Fellas, I have a good 15/16 50 cal 36 inch bbl. I am thinking about a flinter, full stock hawken, What was the typical bbl length of the early hawken flinters, also they were made with both brass and steel furniture werent they? What would be a good flint lock, lock to use in a build. I want to make a gun as close to the originals as I can. Kind of tired of all these hawken wanna be guns around, yours hounddog
original hawken barrels
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The ones I've read about mostly had barrels heavier than yours and tapered. I'd start by swapping barrels if you want something besides another wannabe.
A 1" or 1-1/8" barrel at 36" long would be closer to the originals. I'm not so sure they were all tapered. Kit Carson's Hawken was, but that doesn't make them all tapered.
Steel furniture was probably more common than brass.
Jeremiah Johnson's rifle (the movie) was ornate and in real life, I'm not so sure, but I understand most Hawken's were rather plain.
Steel furniture was probably more common than brass.
Jeremiah Johnson's rifle (the movie) was ornate and in real life, I'm not so sure, but I understand most Hawken's were rather plain.
1) The vast majority of still extant Hawken rifles have tapered barrels whether they be half-stock or fullstock. Next in numbers are swamped barrels, which show up on both types. Straight barrels are virtually non-existent - IIRc there are only one or two.
2) Size of Hawken barrels varies dependent on date -
per Don Stith who is one of the most knowledgable of Hawken students.
"Mine (his 1840's era full-stock) is 1.040 taper to .970 and 37", and 52 cal. Fullstocks tend to be smaller barrels with less taper than the half stocks. Personally, I would not go larger than 1 1/16 at breech . With a flint tang I would go 38" long."
Others sources such as James Serven note that the earlier guns averaged 38" long with later ones averaging around 35" - these later ones are where the heavier 1 1/8" breeched barrels show up.
IMO if you are going to build a Hawken of any style you need to gett he books and do the research - basing your ideas on other makers is not always a good idea especially since there is a lot of mistaken knowledge regarding Hawkens.
Yes some were made with brass fittings but those fittings do not necessarily match the iron ones.
As for fancy - the Hawkens built both plain and fancy, one at least has real Silver fittings and includes some mother of pearl inlays.
2) Size of Hawken barrels varies dependent on date -
per Don Stith who is one of the most knowledgable of Hawken students.
"Mine (his 1840's era full-stock) is 1.040 taper to .970 and 37", and 52 cal. Fullstocks tend to be smaller barrels with less taper than the half stocks. Personally, I would not go larger than 1 1/16 at breech . With a flint tang I would go 38" long."
Others sources such as James Serven note that the earlier guns averaged 38" long with later ones averaging around 35" - these later ones are where the heavier 1 1/8" breeched barrels show up.
IMO if you are going to build a Hawken of any style you need to gett he books and do the research - basing your ideas on other makers is not always a good idea especially since there is a lot of mistaken knowledge regarding Hawkens.
Yes some were made with brass fittings but those fittings do not necessarily match the iron ones.
As for fancy - the Hawkens built both plain and fancy, one at least has real Silver fittings and includes some mother of pearl inlays.
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I have a GRRW Hawken made in the 70's as close to original specs as most others, though I'm not sure if the originals were offered in 58 cal like mine. It has a 36" barrel tapered from 1 1/8" to 1" and weighs just over 12 pounds in spite of the larger hole in the middle. And it balances way better than a straight 36" 50 cal 15/16" barreled TC Hawken due to that taper. Makes sense to me.
LaBonte is right. If you want as close to the real deal as you can get you should check out Don Stiths kits. I built one of his Sam Hawken kits in a .58. Not an easy build and I probably wouldn't do one as a first build unless you had some good help. I got some help on mine. His parts are first rate and he gave me a very nice piece of wood also. Great balance with the tapered barrel.
Hounddog, I forgot to tell you that you might want to check out the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. They have a great online virtual library that has some original Hawkens of both full and halfstock, J&S and Sams guns. Good luck. Dew
flintlock62 said:
I have seen JJ's rifle in real life, it is very plain, with steel hardware I am sure. I could not tell what kind of wood as it is pretty much black with age. I could not handle it and can give no details as to barrel dimensions other than it has a long heavy-looking barrel. The one in the movie looks like a TC Hawken to me.
1" straight barrel or 1 1/8 tapered to about 1". Early FS would be 36 to 40" with the 36 being uncommon I would think. Even a very slight swamp would be OK.hounddog said:
While there are brass mounted Hawken "mountain rifles" it would be atypical.
The earlier of the two FS rifles in John Baird's "Hawken Rifles.." would be a good pattern.
But you would need to make your own buttplate or have one made by someone.
This is the buttstock on a later era Percussion FS I built 20 years ago or so.
There is no cast buttplate I know of that is correct brass or steel and they would need rework to fake the brazing line if steel anyway.
The lock is another problem. The only thing close is the L&R full waterproof pan lock but its pretty big.
The R.E. Davis "Ron Long" set trigger is the best bet.
Dan
flintlock62 said:
Because that's what they weighed as did also most of the eastern made rifles from the same period. For instance orders to the Henry Factory for their Lancaster style during that same time (late 1820-1830's) called for the rifles to weigh between 9-11 pounds.
Based on the existing original long rifles most of the lightweight (ie under 8 pound) repros seen today would have been an aberration - look through the books such as Shumway's RCA set and you will see that most rifles included weighed 9 pounds or more.
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When I talked with Don Stith prior to purchasing my J&S Hawken components from him, he told me that the barrel and hardware on Hawkens were blued and the lock was color case hardened, if I recall correctly. He said that if I wanted my Hawken to appear "factory new," that was the way to go, but that a Hawken rifle that was out in the wilderness would have the browned appearance after just a few months, maybe weeks. So, my builder, John Bergmann, browned the barrel and components.
I had an interesting conversation yesterday with a friend who is a true Hawken expert and master builder. In fact, John Baird once wrote a review on a previously undiscovered original Hawken and had it published in American Rifleman. It had been built by my friend about 10 years earlier. Anyhow, he told me the flint Hawkens were made by Christian Hawken, father to the brothers. The stock style was a little different and featured a Tennessee style cheek piece, not a beaver tail that we associate with J&S styles. So the advice to research, if ye want purely 'authentic', is certainly good advice.
Rifleman1776 said:
Not just Dad made flinters - here's a flint rifle made by Sam Hawken either in his father's shop in Hagerstown, Md, or his own shop in Xenia, OH, or in his St Louis shop which he ran by himself from 1822 to the summer of 1825 when he went into partnership with Jake.
This is one of but several now ( I say now since that pic is from Hanson Hawken Book published in 1983) known Sam Hakwn flintlock rifles that were built in the Maryland style in which both he and Jake trained. One of the most knowledgable students/collectors of Hawkens also has a Sam Hawken in that same Md style, but which he claims was made originally in percussion - which would definitely date it into the 1820's.
IMO - Neither Sam nor his brother Jake, who had a shop in St Louis from 1818-1825 with his first partner Lakenan, started out making Rocky mountain rifles, either full-stocks or half-stocks, but those rifles were a development over time and even in some of those rifles dating positively to the late 1830's and early 1840's one can see their early influnces.
As for cheekpieces - Sam continued to use the Tennessee style on full-stock rifles most of the time even until the mid-1850's, but he also used the beavertail style as well on full-stocks.
One of the earliest J & S Hawkens has a style in between the beavertail and Tenn style, it is sort of a rounded end Tenn style or perhaps semi- beavertail, that is much like the cheekpiece used on the US M1814/1817 Common rifle, a style most likely learned by Jake when he worked at Harper's Ferry.
And yes if you want to get it right when making a real Hawken copy then you need to do the in dpeth research because the styles changed over time as well as the materials.
Even things like the shape of the beavertail cheekpiece changed over time - the earlier J & S style is smaller/narrower than the later S Hawken mountain rifles such as the Bridger and Carson rifle made and marked S Hawken after the summer of 1849 when Jake passed on.
Thank you for that explanation and bit of history. My conversation with my friend was only about ten minutes, not a full lecture series. However his explanation of the cheek piece evolution was identical to what you said.
