Hawken barrel length

[L Meadows]

Im looking to build a Hawken for hunting and am looking at barrel length.I had a 'REPLICA" with a 28 inch barrel and it balanced perfect. But being short in stature,5'5, and realizing that most Hawken barrels are 32 to 34",im afraid it would be really nose heavy.Any pics or advice on short barrel Hawkens would be greatly appreciated.

[rsells]

Can you give info on what barrel characteristics you plan on using,  Straight, tapered, 1 inch straight, 1 1/8 straight, cal, etc?
                                                                                    Roger Sells

[flehto]

Awhile back I built a LHed Stith S. Hawken w. a  .54 cal., 1" to 7/8" tapered bbl  X 36" lg  and the weight and balance were superb. This rifle is used by the owner to hunt elk so the weight is very important.....he doesn't hunt from a horse. ....Fred

[Herb]

Here I am with Jim Bridger's Hawken in the Montana  Historical Society museum in Helena.  This rifle has a 1 1/8" straight (not tapered) barrel 33 1/4" long.  It weighs 11 1/4 pounds but has a trigger reach of only 13 1/4".  I made a near exact copy of this rifle but used a barrel that was only 31" long. My rifle weighs 10 3/4 pounds, same short length of pull, and I can shoot it very well off-hand.  Kit Carson's rifle is a near twin to this one, and while I have not yet handled it and am uncertain of the barrel dimensions, whether 1" straight or 1 1/8" tapered, it is a little over 31" long.

Originals were cut shorter after use due to damage or for better handling on a saddle horse.  Cut yours short if you want.  No matter how good a Hawken "replica" one may build, there will always be experts who find something wrong with it.  Build what fits you.

[Bob Roller]

 I have built one and one half Hawken representations.The first one had a Bill Large 1-1/8x33 solid bolster breech barrel in 54 caliber.I finished it on Thanksgiving Day of 1967,shot it and knew it was a good one.
Christmas day I shot a five leaf clover with it at 100 yards from a rest.I used striped pillow ticking,a .535 round ball and 100 grains of DuPont 3fg.I think the rifle which was stocked in walnut scaled in at about 11 pounds.
The "one half"Hawken was a semi finished 50x1x36 in maple that I never found time to finish and sold it "as is
to a man in North Carolina.The heavy one was a "copy"of a Hawken used in an ad of some kind and had a load of brass tacks in the stock which I also put in this one.Kind of a bonehead thing to do but it didn't look all that bad.

Bob Roller

[flehto]

The OP is inquiring about a Hawken that's suitable for hunting....IMO... 10 to 12 lb rifles aren't suitable for the average hunter. A heavy rifle  used  for target shooting  isn't suited for carrying  up mountains or for long periods of time. These heavier original Hawkens were  mostly carried by the horse and if carried on foot, it was probably by men who were in better shape than most today.

I've spent many hours hunting elk on foot in high altitudes {10,0000-11,500 ft}  and my "Hawken" weighs in at 8-1/2 lbs and at times I wished it was lighter. .....Fred

[Herb]

Hawken barrel length.  Jim Gordon in his book "Great Gunmakers for the Early West" Vol III says of barrels:  "...lengths range from 30 to 40 inches with the majority being 34 to 36 inches".  John Baird in his book "Hawken Rifle, the Mountain Man's Choice" shows photos of seven original Hawken rifles, whose barrel lengths I scaled out based on a 5" lock. Lengths were 32 1/2", 33", 33", 34", 34", 31 1/4" and 30 1/2".  These calculations are likely not exact but very close.  And that short one had a checkered pistol grip stock, a heavy barrel and a base for a tang mounted peep sight.  I have seen photos of at least two more similar but longer barreled Hawkens.  Shumway's Longrifle Articles Volume II page 158 has photos of an original J&S Hawken of .49 caliber, checkered walnut stock with a trigger reach of 14 1/2", one key, 30 3/4" long  barrel, with  charcoal blued iron butt plate, toe plate and trigger guard but all the rest of the furniture German silver.  The butt plate is 4 21/32" high and 1 9/32" wide.  A writer named Tag Rittel wrote in Buckskin Report (I think it was) of a Hawken he built with a short barrel for use on horseback hunting.  I think it was 28".  Probably would take me a couple of days to find this article, perhaps someone else has it.  Here are original Hawkens in Jim Gordon's museums.  I scaled that shorter one fifth down at about a 30" barrel.

[galamb]

I built a Carson Hawken, mostly from TOTW's pattern but opted for a tapered barrel like the original which is a 54 cal 1 1/8" at the breech tapering to 1" at the muzzle - 31" long (actually 1.129" tapering to 1.065").

The rifle weighed somewhat over 10 lbs and was horrible to carry (for ME) in the hill/dale, dense hardwoods that I hunt. I sold it part way through the first season that I tried to use it.

If I was to do it again I would opt for a 1" tapering to 7/8" at the muzzle, same length. That would save some weight just with the steel, plus would probably shed a bit more weight scaling all the wood back a tad to match the smaller barrel dimensions.

I have no pics/dimensions, but the Hawken Shop had a 50 cal original S. Hawken with a 30" barrel (47" overall) - don't know if was built that length or cut down at some point.

If the barrel is "too short", to me it just looks "wrong". But here is a pic of a J&S half-stock with a 27 1/2", 55 cal barrel - I have no other measurements and it was not noted to have had barrel cut down (but could have been).

Just looks "stubby" for a Hawken.



(I do have a few more pics of this rifle if you are interested - but no further specs)

[L Meadows]

Got a pre-carve from Track at a great price,Jim Bridger 1 1/8 tapered.I know it's short,but for hunting in the hills of eastern Kentucky,I really like the looks of the rifle in the last post.Thanks to all for the replies.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

The rifle pictured above I'll bet has had a foot cut from it.  The forward pipe is missing plus some of the barrel that was behind the forward pipe.
In the 70's, I handled a new Hawken built by my good friend Gary Mummery.   It has  a parallel 1 1/8" .54 cal barrrel that is 28" long.  At the time, I was amazed at how well it handled and had an opportunity to handle it again just a few years ago.  It left me with the same impression.  A very handy rifle with a forearm scaled to match the short barrel.
My personal Hawken has a 36" 1 1/8" - 1" tapered .62 cal barrel and weighs a little over ten pounds.  I fitted a sling - it was murder carrying it that first year, but the sling made all the difference.

[galamb]

Taylor, if you carried that moose out, carrying a 10 pound rifle should be a breeze for ya 

[Archie Otto]

Looking at the pic of original Hawkens that Herb posted, how in the world did companies like T/C decide that their "hawkens" should stray so far from the originals? 28" barrels, shiny brass furniture, walnut stocks and flat drop comb. I admit that was what I thought defined a hawken until looking into the real history.  Honestly I think those T/C hawkens are just about the ugliest darn gun out there and are really an insult to both the original guns and the people who are drawn to them.

[galamb]

When Robert Redford said "He settled for a .30, but @!*%, it was a genuine Hawken, and you couldn't go no better", that opened the gates.

Didn't matter what it looked like as long as HAWKEN was somewhere in the name 

[Herb]

Re a "stubby Hawken", there is a photo of another in the book "Firearms of the American West  1803-1865", page 54.  It is a .54 S. Hawken with a long forestock  and a 25" barrel, looks to be cut off just ahead of what would have been the rear rod pipe. (Courtesy of the National Park Service, James H. Cook Collection).  It has a single trigger!   Michael L. of this forum kindly wrote me to tell me that he owns the number two Hawken in the John Baird photo I referenced and that it has a barrel 34 13/16" long ahead of the snail, 35 1/2" with the breech plug.  I had based my calculated barrel length on a 5" lock and got 33".  He also owns a fine bench copy of the #5 rifle by Bob Browner, and that one has a 36" barrel (ahead of the snail).  Pictured in the July 2012 "American Tradition" magazine of the CLA with the original.  So with a magnifying glass I carefully remeasured those seven locks and found they were all different lengths.  But with one known dimension (the barrel length of #2) I calculated a correction factor for the photo measurements and recalculated the barrel lengths.  I now get 32.9" for the first one on the left, 34.8 for number two (known), 35 for #3, 34.28 for #4, 36 for #5 (known), 35.86 for #6,  and 32.15 for #7.