Not long ago I bought a 30 year old "component set" for a rather generic Southern rifle. The original owner had started on it but didn't get far and put it aside. The stock is an incredible piece of curly maple that has a lot of wood left to allow me to do considerable shaping. The lock, trigger, and trigger guard were crudely inlet. The lock is a hard used percussion small Siler which I'm replacing with a percussion L&R Manton which would be HC for this type of rifle. That's a close fit to the lock mortise and not a problem to change.
I have an opportunity with this gun to make it into a pretty decent looking gun in the style of the Philip Gillespie rifle shown on pages 36 & 37 of Dennis Glazener’s book, "The Gillespie Gunmakers of East Fork, NC". I bought the trigger guard and butt plate along with the scale drawing from Dennis for the job.
My problem is that the original trigger guard that was inlet in the stock, though about the same length is too wide. The Gillespie trigger guard is quite narrow in comparison, compelling me to do about an eight of an inch or more narrowing of the current inlet. Filling with bedding compound is a total non-starter with me.
I can think of two possible solutions:
One is to try to glue in a piece of curly maple that completely fills the current inlet and re-inlet for the Gillespie trigger guard. The second is to try to glue in slivers of curly maple on each side of the current inlet and then re-inlet it for the Gillespie trigger guard. I know I’ll never match up the pattern of the tight curl either way, but at least it will look better than bedding compound.
This is the first time I’ve needed to do something like this and would appreciate some words of wisdom from some of you experienced builders on how you’d approach it. Thanks.
Mole Eyes
