In 1969, I was a high school junior and I wanted a long rifle although I had never actually seen one…only fuzzy black and white, 2 inch wide pictures of one, printed on news print paper, in the Dixie Gun Works catalog I had just received in the mail. I could just afford a Dixie barrel, a sand cast butt plate, and a sand cast trigger guard. I ordered the parts and had an eye on a walnut tree felled by a neighbor. The tree had been down for a couple of years and was intended for firewood. I told the neighbor that I would cut up the tree for him if I could have enough of the wood to make a gunstock. He said sure and I sawed out a plank about 10 inches wide, more than 2 inches thick, and 5 feet long. I made the lock for this gun by carving all the parts out of wax and getting a local casting house to cast the parts in steel for me. It took several weeks to get the lock parts fitted, springs made, and everything hardened. The rest of the parts were made from scrap brass. The rifle has nothing going for it except that it shoots well. However, to my credit, it looks just like the only two inch black and white picture of a long rifle I had ever seen….however bad it was.
A year later, I bought two Douglass barrels, made two more, better designed, locks by the same wax / casting method and completed the following matched pair of rifles for my Dad and I. The design is better but still very poor and the fabrication poorly executed. However, both these rifles still shoot well and are pleasing for me to look at every once in a while if for no other reason than to just to measure progress since I was 17.
