Great thread and posts, I had to jump in. Like most of you it started with some tv, like Davy C. and John Wayne. Mostly it was books and the exploits of Bridger, Glass, Carson, Boone, Lewis, Clarke and all the rest. I thought EVERYONE used these guns till I realized there was none around. I did the bb gun thing from 8-12 then dad hooked me up with the prerequisite .22 and single shot 20. Mom completely surpassed all expectation at 15 with a white mountain carbine. I remember hiding behind a tree the first time I fired it. At 16, I served the Boy Scouts as a assistant Range Officer to my blackpowder mentor, Bill Smith of the U.S.S. Jesse Brown. He was a Vietnam vet with a flintlock jones. He immediately talked TC into supplying the scout camp with a multitude of their product line. He had his own .54 flinter and a zouve(sp?). I ran back and forth setting wood matches up for him to try to light, I cleaned a thousand blackpowder guns as I drank 1000 illicit beers. We shot skeet with New Englanders and taught hundreds of kids to do the same. A scoutmaster brought a family heirloom musket and Bill coached me in realizing it had been left loaded with assorted iron/shot 100 plus years ago. We unloaded it, cleaned it up and actually made that old lady belch smoke once again. It was the best summer of my life and instrumentive beyond expectation. I drifted from blackpowder for years but always had a few. I did some work a few years ago, on a customers fireplace where two ornate and fantastic switchbarrel(2 shots) pennsylvania rifles hung. The customer had bought them for a few hundred bucks apeice at a yard sale in penn. I found the makers name on the rifles, an found him in one of my antique firearms books. I let the customer know, that the apprx values were 25,000 and 40,000 per gun. I have been dreaming on and off of original longrifles ever since, but know only a cheap reproduction is in my future. Glad to have come to terms with that and look forward to getting back involved in flintspark guns once again. Jeff
