Your first ML rifle
- Thread starter Gene L
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I'm guessing many of these kit or beginner guns are in a cabinet or gun safe with their bigger and more expensive "cousins". And I 'm almost as sure that they bring a smile to their owners face when they remember the good old days.
Exactly so! My son and I assembled CVA kits waaay back; early 80's I think. I killed a deer with mine and he killed his first deer with his. I still have them both.
missionary5155
40 Cal.
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My dad was a .69 musket shooter after his Navy days. He and his Navy buddy went near every week to some shoot somewhere in SW Michigan and I always got to tag along. So I never got one of my own till after I got turned loose from the Army in 74. That was a caliber 45 CVA kit I bought at the PX in 73 but the Green Machine snarled at me working on a "gun" in the barracks so it had to sit in the armory until I ET'sd.
Loving this thread! Feel the passion!
Einsiedler
40 Cal.
My first ML wasn’t a rifle but a percussion smoothbore. A Rossi trade musket from Brazil. About .410 bore. Cost me a whopping $19.95 in 1968. Barrel was held in the stock by 3 folded brass barrel bands peened in place. Very rudimentary. But it would shoot. I think I paid $3 for a pound of DuPont FFG powder and Remington caps were like $.50-.$75 a can!
The guns were cheap but the memories are priceless.
Still using mine, have two and they are both made in the USA
davidmc62
40 Cal.
I felt like I was taken advantage of 30 years ago when I loaned my brother $100.00. He gave me his CVA Hawkens 50 cal. for collateral. So far he's never asked for it back. You reckon I got a good deal?
davidmc62
40 Cal.
Well if you have had alot of good shooting with it, the loan value dont matter. I'd say 30 years of a good shooting gun, yep pretty good deal to my way of thinking.
Well I havent really shot it that much, but I feel that I will in the future. I doubt I even shot $100.00 worth of lead and powder through it yet. But I feel reluctant to ever give it up. He's got his golf clubs, I've got my recreational "toys".
franky4me
Pilgrim
1978 on the last page of Firearms Safety News a paper for firearms safety instructors an add from CVA to get a 50 cal cap Mountain rifle at cost plus a free inscription on the barrel... asked my wife it it could be my Christmas present and so it reads on the barrel François de Anne-Marie (Francois from Anne-Marie) Used it to kill my first black powder Caribou a few years later.. since then I switched to flintlocks and got numerous other caribous or deer the last one with my TVLLE "fusil de chasse" in 16 g smooothbore
My first muzzle loader was and still is a 45 caliber flintlock long rifle. It was in 1983. My wife and I moved home to Winnipeg from Edmonton where I went to work at a large teaching hospital. Because I was the newbie on the bench there I was relegated to work beside the supervisors office with another new tech. One of the best things that ever happened to me as we became life long friends. He was from Allison, Ontario and very interested in old firearms and had bought up a kit of parts to build a long rifle. The barrel I believe was a Green Mountain barrel and the lock was a beautiful replica of a Durs Egg flintlock made by John Clark in Ontario. My friend was a real stickler for being period correct and accurate and something had gone wrong with the build which he just could not come to terms with. I don't remember what. But the barrel and lock were inlet and the butt plate was on and that is where he got stalled out. I knew nothing about period correct and could care less at the time I just wanted to shoot a muzzle loader. So he sold me the parts. The barrel and lock were inlet and the butt plate was on. Otherwise it was a raw chunk. I managed to finish it up and it may not be the prettiest rifle around but it is a sweet shooter and still one of my favorites. I will post some pictures one of these days. Some will I am sure say some of the work is hideous but you know what they say about opinions. I have two other rifles now, one a beautiful 40 caliber Ohio half stock made in the 1980s that I bought a few years ago when I sold some farm land I inherited and another .577 calibre hunting rifle built around Enfield military hardware that the same friend gifted me after I gifted him a 32 calibre CVA half stock that I had tarted up a bit for use by his son. Even so, that first 45 caliber is the best shooter and the one I like the most. We had a lot of fun with that rifle. My friend has since moved to Ottawa, Ontario but we still get together often. He is currently lusting after a 22LR Marini Henry conversion he found on the internet somewhere in the Maritimes.
GreenMtnHunter
Pilgrim
1971. Antonio Zoli .58 Zouave. I remember casting minie balls in the basement with a tuna fish can over a bernzomatic torch. High tech operation that was. Still got it.
Had a tin Christmas cookie box and cast on my kitchen stove, had to keep about 10 lbs of lead in it at a time so it was deep enough to get my ladle in. Spread foil all over the counter and most of the stove.... worked well.
Both of you melting lead indoors? Sounds like something I'd have done in my younger days. Now my wife wont even let me melt wax on "her" stove.
Use to use one of those ash trays that were cast iron and looked like a skillet. Had to file groove in pourway to get narrow stream. Wire clamped a hardwood stick to handle. Any heat I could find would work. Still have just incase.
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