Ron Hess one of my students in my kit building class bought Jim's Southern Mountain Rifle kit to work on. I was happy to hear Ron was going to do Jim's kit when he signed up for the class. I had seen Jim's kit at the CLA show last year but did not take time to take a good look at it.
First like others that have had any dealings with Jim's kit I was amazed at the level of detail and amount of work that had been done. Jim has developed a very fine product as was evident by the amount of time Ron spent doing the initial assembly. For those of you that know Ron he is a very fine horn and pouch maker but he had never put a rifle together. With just a little guidance Ron assembled his rifle in just a couple of days. For the most part these parts went together like a dream. Here are a few things we had to do to assemble this kit.
The tang on this rifle is long and slim and goes all the was down the wrist and ends just before the rise of the nose of the comb. There is an anchor screw at this point. We had to file a slight draft on the tang to get it to sit all of the way down into the inlet and then remove a very slight amount of wood in the lollipop portion of the inlet. The screw is a 8 -32 bolt that goes into the trigger plate, this hole is already drilled in the stock and everything lined up beautifully. This hole is drilled by Jim to the shank size of the 8-32 bolt. I like to tap through the hole into the tapped piece whenever possible so I enlarged this hole to allow for the tap size, the front bolt was done the same.
The lock bolt was done the same way as the tang, a clearance drill and tapped through the stock into the lock plate. You would not have to drill a clearance hole simply by just drilling your tap hole into the trigger plate and lock plate and then tapped these pieces out of the stock. I just prefer to tap through the stock because I have better success starting the bolts with this method. Just my preference.
All of the other slots and pin hole were pre-cut or drilled which made for a very easy time in assembly. The only dove tail Ron had to cut was for the rear sight which we cut by hand.
Ron finished his assembly early in the class so we decided to make a patch box for his rifle. I had the details for a patch box from an original Charlie Bean rifle so we use that for a basis. The C. Bean rifle was a much bigger rifle than than Jim's rifle so we had to scale the box down in size a good bit. When we finally decided on a length we Ron cut out the box using some mild still sheet I keep at the shop just for this purpose. Ron made and formed the hinges, cut the knuckles of the hinge assembled the hinge and then domed the box just enough to give it a little shape. I showed Ron how I make a door spring out of an old hacksaw blade and Ron made that. I also instructed Ron on how to make the catch out of a cut nail and he did a very good job. I had never looked at the original gun that Jim used to design his kit but was very surprised when we looked in Jerry Noble's book at the original rifle at how close we came to the original patch box. The original box used 3 screws to hold down the finial we used 2 other than that I think we pretty much nailed it.
Ron does have to finish his rifle but that he can do at home. The basis of this class is to help you get the main pieces fit together and properly functioning. I hope that Ron will show us his rifle once he gets it finished. Here are a few pictures of Ron and his rifle.
