Hi,
Josh's rifle is done. It has a Getz 38" 54 caliber swamped barrel with the same profile of those sold with "Isaac Haines" kits. The lock is a Chambers Dale Johnson, the butt plate, trigger guard, and pipes are typical wax cast products. Josh and I made the muzzle cap, side plate, trigger plate, silver star, wrist plate, and patch box. The stock is sugar maple with a little curl and we started with a rough blank. Dave Keck inlet the barrel and ramrod groove and hole. The stain is ferric nitrate, however I tinted the Sutherland-Welles polymerized tung oil finish with LMF cherry stain. I also lightly glazed some edges with bone black. Josh did almost half of the stock shaping work and even worked on smoothing background around the carving. He inlet the breech plug and tang, lock plate and some internals, butt plate, toe plate, trigger plate, trigger guard, ramrod pipes, muzzle cap, and a lot of the patch box. He also made the ramrod. I often cleaned up and fixed accidental slips and wide cuts but left a lot alone because this is Josh's gun. You can see in the photos a few rough places and gaps but he did incredibly well for his first gun and being blind. The rifle is meant to represent a plausible rifle from Lancaster during the Rev War or shortly before. The patch box design was copied from one supposedly made by Dickert but perhaps engraved by somebody else. It has a tulip finial, which was the favorite flower of a teacher who helped Josh a great deal growing up. Her name was Nancy and I engraved her name on the side plate. This was a challenging project and now Josh just need to take it deer hunting, which he will very soon.
dave
