Flinter build from the ground up...it's finished!

[DennyRoark]

A good friend of mine is building a flinter from scratch.  Here's a link to the board he's posting his progress on....http://www.ohiooutdoorsman.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=351&sid=d0c81c8dfe7a37c4ab41a06eca970b6c
 
He's been updating it every few weeks.

[Foggy]

Thats some nice work Keep us up to date
Thanks
Foggy

[Skunk]

WOW!! That's pretty darn awesome.

[killer]

sweeeet

[Two Bears]

Thats good stuff, I wish that I had the time to build some rifles, As of now I have a 54 hawkin in parts, a 50 cal flinter that is all finished except the stock and trigger guard, butt plate, a restock to do, and a flinter pistol. All need time to get them finished but I can't seem to find enough to get any of them done.
I have been hunting with my 50 cal flinter unfinished for 2 going on 3 years now......she shoots great but needs to get finished.

[longcaribiner]

From the ground up, as in forging out his own lock, etc? 

I once met a fellow that actually cut down the tree that the stock came from, AND, searched for and found the iron ore that he used to bang out the barrel and lock.  That is taking "from the ground up" to a literal absurditiy.

[coyotejoe]

You got that right! Even in the Colonial period most gunsmiths purchased their locks and by the dawn of the 19th century most bought barrel blanks from barrel mills. The gunsmith may have reamed and rifled the barrel but very few still hand forged the barrel blank.

[DennyRoark]

more new pics....

http://www.ohiooutdoorsman.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=351&sid=d0c81c8dfe7a37c4ab41a06eca970b6c

scroll to bottom

[Casull]

That trigger guard and buttplate are beautiful.  But, he put the lock on the wrong side of the rifle.   

[Victor3]

I once met a fellow that actually cut down the tree that the stock came from....

 Pfff... Big deal.

 I planted the seed of the tree I cut mine from and caught a meteor with a baseball glove to make the metal parts from.

 

 All seriousness aside, there's still at least one guy in the US who makes barrels starting from iron he separates from river sand.

[simonkenton]

Great story and photos!
What beautiful work!

I built a Tennessee Mountain Rifle from Dixie. The stock was routed for the barrel, I still had to do a lot of stock shaping, inlet for the lock, brown the barrel. It really came out nice.

This guy is doing it from the ground up, obviously he has done this before.

[simonkenton]

Here is a story of a real Mountain Man. This is from Sports Illustrated from 1966.  I read this in the magazine when I was a high school junior, I was just fascinated by this man.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1079108/1/index.htm

This guy was Jeremiah Johnson, and then some.
Here is the part of how he made his flintlock rifle, but you really ought  to read the entire article.
During the era of men landing on the moon, this man lived the life of a Mountain Man.



The guns with which Buckskin bags these trophies, trinkets and trousers have aroused considerable avarice. One hand-made flintlock rifle, a particularly enviable product of loving craftsmanship, so excited a wealthy Los Angeles businessman that he practically ordered Bill to sell it. When Bill turned down $1,000 and then a blank check, the man raged: "Damn it, you need the money. You do use money, don't you?"

"No," answered Bill. "Not where I live."

The rifle Hart would not sell has a beautifully hand-bored, hand-rifled barrel, a mechanism with a double cock and double-set trigger and an ornately carved mountain mahogany stock. Bored to .45 caliber, the barrel is made of fine Swedish steel.

Accurately described by Buckskin as "a rotating helix driven by fingers on a headblock nailed to a tabletop," the machine used to make that rifle is not one whit more, and is primitive-looking at that. It scarcely seems sophisticated enough to uncork a popgun, yet the rifle it produced shoots with deadly accuracy. "It's nothing but muscle power," Sylvan says, "but I really lay into it. That cutter comes out of there smoking."

Smoother than rosewood, the stock had been blackened with sulfuric acid and rubbed to its lustrous deep-brown finish with the palm of the hand. Its carvings depict the activities of mountain sheep.

"I just make one as I need it, but I don't like to spend less'n a year making a rifle," Hart said, opening the patch button in the stock to show the orange flicker feathers inside. These are used to flick dust and lint out of the mechanism.

Sylvan demonstrated how neatly the flint-tipped hammer struck the frizzen to create a spark, dropping it white-hot into a grain-of-wheat-sized charge of priming powder, and how the firing pan sloped just right to send the resulting fire into the main charge.

The red-striped ramrod is hickory specially cut in East Texas, and even the bright red and green tassels on the accompanying pouch have a specific, if whimsical, purpose. "They might just be decorations," says Buckskin, in one of his frequent indulgences in melodrama, "or you could tie one to a bush and a pursuer would want to fetch up to study on it."

For somewhat more ordinary purposes, the pouch is well equipped indeed. Priming horn, powder horn, "bosers," borers and cleaners, extra flints, rigs to chip flints, vent pickers and scrapers and even a bullet mold pour out of it in splendid profusion.

Following his regular ritual, Hart showed how he pours powder down the muzzle (30 grains), pushes in a bullet on a patch cut from a World War I bandage, and tamps it down a bit with three different "bosers." After ramrodding the patch down to the powder, he tapped the rod lightly "to seat the bullet" and primed the firing pan. One could still see the shiny spot on the spherical lead bullet where the sprue had been filed off. "Oh, yes, I make my own bullets," Sylvan said. "That's simple, but I make my own bullet molds, too." Accompanying this arsenal is a stock of powder and bullets sufficient to fight an Indian war.

[DennyRoark]

just a progress bump...

http://www.ohiooutdoorsman.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=351&sid=d0c81c8dfe7a37c4ab41a06eca970b6c

[flmason]

That totally rocks. 

[S.S.]

I actually saw one of the man from salmon river's rifles.
it had a 1 inch rifled bore and was a brute of a rifle.
I believe that it could have easily taken any game on earth.

[Ironwood]

Denny,  Your friend is very talented.  I'm in awe of the guys that can do that kind of work. Do you happen to have a photo of the finished rifle. 

[DennyRoark]

Progress bump...staining the stock.  It takes a bit to load now, as all pictures are in the same post.  It's beautiful!

http://www.ohiooutdoorsman.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=1032&sid=148d6d505f5cee3668dd30f576231a90#1032

 

[wormbobskey]

When do we get to see the assembled rifle? Very nice job to say the least.

[DennyRoark]

To those who have been asking, it is a work in progress.  Every few weeks, he sends me an update to his website.  I expect it to slow down now that deer season is here, but he may try to get it fininshed to hunt with in December/January.  I'm a millwright by trade, and I sure wish I could do that!  It's really hard to reweld that stock back up to redo it!!

[DennyRoark]

He completed it this weekend.....What a bute!

http://www.ohiooutdoorsman.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=403

[Ironwood]

Denny,  You've got yourself one beautiful rifle.  I didn't think I was going to like the dark stain for the stock, but after seeing the finished rifle the dark stain looks great!  Congratulations!

[DennyRoark]

Not my rifle, Ironwood, a good friend of mine's.  I couldn't use it anyway, he put the lock on the wrong side!  Wish he would build me a Poorboy for all the publicity...

[Canuck Bob]

Excellent build!  The photo's are very informative.

[stevinator]

Wow that is some real craftsmanship and talent , beautiful work.I just don't have the patience and I am terrible with wood.

[Casull]

That is a real work of art.  Useful, purposeful, beautiful art.