More progress on squirrel rifle

[Sidney Smith]

Finally got the lock fully inletted. Lock now functions through all settings. As can be seen in the photos, the stock has a lot of wood to remove. I had to carve out a crap load in the area of the cock to get it to function without binding. Fortunately, most of the thickness will be removed when final shaping of the stock is done, so what looks like a canyon now should be more pleasing to the eye in the end. This was my first ever attempt at mortising a lock. All I can say is, glad that is over and I can move on to the next phase. All in all I'm happy with the results thus far. View attachment 7586

View attachment 7586

 

[Rifleman1776]

Congrats on the progress. Looking forward to more.

 

[Huntschool]

Nice job, really nice so far. One thing, you can still reduce the size/shape of the back of the lock mortice a good bit. That will make the lines of the gun flow a good bit better. Dont just take a rat tail rasp and file the radius in but rather stroke the file in a soft motion to create a gentle blending of "line" from the surface of the mortice back to the wrist of the stock. Take your time and look closely at pictures from other contemporary builders.

Great job….. Keep it up.

 

[dave_person]

Hi Sidney,
Looks pretty good. I would clean it up a bit using a flat chisel to scrape the bottom of the mortice. Also, it is much easier to inlet a lock when you do not have a lot of excess wood to work through. I thin the flats around the lock and shape the top of the stock by the breech before inletting the lock. That way you don't have to cut your way through a lot of wood particularly to fit the flintcock. The flats around the lock plate are way too big.

dave

 

[Sidney Smith]

Yes, now that I've done it, I think the next time I'm going to sand the flats a little thinner first before inletting. I am definitely going to reduce the flats in front of and behind the lock to make it flow better, but that will wait until after I have everything inletted. Then during the final shaping I'll make the flats more pleasing to the eye. I'm actually glad I have a lot of wood to mess with. More forgiving of mistakes, and since this was my first ever inletting job on a lock, where I did the whole inlet myself, I'm actually glad I had the excess wood. More room to fix errors that way,.

 

[hanshi]

I think you're doing a good job and look forward to photos of the finished rifle.