Another .36 cal Rifle from a Plank

[davec2]

Nine or so years ago now I made a close copy of a beautiful rifle that Jim Chambers had originally done. It was not the same caliber, etc., but I did copy the engraving and carving on the rifle I made up from parts I had on hand. (Original link https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=37186.0 )

One of the changes I made was to use a much smaller caliber. I had a .36 cal Rice barrel and a 25 year old piece of stock wood and geared everything else around that. That rifle shoots great and having never built a muzzle loader as small as a .36, I became quite enamored with the caliber. Don't get me wrong, I like all the others from my .45s all the way up to my 2.75" bore cannon....but I really enjoyed the .36.

Fast forward nine years and I have a little time between rocket testing contracts to start in on another rifle....just to keep my sanity and step out of the highly technical propulsion world and into the 18th century.....for a little peace and quiet. So I pulled out a lovely piece of maple stock wood I bought from Tom Fornica in 2017 and another .36 caliber Green Mountain swamped barrel I bought from Tip Curtis about the same time frame. I also had on hand a Lancaster trigger guard and butt plate from Jim Chambers along with ram rod pipes, a spare trigger plate, trigger, nose cap, etc., etc.



Quite some time ago now I had sent the rough shaped stock and the barrel to Dave Rase and had him inlet the barrel and drill the ram rod hole for me. (This was before the US Postal Service drove David to madness and he quit doing this kind of work.... ) Then I got busy again with work and the stock / barrels sat in a corner again. Long story short, a couple of weeks ago I had time to make some actual progress.

Here the stock shape is being refined on a band saw......



Also using the band saw, the initial prep for the butt plate is made by cutting away a lot of excess wood.....





After careful final fitting of the butt plate with chisels, I bedded it with AcraGlas. (Not PC I know, but I always bed the butt plate and the barrel breach to absolutely seal the end grain in those locations with epoxy and to get a perfect fit of the barrel breach.)



Next up was to get the barrel lugs installed on the barrel. I wanted to use barrel keys on this rifle, so I used loops. The barrel dovetails were milled in place, the loops fitted closely and then soldered permanently in place.....





While I was at it with the milling, I cut the dovetails for the front and rear sights.....





With the barrel loops installed, I used the burning in method of drilling some and then burning in the barrel key slots with a tool I made up......







Well....that's it for the running start. I need to decide on a lock for this rifle but I think I have something in mind. I'll save that for the next installment.

 

[davec2]

On the subject of the lock.....quite some time ago I modified a Chambers late Ketland lock for a half stock English rifle that is still in work. I had another unmodified Ketland on hand and decided just to go ahead and do the same esthetic modifications to it. Here is the unmodified version......




First thing I wanted to do was to change the curl on the top of the cock....no reason....I just like it facing the other way. So I welded on a blob of steel again so that I could make it like the cock on the right from another lock I made many years ago...



Here is the re-contoured top curl......



Then I wanted to reshape the pan into a more "waterproof" version so I cut away as much steel as I could that didn't look like a waterproof pan.....started out like this:





Ended up like this....



Then I wanted to add moldings to both the lock plate and the cock......cut with gravers and then cleaned up a bit with files and stones.....













Not sure what I want to do as far as engraving goes yet.....need to think about the whole rifle design some....

 

[davec2]

Back at the bench, I did get the barrel tang inlet and bedded, the ram rod pipes installed, and started in on the lock inletting......









With all of that out of the way, I started in with a plane and a spoke shave to release the .36 caliber rifle that I know is buried inside that maple plank.....

 

[davec2]

Bouncing back and forth between the cannon re-build and this rifle....so moving a little slower than usual on each. (This quite a transition each day moving from a bore of ~3 inches to a bore of .36 inches).

Had a chance last evening to get the muzzle cap placed and then start in on shaping the forearm. There are three tasks on a build that are not my favorite...installing the butt plate, installing the rear ram rod pipe, and fitting the muzzle cap. This is the last of those, so the rest of the project should be more enjoyable...

In this first photo you can see how things start out. The cap is a prefabricated piece I purchase quite some time ago from Track of the Wolf and had on hand when I started gathering parts for this rifle. It fit the Green Mountain barrel well so I decided to use it. With a jeweler's saw I made cuts on both sides of the end of the forearm and vertically down to the ram rod groove. Some of the wood that needed to be removed I cut away with chisels. However, because the wood starts to get very thin, and because the very curly grain wants to go where it will, most of the wood removal was done with a fine rasp and then files.





In order to get a precise fit between the rear end of the muzzle cap and the forearm wood I get the bulk of the wood removed and then slowly dress the transition point between wood and metal. In this second photo you can see that I have not started to remove that wood to the rear of the cap. In addition I usually have a problem with the transition from the bottom of the ram rod groove to the cap. I like to keep the web between the bottom of the barrel channel and the bottom of the ram rod groove no more that ~ 0.100 inches to keep the rifle forearm slender and graceful. However, that usually requires some reshaping of the muzzle cap at the open rear end to make sure that there is a smooth transition between wood and metal at the bottom of the ram rod groove.

With the cap now defining the shape of the forearm at the muzzle end, I could start removing wood on the forearm. I do the bulk of the stock removal with a large spoke shave. Finer shaping is done with a much smaller spoke shave and then a scraper. To keep the surfaces straight, I run a few pencil lines down the length of the forearm. Then, using a 12" long by 2" wide flat piece of oak with 120 grit paper glued on, I sand the forearm a bit lengthwise. The sanding will take away the pencil lines on the high spots immediately and the remaining lines show the low spots. I sand until all the pencil lines are gone.

Major stock removal......





Fine tuning the shape with a much smaller spoke shave.......





Tomorrow I'll start in on shaping the stock in the area of the rear ram rod pipe. Enough for tonight.