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I had been sharpening my Stanley No. 5's iron by hand, I went back to using a honing guide and set the chip breaker a hair's width away from the blade edge. What a night and day difference, now it's time to start laying out the rifle. Thank you all for the gentle slaps to the back of my head...

I just have to accept I was spoiled by my first blank, it was easy to square up with consistent grain direction and no knots.

With what little time I have left this morning I tried running my block plane skewed across the grain and that seems to help alleviate the chatter, I'll try doing the same with my jack plane this evening That is a good question. On the lock side, about 20" from the nose of the stock it takes a...

I'm still a novice builder so this may be a "me" problem more than it is a wood problem, but while attempting to square up a blank for my second longrifle I've been having a much harder time with hand planing than I did with my first blank. I've sharpened and resharpened my plane irons because...

I really like how you finished the stock, there's lots of figure but it doesn't distract from the lines of the rifle. I also like what you did to the steel, you've got me second guessing my plans to brown the barrel and furniture on my mountain rifle.

I originally planned for this to be a flintlock, but with the best flintlocks for mountain rifles being the late Ketlands from Chambers and Kibler with the step-down at the rear of the lock plate I got into analysis paralysis during the planning stages of this rifle and thought I could end up...

And here is the other side of the rifle. The cheek piece still needs to get shortened from the front end, I've yet to see a longrifle with one quite this long:

Here is the inlet for the trigger plate and the front trigger bar marked out with inletting black. I eventually learned how much inletting black is enough inletting black. Also, a pattern maker's vice is a great investment, I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get into building: Here...

I think this rifle deserves its own build thread by now. I'm pretty bad at documenting my progress in any of my projects, but I've got enough pictures from my first muzzleloader to hopefully constitute a worthwhile thread for y'all to scroll through. A brief summary about myself: I'm going to be...

Technically this is "What Muzzleloading Stuff I Did Yesterday", but I took pictures of my progress today. I got the trigger guard screwed into the stock, for some reason the rear hole was the hardest steel I've ever tried to drill through while the front was like any old mild steel. I also got...

I got the toe plate on my western Carolina rifle installed, or at least 95% of the way there. Next up is screwing on the trigger guard

I can't really speak to Kibler kits since I started with a blank for my first build, but I will say I am thankful for Jim since there's a plethora of pictures featuring well-shaped stocks being posted on the internet thanks to his rifles. All of the print resources I have are wonderful, but...

I just bought some 10d 3" masonry nails today for the latch, it's on!

I got the butt plate screws on my Western Carolina-ish rifle filed flush, now I am trying to decide if I want to add more work by installing a patchbox or make life easy(er) by going with a grease hole instead.

I'm a complete novice but I know good advice when I see it, and Dave's is just that. Reference material is worth its weight in gold IMHO. Also keeping a working full drawing of the gun being built is something I plan to do for my second rifle. I've yet to make any fatal errors on my first rifle...

Randall Pierce's book is where I found the Soddy Daisy rifle I'm sort of following, hopefully this is a case of great minds thinking alike! I think I'll forge on ahead without trying to use a shim this time, I'm not sure I've earned the stripes to be messing with Kibler perfection quite yet. The...

I'm also building my first rifle from a blank like Bob, and it's also going to be a small caliber SMR with a skinny barrel, and it looks like we were both planning to work off of TOTW's Tennessee rifle plans. I ran into the same problem with the vertical profile of the wrist of the plan drawing...

Got the barrel on my first build down ready to start hogging out the main barrel channel. Also tried posting an image on this forum for this first time.

I bought a 1/4" DeWalt chisel from Ace this weekend based on this information. I couldn't find Sheffield anywhere on it, or any other country of manufacture for that matter, but other sources on the internet back up the Sheffield manufacture, and only a minor amount of work was needed to get it...

Awesome! Are you by any chance making your pins out of bicycle spokes? I was wondering why you used a 5/64" bit instead of a 1/16" or 3/32" like I've seen most pins to be sized, but if those spokes are 2 mm like the straight gauge ones I've built with, that makes a lot of sense