Best Building Book?

[joeerik]

Hey Guys,

I'm new to the forum and I'm looking into building my first Flintlock (Tennessee Mountain).

I looking for the book "The Gunsmith of Grenville County, building the American longrifle".

Does anyone have one for sale?

Could you recommend a other good books!

Thanks!

Joe

 

[Goldhunter]

Recreating the American Longrifle by William Buchele, George Shumway, Peter Alexander

There is also a series of books by Kit Ravenshear that covers this. I haven't seen them in person just noticed them on TOTW. They may be new. Click here.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

The Art of Building the Pennsylvania Long Rifle by Chuck Dixon, of Dixon's Muzzleloader Shop and the Gunmaker's Fair fame. Costs about $24.00 from Dixon's Muzzleloader shop, which you can google.

Frankly, I am not sure there is a best book. There are some better than others. From what I have seen, there are always questions that remain unanswered of one sort or another regardless of which book.

I was fortunate enough to travel past Dixon's shop a few times per year and Chuck is unbelieveably gracious in answering questions and showing folks how it is done.

 

[fyrfyter43]

Chuck Dixon's book is a good one.

Funny you mention Gunsmith of Grenville County. I got an email from Amazon a couple weeks ago offering to buy back my copy.

 

[saber]

there were a few on e-bay used and new

 

[Vaino]

Seeing I haven't read the "Gunsmith of Grenville County". I won't comment on it. Of the other "how to" books all of which I have read, I'd rate "Recreating the American Longrifle" by Buchele, Shumway and Alexander as the best, especially for the beginning builder because of the enumerated "order of procedure" in chapter 5. I've got Dixon's "The Art of Building the Pennsylvania LR" but it doesn't have this order of procedure info and also has some misinformation as to stock cross sectional views. Otherwise it's an excellent book. "Studying" more than one "how to" book should give the builder enough confidence to start a build. The order of procedure is a little different for parts sets {"kits"} vs "from a blank" and that should be noted. An excellent resource found at the top of this "forum" is the gun building tutorial by Mike Brooks and it's free......Fred

 

[Rogue River]

Amazon.com has 5 copies of The Gunsmith of Grenville County! Cost used....$320.00 to $425.00! :shocked2:

 

[rich pierce]

I'm with Fred and will add that "it depends" on what you mean by "building a rifle". That varies from assembling a kit, to designing a rifle, drafting the blueprint, gathering together and making the parts, and building it from a blank.

Most of the early books assumed you'd be building from a blank, making quite a few parts yourself. Some books include a lot of info that many today will never use on stock layout, band-sawing, inletting a barrel with chisels, planes, and scrapers, making the ramrod groove, drilling the ramrod hole, making a toeplate, trigger plate, simple trigger, sideplate, sights, thimbles, nosecap, underlugs, etc. On the other hand the early books have nothing about how to make a precarve "work"- the special challenges of inletting onto shaped surfaces and keeping things square, shaping to the shape you want when there's already a shape there, how much excess wood is on most precarves, etc.

So I don't think one single resource covers it all, but you'd be hard pressed to do better than Mike Brooks' tutorial here. Price is right.

 

[longcruise]

Could you recommend a other good books!

I have all three that are most commonly mentioned here and have gotten good info from all of them. If I could have only one, it would be Alexander's Gunsmith of Grenville County. Why, it has the most detail of all of the three. Some chapters need to be read over several times (at least for me :haha: ) in order to clearly understand the content.

The Sumway, Buchelle, Alexander Recreating the American Longrifle would be my second choice and the Dixon would be the last choice. I'm talking here about which one book I would favor of the three.

Truth is, all three have special contributions to make to the new builders knowledge base, so final recommendation by myself is to get all three.

Alexanders book is difficult to get at this time. Hopefully it will be re-printed.

The Brooks tutorial is also great!

 

[wayne1967]

I always borrow a friends copy of Recreating the American Longrifle. It's the only building book I've read though. Very informative. It's pricey though buying one I think they are like $50. might be cheaper ones out there just as good.

 

[hoochiepapa]

When I first decided to build, the local shop owner handed me Dixon's book and told me to read it cover to cover several times, and THEN he would sell me Alexander's book.
And I,too, have to read some areas of Alexander's book several times! :haha:

 

[joeerik]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the reply's. I am ordering a few books from Dixon's.

I have read the tutorial on this page and it's awesome. However, I don't think I'd like to have my computer out there while working on my rifle.

As for the one question about "building my own".

I am going to get a "kit" from Pecatonica or Tennessee Valley Mfg. I'd like to do the inletting and carving myself and buy all the metal components.

I've heard Tennessee Valeey Manufacturing and Pecatonica both have some great prices on kits. Your's thoughts on the two?

 

[J.D.]

Don't limit yourself to looking at only the kits offered by those two makers.

Chambers makes the best kit out there.
http://www.flintlocks.com/rifles03.htm

Cabin Creek
http://www.cabincreek.net/

Jim Kline makes a dandy kit that is as right as they get.
http://www.jklongrifles.com/BeckVaKits.html

Mike Brooks kits are some of the best.
http://www.fowlingguns.com/

For assembling kit guns, Chambers offers a DVD on "Building the Chambers Kit Rifle" that is pretty good, but it leaves out a lot of detail.

The DVD can be rented from Smartflix too.
http://smartflix.com/store/category/75/Kits-Scratchbuilt

As for the best book? It's the one that is available to you.

I built my first rifle using R.H. McCrory's "The Modern Kentucky Rifle" as a guide. It's a decent little book with lots of good information, but it isn't as good as some of the other, later books on the subject.

There are some good building tutorials on the net too. Mr.Brooks posted an excellent tutorial on this site, for example.

God bless

 

[paulvallandigham]

You don't put your monitor in the shop. Leave it where it is, and visit it often, as you move from one stage to another. Take time to PRACTICE anything new on a scrap piece of wood, brass, iron, etc. Practice using New tools, and learn how to sharpen them razor sharp, before going near any gun stock with them.

You will have plenty of time to go back to your computer and watch the Tutorial several times, so you will know what to do next, back in the shop. These are NOT Exercise videos, where you move with the music on the monitor!

The Breather will give you time to think, and decide how much practice you need to do before you attempt to do the next step on the stock, or metal parts.

Matt(TVM) can build the gun for you, or build the parts you don't think you can handle, and price it accordingly. So can Dick Greensides at Pecatonica River. Other kits: See our Mike Brooks, author of the tutorial on this forum; and Jim Chambers. You should also contact Tip Curtiss about the guns he sells in various stages- call them kits or in the white, or whatever have you.

Other companies offer kits for certain styles of guns. It depends on what kind of gun you want to build, or finish, as to where we can recommend you look. :surrender: :hmm: :hatsoff: :hatsoff:

 

[longcruise]

You don't need to have the screen in front of you. Print the Brooks tutorial to PDF and save it to your hard drive and then print it on paper and put it in a loose leaf binder that you can keep on your bench. If printing to PDF is a mystery, you can go here Cute pdf writer and download a free pdf converter.

Only thing wrong with the Brooks tutorial is he makes it look so dang easy! :shocked2:

 

[Capt. Fred]

I've never dealt with TVM but I know that several of the people on this board have and have been real happy with their service. I have done a few from Pecatonica and have been very happy with their products. Dick (@ Pecatonica) will set things up however you want to whatever degree of "doneness" you want it.

Another source is Knob Mountain Muzzleloading. He just took in a huge bunch of patterns from Fred Miller so he also has a big selection and a good reputation.
http://www.knobmountainmuzzleloading.com/