New .36 cal Rifle....Start of work on brass patchbox....

[davec2]

Well, its been over a year since I had the time to post anything about actual gun building.  Since I have received a few emails asking if I was still alive, and since I have had some time between test contracts to do a little gun building, I thought I would post some recent progress.  Nine or so years ago now I made a close copy of a beautiful rifle that Jim Chambers had originally done.  It was not the same caliber, etc., but I did copy the engraving and carving on the rifle I made up from parts I had on hand.  (Original link      https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=37186.0   )

One of the changes I made was to use a much smaller caliber.  I had a .36 cal Rice barrel and a 25 year old piece of stock wood and geared everything else around that.  That rifle shoots great and having never built a muzzle loader as small as a .36, I became quite enamored with the caliber.  Don't get me wrong, I like all the others from my .45s all the way up to my 2.75" bore cannon....but I really enjoyed the .36.

Fast forward nine years and I have a little time between rocket testing contracts to start in on another rifle....just to keep my sanity and step out of the highly technical propulsion world and into the 18th century.....for a little peace and quiet.  So I pulled out a lovely piece of maple stock wood I bought from Tom Fornica in 2017 and another .36 caliber Green Mountain swamped barrel I bought from Tip Curtis about the same time frame.  I also had on hand a Lancaster trigger guard and butt plate from Jim Chambers along with ram rod pipes, a spare trigger plate, trigger, nose cap, etc., etc. 



Quite some time ago now I had sent the rough shaped stock and the barrel to Dave Rase and had him inlet the barrel and drill the ram rod hole for me.  (This was before the US Postal Service drove David to madness and he quit doing this kind of work.... )  Then I got busy again with work and the stock / barrels sat in a corner again.  Long story short, a couple of weeks ago I had time to make some actual progress.

Here the stock shape is being refined on a band saw......



Also using the band saw, the initial prep for the butt plate is made by cutting away a lot of excess wood.....





After careful final fitting of the butt plate with chisels, I bedded it with AcraGlas.  (Not PC I know, but I always bed the butt plate and the barrel breach to absolutely seal the end grain in those locations with epoxy and to get a perfect fit of the barrel breach.)



Next up was to get the barrel lugs installed on the barrel.  I wanted to use barrel keys on this rifle, so I used loops.  The barrel dovetails were milled in place, the loops fitted closely and then soldered permanently in place.....





While I was at it with the milling, I cut the dovetails for the front and rear sights.....





With the barrel loops installed, I used Taylor's method of drilling and then burning in the barrel key slots......







Well....that's it for the running start.  I need to decide on a lock for this rifle but I think I have something in mind.  I'll save that for the next installment.

[smylee grouch]

I and many others here I'm sure will be looking forward to the follow along Dave. Thanks for including us. 

[Daryl]

Oh YEAH!

[hanshi]

I'm looking forward to seeing more of your progress, dave.  I'm a fan of the .36 and probably fire my .36 more than any other rifle I own.

[davec2]

On the subject of the lock.....quite some time ago I modified a Chambers late Ketland lock for a half stock English rifle that is still in work.  I had another unmodified Ketland on hand and decided just to go ahead and do the same esthetic modifications to it.  Here is the unmodified version......




First thing I wanted to do was to change the curl on the top of the cock....no reason....I just like it facing the other way.  So I welded on a blob of steel again so that I could make it like the cock on the right from another lock I made many years ago...



Here is the re-contoured top curl......



Then I wanted to reshape the pan into a more "waterproof" version so I cut away as much steel as I could that didn't look like a waterproof pan.....started out like this:





Ended up like this....



Then I wanted to add moldings to both the lock plate and the cock......cut with gravers and then cleaned up a bit with files and stones.....













Not sure what I want to do as far as engraving goes yet.....need to think about the whole rifle design some....

[Spalding]

OH MY!
Cant wait to see how this progresses.

Bob

[TDM]

Wow! What an awesome project. It’s already beautiful.

[duca]

Awesome!!!

[Leatherbark]

Fitting a butt-plate on a blank looks a whole lot easier than fitting one on a pre-carve.

Bob

[P.W.Berkuta]

You do BEAUTIFUL work Dave - Jerry Huddleson would be proud of you!

[Bob Gerard]

I’m in awe of your work, again. Dave you are amazing.

[davec2]

Thank you all for the encouragement....it's nice to get back into the shop for a bit.  Not sure how fast this will go before i need to return to the trenches, but I'll do my best. 

Bob, thanks for the compliment and I want to tell you that I have several horns that I have made in the past, most mounted in sterling silver, but that I have not scrimshawed do to lack of design inspiration.  I have been saving photos of several of your recent horns and, if you don't mind, I would like to plagiarize some of your design features.

PW,  I think of Jerry every time I pick up a graver and ask Jerry to look over my shoulder.  He was gruff, brutally honest, and one of the most talented people I have ever met.  Despite his "curmudgeon-ly" exterior at times, he was in fact a very kind, helpful, and giving man.....I miss his talent, his sense of humor.....and his friendship....

Leatherbark.....much easier, in my opinion, to put a butt plate on a blank than to fight the inevitable misfitting on a pre-carve.  Side note: Not really a pre-carve, but I must also say that on the two Kibler kits I have (and two others I have helped some others with), the combination of the miracle of CNC machining and Jim's attention to detail provide as perfect a butt plate to stock fit as I think can be had.

Meanwhile back at the bench,  I did get the barrel tang inlet and bedded, the ram rod pipes installed, and started in on the lock inletting......









With all of that out of the way, I started in with a plane and a spoke shave to release the .36 caliber rifle that I know is buried inside that maple plank.....

[JasonR]

Please continue posting images and progress updates, especially any problems that present along the way. It is inspiring seeing other's work and also workbench/shop images.

Jason

[flint45]

This is going to be fun to watch as it comes together. I have installed a key on a halfstock Vincent, but I am curious of the "burning in" you speak of on the barrel keys. I'm always watching and learning.

[flatsguide]

Nice shop Dave, looks like plenty of light and that’s a great idea of your bench top on all those neat rollaways with all that drawer space.
Cheers Richard

[davec2]

Flint45:  Here is an excellent tutorial on making slots for the barrel keys.....   https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=10171.0   If you do a search, Smart Dog has some great posts about this topic as well.

Richard & Jason:  In 2018 I built a small outbuilding in my back yard.  Not huge (18' x 23') and about a third of it has industrial steel shelving for storage.  Well insulated, heated, air conditioned, attic storage. One long wall has sink, 12 feet of standup bench and two sit down benches for jewelry, dental, and engraving work.  I have a bunch of other tools in a separate location (welder, lathe, mill, band saw, table saw, planer, etc.) so the situation is not ideal but it is light years ahead of working in a corner of a 118 degree garage as I have been for the last 30 plus years.

[Tenmile]

That’s a really nice shop. You have some nice equipment. Looking forward to seeing the completed rifle.
Lynn

[davec2]

Bouncing back and forth between the cannon re-build and this rifle....so moving a little slower than usual on each.  (This quite a transition each day moving from a bore of ~3 inches to a bore of .36 inches).

Had a chance last evening to get the muzzle cap placed and then start in on shaping the forearm.  There are three tasks on a build that are not my favorite...installing the butt plate, installing the rear ram rod pipe, and fitting the muzzle cap.  This is the last of those, so the rest of the project should be more enjoyable...

In this first photo you can see how things start out.  The cap is a prefabricated piece I purchase quite some time ago from Track of the Wolf and had on hand when I started gathering parts for this rifle.  It fit the Green Mountain barrel well so I decided to use it. With a jeweler's saw I made cuts on both sides of the end of the forearm and vertically down to the ram rod groove.  Some of the wood that needed to be removed I cut away with chisels.  However, because the wood starts to get very thin, and because the very curly grain wants to go where it will,  most of the wood removal was done with a fine rasp and then files.





In order to get a precise fit between the rear end of the muzzle cap and the forearm wood I get the bulk of the wood removed and then slowly dress the transition point between wood and metal.  In this second photo you can see that I have not started to remove that wood to the rear of the cap.  In addition I usually have a problem with the transition from the bottom of the ram rod groove to the cap.  I like to keep the web between the bottom of the barrel channel and the bottom of the ram rod groove no more that ~ 0.100 inches to keep the rifle forearm slender and graceful.  However, that usually requires some reshaping of the muzzle cap at the open rear end to make sure that there is a smooth transition between wood and metal at the bottom of the ram rod groove.

With the cap now defining the shape of the forearm at the muzzle end, I could start removing wood on the forearm.  I do the bulk of the stock removal with a large spoke shave.  Finer shaping is done with a much smaller spoke shave and then a scraper.  To keep the surfaces straight, I run a few pencil lines down the length of the forearm.  Then, using a 12" long by 2" wide flat piece of oak with 120 grit paper glued on, I sand the forearm a bit lengthwise.  The sanding will take away the pencil lines on the high spots immediately and the remaining lines show the low spots.  I sand until all the pencil lines are gone.

Major stock removal......





Fine tuning the shape with a much smaller spoke shave.......





Tomorrow I'll start in on shaping the stock in the area of the rear ram rod pipe.  Enough for tonight.

[longcruise]

Will you be doing barrel key escutcheons?

[davec2]

Longcruise......sorry I missed your question...I'm not sure yet if I will use barrel key escutcheons.  I didn't on the last rifle I used keys on but may on this one.

While waiting for paint to dry on my cannon wheels I had the time to rout out the patch box on this .36 rifle.  Not CNC by any means, but I clamped the stock with screwed wood blocks to a plywood base and then set it up in the mill to remove all the patch box cavity wood.  Does a nice neat job....

[davec2]

Lock is inlet so I started to work on the trigger.  I have never been much of a fan of pinning the trigger directly through the stock.  I know it's very traditional.....but perhaps I just got too used to a cleanly detachable trigger group on an M-1 Garand....  

At any rate, I like to attach the trigger directly to the trigger plate.  The first photo is just a look at a very small piece of steel cut from 1/16" sheet.  This will be used to form a "U" shaped bracket that will enclose the forward edge of the trigger.  The bracket is silver soldered to the trigger plate.  A pivot pin will then be run through the bracket and the trigger attaching the two into one unit.

Small piece of thin steel sheet.....



Bracket formed.....



Bracket silver soldered to back side of the trigger plate......



Pivot hole drilled......



Trigger plate and attached bracket inlet into the stock.......



After some minor adjustment, the lock and trigger / trigger plate installed and functioning properly.....

[HSmithTX]

I like that trigger and plate a lot, I will be shamelessly copying that effort on my next rifle.

[rich pierce]

Dave, do you get your desired pivot-to-sear contact distance using this setup?

[davec2]

Rich,

Yes.  I make up the trigger / plate assembly and then inlet it into the stock to get the distance to the sear I want.  No more difficult to lay out than the conventional pinning through the stock....with the added advantage that I don't have a hole showing up at an inconvenient location on the opposite side of the stock when I inlet the side plate.....

[flatsguide]

Dave, I’m blown away at the molding you did that surrounds the lock plate , cock too. How did you do that, please  don’t tell me “just needle files and rifflers” or I’ll leave just shaking my head lol. That is beautiful work.



Not sure what I want to do as far as engraving goes yet.....need to think about the whole rifle design some....
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