Well maybe not a resurrection, but back in one piece again!
I was thrilled to have this rifle come to my place for its restoration work. I’ve had it for the past 3 ½ months and have put a lot of hours into the work.
The first picture is the way the rifle was found when bought. This link will take you to that thread started by the owner back in March;
https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=69696.0The remaining pictures are the ones I’ve taken of it now.
After much discussion with the owner, he decided to do a full, but limited restoration. By that I mean the rifle was to be put back together, the missing forearm wood replaced, the missing wood in the tang area restored, the lock restored back to flint, etc., but to leave the wood finish as is, old, uncleaned, leave old splinters and chips alone, though stabilized if loose. I suggested and he agreed that a small bit of finishing oil be applied to the wood to bring out a bit of luster. As is now, it has a bit of soft warm patina, but if left alone will pretty quickly return to a dry look on the wood.
A note on the lock restoration. In the original thread there was some discussion on returning it to original flint condition, or leaving it as a percussion. Generally, when doing that work, the threaded hole into the barrel for the percussion drum is weld closed, and a new touch hole drilled. For this barrel, I thought a different approach would be better. For one thing, in style with the early date of this gun, the Joel Ferree signature starts at about the forward end of the lock (as opposed to several inches forward on a later period gun) and I was concerned that welding heat would discolor the barrel signature area. The signature is somewhat faint and the barrel has a great patina, and I didn’t want to touch it. To that end, I plugged the threaded hole with a piece of antique iron, blended the plug into the surrounding area, drilled a touch hole, and did the conversion without any heat. And this way, it’s also easily reversible. Just easy-out the plug - screw the drum in, and reconvert the lock to percussion. That’s easy as well, the lock, original to the gun, has a replaceable pan, so just remove it and the other flint parts, reinstall the percussion hammer and that’s it.
Obviously, there was a bunch more work done, but I’ll leave it to the pictures to show what was done.
If you have any questions, or comments, don’t hesitate to reply.
Thanks for looking, John
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