Reworking a French Dragoon Pistol

[Bob Gerard]

Last night I finished up this little project. I had built the Model 1733 French Dragoon from parts from Muzzleloader Builders Supply about three years ago. I liked it at first but gradually realized that I left the stock much too beefy. It has a 15” barrel and is quite long but didn’t look very graceful.
So, a couple weeks ago I decided to disassemble the piece and start removing lots of wood, adding and removing carvings and inletting a silver thumb piece.
I think it’s a lot more graceful looking and handles so well.
I also modified the ramrod, adding a horn tip just for smiles.












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[45-110]

Very nice rework! A beautiful pistol. I finished my English style last winter, and it has bugged me ever since. I need to do the same and thin up the grip area up also.
kw

[rich pierce]

Sleek now. What lock is that?

[Bob Gerard]

Rich, thanks- it’s an L&R lock. Not terribly good but it works.

[Bob Gerard]

Very nice rework! A beautiful pistol. I finished my English style last winter, and it has bugged me ever since. I need to do the same and thin up the grip area up also.
kw

It bugged me how clunky I had it. After seeing and learning from the talent here, I decided to make the changes. It is nice to improve on your earlier work sometimes 🙂

[Steeltrap]

Looks very, very nice. Great lines!!

[Daryl]

Slim-Jim, looks great.

[Justin Urbantas]

Excellent job! It always bothers me how chunky so many reproductions are. Especially these Indian ones.  I could probably shave a pound of wood off.

[FlinterNick]

Looking great Bob ! Really classy looking pistol !

[Bob Gerard]

Thanks!
Justin- I was on the fence about reworking it but after making the decision to do it, I reworked a bit on the handle (bending the barrel tang downward a little more and taking most from the top), but far more wood was removed from the forestock.

[Steeltrap]

Just a swag on that India made pistol, but I "drew in" some lines on the bottom and along the top of the barrel channel of wood that "needs" removed in order to streamline it more.

Removing the top of the barrel channel and tang area is easy enough, and then likely slimming the width as well.

The work comes in when you do the bottom. You would have to look at the RR entry pipe to see if you can thin the web. That's a chore in itself. Then the TG, TP and perhaps the pivot point of the trigger?

I suppose that's doable, but it could get tricky.