English style blunderbuss build

[Noeyebrows]

I wanted to start a post of my blunderbuss build. This project began about 2 years ago when I saw a parts set from Pecatonica River at the Kalamazoo living history show. I ended up placing an order with them for walnut stock with just barrel channel and ramrod done, no other inlets. Their barrel is made by Rice in 4 bore flared to about 2 inches. The guys at Pecatonica were very easy to work with and their partially carved stock came as ordered some nice figured grain and tons of extra wood to work with, essentially no wrist. Perfect for this project as it will be modified quite a bit. This will be quite a few posts, as the gun is nearly finished. More to come!

 

[2 shots]

 

[Noeyebrows]

My vision for this project was for a fairly ornate english blunderbuss. I am only 3 years along my gun building journey, my last project was a Chambers NE fowler in 10 ga. I really wanted to learn more of the decorative skills like wire inlay, engraving, and improving my carving. I began my research with The Blunderbuss book by Foreman from TOW, good history and some fair quality black and white photos of originals. Most of my inspiration came from searching auction sites for fancy British examples from 1740’s-80s. I found a gun from 1747 by Jordan of London with “Bankers of 59 Strand” engraved on the thumb piece. This gun would be my reference for the general architecture.

 

[Noeyebrows]

After studying a lot of english busses, I ordered a large english fowler butt plate, large acorn finial trigger guard, fowler style pipes, and a Chamber English round faced lock as well as their fancy english fowler side plate and thumb piece.

Soon I got right to work on the barrel. Draw filing, tang bent and worked into a thumbnail shape, breech face checked for a good seal. Barrel inlet first then the tang. There was a little extra space around the breech and tang bolster from the duplicator cutters, but I planned on bedding the whole barrel with Acraglass for strength, it is a 4 bore after all!

 

[PathfinderNC]

This will be a nice gun I think

 

[RiverRat]

I built a blunder buss from a kit that I bought off of Mike Lee. It was also a 4 bore. We had a blast shooting cut up broom handles to 1” in length. I would load up about 5 of them and shoot them straight up and we would hear them bounce off of our tin roofs. No damage done and we all got a laugh. Shooting a load of cotton balls would make it snow in July.

 

[Noeyebrows]

I liked some 1/16 flats on a barrel I saw on an original buss, so I measured them out about 1/3 the length of the octagon section (golden mean proportions in mind) and went at it with some hand files. Turned out pretty good I think.

 

[Noeyebrows]

The dreaded english butt plate… please, if you have a quicker way to do these, do tell. I have to clear my schedule for quite a while to finish these. I rough shape the butt end of the stock with a 18th century belt sander, then hit it with inletting black fitting the end first then down into the stock. About a thousand times I think…got a good fit.

 

[Noeyebrows]

Added a front lug to the butt plate. My 10 year old completed the whole operation.

 

[2 shots]

great to get the kids involved. she does great work.

 

[Noeyebrows]

Rapid fire progress pic dump… lock plate, lock bolts. The trigger posed some unique challenges, had to scoot it toward the lock so it would reach the sear arm, added some metal to the trigger height after bringing the wood as high as I dared without breaking into the ramrod channel. The whole trigger assembly was a pretty custom project. Had to anneal and bend the trigger guard quite a bit- scary. Those things are not cheap. Side plate was a challenging inlet job.

 

[Noeyebrows]

Early this spring I really started thinking about and studying wire inlay and engraving. Dave Person’s tutorials are priceless for any English project. I found all kinds of great references. Lots of threads here. I purchased John Schippers book on engraving, Sam Alfano’s old school hammer and chisel video, some books on English gunmakers. Searched as much English wire and engraving I could find. Bought some graver blanks, diamond stones, made some wire inlay tools and basically dived right in. Early efforts were pretty crude, but I was seeing rapid improvement.

 

[Noeyebrows]

Lock in and functioning well, trigger pull feels good…

 

[Noeyebrows]

I thought about the carving for this project for quite a while. After studying lots of these guns, I concluded less is probably more. Even the fancier English blunderbusses had relatively little carving, although extremely well executed. Most commonly an English shell or plain beaver tail around the tang. Rarely beaver tails around the lock panels which I omitted. I did a shell on my fowler project but it was not at the British quality level. Here is the reference carving from an original and my design. Just have to take your time…thumbpiece inlet also.

 

[PathfinderNC]

Your work is meticulous!

 

[Noeyebrows]

Your work is meticulous!

It’s taking forever..learning as I go.