My new Rifle by C. Starks (Captchee)

[bob in the woods]

The only rule I have, is that I won't build something that I don't like. It's hard to apply yourself when you have little interest in what you're building. 

[kaintuck]

great wire work!....and carving on walnut has it's problems....but your work is very nice~ those 'dished' scrollwork is tuff on walnut's big ol grain!!!!!!!!!

marc n tomtom

[Captchee]

 yep walnut can be  fun to carve . this one however  wasnt to bad . here is a better photo of the finished carving .



 maybe one of the photo guys can answer this .
 I have found that for some reason , some digital cameras  seem to get confused  and  fill an areas with shadow or light . IE if the lighting is to  dark , they produce a glair that isn’t there . Or if the lighting is to bright , they darken areas  like grain , with near black shadow . When in fact there is none.
 I  could be wrong but I also think this happens  if your   to close or zooming to much . I wonder if it would not be better to  shoot from say 4 ft  in high resolution , then cut crop and enlarge don’t know , just asking .

As for building . I think everyone has their opinions  which is OK .
 But myself I believe that a customer asks for what they want and that’s what they should get .
They will frankly get what they want , be it a copy of a specific maker or a  or more of a fantasy piece .
 One way or another they will go to  the person who will make them what they want .

 Myself in not a re-enactor in that I don’t want or care to build copies of historic examples. that’s not to say I cant . I have and probably will again .  However im a gunsmith and I work on all manor of guns . As such I have made some I didn’t care for and some which I very much would have liked to own .
  Speaking for myself ,  with few exceptions, I find very little enjoyment in  copying someone else’s work . Be that work today or 200 years ago .  When someone asks for that . I charge for it .surely there is a time and place for that  and I commend those who chose to do nothing but that type of work .
 But I also think there has to be room to put some of yourself in that work . Without that , what is it really ?
 I guess kind of like making a copy of the Mona Lisa vs.  a person who decided to step out of bound and  create something from themselves that   turns out to have broken the mould , so to say .
 I not say that  this rifle is comparable to that . Nope im not saying that at all .
 What this rifle is , is a combination of Customer  requests and my own  prospective , within the guidelines of those requests. The end result is what you see .   

[Dphariss]

Firearms are about the most difficult items to photograph and get it "right".
My little digital seems to do better on rifles than it does on scenery where it just does not quite "get it".
To get rid of hot spots one needs a very soft uniform light source(s) and a completely white room. Floor, walls, ceiling. This will eliminate shadow and hot spots. But its not something we can do at home.

The decoration on this rifle rates better than "nice" and the owner should be very pleased. In the 18th c owning a rifle like this would prove that the owner was in the upper levels of society.
The wire work and engraving are a knockout. For those that claim its not "Issac Haines" I would point out that it does not have Issac Haines' name on it.
Everything we do is an INTERPRETATION. Unless one has an original rifle that he can disassemble its impossible to make a "copy". Even then it will likely come out an interpretation.
Rifles today are made for a far different clientele than that of the 18th and 19th c.
People can afford more bells and whistles than most could back in the day so the rifles are fancier in many cases.
Once the engraving starts and its going well, for example, its often hard to stop.
By the end of 18th c fashion had changed radically in Europe, England especially, and the elite here followed suit. Compared to the 1770s EVERYTHING got austere so that, for example, any carving on any wooden item was considered vulgar by people like Thomas Jefferson. That the carved longrifle hung on as long as it did speaks to America still resisting Europe or simply because people still thought that a rifle was supposed to be carved. That JP Beck was still making rifles much like his 1770s rifles in the first decade of the 19th tells me that he made HIS rifle and if you wanted something different go someplace else. Many of the American rifles of the 19th C traded grace and carving for poor architecture and store bought inlays. Often applied via the "shotgun" approach. No artistic knowledge was needed to be a "gunsmith" is seemed.
People tell us that they like "plain" rifles. But plain rifles are not typical of the 18th c longrifle. Most were carved because that is how it was DONE at the time. Even the American Native of the 1780s would not accept an uncarved rifle. See the English trade rifles of the period. That the Natives insisted on carved rifles tells this is what they were used to seeing.
So the rifles on the frontier, where all those uncarved rifles were supposed to be, were carved because it was how things were done in the mind of the people making them.
So people that tell us that all the uncarved rifles were destroyed over time and all the "fancy" rifles we see were simply the creme of the crop and were saved miss this point. The American longrifle from at least the 1750s till into the 19th c was carved. The uncarved rifle would have been an anomaly based on the fashions of the time, by 1790 this was changing, by 1820 English style rifles were being made in Philly and other eastern centers. These were the "plain" 1/2 stocked FL rifles that might be well engraved but have no stock embellishment at all, like the English Sporting rifles that were being seen at the time. This evolved into the later often butt ugly rifles that increasingly appeared in American after about 1830 or so. Not only were they uncarved in many cases they appeared to have been stocked by carpenters/blacksmiths or even farmers with a drawknife who had no "eye" for how the lines should flow.

Today, as more and more skilled makers evolve and rifles get more ornate, in many cases equal to or approaching the "masterpeices" from the 18th c in European collections some people, brought up on Winchesters and Remington etc bolt guns that have almost no artistic merit see the decorated Kentucky as somehow vulgar. This IMO shows a lack of understanding of the past and how guns were stocked and how they were expected to look BACK IN THE DAY. The 1835 Hawken rifle in FUNCTION was creme of the crop, but some are pretty poorly laid out and ugly, not something that John Armstrong would have made for sure.
I also think that people, even ML shooters, often look at a rifle like the one that is featured here and have no idea what they are looking at. In a world of plastics and cookie cutter modern firearms its out of place and for many beyond comprehension.
So when someone tells me how they don't like the carving or even that some fool FILES IT OFF since HE does not think its correct for HIS faulty interpretation of the past I must figure the person has not done proper home work on the longrifle. Or in the case of the guy with the file, something worse.
So if those that find that carving on a long rifle is obnoxious then perhaps they should try to look at it with a 18th c eye rather than a 21st c "plastic moulded, cookie cutter formed" eye. It was not just about function. The longrifle is now and was then an art form.

Dan

[hanshi]

That beautiful rifle is definitely museum quality. 

I notice that many folks with a handgun they particularly treasure will have them engraved and chrome/gold/silver plated; It stands to reason this was done in the past with long guns as well.  Carving was very common on long guns in the 18c and early 19c;  but those who could afford it would have certainly gone "whole hog" when the mood hit.  Just saying.

[huntinguy]

Beaverman,  you are just kidding about shooting that... right?

I would be afraid to even touch something like that....

Nice work captchee.

[Beaverman]

Well I took her out to the range today to shoot in the barrel, just stared with 65 gr 3f, .530 ball and .015 patch, shooting 3 inch groups off hand at 45 yrds, got 25 rounds down her today, will shoot another 25 on Sunday, then next week sit at the bench and finish up with adjusting sights, need to remove probably a third off the front site for elevation, shooting WAY too low at the moment,

[Captchee]

 let her buck Jim 

[Captchee]

 if you folks will accept my apologies for bring this thread back up , but i wanted to post a better set photos of the above rifle .
i realize they are still not the best. however i  wanted folks to know that i am attempting to  work on the photographing side of things

[gunmaker]

Cap, friend sells gun stock blanks and what he uses to get good pics is a flat black background of cloth camera centered in front on tripod, and two of those shop lites from Lowes or ?? on each side.  Next time I'm over there I'll get a pic.   ...Tom

[Captchee]

 cool .
 thanks tom