What makes a Tennessee mountain rifle?

[Stophel]

You know the early Leman style that you get when you buy a Leman part set today has a similar if different crescent butt plate. Do you know if that was just the direction all civilian guns went? After all the 73 Winchester and even 86 Winch has a painful crescent butt. Seems that by 1850-ish the American notion of riflery(not musketey) believed a severe crescent was necessary for good shooting. Thoughts?

The past was populated by skinny little men with skinny little arms.

 

[Cattywompuss]

Do find it quite comical when others point fingers, make inaccurate assumptions. Pride wasn't the reason for posting.
We're Scotch-Irish and Boone needed our families help too.

Then give us a post worth having Tennessee-Man. Speaking of Boone, I never found the view west as pretty as the view east from our house on top of Snaggy Mountain. Lake Watauga never did it for me. And the daggum Christmas tree farm just over top of the mountain from the house was a waste of land. But my goodness, my 10 year old self wandering those mountains alone with a machete, a hatchet, and a Mason jar never tasted water so good as the branch about 200 feet down from the top of Snaggy.

 

[Cattywompuss]

The past was populated by skinny little men with skinny little arms.

You know, I've spent my whole adult life trying to be one of them skinny men. Dang ol cheese biscuits keep getting in the way is all. By golly, my daddy is 6'3 and 180lbs. All I got was average height and a fight to keep from being pre-diabetic. When I was a kid though I could climb mountains like nobody's business with my stumpy legs.

My granddaddy(mom's side) has never made it past 150lbs, but he would complain about the weight of an SMR or TMR on account of being five foot five inches tall.

 

[Ranger]

Pissing against the wind won't help.
Do agree Christmas Tree farms are an eyesore.
Been running the ridgelines between NC and TN for decades. looking South has advantages.

 

[Ranger]

Oops gotta run. Hounds going off.

 

[Cattywompuss]

Pissing against the wind won't help.
Do agree Christmas Tree farms are an eyesore.
Been running the ridgelines between NC and TN for decades. looking South has advantages.

Main advantage of looking south is cost these days. Only reason I live in Alabama. Well, that and the wife's family roots here. But we moved because it was ridiculously cheap. Used to be you could buy mountain land for the same money as Bama land. Took the wife to the mountains for our honeymoon, drove her up to our old house on Snaggy. We put that house there, bought it from the local high school shop class who built is as a class project. Now it's surrounded by houses.

My folks put that house there after a visit to our friend Billy Boone who had moved an old family cabin from one hill top to another. One room and a loft with a utility light from a generator. Nice little spring house for water. Made me want to build my own, so I started chopping saplings down and notching them off in the woods on my own for a "cabin". Ol Billy ended up in the middle Florida prairie in the end. With a bucket for a shower.

One too many fermented beverages has got me ramblin.

 

[beardedhorse]

Randall Pierce's book is excellent and came out in limited number of copies. Was fortunate enough to meet him and get signed copy at Colorado Gun Collector's Show. Has some pistols in it too, including long barreled "bear" pistol in around .40 caliber. The pattern I noticed in bore size was that all were of smaller than .50 caliber. I owned a Tennessee poor boy in .50 that shot accurately but beat my cheek up. I always liked their simple lines and built one in .54 for our state ml club president. The higher quality curly maple was eye candy and as those who try to inlet them with inlays know it is a pain in the breech. The rifle on the cover of one of Merrill Lindsey's Kentucky Rifle book had a J. G. Gross Tennessee rifle on the cover, Very long tang that extended to the comb of the stock. Rounded lock plate and many have distinctive lock bolt escutcheons. Definitely an offhand rifle and the deep crescent not conducive for bench or prone positions shooting. If I did a lot of target shooting or squirrel hunting a long barrelled Tennessee or Southern Mountain rifle would be the ticket. Unfortunately here in Colorado I can't use a .45 with patched round ball to hunt deer or bear.

 

[Ranger]

Still have one of our homestead cabins. Others either burnt or rotted away. Think the foundation stones on this one was laid in 1840.
Some of the logs from other cabins were used to raise a log barn and spring house. Lot's of folks moved North up to Oak Ridge during the Manhattan project.
Super rich folks blanket the hill sides here now. Country clubs one after another.
They even pay to have fiddlers on woodline trails when they want to stroll through the prime-evil forest.

 

[rich pierce]

I guess we’re mostly done discussing actual Tennessee rifles. Does anyone here build iron mounted Southern rifles from blanks? Have anything cool planned?

 

[tenngun]

You know the early Leman style that you get when you buy a Leman part set today has a similar if different crescent butt plate. Do you know if that was just the direction all civilian guns went? After all the 73 Winchester and even 86 Winch has a painful crescent butt. Seems that by 1850-ish the American notion of riflery(not musketey) believed a severe crescent was necessary for good shooting. Thoughts?

Personally I find that crossbody upper arm hold very comfortable and naturally steady. To a point I use the same hold with my flat butt guns

 

[Big_Rubber_Duck]

Personally I find that crossbody upper arm hold very comfortable and naturally steady. To a point I use the same hold with my flat butt guns

After I learned that that was how you are supposed to shoot guns with a deep crescent they became a lot more pleasant to shoot. That being said, probably not as enjoyable with smokeless powder guns.

 

[toot]

Iron furniture. Distinctive trigger guard. No inlays or carvings. Deeply crescent butt plate with sharply pointed heel and toe that in larger calibers hurts like hell if not mounted carefully.

View attachment 74824
View attachment 74825

and mine has a hole / grease cup in the butt stock also.

 

[Cattywompuss]

After I learned that that was how you are supposed to shoot guns with a deep crescent they became a lot more pleasant to shoot. That being said, probably not as enjoyable with smokeless powder guns.

I grew up shooting crescent buttplates. First time I put a wide flat earlier style Lancaster against my shoulder it was game over. Now I vastly prefer the wide flat.

 

[Johnny Tremain]

How about Tenn black walnut?
It is native

 

[Lipps1948]

Joined this forum just to comment on this thread.
East TN mountain folk have had their own stile of riles before breaking off from NC. Before the Revolution and prior to Statehood 1796.
Many served in the Revolution took their rifles with them and returned with other rifles. They modified them in ways to make them lighter and more accurate.
Our family have been here in East TN before TN became a state and we still have our rifles, our Walker hound breeds and our ways.

Them books are just that....... Books.

Lol, love it yes we do have our ways.

 

[tenngun]

How about Tenn black walnut?
It is native

We know of beech and I may be wrong but I don’t think any cherry was used for them. I’ve seen walnut but it was all on later period guns, maybe post WBTS and modern.
Walnut was the go to wood in Europe, for military and civilian guns,however in America most civilian guns were on maple or a few cherry in the north and vary rare on walnut. I don’t know why. Walnut on civilian guns in America is mostly post WTBS also.

 

[Nameless Hunter]

We know of beech and I may be wrong but I don’t think any cherry was used for them. I’ve seen walnut but it was all on later period guns, maybe post WBTS and modern.
Walnut was the go to wood in Europe, for military and civilian guns,however in America most civilian guns were on maple or a few cherry in the north and vary rare on walnut. I don’t know why. Walnut on civilian guns in America is mostly post WTBS also.

In his 1970 presentation on TN rifles, Robin Hale states that walnut was very popular with TN rifle makers (2nd only to maple), and shows a fine example in a flintlock by Elisha Bull.

 

[tenngun]

Yes but, pre war guns are rare of this style, but walnut seems to have increased popularity after tge WTBS

 

[AZshot]

I have to say, some posts have a lot of misinformation in this thread.

Eastern TN rifles and Western NC rifles had very similar features. Walnut stocks were on 95.5% of them with a few maple. Maybe 1 out of a 100 were other woods. Early gunsmiths supplied the Scotch-Irish families who settled the Appalachians starting in the 1740s and ending during the Revolution. Were long rifles made in TN/NC that early? Probably, but also a lot were brought down from more settled colonies.
But by about 1800 or 1810, there were gunsmiths in the back hills, forging the native iron and building rifles to fight Indians, hunt game (deer, wild boar, turkey) and a generation later, fight bushwackers. It was wilderness.
The Piedmont rifles are fancy with lots of brass and ornamentation because their users lived in towns or on farms near towns, trotting around on fine horses between villages on plank roads. In 1820 Appalachia, there were no towns or roads...it was rough frontier. In the Piedmont, there was no longer a worry about Indians by 1810, but you still had lots of bad guys in the mountain border regions. Just like today, the government expected the border settlers to be a "buffer" against all that bad stuff, and protect the landed gentry down in the flatlands.
Appalachian mountain rifles have a distinct style because of their isolation and resources. Iron ore was around, and used instead of brass which was expensive. Walnut instead of maple. Grease holes instead of beautiful, fancy brass patch boxes.

The styles we study as sounthern mountain started in middle NC, (which were a merging of several Northern styles like Moravian and Lancaster), then moved westward into the foothills counties like Catawba, then further into the mountains of NC, then over the Blue Ridge into eastern TN. In that direction. East to West, from the very late 1700s to the 1830s. Once the styles were established in the counties of the far Western NC, they carried over (literally) into Tennessee. The much earlier, Revolutionary TN "over the mountain boys" surely had Northern long rifles traders brought down to them. It was too frontier in 1776 to even have blacksmiths and such, for the most part.

 

[oldwood]

In some of the m/l parts catalogs , there are actual drawings of original Tenn. rifles , that can be bought for a builder to copy a rifle.