Dan, that's real nice. When you designed the rifle, did you take into consideration the butt stock architecture? For example, my offhand rifle weighs 10 pounds in .50 cal. and is very comfortable to shoot, but shoot it prone, and it beats my cheek to pulp. The same goes for my Kuntz .40 cal. This rifle weighs 8 1/2 pounds, and is very pleasant to shoot offhand with 65 - 85 grains 3Fg. But shoot it prone over a chunk - ouch!
So is it weight alone that makes the difference? Or is there something in the drop at comb and at heel that makes the difference?
Its styled after Dickert RCA 48 because I liked the rifle and the buttstock design in particular. I raised the top of the wrist/tang area to accommodate the 1 1/4" barrel other than that its pretty similar to the original. It has a 3/16 web and 3/8 rod hole and I tried to maintain the same bottom lines to the stock. I suspect that finished I have between 3/32 and 1/16 of wood covering the RR hole.
This is how it was drawn out and I hit all the lines and the rod hole is exactly as drawn.
I think purely for strength due to the weight the web could be deeper and this may be why some such as the Zorger cited below have heavy stocks. SPGs Boyer has a really heavy stock as well. Increasing the web makes the entire stock deeper. As a result of raising the wrist tang area I am sure it have slightly more drop at the heel than the original. But it works well off a plank rest, I have not shot it prone so far but anticipate no difficulty. The comb being close to parallel to the bore always helps.
Nor have I tried shooting it offhand but its seems doable if I don't hold it too long and use a Schuetzen stance. But would have to do pushups for a couple of months to get in shape for more than a few shots I think
The normal load is 109 gr of FFF Swiss.
I have a lighter weight version in planning but things keep interfering with me getting the current project done so its on the back burner. Was supposed to be at least started by now.... Wanted the lighter one by Oct-Nov
I basically built this to counter the typical iron mounted "chunk" gun. Not all heavy rifles of the past were plain or crude. There are two heavy FL match rifles in Kindig #124 Zorger and #139 Klinedinst attributed. Both are carved and engraved.
I suspect that heavy rifles might might have been fairly common even in the FL era based on the fact that there was quite a bit of rest shooting done since offhand was thought to be a "poor test of the rifle". Charles Johnson was captured off a flatboat in 1790 while traveling to Kentucky and stated in part:
So apparently someone in Kentucky had ordered an "uncommonly heavy" rifle barrel in 1790.
But like many heavy barreled Sharps I suspect they fell from use due to the weight. Many heavy BPCRs of the 1870s-80s for example have had the barrels chopped to reduce the weight to 8-10 pounds after the need for the heavy heat sink had passed.
It takes a dedicated competition shooter to even want a LR this heavy I suspect that many may have gone to WW-I or even WW-II scrap drives as their lighter brothers did.
Dan
