In keeping with my previous post, I will make some of my own critiques on my first rifle posted above. I will start at one end and work toward the other....
1) Butt plate: The casting I chose from the Dixie catalog was actually for a Hawken rifle. Not knowing the difference between a Hawken and a trade musket at the time, I just liked the curve of that plate and used it.
2) Patch box: It is made from 1/16" thick brass sheet and the design was all my own. In my enthusiastic ignorance I could not imagine that using brass sheet any thinner than 1/16" was in the least way possible from a sturdiness stand point. As you might imagine, and with all the piercings I decided looked "great", inletting those narrow sections that deep was way more effort than it was worth....and it doesn't take much of a closer look to see how rough the inletting actually is. The hinge on the box is from the hardware store. Too narrow, and really too sloppy for a door that heavy, I simply notched a spot for it and soft soldered it in place. The catch was originally a clutch back from a tie tack soldered into a hole in the door. The corresponding pin that the clutch engaged was held in place in a hole in the stock with pink dental acrylic. Later, realizing at least how out of place that was, I replaced the tie tack with a small magnet.....equally historically incorrect.....but at least not so noticeable from the outside. As for the design of the box and side plates, I was assuming that learning to engrave was something I could do quickly (and easily) and I would just go back and add some decoration to the flat surfaces later. As you can see, that was never accomplished. I couldn't come up with a finial design for the box that I liked, so I made my own version of the US eagle insignia and put that at the top of the box. On a positive note, the eagle is cast out of 18 karat dental gold (which was about $40 an ounce in 1970....so the eagle was worth about $18 for the gold it contained.) Originally, the patch box door had no spring to kick it open (I couldn't see that in the tiny black and white, grainy photo I was using for a guide in the Dixie catalog) so getting the door open by pulling on the tiny part of the tie tack clutch sticking up from the surface of the door was a pain. Later I added a spring. However, it was strong enough to take the end off your finger if you didn't get your hand out of the way fast enough. When I shifted to the magnet catch, the spring was stronger than the magnet, so that didn't work. I finally took the spring back out....and haven't opened the patch box since.
3) The butt shape: It is not quite apparent from the photos I have posted, but the butt shape has all the finesse of a hockey stick. It is slab sided and I didn't know anything about drop or how to transition the shape of the nose at the wrist. The wrist is also basically square with a very slight rounding of the corners.
4) Trigger guard: The retention is by screws on both ends. From the Dixie catalog picture I had no idea about pinning a trigger guard and figured it had to be retained by screws I couldn't see in the photo. The "decorative" shapes I cut into the trigger guard ends also don't look like any long rifle I have ever seen since. The shape just appealed to me at the time. Again, with no engraving, the guard looked a little "plain". So I carved and cast (in sterling silver) a small ship that I subsequently soldered onto the bow of the guard. (Also something I have never seen on any original long rifle since.)
5) Trigger: Not knowing any different, I made a wax pattern of a trigger and then cast it out of a chrome cobalt alloy used for dental partial frames...so if it looks like a chrome trailer hitch, it is made out of chrome ! I didn't know how a trigger was pinned through the stock, so I made a solid brass block with a slot in it to hold the trigger and pivot pin.
6) Lock and side panels: Both are basically shapes that emerge from the flat side of the stock and have a slight radius transition done with a rat tail file. There is no contour blending at all and the whole area is just a continuation of the "plank" that the stock is cut from.
7) Lock: As noted above, I made the lock but it looks nothing like a real flintlock. Rather it looks like the cartoon version I saw in a drawing and like a very poorly made Spanish lock that I had seen on a pistol. At the time I thought it looked great....but I made and broke three frizzens trying to get one that would spark. Even this one is welded back together where it broke again at some point. I don't know how many main and frizzen springs I made trying to get one of each that would work. I didn't know how to engrave so I etched the design into the lock plate with a resist and nitric acid.
Barrel: As noted, this was a Dixie barrel in .45 caliber. I think they were about $25 at the time. For the barrel inlet, I made a router bit that would cut the bottom of the channel but removed most of the wood with a dado blade in a table saw. Fit was not all that precise. I never pulled the breech plug when I got the barrel. Long after the gun was built, I did. Basically the plug was threaded 1/2"-13 so there was no shoulder at all and the plug was a little over 3/4" long. Having measured where the face of the plug was originally (and not knowing that it was WAY too long) I just drilled the touchhole about an inch forward of the breech end of the barrel and located the lock position accordingly. Of course, this made the architecture in the lock / breech / wrist area a mess...but I didn't know it was a mess at the time, so I just blended all the surfaces as best I could. In later years I recognized that one would have to go way out of one's way to try to make the design any uglier.
9) Sights: Home made....not very good....and both were placed as poorly as one might imagine. The rear sight is right at the balance point and cuts you hand if you try to carry the rifle one handed. The front sight is right at the very muzzle end of the barrel.
10) Fore stock shape: By now I am sure you can imagine that the entire fore end of the stock is as poorly shaped as the rest of the stock. Flat sides, flat bottom, some slight rounding of the edges. The web between the bottom of the ram rod channel and barrel channel is about 1/4" thick and adds to the appealing "slenderness" of the fore stock.
All that being said, I had a wonderful time building this first rifle. I learned a lot doing it and, despite its many and irretrievable flaws, I enjoy taking it out of my home made leather case and remembering how excited I was to have a "long rifle" that I could shoot. And as mentioned, I even won a match with it on the Fourth of July, in the bicentennial year of 1976 at the US Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton, CA. It has all the architectural finesse of a canoe paddle....but it's MY home made canoe paddle
