This thread could easily belong in Gun Building, but since we're already here...
The rifle pictured is a half stock flint Hawken styled rifle in American walnut. I built the rifle three years ago this month. The owner has a documented 10,000 rounds through it. He's on his second frizzen.
Last winter shooting alone on our trail, he suddenly found both feet at chest height and his body parallel to the snow - slipped on ice under the snow. He instinctively put his hands down to catch his fall, but his rifle was in his right hand grasped behind the rear sight. The rifle broke his fall, contacting the ground on the muzzle and toe plate approximately the same time. He searched for a half hour on his hands and knees but found all the pieces in the snow, and brought them to me very upset. He was sure it meant a new stock, and an appropriate expenditure. Since the rifle has not been disassembled, it was still joined by the hardware. But once I removed the barrel and trigger plate, it all came apart in several pieces. After reassembling the pieces it appeared that it was complete, so again, I disassembled it, cleaned it, and mixed up a batch of Brownell's AcraGlas. I clamped everything tightly with five various clamps vertically in the vise, and let it cure. Cure is a good word here, because when I refinished the stock, there was hardly any evidence of the fractures. Both I and the clint were delighted with the outcome. So here it is (again).
The first rifle I repaired was back in the early '80s. It too was a hawken but this time a percussion rifle with a Claro walnut stock. In this case, the shooter had fired a shot and missed a fairly easy target. In his disgust with his performance, he thumped the rifle on it's butt plate on the ground, and the wrist fractured , almost straight across.
The repair was to separate the two pieces, drill holes in the ends of the breaks a little oversized, insert a section of redi-rod (1/4" x 20 tpi) two inches into each end, again the bonding agent was AcraGlas. After refinishing, there is no evidence of the break. That rifle is still in use, though it doesn't get thumped like that anymore. Sorry no pictures...it was BDC (before digital cameras)
Both Daryl and I have had T/C "Hawken" rifles that got cracked through the lock bolt...I think they all do eventually.
If you can avoid it, do not stand any rifle up, if there's a place to lay it down. A standing rifle that falls over, or slips out on the floor, will almost certainly sustain a catastrophic break.
One thanksgiving at Lillouet's annual shoot, I was standing on a low bank above a narrow dirt road loading my Centre Mark Tulle Fusil Fin. I was holding the gun between my knees vertically using both hands to do the loading. My knees relaxed, the muzzle left me, and at the end of it's arc struck the road some two feet below where I was standing. The wrist was broken completely through, but the long trigger guard held it all together. I lashed it up with buckskin wangs from various shirts that were close at hand, and finished the match.
Back in the shop, I joined the pieces as I had the Hawken mentioned above, but some small chips were gone and it looked like heck. So I covered the break with rawhide and glue, and it is still shooting strong today. It even survived Leatherbelly LOL.
