First BP rifle.

[pathfinderifh]

Great topic Mike,just answered on the smoothbore side. I too have the problem of others needing the gun more than myself,so I built a Tenn."smoothrifle" in .50 cal that thankfully no one seems to want,I now have a gun to call my own! :blah:

Back on subject,My first rifle was a CVA "Kentucky" in .45cal percusion that I converted to flint,and I shot it when I didn't have balls for the Brown Bess. :grin: Pathfinder

 

[Rles221]

my first was a handme-down from my dad how didnt like them .45 cal Flinter. Looks like the kentucky rifles in cabela book. second is Lyman GPR my wife bought in Feb. for my birthday. Keep looking at the TOW kits to chicken to try to builds one though

 

[Rebel]

I know what ya mean about the kits. I had a Track NW Tradegun that was built from a kit. Not by me though. In one of my dumb moments, i made the mistake of selling it. I have thought about building another one, but don't have the tools or the skills to do it myself, or the money to have someone else build it for me.

 

[Stony]

First BP rifle was a T/C Renegade in .54 cal. Didn't know about the club I'm in now so after shooting it once on an indoor range, sold it. Didn't know there was that much unburned powder on the floor. Scared the you-know-what out of me to see the whole floor flash up with flames and such. Scared the guy next to me even more!

 

[jernestc]

My first bp gun was a flintlock made by CVA. The mainspring wasn't strong enough to make a spark with any of the flints I tried so I traded it for a Traditions Deerhunter. I got a doe that first season with the Traditions. I and my hunting friends were quite impressed with the success. Since then my brother, two cousins and some other friends have started using flintlocks but we've only gotten two more deer in the last 3 or 4 years. We're still working on it though.

 

[VAshooter]

I was about 11 or 12 and I bought an original percussion rifle, about 40 caliber and stocked in walnut. I shot it for a year or two but the barrel was in really bad shape so I never actually hit anything with it. As I learned more about muzzle loading firearms I realized that my rifle was unsafe and might come apart at any time. It had a hammer forged barrel that was about 3/4 of an inch at the breach and a little more than an inch at the muzzle. Being 40 caliber didn't leave much metal at the breach for a drum with hand cut threads and that drum blew out more than once. I picked up a Billinghurst rifle which I still have and traded off the first rifle to a guy that just wanted to hang it on the wall.

Freedom isn't free

Doug in Virginia

 

[MikeChapin]

My first was a Navy Arms Hawken Hunter. .58 with a 1 1/8 barrel to fire those big magnum loads. Didn't take long to see how silly that was. I used it for a couple of years before selling it. It shot well and was a good rifle to start with. Started going to flint not too long after that.

 

[Cruzatte]

My first bp rifle was a Dixie TN Mtn. rifle, .50 cal. I shot that thing quite a lot for maybe eight or nine years. It was so muzzle heavy, I just couldn't hold it steady. But, in its favor, I have to say that it taught me a lot about shooting flintlock rifles. I'm not sorry I bought it, and I'm not sorry I finally sold it.

Cruzatte

 

[Begor]

Mine was an original 42 cal. perc. rifle with a broken stock which I restocked and shot in BP matches. It weighs 14 lbs. and has a 1:96 twist. Got it in about 1960 from a friend who didn't want it. I still have it.

 

[jmckenney]

My first muzzle loader was a percussion smooth bore military type made in Belgium. I purchased it from Century Arms for $13.00 and it was delivered via RailRoad Xpress (REA). Dupont powder at the time was $0.75 a lb and musket caps were $0.50, lyman bullet mold 69 cal with handles was something like $5.00. I was lucky, the neighbor was having to shoot glass marbles because neither of us knew enough about guns/muzzle loaders to figure out the correct mold for his gun, Century's Ad told me what caliber mine was.
How times have changed, I was 12 yrs old at the time. REA is no more, Dupont doesn't make black powder and I'm almost 60 and have to prove I'm over 18 to purchase.
I sold the gun to a local guy to hang over his fireplace where it still hangs today unfired for almost 45 yrs.

 

[Flintandsteel]

Believe it or not, I started out with a Vincent that I built myself. I wanted authenticity that you can't get "over the counter", and didn't have the money to buy one, so..... I built one.
Of course it wasn't pretty, but was over 12 years ago, and that baby is still out there driving tacks.
As I build, they get better, but probably will never be satisfied. :hmm:

 

[G. W. Gill]

A "Garibaldi" .72 rifled musket from an antique store. My 15th birthday. I used newspaper and buckshot for the load. I had it rebarreled by a man named A. Peterson to .58. 40 yrs later I notice it's stock is marked to the Stonewall Brigade. The original barrel is somewhere around. I shot bottle rockets out of it at my manic depressive nieghbor for years. Such fun. I even dropped a low battery smoke detector down his old oil furnace chiminey so his house would beep and got all the other nieghbors to say they didn't hear it. It beeped for almost a year and you could not tell where it was coming from!. :rotf: He lived in a mother in law house in back and would show up on your porch with a comb in his hand complaining he was going bald!!! Nice guy and great to mess with! :rotf: I was 25 to 45 yrs old. :rotf: