doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com H.D.T.D.T.?

I was going thru some old pictures on my computer and came across these again. Every time I look at them the degree of skill and precison involved in executing this kind of work begs the question "How did they do that"? Yes, the adjectives like experience, skill, pride and so on apply but focus on the detail of finish involved in the last 1% or 2% of effort. Any ideas of the actual techniques used especially in the case of the Purdey? Here, there is only one instance of the slightest tool mark (small chisel cuts best seen with magnification)which appear on the radius of the tang/action-body intersection. The rest of it looks like it was cast from plastic. In the A.H. picture, notice the compound angle/radius cut for the end of the upper main spring leaf and the total absence of tool marks on the "flat" interior portions of the mortise. Amazing work!!
Jim Westberg

A circa 1920 Purdey


A circa 1865 Alex Henry

Until I began restocking sidelock guns, I really didn't appreciate why I might want some of those bull-foot rasps and chisels that Brownell's sells. Now I'm making my own in special shapes 'cause that's the ONLY way a smith can ensure those smooth surfaces inside the mortices.

Just wish my work looked like THAT!
Regards, Joe

Jim, This is a smoothbore Bucks County gun built for me by Paul Allison of Gap, PA. Just thought you would like to see his work.

Nothing special here:


This is the inside:


Jim

Jim,
Very nice work indeed, few original longrifles have a lock mortise that looks like yours. Interestingly, Mr.Allison was able to do that kind of work in maple without the advantages of English walnut. Judging from the incised carving, he knows how to sharpen chisels/tools.
Jim

When visiting the Old Birmingham Gun Quarter many years ago the stocker Malcolm Bowater told me that no files were used when inletting only chisels. I watched him work and it was unbelievable the work that can be done with sharp chisels and lots of talent. The chips removed for inletting a side lock were like cigarette paper on the final cuts. For the shaping of the stock draw knives were the tool of choice for most of the wood removal. He learned the trade partly from his father. When he was apprenticing his father would cover up anything he was working on if he got too close to the bench.
Cheers,
Laurie

Love that "ball and shot" gun, Jim!

Yea, Paul is a perfectionist. This gun is 28 gauge, .550 bore barrel by Bobby Hoyt. It shoots roundball much better than I can shoot it and once in a while I take it out and shoot trap with it. It was gun #200 for Paul.

I know that some guns that were originally rifles were converted to ball-and-shot guns later in their careers by simply reaming out the remaining rifling. But I wonder what the proportion of new purpose-made smoothbores to rifles was for the early frontier gunmakers. Suspect that most folks who wanted a smoothbore just used a worn out or discarded military musket or "trade fusil." But wonder how many purpose-built ball-and-shot guns there were....

I suspect that if you had a close look at some of the guns hung on walls in museums around the country as "classic Pennsylvania rifles," you would find that some of them never were rifles. Frontiersmen were very practical people and if they could use something for several purposes, they did. And, as you say, a carefully bored smoothbore with a tightly fitting ball can be very "woods accurate." And shoot shot, too.