So I have my Rogers Rangers leggings and Moccasins, my Rogers Rangers green weskit, my Rogers Rangers Scotch Hat and my new cartouche.
Ready for a good, Autumn trail walk... Me… Rogers Rangers Captain…
Elmer Fudd.
No Picture here.
I had a vague memory of the documentation calling out rifle armed hunters around Forts Edward and William Henry, sometimes escorted by Rangers or sometimes in small groups as they brought in fresh meat. Not a lot of guys, but enough to make a couple of diarists marvel at their heavy, short rifles. Now I am carrying a Jaeger/transitional/early rifle fresh off the bench.
Sometime around June, tired of making ladies shoes, I decided I hadda have this early style, museum quality short rifle. That’s Museum, Quality…you know…like an original…a couple of file marks and scratches somewhere on it, a small gap here and there because they come with the territory when working only in daylight and getting older ( I’m not dead yet, but I can see it from here)…
Not one of those perfect gems that modern day masters build to perfection and bring to Dixon’s Rifle Faire or some other show where they give out prizes, but rather something that might have been used heavily in the latter 18th Century to the point of ultimate destruction
Oh, the cross pins went into the stock and came out the stock in the same county ( nearly level by-the-by) and the brass was burnished OK where the inside of the trigger guard was smooth but not as shiny as the outside. And the lock was tightly inletted, but this bad boy was going into the woods, not into a contest.
Anyway, everybody gotta have new stuff to go with their new gun. So, I sat down a while and tried to think if I was sitting around in camp…”the stench of which is enough to cause infection”…per that British Officer whose name I can’t remember, what would I come up with to make my job as one of the camp Jaegers easier? How much of my Cordwaining talent was necessary to cobble something together that maybe served me well, or was discarded ten years later by that Ottawa who took my scalp or got thrown away years later by an impetuous daughter in law who was cleaning house after a few sniffles when I finally went to walk the Streets of Glory?
I dunno as I would have wanted a powder horn, but would have fancied a cartouche. Cartridges are easier to manage in the woods for my money. Knowing me, I probably would not have had the patience to stitch up everything diligently because it was for myself and not some customer or the luscious and forbiddingly sexy ankles of his wife who needed measurement, so wood sides and block would become the order of the day.
Only sissies don’t like loading blocks…all of you exempt, of course. Yeah, I know…brass instead of copper charges but when I took my five dollars off coupon down to Ace Hardware, they were out of brass tubing..
An inch and a half of copper tube, a half inch wooden plug and a bunch of corks proved ideal. I mis counted the brass head trade nails I picked up at Dixons, so, being cheap like a traditional shoemaker I used a saddle washer and flat head screw to hold the top of the front to the wood.
I made a small cow horn Priming horn; The only one I have made like that. I don’t think it’ll end up on the trade blanket. I also made a dagger and a bone handled patch knife just for the sake of making them. I don’t use them, but I wanted to make them anyway. Had to have the center seam sheaths because….hey…I’m a Cordwainer…
They all sit in a pouch I stitched to the back of the box. My favorite is the turkey bone tool with the brass screw driver/Knapper at one end and the poxied nail at the other. Brass striking a dull flint edge won’t blow me up and I drill a hole in the top jaw screw to keep my flint tight.
So, now I take the whole rig out to sight in.
Yikes.
I wonder if I’d have fit in at Rogers Island or the camp at the lake with all this stuff? I won’t stand up in court to swear that all of it belongs in the 18th Century and won’t deny the conjecture that I bet I could find pieces like these if I could step back in time and lived to tell Starz Encore and Outlander how they should have written it….Eat yore heart out, Daniel Day Lewis…
Don’t shoot yore eye out, kid
The Capgun Kid
