Hi,
First let me thank you all for your interest and comments. I appreciate them and I hope you find this thread useful. New England made rifles from the 18th century are extremely rare and most rifles attributed or documented to that period are nothing like the 19th century rifles commonly made in NE and identified as such. It is a story that needs telling but the data are very sparse.
Got a lot of shaping done. I've posted several threads over the years about shaping lock panels, breech area, and wrist. I also taught that process at Dixons and now at the Kempton gunmaker's fair. I'll just say here that I do not use gouges or chisels to shape those areas except for the very nose of the lock panel. This is a task that most new builders get very wrong and if done badly, ruins the entire project. Anyway, I shape the lock area and wrist with pattern makers rasps and the lock and side plate panels form naturally as I round the squared up stock. Here you can see how the panels are formed without any recourse to chisels.
Just use the rasps flat and convex sides to shape the stock. I do use gouges to shape the nose of the lock and sideplate panels. However, I want to describe to you some of the nuance pertaining to that task. I don't believe you will find this in any video or book. First, let define my rules for lock panels based on experience with original guns and making aesthetically pleasing recreations. Please do not assume I mean these to be the ONLY way. There may be other combinations that fly but these are my candid observations and guidelines for my work.
1. Limit the use of chisels and gouges to shape lock and side plate panels to the final stages of the process and for details.
2. Keep the flats around round-faced lock plates vanishingly small and allow flats around any lock to expand only as you progress toward the 19th century. This always has exceptions but those exceptions are usually associated with poorly trained rural gun makers.
3. Flats around locks do not need to be even. When they are even the result is often awkward and clumsy looking. This is because the lock itself does not look even around its borders. I has greater mass on top and less below. Making the flats wider below and narrower on top enhances balance in the appearance. Moreover, extending the flats forward at the nose and rearward at the tails also improves the image.
4. The lock panel and side plate panel do not need to be identical. If you look down on the stock from the top, I believe it best that the panels start and end looking even and the points of beginning and ending should be at the same vertical positions the sides of the stock. Beyond that, all bets are off. Particularly in English work, I tailor the panels to fit the lock and the sideplate separately.
5. There is almost never a need for an ugly notch to clear the flintcock if you know what you are doing.
John Hills' lock panels are simple and some are finely shaped and others not . Moreover, they vary a lot between his guns so this gives me some latitude. As I wrote before, I don't use gouges much except around the nose of the panels. Even the use of gouges has nuance and I am going to describe some details that I do not think anyone has provided before. I am focusing on the lock panel shaping extending from the lock pan down to the nose of the lock. So many inexperienced builders make that area look clumsy and awkward. Sometimes they punt and don't even try to shape it just cutting it off as part of the "flat" and leaving a big ugly flat blob. Others try to cut tightly concave edges that follow the lock evenly to the pan. Those are more skillful but they usually look very clumsy. Here is how I do this on most guns and particularly my British guns but also many long rifles and New England guns.
I want both panels to be close to symmetrical on the Hills gun so I shape the lock side, then do a rubbing of the panel on paper and transfer it to the other side of the stock. That provides the guidelines to work from.
Then I use a wide shallow sweep gouge to cut the area from the lock pan to the nose of the side panel. I do not use a small diameter gouge. I want the concave surface to be shallow and broad. IMO, this looks immensely better than a deep tight radiused depression at this position. It is also he way British guns were done.
Then I smooth the cuts with a wide Fisher round scraper I bought from Brownells 40 years ago.
Next, I use a smaller gouge to cut the curve around the front of the panel.
And then clean up the panel with a round file.
Here is the finished work.
I also did a lot of shaping of the stock. Here is where I am.
dave
