58 Caliber Hawken Fullstock, gun number 4

The brass keys you see hold the barrel in place.  A nice feature of a Hawken rifle is the hooked breech.  A hooked breech allows a person to remove the keys and take the barrel out for cleaning.

 This is probably the prettiest piece of wood I have ever used.

Here is another part of what makes a Hawken such a good choice for an everyday hunting rifle.  The long tang allows for two bolts to engage the long trigger bar, thus reinforcing the whole wrist area with steel.  The narrow wrist area is the most vulnerable place on the gun.  Many old guns wrists were broken because they didn't have this feature.

I'm not sure how this happened, but the touch hole location sucks!  I was hoping it was close enough, but Craig looked at it and said it might not fire.  As I was planning on selling it I didn't want to go try firing it, so I made a new touch hole that I wish I had taken a picture of.  I used a case hardened bolt as the new vent liner.  I cut a bigger hole in the barrel, tapped some threads for the new vent liner, drilled out a bit of the inside bolt, and then marked for and drilled the touch hole.  I think it will work, but I will do somethings differently next time I make my own touchhole.  I will use a bolt that is only part way threaded, cut it the length of thread I want so that where the threads stop and the bolt gets bigger it will give me something to tighten against (on this one I had to take a punch and beat the crap out of the bolt till it expanded enough to keep it from turning).  I will then be more precise about marking the center of the bolt and hollow it out as far as I can to allow the powder to sit closer to the pan before cutting off the extra material on the other end.  I will leave about an eight of an inch extra so I can cut a slot for a screw driver and then file it off flush with the barrel after installation.