Is building a Hawken significantly more difficult than building a traditional long rifle?
Building any muzzleloaders can be hard or easy. If you’re dealing with a CNC kit beautifully designed with great architecture, I’m not sure it can be hard. If you’re starting with a blank, a barrel, lock, and small parts and are building a halfstock Hawken rifle or a plain flintlock rifle with no carving, engraving or patchbox, the plain halfstock Hawken is much harder.
You have to fit and finish the hooked breech compared to a simple flint tang.
You have to hold that hooked breech together while inletting.
The long thin curved tang is a bear to inlet. Then a bear to drill in center and into the long, thin, curved trigger bar.
Cutting the lockplate to fit the snail on the hooked breech is not a lot of fun.
Double set triggers are a must on a Hawken but optional in many longrifle styles.
Fitting, drilling and tapping the rib is tedious.
That thin steel, deeply curved buttplate is a bear to inlet compared to malleable brass buttplate with little curvature.
That’s just the nuts and bolts of it. On a plain Hawken there’s nothing but architecture.
