Late as usual”¦ I have been shooting since I was 4 or 5. Remember when there were shooting clubs at school? You could even letter in it. At 13 I started shooting in the NSSA with a 1863 Springfield, I even took it to school to do a history report with it, not today. I used to cast my own minis , along with lead soldiers and sinkers.(Back then there was no lead poisoning ) It wasn’t a year or so later when I really discovered long rifles, I know they were out there a’la Davey and Dan but had never seen one in the flesh. I was over at a friend’s house and heard this explosion, his dad had just dispatched a ground hog with a long rifle out the door of his shop; from that day on I have had the bug. He had a collection of originals and would also make one once in awhile. He had a lot of old parts around that he had collected, some just broken stocks with parts attached, some forearms with barrels, straight and swamped, sights, thimbles, nose caps, pins or keys and inlays still in them. Some of the broken off butt stocks he had had patch boxes in them that still worked. He was form Broadway Va and had been collecting rifles and parts his whole life. He had original bags and horns that went with most of the rifles. He used original barrels and locks that he would recondition, for stocks he used walnut; he was a cabinet maker by trade and had what seemed like an unending supply of it. The piece that he cut my stock out of was so big that it took both of us to move it. He got me started with an old barrel that he helped me fresh out and a flint lock that he had redone. He had been a member of the NMLRA for many years and kept every Muzzle Blast that he had ever gotten, enough of them to keep me reading late into the night for a couple of years. They used to have a monthly column on patch boxes and I traced a copy of every one, still have them. All of the work was done by hand, if he didn’t have the right tool he would modify one or make it. The rifle had a single trigger, one inlay, a half moon in the cheek piece, a toe plate, a simple daisy patch box and the barrel was keyed, it was straight about 40 inches long, he thought it had been cut down and about 40 Cal. I made a bag and horn to go with it and carried with me hunting, trapping, fishing, basically any place I could get away with it. I wanted to build another so I sold what I had, to make a long story short I ended up with a Russ Hamm Bedford Co, flint lock and a .36 cal, 13/16s Douglas barrel and was off and running.
Fast forward 45 years and 19 rifles later I am still running. I would hope that the 15 rifles that are out there are still being shot.
TC
