brushyspoons
36 Cl.
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 33 years young this year, and my late grandfather built 5 muzzleloaders in the 70s when he lived in Kentucky; the first he gave away to his brother, the other four were my first introduction to American Longrifles. Three are Pennsylvania rifles stocked in curly maple, one is a southern mountain rifle stocked in walnut; all have Bill Large barrels. Although we hunted together up until the year he passed, we never really did anything with muzzleloaders. He would tell stories of old rendezvous he attended and pull out the muzzleloaders he built from his safe every now and then while I was visiting to wipe them down, which I assume gave a lasting impression because sometime in late 2021 I decided I would build my own muzzleloader. Starting from the books he had accumulated, I started reading through "Recreating the Kentucky Rifle" by William Buchele and was fairly overwhelmed with the amount of instructions and lack of associated illustrations. I picked up "The Art of Building the Pennsylvania Longrifle" which helped my understanding of the build process considerably, but I still refer back to both books whenever I start a new part of this rifle. When trying to decide on what I really wanted to build, I figured something I could use for hunting would be a good idea; even if it didn't turn out looking too great, as long as it was accurate and reliable I could call it a success for my first attempt. So I settled on a .32 Appalachian mountain rifle for pursuing squirrel. I figured the lack of embellishment for this style of rifle would lend itself well enough to a beginner since I had what some might call zero experience with working wood by hand. I started out with ordering a CM2 maple stock from Pecatonica, quickly followed by an old Stanley No. 5 plane to get the sides squared up:
That was followed by a .32, 3/4" straight octagon barrel by Rice:
I eventually got the barrel inlet, and looking back at it now I think I'll probably glass bed it since my work was probably less than the best:
I originally wanted to follow a Soddy Daisy rifle for this one which is the profile you see drawn on the stock, but I eventually abandoned that ambition when I realized those really need a specific butt plate to follow the style. Anyways, I thought I was making the stock absurdly thin at this point. Little did I know how thin the upper forearm really gets on a longrifle:
Here's the ramrod channel getting prepped for drilling the ramrod hole. I think this picture makes it look kind of curved, but I promise it's straight. Please ignore the file laid on top of other files, it's a bad habit I am trying to drop:
Here's the celebratory bubbly being uncorked for a successful ramrod hole drilling. Using a hand brace was incredibly slow work, but it was easy to feel and hear when the bit started to get clogged with wood chips and it was time to back it out. As best I know this hole was drilled as straight as one could hope:
I don't have any pictures from seating the breech plug, but I ended up doing that twice. When I started inletting the tang I had just received some inletting black in the mail, and I quickly learned how much inletting black was too much inletting black. I was definitely using too much:
After getting inletting black on everything I know and love, the tang was eventually inlet with a mildly unacceptable amount of gaps on each side. 95% of the acetone used during this project was consumed during this single inlet:
Next up was the lock inlet. You can kind of see behind the lock plate a weird step up in the wood. The only power tools I own are a drill and dremel, all sawing has been done by hand with a 9-1/2" Ryoba saw. I'm not sure if I'm just bad at sawing or if the grain makes the saw blade wander, but I had to work in chunks to remove material successfully. I highly recommend using a band saw or making friends with someone who owns a band saw if you want to build a longrifle:
Next was inletting the lock internals. You might notice the workbench I'm using has considerably improved; most of the work I got done on this rifle was during the time I was visiting with my parents over the Christmas and New Years holidays. Thanks to the extremely thin 3/4" barrel it was nigh impossible to not break into the ramrod channel for the mainspring inlet. Also if you are looking at those powder drum threads and wondering if I messed up don't worry; I absolutely did. I'm redrilling/tapping that hole for 5/16-24 threads:
My next post will continue the progress of this build.
That was followed by a .32, 3/4" straight octagon barrel by Rice:
I eventually got the barrel inlet, and looking back at it now I think I'll probably glass bed it since my work was probably less than the best:
I originally wanted to follow a Soddy Daisy rifle for this one which is the profile you see drawn on the stock, but I eventually abandoned that ambition when I realized those really need a specific butt plate to follow the style. Anyways, I thought I was making the stock absurdly thin at this point. Little did I know how thin the upper forearm really gets on a longrifle:
Here's the ramrod channel getting prepped for drilling the ramrod hole. I think this picture makes it look kind of curved, but I promise it's straight. Please ignore the file laid on top of other files, it's a bad habit I am trying to drop:
Here's the celebratory bubbly being uncorked for a successful ramrod hole drilling. Using a hand brace was incredibly slow work, but it was easy to feel and hear when the bit started to get clogged with wood chips and it was time to back it out. As best I know this hole was drilled as straight as one could hope:
I don't have any pictures from seating the breech plug, but I ended up doing that twice. When I started inletting the tang I had just received some inletting black in the mail, and I quickly learned how much inletting black was too much inletting black. I was definitely using too much:
After getting inletting black on everything I know and love, the tang was eventually inlet with a mildly unacceptable amount of gaps on each side. 95% of the acetone used during this project was consumed during this single inlet:
Next up was the lock inlet. You can kind of see behind the lock plate a weird step up in the wood. The only power tools I own are a drill and dremel, all sawing has been done by hand with a 9-1/2" Ryoba saw. I'm not sure if I'm just bad at sawing or if the grain makes the saw blade wander, but I had to work in chunks to remove material successfully. I highly recommend using a band saw or making friends with someone who owns a band saw if you want to build a longrifle:
Next was inletting the lock internals. You might notice the workbench I'm using has considerably improved; most of the work I got done on this rifle was during the time I was visiting with my parents over the Christmas and New Years holidays. Thanks to the extremely thin 3/4" barrel it was nigh impossible to not break into the ramrod channel for the mainspring inlet. Also if you are looking at those powder drum threads and wondering if I messed up don't worry; I absolutely did. I'm redrilling/tapping that hole for 5/16-24 threads:
My next post will continue the progress of this build.
. I'll spend some time with my egg beater and countersink and get the rest of the screws lined up. I spent the time with the butt plate comb screw to get that one oriented N-S, no reason to not spend the 5 or 10 minutes on the rest of them.
