particular or special rifle to make, don't be satisfied with mediocrity. Buy the best you can find, and change them to satisfy your need. Incidentally, Don Stith has some great authentic parts.
