My steel butplate

[B.Barker]

Finnished my first two piece but plate. Turned out ok but not sure I'll use it. Trying to get a set of hardware made for a southern rifle for Ian's and Jim Kibbler's class later this year. I thought pipe axes were frustrating this thing almost drove me nuts trying to keep everything square. Its about 4-7/16" tall and 1-3/8" wide with a 4-1/4" heal return.

[eagle24]

Looks good to me.  How did you join the two pieces?  Single steel rivet and brazed with brass?

[G-Man]

Looks good to me.   Any particular style you are going for? I like the look of the ones like this with a bit of length to the heel - it just seems to accentuate the lines.

Guy

[B.Barker]

Not really trying to follow any school or particular maker. I've looking at every photo of iron mounted rifles that I can find and looking at all originals I can. I don't like really deep curves and narrow butt plates. I like to keep them 1-3/8" or wider unless it was a petite rifle. I know some old ones have 1-1/8" wide plates but I like them beafier. I'm not trying to duplicate any one rifle so it leaves room personal taste. Its going to be mine so I'm the only one I need to please. Unless my daughter takes it from me. I'm going to make another one from wrought iron and put a little less curve maybe. I used a steel rivet and brazed it with 360 brass. After that I'll start trigger guards.

[J.D.]

Looks good to me. How wide do you make the blanks for the finished width?

The coupla butt pieces I have made have much more, side to side, radius than yours appear to have. There must be a rule of thumb, that I'm missing, in the dimension of the width of the blank in relation to the width of the finished Butt piece.

Thanks and God bless

[B.Barker]

JD I started with about a 1-5/8" wide blank.