I’ve been playing this muzzle loading game for awhile now and it always seems that good things happen in their own time and place. Here’s a case in point!
2 years ago Frank House called me and said that our mutual friend Joe Keeslar was selling all of his gun parts and recommended that I contact him (which I did). He had locks, lock kits, barrels, wood, and all the rest. I ended up buying it all. There were 4 fullstock blanks (all of them very good) that he had purchased from Kenneth Thompson of Slippery Rock Pa..
That same summer Charlie Burton shows up at my place with 2 38” Haines profile barrels. One in 60 cal which went to Jud Brennan for an upcoming project and the other, a 54 cal. for (well whatever comes up).
A month later David Rase shows up to attend the Knoxville show and I give him the 54 barrel and a piece of that ancient wood that I had previously bought from Keeslar. Rase returned in August to attend CLA and had my wood and barrel perfectly inlet and ready to go. Now I ponder my next move.
It seems that the stock was showing some powder post beetle galleries in the under side of the forestock. What to do? I paused.
Fast forward to February of this year. I attended the Artisan Show at Lewisburg Pa. and on a fluke took the stock and barrel along just to get advice, good or bad.
I handed it over to my buddy Allen Martin and the first words out of his mouth were “sure we can make a Schimmel out of it!”. Good enough for me.
Forward again to CLA of this year. Allen had the gun in the white and wanted me to look at it (which of course I did). I looked at him and said “something is missing, it needs to be carved”. He told me that he had come to the same conclusion. We both agreed that not only should it be carved, but it should be scrubbed back and aged.
There’s a little tip of the hat to our old friend Don Getz and his “Barn Guns” too!
Here’s the end result!
