First attempt at building a longrifle ,four questions.

[Rolf]

The stock blank is a red maple, grade 6 from Dunlap. Barrel inlet and RR channel by Fred Miller.
The barrel is a 44” long, swamped C weight, caliber 54 from Rice. Trigger guard and buttplate from David Keck. Lock is a lefhanded large Siler.

 Pipes, trigger+ trigger plate made from sheet stock. I tried to base the stock profile from a Beck pattern bougth form Paul Taran. It’s the same pattern sold by Keck. Couldn’t get it to work. It looked wrong/strange. I think the problem was the barrel profile. The barrel in the pattern was a straight octagon, 42”.  Ended up drawing my own pattern based on” Rifles of Colonial America”.
I think the results look more Virgina style than Beck, but it’s the best I can do. Which I why  I called it a “Beckish rifle.

I messed up drilling the Tang bolt hole and had to weld it up and redrill. The results are acceptable but coudld have been better. Next time, I’m going to counter bore instead of counter sinking the bolt head. All in all, think the general shaping of the stock looks okay.






I finish up most of the rr molding today. I made a set of tools described in “Recreating the American longrifle”


The results look okay, aside from a couple of dips in the molding.





1.I need suggestions/advice on how to terminate the molding at the front end and rear end of the rr chanel.




2. I’ve drawn the sideplate molding. Is there anything I shoud  change?




3. Where should the patch box go?
 I don’t know how to ingrave, so I want to make a wooden patch box. I’ve drawn in the patch box placement. This placement seems to be the best according the curve in the the butt. But looks a bit strange. I would have like to have it more in the middle of the stock and angled towards the middle of the wirst. But that seems to come in conflict with the curve in the buttstock.


4.How should the front and rear end of the cheek piece curve?
I shaped the butt stock following the procedure describe in “The Grenvill Gunsmith”. A bit at lose on how to finish the cheek piece. I had planned to concentrate on getting the basic shape and moldings on the stock before drawing in any carving patterns. The idea being that it’s easier to draw the carving after these are defined.

Best regards
Rolf

[B.Habermehl]

Your pencil drawing of the beaver tail at the rear of the lock looks a bit pinched or small to my eye. Let it grow some to balance the front lock panel moulding you drew. The panels should complement each other. Depending on the gun Beck did use some pretty generous beaver tails. BJH

[jerrywh]

If it were mine I would center the patch box on the butt stock. Center the rear and center the front of the patch box.  
 At the front the RR molding should terminate just ahead of the forward RR thimble. There should be room for four fingers to grasp the RR at the muzzle. at the rear you can terminate the RR molding with a carving or just a incised scroll. Don't be fooled into thinking that an incised scroll very is easy to execute. Be patient with all your wok and think things out well in advance.  
 The molding at the bottom of the butt stock should be tapered wider at the rear. Also, study some other good rifles to determine how the cheek piece terminates a the rear and the front.
 Don't think all the originals were correct either. Some of them were not very good.   Blasphemy !!! maybe but true.

[Ryan McNabb]

What's going on with your trigger?

[kaintuck]

The rear of your cheek piece will sweep up to the corner of the BP, nice long curve, the front ending of it looks good....do some internet picture searches....see what YOU like.....

Your doing dang good on the rifle!!!

Marc

[Rolf]

What's going on with your trigger?

Thought it looked to compact, so I pierced it.



Best regards
Rolf

[Old Ford2]

Very fine looking trigger!
Fred

[Rolf]

Thank you for your comments. I've tried to implement them.

1. Front end of RR moulding.
The problem solved when I made and installed the muzzle cap. I hadn't cut down enough of the channel walls.





2. Terminating the end of the rr moulding.
I've drawn a singel scroll. Any tips on how to carve a incised scroll? Had planed to leave the area around the thimble tang bare, but it looks abit nude. Any suggestions?



3. Side panel mouldings
I've redrawn them and made them bigger. Do they look better balanced?



4: Patch box
I've centerd the cover more on the middle of the butt stock. Does this look Right?



5.Planning cheek piece carving.
This is the pattern I want to use. Anything that looks wrong? The pattern is drawn from "The book of Lancaster carving details for the Gunmaker" by Susanne Warren-Bico. The book is missing the tang carvings and the carving in front of the cheek piece. Please post pictures of suitable carvings.



Best regards
Rolf

[Keb]

I'm no expert but I learned to center a patchbox like this.
The center line of the patchbox should run along the red line.



There is a great possibility the image used is not a true face image and the 2D lines I've drawn on could be in the wrong location.

[Ed Wenger]

Rolf...  I really like the trigger as well. 

The beaver tails look much better, although to my eye, I'd probably play around with making the neck just a tad thicker and see how that looks.

I think your scroll looks nice, well proportioned...  Personally, I cut them in with different radius gouges, stamping in first, then removing the small wedge of wood with a slightly larger gouge.  You can do it with a small "V" gouge as well, but the small radius can become very problematic with this method, at least for me.

I'd scour the net for some carving patterns relative to the tang and wrist area.  Your design behind the cheek is "Beckish", and I'd bet you could find some nice patterns to compliment the design.

Looking good!  Keep us posted...


           Ed   

[whetrock]

Hey Rolf,
Man, you are making fast progress!
Re the position of the box, there are several ways to center a box. Various builders approached it differently. You might want to see some diagrams I posted a while back. These might help you as you think about what you are trying to represent. Here's the link. Scroll down and you will find the images.
http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=24772.0

The pencil sketch you showed for box position earlier shows something similar to the box position in RCA 100 (which is an unsigned rifle that Shumway attributes to Beck), where the box is more or less centered where it intersects with the butt plate, but is otherwise parallel to the top of the comb.
The position you show with the paper pattern is, in contrast, more like RCA 39, which is centered along the axis. (Shumway suggests that RCA 39 is similar in some ways to a Beck, but you might note that box alignment in that one is different from the "Becks" in RCA 98, 99, 100, and 101.)
I don't mean to suggest that you need to follow any particular alignment. Just commenting about this because you mentioned Beck.
It's all a matter of personal preference, of course, and if you are building something of your own design you aren't locked into anything. (And personally speaking, I really like RCA 39!)

As for vertical centering, also keep in mind that some old builders centered the box between the toe and the top of the comb, whereas some centered it between the toe and the bottom of the butt plate extension. Some included the toe molding, while others excluded it, etc.
I found it helpful to make a small set of wooden dividers to use when comparing and plotting out what measurements compare to what on the photos in the books. (I hate to use metal ones on the books, as they scratch up the images.)

Whet

[whetrock]

Re the positioning and size of the carving, you might also think of that in terms of similar alignment and balance issues. You can think of the intersection of the two "C" scrolls as an axis of sorts, which then lines up with something, depending on school and builder. For many old builders, the size and position of the carving also seems to have been determined by alignment. For example, in RCA 100, the main body of the carving does not hang down bellow alignment with the cheek piece. The tendrils do, but not the main body. I think of the main body as the weighty part of the image, the part that captures your eye. Smaller details, like the hanging tendril, just give something to balance out the blank space. Also note the blank space between the carved image and the butt plate. Some blank space is good.

Hope this helps.
whet

[PPatch]

Rolf: Great job so far.

To my eye you are almost there with the patch box but it could go upward a wee bit. In other words it should have more stock showing below it than on top, be every so slightly above centerline, don't just mechanically center it. Doing this will give it a visually pleasing look which simply centering it lacks.

Your beaver tail is much improved from that first skinny one, but the "body," of the one you have now, the fat part, could be extended just a hair to make it longer (make sense?). Its width is fine in the fat part, just lengthen the top and bottom curve a bit t make the fat part longer.

I too made one of those devices for creating molding on my first rifle - have thrown it away now and just use gouges and a sandpaper wrapped dowel now.

Cheers

dave

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

Rolf:  this is your photo of the wrist area and your drawing of the beavertail finial in the lock molding.  There was something that caught my eye about it, and I didn't know what it was until I copied it and drew over it.  Your beavertail should be centred in the wrist.  I checked out some images of original rifles by Verner,  Bonewitz, and Beck, and their beavertails are a little more 'veluptuous than yours and are centred in the wrist.  Draw a line from the tail of the lockdown through the centre of the wrist, and position your beavertail around the centreline.  It would look nicer too, to me anyway, if it was drawn a little chubbier, like in my sketch below.  Your's isn't wrong but I like mine better....since you asked.

[Acer Saccharum]

Taylor Sapergia writes:

Your's isn't wrong but I like mine better....since you asked.

Love that Canadian way with words. Maybe it's how Google translates it?


Rolf, I agree the tail is too high on the wrist. You can drop the tail of the panel a bit, and then re-draw the tails.

[B.Habermehl]

Taylor captures what I poorly tried to describe perfectly. Beck did his beaver tail a bit differently on each of his guns. But to my eye his boldest work was best. BJH

[Don Getz]

Gad, that's an ugly trigger........why didn't you make a plain, unique, Beck trigger.  Now, go back to your pictues of a Beck
and look closely at his beavertails.  The point of your lock panel ends up nearly in the middle of the beavertail.......seems to
be different than most of the other builders..........Don

[kaintuck]

Rolf,

I like the beaver tail the way you drew it.....they all had different sized tails...even from the same maker!
A lot never even put them on guns.....

I lean toward the Paris Hilton size, and not the Rosie Odonall ones......

Marc