Advice for a newbie

[bbassi]

Hi All. I am new to the forum, but I can see you folks are more than willing to share advise, which I really appriciate. I have a couple of general questions about building my first flinter, but first I'll give you a little history about myself.
I've never built a gun of any kind, but I am a fairly accomplished woodworker with tons of modern tools (please don't hurt me!) and practical experience on everything from cabinets to framing houses. I have built a couple of self-bows over the years as well as owning a trophy panel business for several years(i.e. for deer heads, fish mounts, ect.).
I have owned and hunted with a Cabela's Hawkins style percussion gun now for about 15 years and have really enjoyed it. My reason for choosing that gun was because of price and the fact that it was one of the few left handed models available in my price range at the time. ( did I mention I'm a lefty and couldn't hit the sky shooting right?) I actually barrowd a RH flinter one year from a friend to hunt the PA late season. I actually shot a deer with it, but the loss of an eyebrow wasn't worth it in hindsight!
Anyway, enough about me, here are my questions;
I own a camp on the edge of the Adirondack Mts. in NY, and enjoy hunting there. When I build my flinter, considering the amount of time I'll be investing, I want something that is both geograhpicly correct, but PC as well. The problem I have is 1- I have no idea what the period that flint long rifles in that area would fall into, and 2 - I don't know where to start looking for historical documentation pertaining to guns of that area/time. I'm hoping that the documentation will point towards one of the more popular styles of long rifles available, as it would be nice to have lots of reference before starting such a project.
I'm not at all opposed to putting in the reserch time, but I need a good starting point. If anyone could help me out with some good literature I would really appriciate it! Also, I would like to probably start with a "kit" if possible, but it has to be a LH flinter that is reasonably correct, so if anyone has some thoughts on that it would be appriciated also.
Sorry to be so long winded. B

 

[TANSTAAFL]

Take a look around here, Jim has several choices as to locales and periods. You won't go wrong if you find what you are looking for.

http://www.flintlocks.com/

 

[Zonie]

Assuming you are wanting a Pennsylvania style rifle, IMO, the Northeastern area of Pennsylvania is where I would start.
The countys up in that area during the late 1700s and early 1800s would have been Northhampton, Bucks, Berks and Northumberland.
I think the rifles produced by W. Haga, Leonard Reedy, Andrew Figthorn, John Rupp and John Moll might cover the area fairly well.
Putting it into Schools, I would guess Reading and Allentown-Bethleham would cover it.

I don't know if he makes it in left hand models or not, but Pecatonica River offers a Andrew Figthorn stock (Womelsdorf-Reading School).
These stocks have a curved underside on the butt, and the comb is also curved.

To give you an idea of this form I offer the following pictures from Dixies Catalog. (This always raises a debate about Schools and stock shapes, but we haven't debated this for some time.)

To give you an idea of the shape of the butt, you might want to follow this thread to see my version of the Figthorn Reading School rifle:
READING COUNTY GUN