Can a Muzzleloading Rifle Be Built Complete In A Week?

[TNGhost]

Reason I ask, is that I have recently been reading The Kentucky Rifle, written by John G.W. Dillon and published in 1924 by the NRA, and on page 29 there is an account by a Milton Warren an apprentice to gunsmith John Whitesides of Abingdon, VA, in which he states they turned out a good, well finished, but plain rifle in a week.

Which got me to thinking about how long current custom gunmakers take to complete a gun, and how long most of us take to finish putting together a kit, especially considering the account by Mr. Warren states building the rifles included fabricating the barrel and the lock and other fittings from bar iron, and brass or German silver sheet and forming the stock from slabs of wood seasoning in a corner of the shop. Makes modern gunmakers sound like pikers.

Anyone else familiar with this book? It seems to have a lot of interesting information on the origins and use of the "Kentucky" rifle as well as plates showing a number of American Long Rifles and their predecessors. I am wondering how accurate some of the ideas and speculation are that are included in this volume?

 

[Phil Coffins]

A video called Williamsburg Gunsmith that can be found on the net would dispute that one week speculation. They make a rifle barrel and lock from scratch so disregarding the rest of the rifle I’d say, no. Even considering that it’s two skilled men working in tandem that would be very long days.

 

[GANGGREEN]

I guess my question would be how many people are working in the shop that's turning out said rifles in a week? If you order the barrel and lock and possibly order many of the parts like many of us do, then sure, it's not that impressive to think that an experienced builder could build a plain rifle in a week, but if expected to also build a barrel, then wow, that's different.

 

[Walkingeagle]

Yes they can. However you can’t compare a custom with all the fancy scrolling and inlays with a plain old simple rifle. This does assume that the major parts are prebuilt of course.
Walk

 

[Phil Coffins]

He clearly stated that all parts to make the rifle is from bar stock and a slab of wood. We should always read the question carefully before replies are offered.

 

[Dale Lilly]

I built my Lyman GPR rifle to firing stage that fast …. but browning and stock finishing took much longer. You cannot rush a good finish ... barrel or stock. I do not believe you could make a rifle from scratch in a week unless it was completely inletted and all parts pre-made [maybe a Kibler kit]. My 1 1/2 cents worth. Polecat

 

[Walkingeagle]

Two scenarios; lots of gun parts were built off site by cottage industries back in the day, and those that made their own did so when there was no other work happening. A gun builder did not sit on their thumb waiting for an order to come!
Walk

 

[Carbon 6]

I think Mike Brooks said he did a Kibler kit once in 4 hours.

A smart gunsmith of yesteryear would have subcontracted some of the work to the local blacksmith, silver/tinsmith or carpenter if possible.

I think Civil war production numbers ran as high as 25 a day.

When you do the same thing day in and day out, you get good and learn a lot of shortcuts.

 

[GANGGREEN]

This is the only way that it seems likely or even possible to me. If he had a large shop with several apprentices and one was building the lock while another (or two) were building the barrel and he was stocking it, sure, I guess it would be possible, although even in that scenario, the barrel would have to be done in order to stock it and the lock would have to be made sometime before the finishing of the rifle, etc. etc.. I don't doubt that they probably did put one rifle per week through the larger shops though, that's not hard to imagine at all.

I think Mike Brooks said he did a Kibler kit once in 4 hours.

A smart gunsmith of yesteryear would have subcontracted some of the work to the local blacksmith, silver/tinsmith or carpenter if possible.

I think Civil war production numbers ran as high as 25 a day.

When you do the same thing day in and day out, you get good and learn a lot of shortcuts.

 

[Carbon 6]

in which he states they

There's the key word boys, "they" but he doesn't say how many they is.
He literally could have had one person doing every operation. Work goes fast with good help.

 

[hanshi]

A good, professional builder can certainly finish a stock from a board in just a few hours. But back then as is done now there was metal work, wood/metal finishing. Today barrels and some other metal parts are usually acquired from vendors except for a certain few who do it ALL themselves. Even way back this was not uncommon. This allows more guns to be built per year and keeps the cost from being prohibitive.

 

[tenngun]

I timed a kit one build keeping a log, the NWG from Track of the Wolf. Sheet brass that didn’t need much polishing and the iron work needed little touch up to mount. It took me a hundred hours.
That’s seven fourteen hour days( should I work on the ‘Lords day’
Folks worked while it was light so a fourteen hour day isn’t THAT hard to imagine leaving off up to two hours for meals and hour of rest and seven hours in bed.. work hard now winters short days are a comming
Last build I did I had twenty hours in turning a sand cast but plate in to something I could put on my gun and almost that much time on the trigger guard.
I bet I never have done a dove tail in less then an hour.
A master a journeyman or two and a few apprentices could carry a lot of the load, but there are some job only one man can work on at one time.
I was at a gun show in LA in the late seventies in the morning two guys were cutting out a lock plate. They had a colonial style shop set up in the arena but had an electric forge inside the building.
From raw stock the built a siler styled flint lock in the six hours or so I was at the show starting with raw materials

 

[Mad Michael]

TN
There may be a few things at play here. First Folk from that neck of the woods have a tendency to exaggerate some, especially when talking to townies or non hill folk. I know, my father's family has hailed from that general area (well, begining in the Charleston area) for the last 400+ years. I'm willing to bet some of that came into play. Second, It would have been a very plain rifle, no nose cap, simple ramrod pipes, maybe no butt cap or plate. Third, a couple of books on the subject, Firefox 5 to name one, state that only Iron was used and it was frequently very soft and mentions the flats being cut on the barrel with a draw knife. The iron would allow the barrel to be forged and finished in a quicker fashion. Still, to answer your question of "how many?" my WAG is a minimum of 5 people: The Master, A Journeyman, an Apprentice, a white smith and a blacksmith. The fellow in the book could also have failed to mention that some of the parts were pre-made either in the shop or by contract. The shop could have been fairly advanced with items like power driven hammers, drills, and other machines if they were near a water source, though I wouldn't think likely in Abingdon, VA.
Mad

 

[Treestalker]

Mr. Leon Miller of Kirbyville, Texas once had a lady ask him to build one of his Texas Sesquicentennial rifles (a limited edition of 15) for her husband one Christmas. The rifles were a Lancaster County long rifle with curly maple, raised carving and engraving. Leon had seven days to complete the rifle in time. Starting with a precarved stock, barrel blank and flintlock, he handed the rifle, finished, engraved and carved, to the lady on the 7th day. He said later the real challenge was allotting time for stain and finish drying times. The rifles in that series cost $1500.oo in the '80's. They were made in 'New' fashion, Leon would not age a gun, he said if someone wanted to see one of his guns aged, they could look at an original Lancaster or wait a couple hundred years until his guns had acquired a proper patina! Of course this was a parts gun from 'scratch', not one made from raw materials. I don't believe one man could possibly make an entire rifle from scratch materials in seven days. If a Southren rifle made in the backwoods in a poor boy style, with all hand forged barrel, lock and furniture, a master like Ambrose Loving might have been able to do it, but I doubt he would have rushed the job in such a manner. His work with the Union Army arsenal would be a contributing factor to his speed and accuracy, but I just don't know.

 

[rich pierce]

Just cause they said it and it ended up in a book doesn’t make it fact.

 

[TNGhost]

He clearly stated that all parts to make the rifle is from bar stock and a slab of wood. We should always read the question carefully before replies are offered.

Yes his description is just that, and goes on for a couple of pages detailing where they got their bar stock "from "Old Shady", over the mountains about fifteen miles, where there was an iron mine and smelter worked by four men that used a charcoal furnace, an anvil and hammer to forge rods, bars and flats as used by the gunsmiths". He goes on to describe how they peddled the raw iron to the various gunsmiths.

He also described their gunmaking shop as having water power with a crude lathe and a large grindstone for finishing the outside of barrels, (they were rifled on a manual bench hand powered rifling "machine"). The same water powered a sawmill that cut the slab for seasoning into gunstock material. He said the seasoning took at least four years.

As I said the description was very detailed even to the use of which type of charcoal they used for their forge, etc., how they welded, finished and straightened the barrels and rifled them.

The explanation for the one week build (and he did state it was a "plain" rifle that they could turn out in a week) that there were several men working on it would be plausible, but still from a slab of wood and iron bar stock to a rifle in a week is impressive, as you would guess they would work at stations so the man hours could be the same as one man, the different operations being performed at different times by different workers.

You'd think we could better that with the modern equipment we have at hand now.

I found it very interesting as I did the descriptions of how and where the first gunsmiths transitioned from the old country style Jaeger rifles to the American styled long rifle, right down to the local area and names of the 'smiths that were involved in "inventing" the American rifle and the developmental process.

Fascinating book, and why I asked if anyone else was familiar with it and had any idea as to the veracity of the facts laid out in it. It is quite unlike anything I have read on the subject before. Cline and Roberts are informative and come close, but this book seemed to have more detail.

 

[FishDFly]

"Just cause they said it and it ended up in a book doesn’t make it fact."

Just like U-Tube does not put things in the Bible or Vatican Library does it?

 

[TNGhost]

Mr. Leon Miller of Kirbyville, Texas once had a lady ask him to build one of his Texas Sesquicentennial rifles (a limited edition of 15) for her husband one Christmas. The rifles were a Lancaster County long rifle with curly maple, raised carving and engraving. Leon had seven days to complete the rifle in time. Starting with a precarved stock, barrel blank and flintlock, he handed the rifle, finished, engraved and carved, to the lady on the 7th day. He said later the real challenge was allotting time for stain and finish drying times. The rifles in that series cost $1500.oo in the '80's. They were made in 'New' fashion, Leon would not age a gun, he said if someone wanted to see one of his guns aged, they could look at an original Lancaster or wait a couple hundred years until his guns had acquired a proper patina! Of course this was a parts gun from 'scratch', not one made from raw materials. I don't believe one man could possibly make an entire rifle from scratch materials in seven days. If a Southren rifle made in the backwoods in a poor boy style, with all hand forged barrel, lock and furniture, a master like Ambrose Loving might have been able to do it, but I doubt he would have rushed the job in such a manner. His work with the Union Army arsenal would be a contributing factor to his speed and accuracy, but I just don't know.

From the description given it would have indeed been a southern styled "po-boy" rifle and the fellow described their customer as woodsmen and subsistence farmers/families.

He also said that along with rifles, they built a popular "boot leg" pistol that they could turn out in a day.

 

[TNGhost]

A good, professional builder can certainly finish a stock from a board in just a few hours. But back then as is done now there was metal work, wood/metal finishing. Today barrels and some other metal parts are usually acquired from vendors except for a certain few who do it ALL themselves. Even way back this was not uncommon. This allows more guns to be built per year and keeps the cost from being prohibitive.

FWIW he mentioned that 2 of the 7 days were spent on the stock.

 

[Bob McBride]

Eric Kettenburg and Bob Leineman, among others, back around 2000 tested what sort of rifle could be built in '3 days' as was done at one shop according to Bob's research I believe. Anyway, it was a thing there for a while and they each fairly easily stocked (as would have been done in the period) a darn nice simple gun in three days many times. I own one of them EK did. It's gorgeous. They bought barrels, locks, and furniture in the period usually and stocked and fancied up whatever the customer wanted and they did it in a 'workmanlike manner' in 3 days to a week I believe for a simple gun with pipes a side plate and a buttplate. A fine gun would take much longer but I imagine the profit of a few simple guns was equivelant to a fine one, as was the time invested. Perhaps 3-4 Schimmels per fine gun.