Two months ago I posted about the milled underrib supplied with my St. Louis Plains Rifle Company Gemmer Hawken kit as being too tall for the available space between barrel and ramrod port (probably my problem- over-inletting the barrel- rather than the supplier's error). Susie, from Muzzleloaders Builders Supply, suggested trying the cold drawn style without the lip, as they were a bit shorter top-to-bottom. She didn't have any in stock, but I did find them for sale, and in fact the replacement worked just fine. Thanks, Susie!
I carefully measured and drilled the four holes for the underrib screws, but couldn't get the three threads tapped in with the calculated depth hole for a 1" .50 cal barrel. After reading Zonie's disaster tale about drilling through a barrel during this same process, I finlly just made four 3/8" long steel pins and silver-soldered them into the barrel, then fitted the underrib with its holes countersunk and silver-soldered that in place. I also silver-soldered the hoops in place. Worked fine. I just have to do the two dovetails for the sights and I'm done!
(It's taken so long because I just work on the rifle as a reward after reaching a reasonable stopping point on the online course I'm teaching on scratch-building the Revolutionary War brigantine "Lexington".)
Clay
San Jose
I carefully measured and drilled the four holes for the underrib screws, but couldn't get the three threads tapped in with the calculated depth hole for a 1" .50 cal barrel. After reading Zonie's disaster tale about drilling through a barrel during this same process, I finlly just made four 3/8" long steel pins and silver-soldered them into the barrel, then fitted the underrib with its holes countersunk and silver-soldered that in place. I also silver-soldered the hoops in place. Worked fine. I just have to do the two dovetails for the sights and I'm done!
(It's taken so long because I just work on the rifle as a reward after reaching a reasonable stopping point on the online course I'm teaching on scratch-building the Revolutionary War brigantine "Lexington".)
Clay
San Jose
