[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
…[/quote]
That’s really cool. You guy’s did a nice job on it.
What’s up with the two triggers? What kind of accuracy have you seen with it?
[quote]theuofh wrote:
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
…[/quote]
That’s really cool. You guy’s did a nice job on it.
What’s up with the two triggers? What kind of accuracy have you seen with it?
[/quote]
The rear is the set trigger, which arms a spring. The pull on the front trigger is adjustable, and you can set the tension on it however you like. You can literally make it a hair trigger. When you pull (or just touch) the front trigger the spring is released and snaps up into the sear. I used that trigger for historical reasons, as that was the style at the time, and what was used on the rifle I copied.
Shooting off a bench at 50 yards (the only bench I have access to at this time) it makes one ragged hole. Shooting 50 yards off hand I have good days and bad. I hunt with it often, even during open firearms season and it shows it’s scars up close. I’m itching to build another, and will start as soon as I finish my blacksmith/wood shop. Probably in the spring.
During the first revolutionary war American sharp shooters made confirmed kills at 300+ yards with this kind of rifle. But I wouldn’t shoot a deer at much over 100.
Uncle Gabby, you may be interested in the story of Sylvan Hart, also known as Buckskin Bill.
Hart, who lived by himself for over fifty years (between the 1930s and the '80s) in the wilderness near Salmon River, Idaho, was an accomplished blacksmith and gunsmith, who made all of his own tools, including knives, cooking implements (which he made from copper mined and smelted by hand), and an arsenal of flintlock rifles, the barrels of which he bored and rifled by hand using homemade tools (pictured above).
Please do not think I am in any way trying to diminish your accomplishment: I have never built a flintlock rifle, and am in awe of anyone who can… but you might pick up a copy of either The River of No Return by Curt Conley, or Last of the Mountain Men by Harold Peterson to see some of the fabulous gun work this fellow accomplished with nobody around but grizzly bears and mountain lions.
[quote]pat wrote:
A strong argument can be made that the flintlock long rifle was why we won the war. [/quote]
Oh? I didn’t know the French Navy was armed with flintlock rifles.
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
The last image loaded upside down, we’ll see what happens to this one. Anyway, the flintlock has an undeserved reputation for being unreliable. This is because a lot of the early modern locks that came out when the interest in the old rifles came around in the 50’s and 60’s were poorly made by people who didn’t know what they were doing. There’s a little bit of art to keeping the thing running properly, as opposed to just sticking a percussion cap on a nipple.
But of course they’re reliable. Men staked their lives on them for many generations.[/quote]
Ah, the ultimate tool of the Revolution. A strong argument can be made that the flintlock long rifle was why we won the war. I would love to shoot one.
I could just imagine sitting in a tree with rifle in hand waiting to see red coats coming up the road and being taken by surprise. While they shoot aimlessly in to the woods with inaccurate muskets.[/quote]
The Brown Bess and the smooth bores in general were not as inaccurate as most think, and could easily hit a man sized target at 60 yards. The smooth bore’s strength was in rapid fire, as well trained infantry like the British regulars could fire 4-5 shots a minute, while the rifle takes around 2 minutes to reload. The rifle’s compensation was range and accuracy. But you couldn’t snipe with it as the puff of smoke gave the rifleman’s location away.
The British quickly learned that they could beat the riflemen by a quick bayonet charge, thereby closing ground before the riflemen could reload. Several skirmishes ended very badly for the rebels this way, and there are many fine American Longrifles in British collections today. So the rifle was really a skirmisher’s tool, and was in fact also used by some loyalists and even special detachments of the British army.
The two battles where it played a decisive role were the battles of Saratoga and King’s Mountain. It was likely not even present at Lexington and Concord as it was a regional specialty of Pennsylvania and Virginia before the war, and would have been very uncommon in Massachusetts. [/quote]
Is that picture, that of a smooth bore musket or the American Longrifle?
To be more specific on what I meant, is that the American Longrifle was instrumental in the southern theater by militia cutting down supply lines and hamstringing Cornwallis’s progress north, allowing Greene to fortify his positions. While the musket was the primary firearm, those who used the long rifle had a tremendous effect on the outcome of the war.
It had much greater effect in the small skirmishes than on the open battlefield.
I still could not imagine standing shoulder to shoulder on the front line waiting for the response after having fired your one round.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
The last image loaded upside down, we’ll see what happens to this one. Anyway, the flintlock has an undeserved reputation for being unreliable. This is because a lot of the early modern locks that came out when the interest in the old rifles came around in the 50’s and 60’s were poorly made by people who didn’t know what they were doing. There’s a little bit of art to keeping the thing running properly, as opposed to just sticking a percussion cap on a nipple.
But of course they’re reliable. Men staked their lives on them for many generations.[/quote]
Ah, the ultimate tool of the Revolution. A strong argument can be made that the flintlock long rifle was why we won the war. I would love to shoot one.
I could just imagine sitting in a tree with rifle in hand waiting to see red coats coming up the road and being taken by surprise. While they shoot aimlessly in to the woods with inaccurate muskets.[/quote]
The Brown Bess and the smooth bores in general were not as inaccurate as most think, and could easily hit a man sized target at 60 yards. The smooth bore’s strength was in rapid fire, as well trained infantry like the British regulars could fire 4-5 shots a minute, while the rifle takes around 2 minutes to reload. The rifle’s compensation was range and accuracy. But you couldn’t snipe with it as the puff of smoke gave the rifleman’s location away.
The British quickly learned that they could beat the riflemen by a quick bayonet charge, thereby closing ground before the riflemen could reload. Several skirmishes ended very badly for the rebels this way, and there are many fine American Longrifles in British collections today. So the rifle was really a skirmisher’s tool, and was in fact also used by some loyalists and even special detachments of the British army.
The two battles where it played a decisive role were the battles of Saratoga and King’s Mountain. It was likely not even present at Lexington and Concord as it was a regional specialty of Pennsylvania and Virginia before the war, and would have been very uncommon in Massachusetts. [/quote]
Is that picture, that of a smooth bore musket or the American Longrifle?
To be more specific on what I meant, is that the American Longrifle was instrumental in the southern theater by militia cutting down supply lines and hamstringing Cornwallis’s progress north, allowing Greene to fortify his positions. While the musket was the primary firearm, those who used the long rifle had a tremendous effect on the outcome of the war.
It had much greater effect in the small skirmishes than on the open battlefield.
I still could not imagine standing shoulder to shoulder on the front line waiting for the response after having fired your one round. [/quote]
Mine’s a rifle, .54 caliber with a 42" barrel.
I agree about the skirmishing, but a lot of those boys were probably carrying smooth bores as well. It just depends on where exactly we’re talking about. The rifle culture didn’t really take off in this country until after the revolution. For example the famous “Swamp Fox” Francis Marion was from coastal South Carolina, where there really wasn’t much rifle culture. So his forces probably had very few rifles. The “Over the Mountain Boys” who killed Colonel Furgeson were definately riflemen, as the rifle culture had filtered down the Shenandoah wagon roads into western North Carolina and was firmly established.
Colonel Furgeson, though a Brit was a strong advocate of the rifle, an excellent marksman himself, and the inventor of a breech loading rifle that could fire 6 aimed shots a minute. King George was smitten with the design and Furgeson lead a company of sharpshooters who were equipped with the rifle. Fortunately for us it was a very expensive and time consuming design to build, and the mechanism didn’t hold up well in the field.
Daniel Boone (one of the finest marksmen on the frontier) carried a smooth bore to what turned into the Battle of the Blue Licks. His was probably the equivalent of a 16 gauge (they didn’t measure things very well back then) and he loaded it with 3 round balls. He shot one of the Native American’s at close range in the chest and later stated that was the only “Indian” he was ever sure he killed. With 3 ounces of lead to the chest at the velocity of a modern 12 gauge I bet he was sure.
I could talk about this shit for hours.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Uncle Gabby, you may be interested in the story of Sylvan Hart, also known as Buckskin Bill.
Hart, who lived by himself for over fifty years (between the 1930s and the '80s) in the wilderness near Salmon River, Idaho, was an accomplished blacksmith and gunsmith, who made all of his own tools, including knives, cooking implements (which he made from copper mined and smelted by hand), and an arsenal of flintlock rifles, the barrels of which he bored and rifled by hand using homemade tools (pictured above).
Please do not think I am in any way trying to diminish your accomplishment: I have never built a flintlock rifle, and am in awe of anyone who can… but you might pick up a copy of either The River of No Return by Curt Conley, or Last of the Mountain Men by Harold Peterson to see some of the fabulous gun work this fellow accomplished with nobody around but grizzly bears and mountain lions.[/quote]
Thanks! I’ll have to read up on him. He sounds like another of the local legend who carried the old ways forward into modern times so that they could be “rediscovered” by the modern masters, like Jim Chambers of NC (who’s shop made my lock) and the boys of the Colonial Williamsburg Gunshop.
In my area there was a local legend named Hacker Martin, who ran a gristmill and built flintlock rifles by hand. My friend the Gunsmith went to see him when he was a boy. Hacker Martin was featured prominently in one of the Fox Fire books. Number 5 I think.
I didn’t build mine from scratch. It wasn’t exactly a kit either as the parts were ones I handpicked and assemble to my own design, and the stock was a rough piece of wood with a channel for the barrel and a hole drilled for the ramrod (thank god, that’s a long hole to drill in a very expensive piece of wood). Anyone who’s interested can buy a kit, and if you’re not too ambitions some of them come very close to finished. Mine took about 300 hours of labor, you can get some that would probably take 80-100.
I would recommend trackofthewolf.com, or Jim Chambers’ website flintlocks.com. “The Gunsmith of Greenville County” is the flintlock maker’s Bible, and fortunately it’s back in print! The guy who wrote that book is off a little in his history, but he’s Canadian so it ain’t his fault.
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
The last image loaded upside down, we’ll see what happens to this one. Anyway, the flintlock has an undeserved reputation for being unreliable. This is because a lot of the early modern locks that came out when the interest in the old rifles came around in the 50’s and 60’s were poorly made by people who didn’t know what they were doing. There’s a little bit of art to keeping the thing running properly, as opposed to just sticking a percussion cap on a nipple.
But of course they’re reliable. Men staked their lives on them for many generations.[/quote]
Ah, the ultimate tool of the Revolution. A strong argument can be made that the flintlock long rifle was why we won the war. I would love to shoot one.
I could just imagine sitting in a tree with rifle in hand waiting to see red coats coming up the road and being taken by surprise. While they shoot aimlessly in to the woods with inaccurate muskets.[/quote]
The Brown Bess and the smooth bores in general were not as inaccurate as most think, and could easily hit a man sized target at 60 yards. The smooth bore’s strength was in rapid fire, as well trained infantry like the British regulars could fire 4-5 shots a minute, while the rifle takes around 2 minutes to reload. The rifle’s compensation was range and accuracy. But you couldn’t snipe with it as the puff of smoke gave the rifleman’s location away.
The British quickly learned that they could beat the riflemen by a quick bayonet charge, thereby closing ground before the riflemen could reload. Several skirmishes ended very badly for the rebels this way, and there are many fine American Longrifles in British collections today. So the rifle was really a skirmisher’s tool, and was in fact also used by some loyalists and even special detachments of the British army.
The two battles where it played a decisive role were the battles of Saratoga and King’s Mountain. It was likely not even present at Lexington and Concord as it was a regional specialty of Pennsylvania and Virginia before the war, and would have been very uncommon in Massachusetts. [/quote]
Is that picture, that of a smooth bore musket or the American Longrifle?
To be more specific on what I meant, is that the American Longrifle was instrumental in the southern theater by militia cutting down supply lines and hamstringing Cornwallis’s progress north, allowing Greene to fortify his positions. While the musket was the primary firearm, those who used the long rifle had a tremendous effect on the outcome of the war.
It had much greater effect in the small skirmishes than on the open battlefield.
I still could not imagine standing shoulder to shoulder on the front line waiting for the response after having fired your one round. [/quote]
Mine’s a rifle, .54 caliber with a 42" barrel.
I agree about the skirmishing, but a lot of those boys were probably carrying smooth bores as well. It just depends on where exactly we’re talking about. The rifle culture didn’t really take off in this country until after the revolution. For example the famous “Swamp Fox” Francis Marion was from coastal South Carolina, where there really wasn’t much rifle culture. So his forces probably had very few rifles. The “Over the Mountain Boys” who killed Colonel Furgeson were definately riflemen, as the rifle culture had filtered down the Shenandoah wagon roads into western North Carolina and was firmly established.
Colonel Furgeson, though a Brit was a strong advocate of the rifle, an excellent marksman himself, and the inventor of a breech loading rifle that could fire 6 aimed shots a minute. King George was smitten with the design and Furgeson lead a company of sharpshooters who were equipped with the rifle. Fortunately for us it was a very expensive and time consuming design to build, and the mechanism didn’t hold up well in the field.
Daniel Boone (one of the finest marksmen on the frontier) carried a smooth bore to what turned into the Battle of the Blue Licks. His was probably the equivalent of a 16 gauge (they didn’t measure things very well back then) and he loaded it with 3 round balls. He shot one of the Native American’s at close range in the chest and later stated that was the only “Indian” he was ever sure he killed. With 3 ounces of lead to the chest at the velocity of a modern 12 gauge I bet he was sure.
I could talk about this shit for hours.[/quote]
I agree that the longrifle did play a small role, by means of the numbers of them, but made a significant impact in the war. The British certainly felt the use of them in ambush was ungentlemanly.
I would love to shoot that rifle. How much do nice reproductions go for?
I can tell you, I’d be terrified to load it at first. So way, somehow I would pack that sucker too hard and blow my hand off. But hey, I got another one right?
[quote]pat wrote:
I would love to shoot that rifle. How much do nice reproductions go for?
I can tell you, I’d be terrified to load it at first. So way, somehow I would pack that sucker too hard and blow my hand off. But hey, I got another one right?[/quote]
If you’re ever in south central VA let me know. Don’t be scared, we’ve got this thing called a powder measure. And besides it’s not easy to blow one up using FF black powder. Some shoot FFF to get the same or higher muzzle velocity with less powder but that’s a mistake for several reasons which are too long to go into here.
I did have a barrel burst a few feet from my face, but that was the result of deep pitting in the bore from years of neglect and half-assed cleaning. Black Powder is highly corrosive!
As far as prices go to trackofthewolf.com, they have some beautiful finished rifles made by some very talented gunsmiths. Or you can get a kit and build it yourself. Some of the kits are really not hard and will run you $8-900. You have to get a SWAMPED barrel. This is very important! Straight sided barrels are too front heavy and are no fun to shoot, also not historically accurate. The kits that come with straight barrels are cheaper, but that’s a big mistake.
You can buy cheaper Spanish and Italian made “Kentucky” rifles from companies like Cabela’s for a lot less but they are not historically accurate, and just fucked up looking.
Also Pat, I don’t mean to knock the rifle, I agree about it having an important place in the revolution, but it’s one of the things I find “historians” frequently get wrong because they assume it was more ubiquitous in the Colonies that it actually was. Like fools talking about “the smell of cordite.”
Never been afraid of fucking with my guns, exepct for stippling which has scared the shit out of me with it being permanent, voiding the warranty, and the chance for really jacking up your gun. Went for it on my shield today anyway and pretty happy with how it came out. Way easier than i thought it would be.
Nice. That come out pretty well. I have somebody doing mine for me. I think I’m getting the same sights you have too.
Also, I found this. This is the rifle Meriwether Lewis took on this trip out west:
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
Also Pat, I don’t mean to knock the rifle, I agree about it having an important place in the revolution, but it’s one of the things I find “historians” frequently get wrong because they assume it was more ubiquitous in the Colonies that it actually was. Like fools talking about “the smell of cordite.” [/quote]
I understand. And what I was specifically referring to was that it allowed us to use guerilla tactics against Britton’s supply chain specifically in the south. That did play a significant role in slowing British progression by messing up their ability to supply and send messages back and forth.
I do agree on the battlefield itself they gave little if any advantage.
[quote]theuofh wrote:
Nice. That come out pretty well. I have somebody doing mine for me. I think I’m getting the same sights you have too.
[/quote]
Thanks man. It feels phenomenal. For $5 bucks this is the second cheapest modification I have done to any of my guns. The first cheapest is the $2 paint markers I used for my front sight lol, they are just factory. Whats sights you planning on putting on yours?
[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:
2[/quote]
That turned out very nicely.
I think the Ameriglo tritium w/ the orange outline. Then the two dot tritium operator I think on the rear. I took a CCW class then left it with their pistolsmith to work over. Honestly, it didn’t need anything, but that is my main carry gun so I want to make it expensive so I feel important carrying it around all day. I was also thinking about sending the slide to ATEI for the top serrations, but I probably won’t.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:
2[/quote]
That turned out very nicely.[/quote]
Thanks, I am suprised it turned out as good as it did, I was worried I would really jack it up.
[quote]theuofh wrote:
I think the Ameriglo tritium w/ the orange outline. Then the two dot tritium operator I think on the rear. I took a CCW class then left it with their pistolsmith to work over. Honestly, it didn’t need anything, but that is my main carry gun so I want to make it expensive so I feel important carrying it around all day. I was also thinking about sending the slide to ATEI for the top serrations, but I probably won’t. [/quote]
With the money you save by getting it over an xds you might as well add some nice sights. That Xds 4.0 islooks pretty sweet though…
[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:
[quote]theuofh wrote:
I think the Ameriglo tritium w/ the orange outline. Then the two dot tritium operator I think on the rear. I took a CCW class then left it with their pistolsmith to work over. Honestly, it didn’t need anything, but that is my main carry gun so I want to make it expensive so I feel important carrying it around all day. I was also thinking about sending the slide to ATEI for the top serrations, but I probably won’t. [/quote]
With the money you save by getting it over an xds you might as well add some nice sights. That Xds 4.0 islooks pretty sweet though…[/quote]
I agree on the XDS 4.0. It didn’t get much buzz, but compared to the Remington 51 POS, I thought it was a pretty smart idea. At first I thought the Glock 42 was kinda dumb too, but then I was able to handle one, and not bad. I’d still give the nod to the XDS 4.0 as the most innovative slim carry gun release.
I still want to see somebody modify a shield magazine and take the ribs out to see if it could fit 1 or 2 more rounds in there with reliable feeding. The only downsides to those guns are the capacity.