Recently completed this reproduction of a Clark County (Kentucky) school rifle. Shelby Gallien in his last book on Kentucky Gunmakers, identified a distinct sub-set of the Lexington School amongst a group of gunmakers in Clark County, just east of Lexington. This rifle follows closely the work of one of those Clark County School builders, Leonard Harmon. Mr. Harmon’s original rifle is featured in Shelby Gallien’s Kentucky Gunmakers Epilogue and appears on the dust jacket of that book.
Particulars on this one: the heart of the piece is a Rice Premium Golden Age B wt. barrel in .50 cal. X 42” Lock is a Chambers Late Ketland, double set triggers are Davis, butt plate and guard of commercial castings, all other brass and fine silver furniture is shop made. Over all length of the rifle is 58”, 13 ˝” length of pull to the trigger, finished weight of the gun is 8 lbs.
Stock is nicely curled hard Sugar Maple harvesting in Michigan. It was finished with a wash of tannic acid then two coats of some aqua fortis. Stock was filled with Tried & Trued Varnish Oil and finished with a few coats of Chambers Traditional Stock Finish. Barrel is rust blued using Mike Lee’s #3 Slow Rust Blue, all other metal parts were left polished.
A few points that made this build a little more interesting than usual. As this rifle was only recently “discovered” and documented by Mr. Gallien just in the past couple of years, I suspect this is the first reproduction of this piece. More than that, this rifle was built in Clark Co. Kentucky only a few miles away from where the original was probably constructed. Thanks for looking!
