CRUDE gun finish

[Mike Brooks]

 Thank you so much for hitting the nail on the head Bob in the Woods!!!! Crude does not have to be ugly!! That is what I am exactly after. Primitive in architecture and but still not having fit and finish of the work of a professional gunmaker. I think many of the old muzzleloaders were had a rougher final finish that many of todays high glossy finishes left on longrifles.
    Also, Mr. Brooks, (by the way, I am a true admirer of your craftsmanship) don't forget the backwoodsman had to be self-sufficent to the point of having to make his own tools sometimes. Hacker Martin made many of his own tools to craft guns. These hardy people made do with what they had if not they made it. I am a firm believer in necessity is the mother of invention.
   By the way,I really am impressed by the way you antique and distress you stocks Mr Brooks.

Thanks.
 I was hoping you wouldn't be offended by my post.
 I'd take as much care as I could with the inletting and shaping of the stock then do a quick scraper finish leaving some tool marks, File out the mounts  with out polishing out the file marks. Dark aquafortis stain with a linseed oil finish. I think then you'd have something very realistic and still attractive enough to be acceptable for most. Heck , sounds interesting enough I might do something similar.

[leviathan]

Thanks Mr Brooks After filing out the mounts, lock, guard, etc, would you brown the mounts or leave them as is.  Also, do you use linseed on your stocks? 

[Mike Brooks]

Thanks Mr Brooks After filing out the mounts, lock, guard, etc, would you brown the mounts or leave them as is.  Also, do you use linseed on your stocks? 

Depends on what you're trying to represent, a just made gun or an old gun. If new I'd leave them bright if old I'd rust them. No, I don't use linseed on my stocks.

[Hungry Horse]

 If the mounts are iron, consider heating them, and painting them with linseed oil. This is a quick metal preservative used by blacksmiths for centuries. I have some mounts from a Southern mountain rifle that have this finish on them, and very little rust has accumulated in the hundred plus years since their manufacture.

                  Hungry Horse

[Pete G.]

Good ol' # 136 evidently had a sliding wood patchbox door before the brass one on there now.
I'd guess an owner shortened up the pull length and did the carving.
John

I think you're confused. #136 is a rather crude blacksmith made gun that has all iron fittings, including the patchbox. I have thought about trying to build a replica, but every time I study it I chicken out.

[rich pierce]

Some speculate #136 is a revival gun not made in the original flint era but made later from old parts. Hard to know on a gun like that. Either way it was made by somebody sometime. I'm not sure when the idea it was made by a blacksmith became an accepted certainty. One of many possibilities.

[KLMoors]

I'm pretty sure that Daniel Boone made a gun out of a branch. It came out good enough that he bragged about it later! He had managed to scrounge some parts during his captivity and made the gun once he had escaped. Too bad that thing didn't get saved.

Good luck on your project, I think it is a pretty cool idea.

[JTR]

Good ol' # 136 evidently had a sliding wood patchbox door before the brass one on there now.
I'd guess an owner shortened up the pull length and did the carving.
John

I think you're confused. #136 is a rather crude blacksmith made gun that has all iron fittings, including the patchbox. I have thought about trying to build a replica, but every time I study it I chicken out.

I might be confusing it with another rifle, and I don't have time right now to search for the reference I had regarding the butt plate and shaping of the patchbox hole indicating a wood box cover, so I'll gladly delete my comment.

I've not heard of a blacksmith attribution before either. Do you have a reference or research for such, or is it just someone's opinion?

John

[Mark Elliott]

I think that most everyone had access to linseed oil, turpentine, and beeswax as these were general store items.

[Vomitus]

....or, buy(or build) a trade gun. There must have been parts galore after the F&I war. Just an option.

[Joe S]

Primitive in architecture and but still not having fit and finish of the work of a professional gunmaker.

What's special about that?  All my guns look like that.

[Gaeckle]

does this qualify as crude



http://contemporarymakers.blogspot.com/2012/04/john-gaeckle-rifle.html


Hope I did this right....

As for a finish simple soot mixed and disolved in oil could work followed by pine tar. Pine tar can be easily made by simply boiling down (cooking it in some sort of metal container) that can then be applied.

[Mike Brooks]

does this qualify as crude



http://contemporarymakers.blogspot.com/2012/04/john-gaeckle-rifle.html


Hope I did this right....

As for a finish simple soot mixed and disolved in oil could work followed by pine tar. Pine tar can be easily made by simply boiling down (cooking it in some sort of metal container) that can then be applied.

Hardly. That is a nice slim racey gun. No extra wood anywhere and smartly made. Hackberry stock, interesting.......

[frogwalking]

Do you mean crude, or rustic?  My wife gets these two confused when she buys "rustic" furniture.  When it is delivered, I think it is often "crude" rather than rustic.

[Gaeckle]

does this qualify as crude



http://contemporarymakers.blogspot.com/2012/04/john-gaeckle-rifle.html


Hope I did this right....

As for a finish simple soot mixed and disolved in oil could work followed by pine tar. Pine tar can be easily made by simply boiling down (cooking it in some sort of metal container) that can then be applied.

Hardly. That is a nice slim racey gun. No extra wood anywhere and smartly made. Hackberry stock, interesting.......

That's good to know, now I can prove to my wife that I am not crude.......Hackberry: what an awfull wood to work with!

[Long John]

There were two things that distinguished the craftsman from the ploughboy during the 18th and early 19th centuries:  knowledge and tools.  At the end of his term of apprenticeship an apprentice was given a set of tools sufficient to allow him to practice his new craft or trade.  I believe that the notion that a "backwoodsman" would have either the knowledge or the tools to build a rifle is unrealistic.  That backwoodsman would have gathered everything he could of worth and taken it to the settlement where he could purchase a rifle.  The local smiths would probably have a couple of "spec" guns (made on speculation) and one would have been very plain with a minimum of parts or adornment, just a basic utilitarian gun, made as austerely as possible yet still be functional.  That backwoodsman would sell everything he had and work to make up the differ3nce to get that very basic gun.

Remember that you didn't buy tools back then for the most part.  Except for hammers, anvils and some files, the gunsmith made his own tools.  He had learned the art of heat treating steel as an apprentice and probably made most, if not all, the tools with which he left the master.  Think of all of the chisels, files, drill bits, threading tools, scrapers, etc. that we use just to build a basic gun!  This would not have been available to a backwoodsman.  Furthermore, that backwoodsman knew what it took and all he lacked to build a gun.

Best Regards,

John Cholin

[Kermit]

My own grandfather (born circa 1875) and at least 4 generations before him were all practicing farmers and frontier homesteaders from MA to OR and all were trained as coopers with the tools of their trade. I own many of those today. I don't think this would have been uncommon.

[Dr. Tim-Boone]

Apparently many of the early settlers in KY knew enough to repair, rebuild/ restock rifles... as it became more settled the specialization probably began...

[axelp]

First: If I were a gent that decided to head west and harvest deer hides in KY or trap beaver in the Rockies, I would first off, want to already have my gun figured out before I left...

Second: if my gun got broke, I'd need to repair it in the field as best I could. So I can see a hard used gun with a wrist repair and maybe I might have the extra parts/tools with me to replace a spring etc, but I doubt I would bother carrying all the tools associated with smithing and wood working plus parts etc--- unless I was planning on working as a gunsmith in the first place.

He could most probably trade for a used gun with the company and/or also pay a company smith to fabricate what he did not have to replace broke parts etc and save his back, and the back of his packhorse for what he was there for--- FURS. --Smithing equipment is heavy!

Making a rough whittled "stick gun" might be fun though---and shooting it would be cool! It would be an interesting historical impression and fun to see at a Rondy. You would need to probably limit your other gear too right? Like rags for clothes and bare feet and whatnot. But realistically it would be a last ditch very temporary situation. I doubt old Daniel kept his cobbled stick gun for much longer than it took him to reach the first Station he came to that had some extra guns to barter for… It was probably wired/tied together with rawhide etc, and was hardly a practical weapon--it WAS a "zip-gun."

[Dr. Tim-Boone]

Right on Ken.  Not all in KY were hunters and trappers.... they did settle.... The long hunters were not going to pack a gunsmith shop with them..... the folks who settled in Boonesborough and other stations might well have though... and more than one of those in the early groups may well have had skills in more than one arena....  Now how crude were these guns???   As you say Ken, I am sure Boone didn't hang on to his stick gun for long... Good gun-makers were probably sought out by every settlement either as part of the plan or soon after establishment...  I would love to see some of the original sources such as newspapers and letters/flyers that might have circulated about this trade.

[rich pierce]

Good discussions.  What I hear are several different scenarios for non-professionally stocked guns.

1). A farmer or laborer without specialized woodworking skills decides to build or restock a gun, because he wants to, or wants to save money.  Open questions are how he drills and taps, how he makes the ramrod hole, and why he wants a gun like that.

2). A skilled craftsman, perhaps a cooper, carpenter, other woodworker, or even a blacksmith decides to build or stock a gun for similar purposes.  This seems plausible and we have an example in Colonial Fowlers of a New England fowling piece made by a clock maker. Its a beauty.

3) a frontiersman breaks his gun and decides to restock it using his pocketknife, axe, hatchet, file, and whatever else he has handy.  Unless it was burned in a fire, it seems a patch job would be the way to go here, and we've all seen rawhide and sheet brass repairs.  The situation in the Boone account would seem rare, but since gun smithing was in his family, it seems plausible he could make something that fired.  As mentioned above, I'd assume it got re-stocked by a pro gunsmith when he got back to civilization, which could be Fort Pitt or any other major British fort in the colonial era, or St. Louis in the mountain man era.

[Clark Badgett]

And so, just how much time would a frontiersman devote to restocking a rifle when he was already fully engaged in working every waking minute to survive? Leisure was for the wealthy, and modern man.

[rich pierce]

Referring to my post above, I'm guessing that the finish for the gun would depend on who was building it, and where.  The unskilled laborer-stocked gun might be painted or varnished, perhaps without staining.  The craftsman-stocked gun would probably received a quality finish.  The energency-stocked gun might be used unfinished, or possibly greased, or smeared with melted pitch.

[Mad Monk]

Right on Ken.  Not all in KY were hunters and trappers.... they did settle.... The long hunters were not going to pack a gunsmith shop with them..... the folks who settled in Boonesborough and other stations might well have though... and more than one of those in the early groups may well have had skills in more than one arena....  Now how crude were these guns???   As you say Ken, I am sure Boone didn't hang on to his stick gun for long... Good gun-makers were probably sought out by every settlement either as part of the plan or soon after establishment...  I would love to see some of the original sources such as newspapers and letters/flyers that might have circulated about this trade.

Remember that a good number of those early settlers in North Carolina and Kentucky came out of the area of Berks, Lancaster and Lebanon counties here in PA. When the Moravians out of Bethlehem started the settlement that became Winston-Salem  they asked the leaders at Bethlehem not to send a gunsmith down there as that would attract the worst sorts.  But the guy they sent down for the church choir also did gunsmithing.  More than a few of the big time stock car racers trace their roots back to this area.

That these people were far removed from coastal settlement did not mean that they did not have access to the things to make nice guns.  The general store in Bedford, PA in 1820 was selling nitric acid to a gunsmith.  In the mid-1830s we see gun barrels made here in Reading, Berks County, showing up on Hawken rifles made in St. Louis.

Good quality raw and boiled linseed was commonly available even in the backwoods areas.

Mad Monk

[blienemann]

Have enjoyed all the input.  Mr. Monk, have enjoyed your posts and your book.

Off topic - the comment about Salem not wanting a gunsmith is interesting and counter to what I've found to date.  Would be interested in knowing more.  Betz as locksmith was at Bethabara early, got the OK to build rifles in 1759, and Beck the talented stocker arrived late 1764.  Beck as gunstocker and two other tradesmen occupied the first building put up in the new town of Salem, so that the public would come there - Salem was to be the center of commerce.  They sent Beck out of town and downplayed arms work during Rev War, to appear neutral - might be source of that thought.