A couple of years ago, my mentor who helped me build by first gun, gave me a 30 1/2 inch, by 1 inch, .50 cal Green Mtn. barrel with a nice solid bar rib. "Here, make a Hawken someday". then at last years NMLRA school on the last day, a gentleman walked into our class asking if anyone was going to build a Hawken? I spoke up and he goes, "Here!" and hands be a walnut rough pre-carved half stock for a Hawken. "What do I owe you for this?", I asked. "Nothing!". Apparently, he had been hauling this stock around to shoots, shows and schools and no-one wanted to purchase it and he was tired of carting it around. Great timing for me and in my pleasant shock, I lost my manners and didn't get this guys name. Did thank him profusely.
Here in Pennsylvania, we have a primitive muzzle loader season right after Christmas. Only flintlocks are allowed. So this gun is going to be a flinter on a half stock. Having just finished a Beck that I copied from #98 in the RCA books, I do like to keep things as historically correct. So, I spent the last year trying to find out if there were any Hawken half stocks that used a flint. The closest I was able to find out that there is one that has a flint lock that was converted to cap. The back half of the lock plate does have some engraving and when the cap hammer was added, someone engraved it and did a okay job but it does look a little mismatched. As I build this gun, I will see if I can blend in the engraving to the front of the lock and hammer to match up a little better.
So, here is the start of my build. First off, I am putting on a hook breech plug. 3/4" 16 plug and the long tang found on a Hawken. First problem. When I bottomed out the plug, the top of the tang was 5 flats short of being aligned with the top the barrel. So it needs to be shortened a bit. But with that, the hook is recessed a little too far inside the breech end of the barrel. A little will be needed to be taken off the end of the barrel as well. I don't have a mill and feel doing this work with a file gives too many chances to get things off. Fortunately, I have a good friend who restores guns and will do those two tasks for me.
While I am waiting for the barrel to be modified, might as well get the butt plate and a few other pieces of hardware on or polished that I can. So far, I have built 5 long rifles so have worked through a lot of mistakes and picked up a few skills but when I saw the curve and little recess on the butt plate with a little recess curve just after the drop, I was thinking, this is going to be a pain to get a tight fit. Having never worked with walnut before, was I ever mistaken. It only took me 3 hours to get it fitting like a glove. First, I cut out a profile from a piece of stiff cardboard and marked it out on both sides of the stock. Then rough cut that out with a coping saw leaving plenty to work with for final fitting. I then made sure the top flat was true, level and square and that looking from the rear, I had the same amount of wood showing on both sides of the back of the plate. (About 1/4 inch on both sides.) Got out my hand cut French cabinet makes rasp and had at it. That part was all done by eyesight and just using a pencil to get the high wood marked and removed. When I was close to 1/16 to being home, I switched to my finest wood half round rasp and started applying inlet black. Tapping with a rubber mallet and lightly filing and repeat and repeat.............I finally got black everywhere metal touched wood!
Measured and punched marks for the two screws and started with 1/8 inch holes. Set the plate in position and with a scribe marked through the holes to the wood and made a small pilot hole for the screw. back to the drill press to make a hole big enough to accommodate the screw and used my taper bit for the tapered screw head.
Had a problem. The butt plate is cast and very hard plus my taper bit is getting some long use on it. I started to burn it out. Maybe was going a bit too fast with the drill. Anyway, need to get a replacement and will deepen that so the screw is flush later. I had it in place enough to get rid of the casting marks and to polish it enough so I could get the wood flush to it. For this I used a Shinto file and what fast and smooth work that was. When the Shinto was about to touch the metal, I switched to a combo wood/metal file and made all flush. A little sanding and I'm happy with the fit and profile. Pictured is the work done today and I use a little mineral spirits to highlight the wood and it also aids me in finding any file marks I may have missed.
Final note on the butt plate: As stated, I like historically correct work and found out that Hawkens had a two piece butt plate that was brazed together. My plan is to engrave a deep line to delineate the top from the bottom, fill that line with copper solder and then polish to give it a two piece look just like it might have been done back in St. Louis.
In my research, there is hardly any two Hawken guns alike, so this one is going to be extremely simple. No carvings, inlays, tacks, etc. I was thinking about a little checkering but history will prevail on this build, so no. More to come as I get though it...................
