I just got a link to this thread and now I feel like I missed all the fun at the party.
First off very nice build, I think it looks fantastic! WEre you the one that sent me all the pics of the original? I knew I had seen that somewhere, found the pics but I don;t remember who sent them to me.
Bucks Co. presents a lot of problems, first and foremost because so many of the early records were lost in a fire (I believe it was a fire). Furthermore there is the issue of the "assumed" blending together of Bucks Co. and Montgomery Co. when one speaks of Bucks Co.
KRA#8 as it's being called is absolutely magnificent. Nobody yet seems to be able to identify who this guy was but it seems to be "assumed" at this point that he was working somewhere in upper Bucks or upper Montgomery, many of us believe somewhere up in the "point" where Montgomery/Bucks/Berks/Northampton (now Lehigh) all come together. When this gun turned up a number of years ago, 1980s, the box was missing and it had a different lock on it (or maybe the same lock without the slash marks on the tail). Bruce M. sent me his pics of when he was still making the replacement box and with the original lock, although I've never gotten a clear explanation of what the deal with the lock was. Anyway, the guy who carved it and stocked it clearly knew his business. The "Ron rifle" here in this thread would also appear to be the same guy. The immediate speculation would be that he was an immigrant or Euro trained, although one only has to look at the Isaac Berlin work to sow some doubt there. George Shumway did the article for MB in the early 90s about KRA#8 and tried to link it to two other Bucks Co. unsigned pieces, later pieces who he believed were the same guy, but I personally have my doubts. Maybe influenced, although who knows - when you view much of the later Bucks work in its entirety, it's pretty obvious that all of those guys were eating out of the same cook pot. Some believe this earlier guy was some form of Yoda-like master up there in the upper Perkiomen area that taught all of the later Bucks guys. Maybe? Again, because there are such scant pre-Federal era records and no real hard paper trail of gunsmiths in these areas, it's currently impossible to say.
In addition to #8 and the Ron gun here, there is one other that seems pretty clearly by the same guy that turned up @6-8 years ago but needed a lot of restoration work. I don;t know if it has since been restored and I haven't seen it since, but it was pretty darn identical to #8 but with plainer furnishings. There is also another that has the same early stock architecture (almost identical to #8) but with sparser, incised carving that seems a little later; its also been buggered a bit i.e. some replacement furnishings etc. It is believed by the owner to be Jacob Daub, although this is based upon comparison with a later piece also *assumed* to be Daub but also unsigned, and THAT is in turn compared to an even later piece with "J. Doub Gon Smith" on the box. I have my doubts, but the middle piece (unsigned) is a good link between the earlier #8 stock style and the later 'classic' Bucks skinny style because it looks later, looks kind of classic Bucks, but heavier built if this makes sense. Regardless, to my mind it makes a total of 4 thus far that seem to be by this #8 guy, all much earlier in appearance than the later "Bucks" work but all seemingly tied to it as something of a progenitor of the type.
Then you have the gun that JTR posted. That one came out of a small local museum collection up here in Wysox a few years back, the old Tee-To-Tum museum. This is not the same guy but he was obviously trying to emulate the much more refined #8 guy. I call him "The Wonky Carver" because some of his stuff, like this one, is just out in left field. It's the same guy who did the attributed 'Jacob Dubbs' rifle (because you know, it has a JD on the wrist inlay after all...
) as well as the near identical broken buttstock. And there are others, probably 4 or 5 at least that I've seen and they all have the same architecture, the same mix of American and Euro type furniture (he was probably buying it all) and the same weird and contorted carving, kind of like a mimic of the #8 type work in all ways but in all ways not quite there. This wonky stuff also seems earlier than the later Verner/Shuler/Weiker work that we view as the classic Bucks school, it might be as early as the #8 work or it might fall somewhere in between.
Personally I don;t think that KRA#8 or the Ron gun here or the other one I saw are all that terribly early, perhaps early 1770s although I know there are folks who call #8 as a 1750s gun. The plainer piece I mentioned that the owner attributes to Daub has a 1770s date scratched on the stock, I'll have to go find the pics but its something like 1774 or so and 'I am not afraid' scratched above it. Don;t know about the legitimacy or not of the scratching.
There are a few guys who think these early pieces are early work of Andrew Verner. This is based upon 'back comparing' the grand signed rifle and the one unsigned rifle that is clearly by him, then working backward through a few others that are earlier, unsigned and have carved details that seem to link his later work to this earlier relief work as well as working backward through an attributed stock progression. I'm not at liberty to post a number of the pics that I have, primarily because I have no idea who all variously sent them to me, but it's actually a somewhat plausible case. There really is nothing out there dealing with him prior to the War, I don;t think, but he obviously was extremely accomplished, possibly more so than any of the others, and he may have been older. It's really unfortunate that so many pieces used in this type of hypothtical 'back tracing' are unsigned. A few signatures would go a long way!
