A Labor of Love, My First Rifle to Keep #7

 This is the patchbox I have ever installed.  When its time to install the patchbox the gun is just about done, so in the past I have been in to much of a hurry to try and also was afraid to screw the gun up.  It came out pretty good, some minor gaps.  I was also happy with how the engraving turned out.

 Here is the buttstock carving,  it has not been relieved yet.

 Here you can see how fancy this gun will be, carving everywhere.

This rifle project is truly a labor of love.  I have made five rifles now, four of them being custom guns.  I have sold all of them except my first which is a Lyman Great Plains rifle given to me by Jaimie's Dad as a Christmas bonus (the coolest Christmas bonus ever!!).  This has always been the gun I shoot with at the Rendezvous's.  Don't get me wrong, the gun has always shot well for me.  I just want a custom gun that is not just like the guns shooting next to me (there are not many custom guns out there).   So that is why this project has been such a labor of love for me.  Knowing that this is going to be my gun has heightened the enjoyment of the project immensely.  I didn't take pictures from the beginning so there are many steps missing.  This gun began a few years ago at Dixon's Gun Builder's Fair in Pennsylvania.  I bought a 38" 54 caliber swamped barrel with round bottom rifling by Rice.  The stock was just a block of wood I purchased from Freddie Harrison.  As you can see it is a pretty piece of wood, although not very expensive compared to many pieces of wood out there(100 bucks).  I then gave it to Fred White at the fair and he took it and inletted the barrel and drilled the ramrod hole for me for 90 bucks.  He did a really great job!  It then sat downstairs for a few years.  After Thanksgiving break I was hooked on building guns again and began in earnest working on the guns I already had.  Craig told me about a show he was going to at the end of January where he could sell sell some guns for me, so I began finishing what I could to sell.  As Christmas rolled around Jaimie offered to get me the rest of the parts to complete my rifle.  I decided to make it into a Jacob Dickert rifle that would have been sometime around 1770.

What you are looking at in the picture is the outline I drew on there from a pattern purchased from Track of the Wolf.  I then band sawed off the excess, installed the lock, measured for pull, cut the buttstock down, and installed the buttplate.  

 Here is a picture after hours with the cheese grater to remove a ton of wood.  This curly sugar maple is incredibly hard and dense!

 I was really nervous about taking a block and getting it into the right shape.  You can see my carefully drawn lines to help my shaping.

 Its getting closer, you can see the cheek piece beginning to show

 Here are my cheek piece lines drawn on the stock.

 After a hard Saturday's work it actually looks like a rifle stock!

 Here is the other side and I feel it came out pretty good.  I would not hesitate to build another one from a block of wood.  Having said that I hope I don't mess something up now, although I have done everything from this point on.

I know a picture is hard to show super fine detail, but the wood to metal fit looks like they grew together.  Such a rewarding feeling.