A. Verner or Tennessee for first build?

[drude]

First post - Glad to have found this wealth of information as I begin selecting my first kit to build. I'm looking for some expert imput on my first purchase.

I'm going to purchase from either TOW or Pecatonica, and now I have to decide on a PA or TN style of rifle. I'm more inclined to try the PA, just because I was born in York and lived for years in Lancaster County. However, I'm told that a TN style may be best for a first build because of its simpler architecture and fewer components (inlays, patchbox, etc.).

I've got a nice shop and am pretty handy with chisels, rasps, drill press, etc. Mostly handy man stuff. For firearms experience, I've been toying with Milsurp rifles for 20 years, taking them apart and restoring/repairing the wood and replacing parts. I'm also comfortable detail stripping modern firearms and making minor repairs such as trigger jobs. For this venture, I plan on purchasing Dixon's book and watching a video or two.

I look forward to your experienced guidance on what style you'd recommend for a first build, and I plan on checking back with questions, updates and photos as I work through the project.

Thanks
--Kev

 

With your experience, you should have no trouble building a Lancaster or any other school longrifle. True, the southern rifles are at times cruder in architecture and furnishings but some of the Tennessee rifles I have seen in museums are as sophisticated as some of the earlier Pennsylvania rifles in execution. Patchboxes, inlays, and relief carvings and moldings. It just depends on what you want to carry and shoot. At any rate, good luck on your first project and most of all have fun with the whole process.

 

[Norskie]

I'm currently building from a precarved stock, and this is the last time I'll do that. Working from a blank should make inletting and drilling easier. So my advise is get plans and a good chunk of wood and have fun!

 

[rich pierce]

I always suggest a very plain and simple gun for the first one, especially a musket or trade gun as if it comes out bulky or rough, it will be less of a problem than it would with a sculpted longrifle. I DO understand that Besses and fusils de chasse and English trade guns have good lines that are hard to get right. But it takes a lot of holding and studying to ge shapes right even if all the inletting and finishing is excellent.

 

[CrackStock]

Kev

>>

All good reasons for having one of these.

>>

I will not recommend a gun, but rather some thoughts.

Consider what you want from a gun and why.

Do you want a gun for re-enacting a particular event, time or location? Study what would have been correct so that you do not have to spend a lot of energy explaining some improbable tale as to how your personna got a bizarre gun.

Flint, cap, match, wheel or other...

Do you want a re-enacting piece, target gun, hunting gun, or wall hanger? Combination?

Will you be shooting offhand, from bench, cross sticks or other?

Have you considered a smoothbore?

Some examples of my guns:
I have found that my Tennessee caplock is most accurate offhand; my Lancaster is most comfortable for a long string of shooting and a correct rifle for RevWar; my fusil de chasse 20 gauge is good for French colonial in Louisiana and hunting almost anything.

Truth be known, the simplest first build would be a plain smoothbore.

The worst part of my Tennessee was the inletting of the tailpipe for the ramrod. This part gave me fits. I still find it a rough spot.

Good luck on your project.

CS

 

[drude]

guys - Many thanks for the replies. I went ahead and ordered the A. Verner (Bucks County) kit from Pecatonica. I'm also having them install the breach plug, staples and cut the sight dovetails. I also ordered the Dixon book.

Now I need to get the chisels out and put a fresh edge on them....

I'll post a photo of the kit when it arives as well as photos of my progress.

--Kev

 

[GreyWhiskers]

Good words. I too am considering building a flinter and havent decided which way to go.

 

[Cherokee]

I would build one of Track of the Wolfs Isaac Haines 1770 Lancaster longrifle kits or a Edward Marshall transitional longrifle.
Make sure to get a kit with the pre-inletted butt plate. Both the above kits are pre-inlet for butt plates. The southern mountain rifles arent.
That was one of the toughest things I have done.
I built a southern mountain rifle from them for my first build and it was a hand full.
I have one of their Isaac Haines 1770 Lancaster longrifle kits nowe IM working on and I put the buttplate on fairly easy.
IM not a novice but doing that I was.
I can weld, fabricate, and build or restore just about anything mechanical cars motorcycles guns but that kit was plain hard getting that butt plate to fit right.
Look at their stocks on the website not the finished guns in the pictures. Look at how they are inletted in the kit description page. You will see some are just a block on the back of the stock and some are cut for the butt plate.
Just for an idea of what to expect the buttplate wasnt even close you have to figure out the contours height width and its all to easy to get it almost inletted and see its crooked.
I barely managed to save mine.

 

[Okwaho]

Drude,the Verner rifle is a fine one but not being a builder I don't know the problems. I suspect, however,that one problem{and this is true with most kits}is that you will need to take off a lot of wood.This is probably the case with the Verner which is an extremely slim graceful rifle.George Shumway illustrates this gun in "Rifles of Colonial America" Vol.I,PP.264-269 with a remarkable series of photographs.

If,however, you opt for the Tennessee rifle be careful which pre carved stock you order.It should have an English style round tailed lock.Germanic locks such as the Siler are not correct for these guns. I have looked at at least a thousand of them over the years and I have never seen one with a Germanic lock.I did own a restocked Charles Bean once with a squared off English lock.The two late Ketland locks in TOW { cat.16} PP.181 and 182 are suitable and if the tail on P.181{Classic Ketland} presents a problem,you can always grind off the point in the rear.Additionally Track's "Early Tennessee Rifle" pre carved stock is cut for an L&R Durs Egg lock which is acceptable.
Tom Patton

 

[mikelange]

Since you've already ordered your kit, advice as to what to order would be redundant -- but I would have suggested the PA gun. I actually would have recommended an early Lancaster pattern, but the Verner is correct to the same area and if you like the curving lines of the butt, as opposed to the straighter lines of the Lancaster's, then you're right to choose that style. The only potential problem to it, PC-wise, is that the fully evolved Allentown/Bucks County style that the Verner represents, according to Shumway, is supposed to date to the 1790's at the earliest. How true that is (seems that every time I turn around, something that one authority or another stated in the past is subject to valid challenge) and how particular about it anyone would be, in a reenactment setting, I don't know.

I would have pointed out, based on having built a fair number of PA rifles and a couple of southern mountains, that once you've successfully installed the buttplate on either type of gun, and the long breechplug tang on the Tennessee/southern style, inletting a patchbox won't be a particularly big deal. And, though a degree of roughness in the final shaping of a southern gun could be excused, many -- maybe most -- southern gunsmiths were just as capable as their brethren further north and east of building finely-styled rifles. That that level of workmanship was not always to be had, or that a good builder might have at times been rushed by various circumstances, does not (IMHO) give me license to settle for poor work on my part. Which leads to another advantage of the PA style guns -- it would appear to me that there are more pictures, with and without detailed descriptions and dimensions, and more skilled builders familiar with the various types, than is the case with the southern guns. I could be wrong -- the fact that I don't care for the southern guns as much may have a lot to do with how little information about them (in comparison to the wealth of detail about PA rifles) I've come across.

For a first build, though, since obviously you want a rifle of some sort, and since also you intend to ask advice along the way, I think yours was a good choice. :thumbsup:

 

[drude]

Since I intend to take a good deal of time to assemble this project, I decided to go ahead and order a patchbox kit from TOW. It's billed as a Verner style an is quite attractive and flowing. I plan on doing numerous mock patchbox cuts on scrap lumber during breaks from actual rifle building. I also plan on trying some silver wire inlays and some mild relief carving and will practice on some maple scraps I have in the shop.

I can see this gun building thing getting out of hand real fast......

--Kev

 

[GreyWhiskers]

I brought up the Track of the Wolf website and viewed the Isaac Haines kit as well as a finished rifle. I like the lines of the stock and steel hardware. Also liked the carving on the stock but that may be beyond my woodworking abilities. Much thanks for the tip.

 

[Cherokee]

You can always build it with no carving.

 

[CrackStock]

You need to consider what you are trying to accomplish with this gun. Is this a learning experience or is it your final product?

I would buy some gouges and study carving and come up with a correct pattern. Try it on cheap wood and then do it in the rifle stock.

Sell it off for the cost of the parts and get another. Repeat until you get better.

Everybody else started somewhere.

CS

 

[Hoyt]

I built the gun I wanted for my first one. I figured they were all too valuable to mess up and none cheap enough to practice on. However..even though my first is a perfectly good shooter I made my share of mistakes on it and it gives me something to do by redoing parts of it when I can't afford a new one to work on or am waiting on parts for a new one to start.
When I get through with all the redo's on it, I'll start redoing my second one.

 

[CrackStock]

Hoyt,

I see your point, which is why I led off with advising him to figure what he was wanting from the gun. For some the first build is the end of the ride. For others getting better with each effort or flexing their talents is the point.

I just hope that people put forth a good effort and are open and honest about what they sell. But then, on this forum, I expect that is a given.

CS

 

[drude]

Guys - Can you direct me to a vendor who sells fishtail gouges? I was practicing this weekend and found it impossible to keep the gouge tips from making cuts I didn't want.

Thanks

--Kev

 

[Zonie]

You might try this place:
GOUGES

I don't know why you want these and that link is the first place that popped up on Yahoo so I don't guarentee anything.

I use mainly straight chisels in building my rifles and small carving chisels like Flexcut for fine work.

Now that you've decided to build a rifle, it would be good if you post your questions and progress over on the BUILDERS FORUM.

The Builders Forum in the Muzzleloading Forum was set up just for people like you who are starting to build your rifle. That's not to say advanced builders can't ask questions too. In fact, they do.

The BUILDERS FORUM has some of the best builders in the world contributing to it every day. Several are Professional Custom Rifle Builders. Many are hobbiests like yourself.
For instance, I do not consider myself professional however I have built 12 guns and am working on my 13th and 14th.

One of the things about this forum area is the builders are more than willing to give away their secrets to anyone who asks, whether they are building their first Traditions Factory Kit, a Lyman Kit or a Kit from Track of the Wolf, Pecatonica River or TVM.

Come join us and remember, as one of the posts up above says: Building is Addictive! :grin:

Zonie

 

[Flintandsteel]

Zonie,

Just try a fishtail gouge once, you'll be hooked. No pun intended.

First of all, they are great for stamping in the larger radius curves on carving, and absolutely the greatest for removing background on relief carving. They cut cleanly across (yes across) the grain.
I have two right now, and am getting ready to order 3 more.

 

[crgabel]

Drude,
How is the build going??
I have built a verner and I feel you will be ok with it.
The first gun that I had built was left heavy in all areas of the stock. After 8 guns now I have just stripped it and put the chisels to it and now have what my minds eye wanted to begin with.
The point I wanted to get across is that heavy can be reworked, undersize cannot. As your skills progress you can always go back and clean it up with the extra material left on.
Craig