"Restoring" a basket case original.

[IanH]

Hi all, new to the site and and new to flintlocks as of this year but not new to gunsmithing or rifle building. So far I have put together a Kibler SMR to learn how they're supposed to go together and built a trade rifle from a board, barrel, lock, and flat steel.

My late father in law had several flintlock rifles that were mostly for decoration and of unknown vintage. This one had been converted to percussion, shortened, and very poorly repaired and refinished a very long time ago but since the advent of original, liquid Acra-Glas and tinted varnish. The barrel is hand forged and pitted evenly throughout the seven lands but good enough to use. The stock is junk but I'm trying to save it.

Here's what I started with:

The barrel had been set back an inch from the breech end, a no-fly percussion lock installed (half-cock notch wrecked by double-set triggers), barrel ground down for the drum, wood severely burned and rotted away from the breech of the barrel and around the lock, toe broken off and replaced with a mon-matching wood scrap, nosecap poorly inletted to the shortened stock, patch box lid a corroded mess from ancient patch grease filling the box, and a host of other issues.

 

[IanH]

First step was fully disassemble the rifle and strip the finish off of the stock, then scrape all the punky spots down to good wood. The stock was split through both tang screws (wood screws) and the grain direction through the wrist is scary, so I decided to replace the breech plug with one having a long tang and install tang bolts through both front and rear of the trigger plate. I had to part 4" off of the barrel to get to clean metal for mating with a flintlock bolster anyway so machining for a new plug was not any extra work.

Not much to work with but I have lots of Acra-Glas!

 

[Phil Coffins]

Good project and it sounds like you may have the skills to do justice to this project. Id suggest you toss the Acura-Glass and splice in appropriate wood.

 

[IanH]

I considered trying to splice in new wood but so much of it is gone it would take me forever and would probably look worse than epoxy. Restocking is likely what a smith of the time would do. I don't think the barrel is really nice enough for a full-reset to new so I'm taking the easy way out to make it structurally sound and a shooter again.

I didn't take photos of all the detail work but I remounted the butt plate, fixed the broken toe, filed the top of the butt plate so it is now straight with the comb, epoxy bedded the trigger plate, did some minor reshaping and straightening of the trigger guard and sunk the trigger guard down to the proper depth, brazed the hole in the rear tab and redrilled it, epoxied some pin hole blowouts, installed the new tang, inletted and bedded the tang and barrel, reshaped the cheeks and blended them with the wrist, re-drilled all the barrel pin holes in the stock, re-inlet and repinned the poorly mounted ramrod thimbles and inlet pipe, straightened out the snakey ramrod channel, bedded the lock, straightened out and re-inlet the patch box hinge plate, pulled out the loose inlays and glued them back in, bedded in a new Kibler Ketland flint lock, re-inlet the side plate and drilled the hole for the lock bolt, installed a touch hole liner, and test fired it. Forgot to mention it's a .32 caliber and I had spent about four hours lapping the barrel to get the worst of the tight spots out of it. Also faced, coned, and crowned the barrel on the lathe. It shot well so I was relieved enough to proceed with finishing all the myriad of other details remaining.

25 yards kneeling, 20 grains of 3F, .016" ticking spit patch, .310" Hornady balls, first five shots, the two off to the right and high were me wobbling around and called, it wants to group in that little cluster just to the left of the bullseye. I'm a happy camper!

More to come....

 

[Comfortably_Numb]

That gun was never flint.

 

[RMH]

That gun was never flint.

It is now!

 

[IanH]

That gun was never flint.

Why, did it used to be yours?

I'm always open to a good education, that's mainly why I'm here. The pitting along the barrel flats and burned wood saturated with powder residue both fore and aft of the touchhole are characteristic of a poorly maintained flintlock. The corrosion pattern is inconsistent with a percussion drum. Also, the breech plug has a fire groove filed in it which does not match the location of the drum. The barrel was set back an inch and re-breeched, the nose cap set back, and the barrel pins re-drilled. The old holes were filled with Durham's water putty. That's all I got. It might have started life as percussion but I think it wore a flint lock at some point. The barrel might be 100 years old or it might be 200 and been through more than one stock already.

No way to know, but I'm certain it wasn't Lawrence of Arabia's rifle so I'm just patching it up into a shooter.

 

[Comfortably_Numb]

It's an Ohio gun built long after the flint period.

 

[IanH]

I don't care what you do to this poor old relic, but you do know this sort of restoration is not generally acceptable these days, right? Generally, you try and preserve the history and do as little damage as possible. This is sort of hair raising.

That ship sailed when the last monkey hacked on it 50-60 years ago and painted the whole thing with tinted varnish to cover up their mess. I'm trying to save it in general, at this point anything is better than it was if a fellow can enjoy actually using it. I do respect the preservation of historical artifacts but if anyone has trouble "accepting" what I'm doing to this particular mess, then I estimate that they have a severely overdeveloped sense of self-rightiousness.

Interesting about it being an Ohio rifle. There isn't a single mark on it except a vibro-engraved SSN inside the patch box lid, probably belonging to the aforementioned previous monkey. Any further information you could share or links to appropriate reading? I've been studying a good bit about flint era guns but ovbiously haven't worked up through the early percussion era.

 

[Eric Krewson]

Is that Bondo or accraglass? If you had used accraglass you could have tinted it to match the wood color and adjusted the wood color to match the accraglass.

I thought about bidding on this really beat-up flint rifle converted to a percussion drum that still had the flintlock on it that came up on an auction to see if I could restore it. I have done some extensive wood patching on several modern M/L stocks that I should have thrown in the burn pile but managed to pull off.

I actually enjoy the complexity of of wood restoration and making my work disappear but I didn't know if I wanted to jump in with both feet on this one

https://hibid.com/lot/159743095/long-percussion-rifle-musket---as-is?ref=catalog
As you can see it went for only $225 but my son buys from this site and said they would probably charge $200 for shipping, that plus the buyer's premium would be more than I wanted to pay for a questionable project.

 

[Dusty_Traveler]

I do understand that it's your gun and your money, but you did ruin a collectible rifle that was in very nice shape to start with. Please, for the sake of history, stick with contemporary pieces to do this kind of stuff to.

 

[64Springer]

I don't care what you do to this poor old relic, but you do know this sort of restoration is not generally acceptable these days, right? Generally, you try and preserve the history and do as little damage as possible. This is sort of hair raising.

Taint that the truth.

 

[Mulebrain]

That rifle was in pretty good shape compared to other originals I have had. Maybe next time, heed some advice from
folks who really know these guns.

RESTORE implies a return to an original state after depletion or loss.

 

[mushka]

Well the OP said early on he wanted to make it structurally sound and a shooter again. I guess he did whether anybody liked it or not. His gun he can do what works for him.

 

[springfield art]

First step was fully disassemble the rifle and strip the finish off of the stock, then scrape all the punky spots down to good wood. The stock was split through both tang screws (wood screws) and the grain direction through the wrist is scary, so I decided to replace the breech plug with one having a long tang and install tang bolts through both front and rear of the trigger plate. I had to part 4" off of the barrel to get to clean metal for mating with a flintlock bolster anyway so machining for a new plug was not any extra work.

View attachment 230961

View attachment 230962

Not much to work with but I have lots of Acra-Glas!

Fun and Informative!

 

[IanH]

I guess I should have let my mother-in-law donate it to the prop department of the local community theater like she did with her late husband's entire, pristine WWII military uniform collection before any of us could stop her.

It IS tinted Acra-glas, as I mentioned, black. BONDO IS PINK. You can't match color accurately with epoxybdies, don't even try, the only color that ever works for repairs is black.

There were two coats of finish: some of the original and the heat-damaged coat of tinted varnish which had also been slopped on some of the furniture and covered up a lot of crack filling and repaired splits on both sides of the front forestock which had been done with original, liquid Acra-Glas by the last guy who set the barrel back an inch without moving the tenons in the barrel to match the original stock holes. So if you think that was original finish you aren't as smart as you think you are.

Not safe or shootable and not structurally sound is not "in nice shape to start with", as far as I'm concerned, we'll just have to disagree on that one, maybe it is to some. Neither can you say I destroyed it. It is almost finished, looks quite nice, wears all the evidence of all that has been done to it by various people throughout history to keep it in usable condition, and will live on by people who will care for it and enjoy it for the reasons it was crafted in the first place. If that bothers you, that's too bad.

The point is taken but poorly delivered. It is no wonder this sport is declining with the attitudes expressed by some. Have fun clinging to your rotting antiques which really should be in static display in museums instead of hoarded in small personal collections by a few.

Goodbye.

 

[dneprdude]

 

[IanH]

I checked back to see if Meriwether had fulfilled my request to close my account and in the meantime got some photos in the daylight. Since he has not yet, might as well post them for further ridicule before I go.

Genuine, homemade ferric nitrate stain, blushed with a non-correct electric heat gun, two coats of drying oils. Still needs some screw heads shaped and darkened, all the brass nails cleaned up and installed, some patina put on the brass in the spots where I had to remove it, and some darkening done to the appropriate areas and especially to blend the Acra-Glas fill into the wood around the lock plate, barrel breech, and front bit of the tang.

Just to tee-off the purists (not really, but it no doubt will) I coned the muzzle with a boring bar with the bore center itself indicated true on both ends via 4-jaw chuck and outboard spider (it was pretty deeply and deliberately if not very accurately coned to begin with) and installed a stainless-steel TH liner....with a screwdriver slot in it.

I know the browning touch up on the top and right barrel flat and tang sucks because it's way too smooth and light so I will redo it with LMF rust-pit-in-a-bottle so it woll better match the 200 years of crusty rust on the rest of the barrel that I was actually quite careful to preserve.

 

[Gtrubicon]

Like the project or not, the op is doing what he deems necessary for the rifle. **** o Lou, not everyone builds muzzleloaders professionaly. This is his path for the rifle. If y’all feel this strongly about saving a rifle then you should put your money where your mouth is and bid them up so the rest of us commoners can’t afford them. I’d like to see what this fellow does with this rifle, yes it’s unconventional but what does it really matter? The gun wasn’t on its way to the Smithsonian. He’s doing a fine job making a serviceable shooting rifle. I like it.

 

[IanH]

Like the project or not, the op is doing what he deems necessary for the rifle. Cranberries o Lou, not everyone builds muzzleloaders professionaly. This is his path for the rifle. If y’all feel this strongly about saving a rifle then you should put your money where your mouth is and bid them up so the rest of us commoners can’t afford them. I’d like to see what this fellow does with this rifle, yes it’s unconventional but what does it really matter? The gun wasn’t on its way to the Smithsonian. He’s doing a fine job making a serviceable shooting rifle. I like it.

Refresh and you'll see what I did with it while you were typing. That's close to 130 hours of painstaking work to make the multitude of durable, lasting, mechanically sound and correctly functioning repairs and modifications I deemed necessary to put it back into safe shooting order so it can be enjoyed again. I also preserved many of the last monkey's faux pas so his part of the history is not lost. I don't remember if I posted a photo the test target or not but it shoots like a laser beam and the unmolested, original sights are still dead-on at 25 yards.