Making and early Peter Berry rifle

[dave_person]

Hi,
Next up in my queue is an early Peter Berry inspired by the gun below.







This has always been one of my favorite guns because it is dramatic and unusual. However, I have a love-hate relationship with Berry, or Berrys if you accept the father and son hypothesis, because they were immensely creative but the execution is sometimes disappointing. He or they were prolific carvers but definitely not of the caliber of Isaac Haines. Then again what other colonial or golden age makers were? I definitely will recreate the odd alignment of the patch box but I am not sure I will go as far as having the lower butt molding run right through the brass. I discussed this project with Allen Martin and he urged me to do all the funky stuff. I like funk and folk but not crude. We will see what happens. I would appreciate reading folks thoughts about that. One change I will make right off is I will beef up the wrist at the comb a little both in width and height. On the original pictured above, that point measure only 1 3/8" in height. There are 3 Berry's I've seen with this stock architecture and 2 have broken wrists. Not a good sign.

I am using a sugar maple stock with moderate curl cut and dried in Vermont. The barrel is a "C" weight Allentown profile by Rice in 54 caliber. The original rifle has a barrel about 1/2" longer and smaller caliber but a similar profile. However, the original gun weighs 12 lbs. Mine will be lighter and much better balanced. I have a sand cast butt plate that is close to the right style and size. The original is 5.5" tall. Mine is 5.375" tall. I still need to find a good trigger guard. The lock presents another problem. All of the commercially made round-faced English-style locks that I like are too large. It is critical the lock be scaled correctly to maintain the architecture. The only lock that fits is the L&R Queen Anne. So I am going to build a completely new lock using the L&R plate, frizzen, flintcock, top jaw, and feather spring, and Siler parts for everything else a la Chris Immel (aka Stophel). It will eventually be a very good lock.

The first job, while I am waiting for the Siler internal parts is to clean up and flatten the lock plate. I don't have a milling machine but I do have good files and I flatten lock plates very precisely. A few swipes of the mill file shows how uneven the inside of the lock plate is. There is always a depression where L&R stamps their logo.






Fortunately, it is in a harmless location, however, on this lock the whole area where the upper portion of the bridle fits was in a depression. Careful filing cleaned that all up.



Now it is ready to fit new internal parts. I am waiting for those so I fixed the stupid lug issue on the frizzen. L&R has this lug on the frizzen that fits down into the pan. They advertise that it is a waterproof measure. Actually, it draws water down into the pan as well as compresses the priming powder. Anyway, no locks of that style or time period having anything like that. I am fitting a new frizzen because it will be so much easier to do than fit the fitted frizzen that came with the lock after eliminating the lug. I ground the lug away and filed a proper notch that prevents powder at the vent hole from being compressed slowing ignition (ever thought why all those English locks have that notch?)






I am still waiting for the lock parts so I worked on the stock. Dave Keck inlet the barrel and ramrod groove and hole for me. He did a great job but I made a miscalculation where the breech of the barrel should be positioned. I am not sure how I screwed that up but the barrel needed to come back almost 5/8" inches. The dark marks on the stock show where the breech ended previously and how much I moved it back.



This is instructive because it shows that you can change the position of swamped barrels quite a bit without creating gaps in the barrel inlet. Certainly, a lot depends on the profile of the barrel but I was able to move this barrel back quite a ways with no trouble. It meant cutting out the breech further back and scraping the barrel inlet near the muzzle to accommodate the flare. It worked really well.










I trimmed up the stock a bit and here is where I am.







dave

 

[Nazgul58]

Following your builds is very instructive.

Thanks, Don

 

[Brokennock]

Love it. Thank you.
I can completely understand you not wanting to recreate what seem like poor choices or mistakes.
Interestingly enough, before I got to you writing about it, one of the 1st things that caught my eye is that molding line going through the brass of the patch box finial. I almost feel like this box had been built for a different, and larger, gun, but they made it work the best they could. Would it look more or less odd to stop that molding line there? Other option I guess would be to reduce the size of that brass part just enough that the molding line sneaks past it.

What does it say on the patchbox lid? Looks like script to me.

Definitely looking forward to how you work your magic in this one. Thank you.

 

[pooch156]

You mentioned that other Queen Anne locks are too large but . . . The Chambers Queen Anne lock at 5" x 27/32" is smaller than the L&R Queen Anne at 5 9/16" x 1 1/16". The lower butt molding running into the brass patch box is annoying. My eyes locked on to it as soon as I saw the picture. If it were hanging on my wall it would drive me nuts. Please excuse my OCD. LOL.

 

[PathfinderNC]

I sure agree about the brass patchbox position. It caught my eye first thing. It just looks so wrong. I imagine he may have done that to utilize the crest of the wrist rail to center the patchbox finial on (?). He was the master and certainly he realized the clumsiness of the layout, so it needed to be done for a reason, I guess.
One thing I can't conceptualize is about moving the barrel back about 5/8" and how the swamped barrel would still set snug in the pre-milled channel without modifying the stock inlet? The narrow portion of the barrel would move back into a wider pre-cut channel, and gaps should appear, as I imagine it. Unless the barrel channel was cut narrower than the actual dimensions of the barrel...(?)
Great lesson on the lock plate and frizzen also. Learned much there!
This will be another very cool thread to follow. Thank you!

 

[Eterry]

Dave, are you sure you don't wanna use a stock L&R lock? We both know how wonderful the QC is on them!

 

[Osseon]

To my uneducated eyes, the buttplate on the original has a unique curve compared to other early rifles, but not the crazy crescent + height of later long rifles such as an SMR. Was something like this meant to be fired from the shoulder or more towards the arm and across the body like the latter?

 

[EC121]

The patchbox could have been pre-made. Because it is already in place on the buttplate, to get the finial centered on the stock metal would have to have been removed at the top of the box/bp joint to let it pivot upward. Maybe Berry didn't want to take the time to do it. We'll never know.

 

[Pete G]

A faithful copy of an original design can create a real conundrum. Do you copy the original warts and all or do you improve on the original design, in which case you no longer have an accurate reproduction?

 

[Spikebuck]

Dave, not that I'm any expert in this, but it's not just the lower butt moulding that goes through brass. Maybe I'm not seeing the picture correctly, but it surely looks like the carving at the very tip of the patchbox finial also goes through brass. So perhaps this was a very intentional "feature," funky as it may be, that Berry was trying to do with forethought. ???

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
It has been a while since I could get back to this project. I was gone for a week and then had a lot of other work to do unrelated to making muzzleloaders. The patch boxes on these rifles were not added later but were a signature style for Berry (or Berrys) and to ignore that would miss the mark. However, there are 3 rifles of this style of which I am aware and at least one has the patch box interrupting the lower butt molding without running the molding line through the brass. That is what I will do. When I am done it should scream Berry but I am not going to risk a weak or poor handling rifle. I am a pretty good designer and I think I can pull this off.

I worked on the lock and installed all the new parts. The first step was to fill the old holes. I do that by deeply counter sinking both sides of the hole, threading in steel rod and clipping it off about 1/8" high on either side. I peen it down into the countersinks and then use my gas welder to melt it into the countersink and hole.





Then I file off the excess and old holes are gone.



Next I fitted a Siler tumbler, bridle, sear, mainspring, sear spring, and the flintcock.












I have to polish up the springs and clean everything up. Then heat treat the works. I annealed the frizzen to clean it up and I will eventually case harden it and many of the parts. The frizzen required fitting to the pan after filing off the "waterproof lug" on the bottom of the pan cover. That lug really serves to hide the gap between the frizzen and pan, which I removed. Tomorrow, I will clean up the lock and get back to the stock. Oh, and the sear bar of the lock remains in the same position on the plate at rest, half, and full cock, yet to has a nice light release at full.

dave

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
Got back to the Berry yesterday and today. Wonderful sunset yesterday!



I installed the barrel lugs, inlet the stock for them, and drilled the pin holes. I use 3/32" spring steel for the pins. I like the mortises to be nice and tidy.



However, I made a mistake on one lug when drilling it. As you can see by the mortise, the lug bases stick up a little above the barrel flat. What occasionally happens to me is I measure the location of the pin hole too close to the bottom of the barrel and the drill hits the edge of the raised base and deflects upward a little. The result is the hole on one side of the stock is slightly higher than the other. When the stock is pared down, the difference essentially disappears and is no more than half the width of the pin.

I started inletting the lock. First, I pare down the side of the stock so there is not much extra thickness. It is a mistake to inlet a lock with too much wood in the way because you will create gaps along the edges of the mortise that you cannot see and you risk badly chipping the wood when you remove the plate. I inlet the bolster first so I can lay the lock plate flat against the wood.





Then I trace the outline of the lock with a carving knife, stab the border in deeper, and back cut the edges.








Using larger and smaller shallow sweeps, I cut away the bulk of the wood within the mortise.




Then I smooth the bottom with a flat chisel and a flat dog leg chisel until the lock plate installs nicely in the mortise.





Next up, I inlet the lock internals and start shaping the stock. All the other hardware gets inlet after some shaping, not before. A nice feature of this lock is the pan fence is positioned such that it butts against the end of the barrel with the center of the pan sufficiently forward of the end of the breech plug. That is a nice touch.

dave

 

[Artificer]

Hi,
Next up in my queue is an early Peter Berry inspired by the gun below.







This has always been one of my favorite guns because it is dramatic and unusual. However, I have a love-hate relationship with Berry, or Berrys if you accept the father and son hypothesis, because they were immensely creative but the execution is sometimes disappointing. He or they were prolific carvers but definitely not of the caliber of Isaac Haines. Then again what other colonial or golden age makers were? I definitely will recreate the odd alignment of the patch box but I am not sure I will go as far as having the lower butt molding run right through the brass. I discussed this project with Allen Martin and he urged me to do all the funky stuff. I like funk and folk but not crude. We will see what happens. I would appreciate reading folks thoughts about that. One change I will make right off is I will beef up the wrist at the comb a little both in width and height. On the original pictured above, that point measure only 1 3/8" in height. There are 3 Berry's I've seen with this stock architecture and 2 have broken wrists. Not a good sign.

I am using a sugar maple stock with moderate curl cut and dried in Vermont. The barrel is a "C" weight Allentown profile by Rice in 54 caliber. The original rifle has a barrel about 1/2" longer and smaller caliber but a similar profile. However, the original gun weighs 12 lbs. Mine will be lighter and much better balanced. I have a sand cast butt plate that is close to the right style and size. The original is 5.5" tall. Mine is 5.375" tall. I still need to find a good trigger guard. The lock presents another problem. All of the commercially made round-faced English-style locks that I like are too large. It is critical the lock be scaled correctly to maintain the architecture. The only lock that fits is the L&R Queen Anne. So I am going to build a completely new lock using the L&R plate, frizzen, flintcock, top jaw, and feather spring, and Siler parts for everything else a la Chris Immel (aka Stophel). It will eventually be a very good lock.

The first job, while I am waiting for the Siler internal parts is to clean up and flatten the lock plate. I don't have a milling machine but I do have good files and I flatten lock plates very precisely. A few swipes of the mill file shows how uneven the inside of the lock plate is. There is always a depression where L&R stamps their logo.






Fortunately, it is in a harmless location, however, on this lock the whole area where the upper portion of the bridle fits was in a depression. Careful filing cleaned that all up.



Now it is ready to fit new internal parts. I am waiting for those so I fixed the stupid lug issue on the frizzen. L&R has this lug on the frizzen that fits down into the pan. They advertise that it is a waterproof measure. Actually, it draws water down into the pan as well as compresses the priming powder. Anyway, no locks of that style or time period having anything like that. I am fitting a new frizzen because it will be so much easier to do than fit the fitted frizzen that came with the lock after eliminating the lug. I ground the lug away and filed a proper notch that prevents powder at the vent hole from being compressed slowing ignition (ever thought why all those English locks have that notch?)






I am still waiting for the lock parts so I worked on the stock. Dave Keck inlet the barrel and ramrod groove and hole for me. He did a great job but I made a miscalculation where the breech of the barrel should be positioned. I am not sure how I screwed that up but the barrel needed to come back almost 5/8" inches. The dark marks on the stock show where the breech ended previously and how much I moved it back.



This is instructive because it shows that you can change the position of swamped barrels quite a bit without creating gaps in the barrel inlet. Certainly, a lot depends on the profile of the barrel but I was able to move this barrel back quite a ways with no trouble. It meant cutting out the breech further back and scraping the barrel inlet near the muzzle to accommodate the flare. It worked really well.










I trimmed up the stock a bit and here is where I am.







dave

Hi Dave,

Have to admit, I've seen the notches in the bottoms of English Frizzens, but never realized it was to ensure the priming charge would not get crushed. Very interesting.

I've come to learn my eyes play tricks on me when looking at photo's, but just have to ask about the lock plate on the original rifle you posted pics of here. It looks pretty flat or with almost no rounding/curves to the plate? The rounded cock sure stands out against it. So is there almost no rounding on that plate or is it the result of the lighting of the photo?

How much trouble did you have fitting Siler parts to an L&R lock plate? I noticed you filled in most of the old holes to make new ones to fit the Siler parts, but I was particularly interested in the hole in the plate for the Tumbler and how well the Siler Tumbler arbor fit it?

Just Love these tutorials of yours!

Gus

 

[dave_person]

Hi Gus,
The lock plate is convex like Chambers round-faced English lock. It was either an English import or possibly one made by "Perkins" in Philadelphia. You occasionally see those on other rifles like at least one by Oerter. Fitting the Siler parts was not entirely straight forward. The original tumbler hole was a tiny bit smaller then a Siler tumbler so reaming a precise fit was easy. I initially thought most of the other holes would work as well for the Siler parts but realized all had to be filled and drilled again. However, the end result is a far better lock than the stock L&R Queen Anne. The flintcock has a fairly long throw but flints hit the frizzen at a really good angle and give a long scrape. I suspect this lock will be extremely reliable and fire every time. Another nice feature is the let off of force going from half cock to full.

dave

 

[Artificer]

Hi Gus,
The lock plate is convex like Chambers round-faced English lock. It was either an English import or possibly one made by "Perkins" in Philadelphia. You occasionally see those on other rifles like at least one by Oerter. Fitting the Siler parts was not entirely straight forward. The original tumbler hole was a tiny bit smaller then a Siler tumbler so reaming a precise fit was easy. I initially thought most of the other holes would work as well for the Siler parts but realized all had to be filled and drilled again. However, the end result is a far better lock than the stock L&R Queen Anne. The flintcock has a fairly long throw but flints hit the frizzen at a really good angle and give a long scrape. I suspect this lock will be extremely reliable and fire every time. Another nice feature is the let off of force going from half cock to full.

dave

Ah, are you talking about "Perkins" the Elder or the founder of the business in his name that his son carried onward? Since he was English trained and came over here trained in that style of making locks, I can see how that could have been one of his now that you mention it. The only reason I know this is from recent discussions on M 1792 rifles and he was one of the lock contractors, as I recall.

Very good to know information on the hole in the lock plate has to be reamed to fit the Siler Tumbler. Thank you!

Perhaps one day we might impose upon you to explain the order you fit the parts to a bare lock plate and thus how you figure and spot the holes for the screws? I only have a vague idea how to do that, but I bet more folks than me would be very interested in reading about it.

Meanwhile, I'm tickled pink to be following this thread!

Gus

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
Well I got a bit more done. I finished inletting the lock. I like a nice and clean lock inlet. Many 18th and early 19th century long rifle lock mortises were hogged out without a lot of care. Not mine. I do it the piece meal way. I first inlet the plate, then using the plate as a template, mark the holes for the bridle, sear, and sear spring screws. I drill each screw to the appropriate depth and diameter of the screw head. Then I insert the screws in the holes, position the bridal on those screws and trace it. I inlet it shallowly with chisels and then use a Dremel with router bit to hog out the wood for the bridle. I then trace the outline and travel arc of the tumbler and rout that space out with the Dremel. Using the sear screw as a guide, I position the sear, drill its deep hole for the trigger bar and rout our clearance for its head with the Dremel. I do the same with the sear spring. Finally, I drill out wood to the depth of the mainspring and then use the Dremel to clean up the mortise.



I worked over the butt plate. I bought a large early "Lancaster" sand cast butt plate that had enough excess brass to be shaped for the rifle. The toe of the plate had a mass of sprue, which allowed me to peen and stretch the toe almost to the length of the original rifle. I then cleaned up the plate giving it the more delicate shape of the original. Many folks seem to ignore the architecture of their butt plates. That is a big mistake because it defines the shape of the butt, a major feature of any gun. In this case, the sand cast plate had a lot of excess mass allowing me to shape it appropriately. I often see contemporary guns where the edges of the butt plate are way too thick. They should be very thin to look historically correct until you get into the mid-19th century. I reshaped the butt plate after a lot of filing. It looks good now. The bottom of the plate had a thickness from the casting sprue that enabled me to peen and stretch the bottom close to the original butt plate's heigth of 5.5". Mine is now just under that by about 1/32".

dave

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
I got the butt plate installed. On those with very shallowly domed returns, I usually just cut the stock flat on top but this one has a pretty high dome so I preserved wood to fill that space.



The installation came out nicely.








My favorite tool for fitting a butt plate is my fine cut Dragon rasp. It cuts fast but very cleanly and can match the profile of any arc in a butt plate. When I drill for the top screw, I make the hole in the butt plate and use it to lightly mark the wood with a heavy center punch that fills the hole. Then, I punch a deeper hole with an awl that is offset about 1/32" from the previous mark toward the front. Then install a screw, which pulls the plate tight against the comb.



I partially countersunk the screw heads but will finish the job when I dress the heads.

I started whacking wood off the butt stock with my Japanese hand saws, chisels, gouges, and rasps. A really helpful tool is the "gunsmith" rasp by Liogier. It is half round and long so you can work on the cheek piece without the handle interfering with the stock. You can begin to see the Berry starting to emerge.






dave

 

[dave_person]

Hi,

I shaved a lot more wood off the stock. The cheek piece on the original sticks out quite far so I am leaving plenty of extra wood to work on. The top of the comb is too Reading like and needs to more gently arc into the wrist but I won't touch it until I've peeled away more wood.







I am beginning to trim down the fore stock and forearm and need to establish the bottom line of the stock. For that, I want to fit the rear ramrod pipe. The rear pipe tang has a truncated taper and a fairly prominent bulge at the step. Ted Cash's octagonal rear pipe was just the ticket after modifying it. After annealing, I used my pipe forming mandrel to raise the step a little. I simply held the pipe in my vise, slipped the mandrel into it and hammered it downward.






Then I annealed the pipe again, and tapped it from the inside with a hickory dowel that had the end rounded. I used a maple form I have for rear pipes. That added a little more height and I finished the job with files.

I'll inlet it tomorrow. As you can see there is a big bark inclusion behind the cheek piece. It is very hard and tight so right now I am treating it like some folks treat any annoying whine coming from their car's engine by just turning up the radio and ignoring the sound until some idiot light comes on (hence, the name). I am ignoring it for now.

dave

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
I inlet the rear pipe. In the process, I thought I would share a short cut I use in cases like this.





The rear pipe was fashioned from a standard Ted Cash octagon rear pipe. I did not touch the actual pipe, just the tang. Because it is manufactured, the pipe portion is identical to the forward pipes he produces. So I inlet one of the forward pipes instead of the rear pipe, which simplifies the process a lot.






I mark the position of the tab and then drill a series of holes the width of the tab. Then I just cut out wood between the holes using a broken piece of fret saw blade held by a scalpel handle. I also use a needle file I ground and honed into the shape of a skew chisel. This makes cutting the slot easy. I then inlet the pipe.



I test alignment of the pipe with the ramrod hole, which is easy using the ramrod drill. Now I just have the step and tang to inlet without worrying about the actual pipe. I just gradually inlet it backward until the job is done.









Now I can establish the bottom of the stock before inletting the trigger and trigger plate.

dave

 

[lexington1]

Anxiously watching your build! I had the remnants of an original Berry rifle, so this is very interesting.