Elkhorne, I had discussed the idea for the rifle with my friend Wayne over the phone a couple of weekends ago and he gave it the thumbs up. He's also gifting me a guard for it once it gets further along. It would be dishonest to call it my creation, it's the Foxfire rifle with some minor cosmetic substitutions. John was helping me get ready for the foxfire class and the cheap stick I picked out from my blank tank™ just wasn't quite long enough for the 42" straight barrel requirement. I'm not sure where he got the pattern for it, but it lines up perfectly with my foxfire rifle so it has got to be the foxfire pattern. He believes he had gotten the pattern from Ian but doesn't know how as he's contracted a serious case of CRS.
Anyways, fast forward to the present and I have a blank with the foxfire pattern on it that is inlet for a barrel that is too long for it that I don't want to cut down. I also own a wooden rib I bought from the Log Cabin shop a number of months ago because it was cheap and looked cool. So you have the Foxfire rifle design and you cut a length of forend off and replace it with a rib. Normally, the web thickness is determined by the rib, since mine is wood and I don't want to get too crazy with the maths I'll just dress the rib web down to as close to 1/8 or so, indicate and drill the ramrod on the stock and get the rib to fit that location. I looked at several dozen examples of half and 3/4 stocks' ribs in the museum and determined that they just did and used a combination of whatever they had access to and what looked nice to them: hollow or solid, different lengths, materials, etc. On an interesting sidenote, I observed a lot of the ribs were hollow and that a lot of the hollow ribs were concave on the mating surface with the barrel. I'm assuming that was an ease of manufacture thing for whoever was making the ribs at the time? It differs in that many hollow ribs made nowadays are flat and mate up with the lower flat, many of these originals mated up with the two lower obliques due to them being round.
Anywho, back on track...
Foxfire gun with part of the forend lobbed off and replaced with a rib, moving back there is a percussion lock instead of a flintlock. The original had an angle filed into the bolster so that the tail would flare out to create the correct stock architecture while the lock was sitting against a straight barrel. I'm not doing that here, it'll save me the additional heartbreak of having to mate the lock up to the drum on an angle different than straight. Plus, it's percussion so I can get away with it straight in the panels. I'm using a modern lock as recommended by Hungry Horse. I have a Davis goulcher but want to save those for my Ohio guns, I'd like to use a different lock on my Southern percussion guns just to differentiate them a bit more. I have a Cochran percussion lock that I'll need to study a bit in relation to a number of originals, I am thinking if I square up the tail that it may do and it may even look like a converted Davis late English with enough imagination and a head injury?
I used the Roller triggers instead of a simple trigger because I wanted it to have some nice triggers and because it felt more appropriate for a percussion.
I'm using the longer tang and filing out a spiked tang from it. It's going to be very subtle for the first 2/3 and then transition into a pointy spike after that. This is to preserve as much meat as possible for the tang bolt and counter sink on an already skinny tang, and it may give the illusion of a spear over the length of it but I'm not banking on it. It's going to have a tang bolt that runs through the trigger plate and behind that a ways either an additional wood screw or maybe a second bolt running through an escutcheon in the wrist.
It won't have a buttplate. I don't have a buttplate for it and I do not want the complications and accommodations of incorporating one into the design.
I met with Gaeckle today during an informal builders' get together. We met up and he discussed some of the more technical things that I'll need to watch out for and take into consideration. Stylistically he admitted it's a bit outside his wheelhouse so he said I'm flying the ship on this one. I'm pretty sure that that's his version of tough love. My one friend Doran showed up and I explained to him my plan and asked him to point to a spot on the rib/stock, he pointed to a spot roughly halfway between the rear pipe and the rear of the rib and I sawed rib and stock off there.
So architecturally and design wise I'm keeping it as close to the foxfire rifle as possible, using my example and Ian's pictures and the t-shirt I purchased as reference. And then when things start to drift off into 3/4 stock land, I'll use this gun Wayne made to fill in some of the blanks:
https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=58052.0Interestingly enough, I had remembered seeing a copper sideplate somewhere a whiles back that I liked for it but couldn't remember where I saw it until I searched for 3/4 stocked rifles on this forum. Mine's going to be a bit different and I may do a front escutcheon for a faux lock bolt.
The embellishments are thematically going to be based around getting a whole lot with very little. It wouldn't make sense, for the flavor of this specific rifle, to have it gilded in copper end to end when is doesn't have a butt plate. A lot of chip carving and wiggle inspired by the Raiders' Rifle below, Woodbury style poured nosecap, as many dovetails as I can fit under a front sight, two (or more?) feather holes so that one could have their choice of feathers at any given time, and also feather holes on a percussion because I am somewhat obsessed with vestigial designs. Stuff like that. Also, I almost forgot, red polka dots somewhere as an homage to Mike Brooks.
https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=75637.0 
