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Is this historically correct?

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The Germanic style lock was rarely if ever used below the so-called Lower, or as non-natives say, Northern, Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, around Winchester.

Would any of the early Virginia rifles made in this area been made with a Germanic style Siler lock, or is this a must be a round faced English lock rifle to be right.

I am wanting to have one built, and being a Lefty I don't have the well made Chamber's round faced lock to choose from.

X
David
 
ApprenticeBuilder said:
Being in the business of being in business, I will reach way out on a limb here (just as you have done) and say that

the particular builder you reference would have purchased his wares in quantity,

15 barrels
15 locks
etc.

Enough parts to hold him over until the next supply run.

Business has not changed that much in the last 250 years, guy brings you in a broken down beat hunk of a rifle you sell him a new one and salvage his parts to repair the salvageable work that comes in later on.

Sounds more plausible


Well said.
 
CrossXstix said:
The Germanic style lock was rarely if ever used below the so-called Lower, or as non-natives say, Northern, Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, around Winchester.

Would any of the early Virginia rifles made in this area been made with a Germanic style Siler lock, or is this a must be a round faced English lock rifle to be right.

I am wanting to have one built, and being a Lefty I don't have the well made Chamber's round faced lock to choose from.

X
David

What period? You may of course, use what you want, but a left hand shooter in the 18th and 19th Centuries would have been a rare thing even though we all realize that "lefties" were as common then as they are now - left handed guns were rare in the extreme. People simply learned (often under severe duress) to do everything that came natural with the left hand with their right instead and that includes shooting or they learned to accept the flash from the pan close across the face. You and I are about the same age and even when we were starting out in school in the 1950s, teachers and parents were still forcing left handed kids to learn to right with the right hand. It is only recently that things have changed.

Frankly, now this is just my opinion, others may disagree, there is no reason for a modern shooter to accept that. We have the luxury of left hand locks being commonly available today that they didn't have then. If you can not find an English pattern lock in lefty version, use the best, most period correct left hand lock you can find and be happy. As long as you do your best to make stock architecture and furniture (buttplate, trigger guard, side plate, patch box, etc.) conform to the period pattern that you want, then you can be happy with it. Always adhere to the patterns used in the time frame that you want to emulate and your your choice will be acceptable, even though it may not be 100% correct in some eyes and you may get some (usually) good-natured kidding about it.
 
CrossXstix said:
The Germanic style lock was rarely if ever used below the so-called Lower, or as non-natives say, Northern, Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, around Winchester.

Would any of the early Virginia rifles made in this area been made with a Germanic style Siler lock, or is this a must be a round faced English lock rifle to be right.

I am wanting to have one built, and being a Lefty I don't have the well made Chamber's round faced lock to choose from.

X
David
Check L&R locks I think they have a early English round face lock in a lefty
 
ol vern said:
CrossXstix said:
The Germanic style lock was rarely if ever used below the so-called Lower, or as non-natives say, Northern, Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, around Winchester.

Would any of the early Virginia rifles made in this area been made with a Germanic style Siler lock, or is this a must be a round faced English lock rifle to be right.

I am wanting to have one built, and being a Lefty I don't have the well made Chamber's round faced lock to choose from.

X
David
Check L&R locks I think they have a early English round face lock in a lefty

Danny Caywood sells the Mike Rowe round face English lock with double drains. Nice design. Mike's stuff is A#1 :thumbsup:
 
I passed based on the input from this thread. Thanks guys! Keep an eye out for a nice mid bore that is historically accurate and in the $1000 range for me :hatsoff:
 
Hi Powerkicker. I have come late to this discussion but I would like to add my two cents worth.

The first settlers in the southern mountais were Irish Presbyterians of Scottish descent, the Scots Irish. They followed English gun making traditions, i.e. walnut stocks, browned iron furniture, and English locks. Cash was scarce and they made nearly everything they used themselves. They did not buy barrels and locks in large quantities as they simply could not afford to do so.

Full time gunsmiths were rare. Rifles were usually made by blacksmiths who made many other items as well. 'Gunmakers and Gunmaking Tools of Southern Appalachia' by John Rice Irwin is an excellent book on this subject. Locks of the English fashion were almost always used but it is almost certain that at least a few Germanic locks would have been recycled from other guns.

It is not incorrect to use a Germanic lock, and in all honesty I prefer Siler locks. Finding a southern mountain rifle with an English lock in the $1,000 price range is next to impossible unless you make it yourself. I have looked high and low for one and have come up empty.

You can buy a rifle with a Siler lock and contact Steve Bookout He can explain how to modify a Siler lock to have a more English appearance. He modified Siler locks to use on his Southern rifles back when he was still making rifles. He prefered Silers for their quick action.

As others have said, do not pass on a gun you like at a price you can afford just because of a Germanic lock. To get a truly "authentic" southern mountain rifle you would have to copy the work of a particular maker, soemthing far more intricate than most people realize.

Good luck in getting the rifle you want.
 
I think it is a nice looking gun maybe post 1812 for mt taste. level of HC/PC if it has a vent liner and is a gun meant to be fairly new then it would not matter about what lock it had. Often we tend to look at one major thing that may be out of place and not notice or ignore as lot of smaller detail, it is up to you of course as to what level you aspire to and whose sand box you want to play in.It wil be heavy if in a .50 cal. or smaller if it has a straight barrel of 42" long. Probably 90+ percent of the guns now offered from that period/area have the Germanic lock so you would not be alone or probably in the company of many who knew the difference. Good luck with whatever choice you make. Sonetimes it is possible to put a different lock in place of the one a gun has if the lock panel is big enough to modify and the vent will align with the pan but that is a lot of work and the odds are against the chances of finding a close enough fit to begin with. One must get a gun pretty cheap to make it worth while. One could really get ballistic and have an English lock made to fit the existing mortice with only minor adjustment of the mortice.Look at your whole kit and see how much that Germanic lock puts you out of tune with the time/place when you look at everything you have.
 
Once the rifle in made changing a Siler into a English lock is not possible.

Dan
 
Locks were often recycled. The mountain gunsmiths used whatever was available. They wasted nothing. You cannot be correct using a later lock on an earlier gun, but using an early lock on a later rifle is not inaccurate. I would not pass on a well made and affordable rifle because of an early Germanic lock.
 
BigDad.54 said:
Locks were often recycled. The mountain gunsmiths used whatever was available. They wasted nothing. You cannot be correct using a later lock on an earlier gun, but using an early lock on a later rifle is not inaccurate. I would not pass on a well made and affordable rifle because of an early Germanic lock.

Sometimes in a discussion each statement can be true or almost true but not hold together. "Locks were often recycled." In general this is true but I have not seen a late flint period Tennessee mountain rifle with a recycled, unaltered, 1770's lock. "Mountain gunsmiths used whatever was available. They wasted nothing." This is a sweeping statement about a lot of different individuals over a long period of time.

I agree that it could have happened, that a 1770's lock could have been used on a 1820's original mountain rifle, unaltered. But i have not seen it, friends who are collectors and handled hundreds of originals have not seen it, but some makers continue to sell such rifles with such locks because they don't know better, are unwilling to change their precarve stock from the 1980's, or can get deals on Siler locks in bulk, or a combination of such reasons. Meanwhile unsuspecting customers think they are buying a rifle that is representative of an original type.

The rifle is probably a very fine shooting rifle, but for the historical re-enactor, requires a complicated story to explain why it is the way it is.
 
BigDad.54 said:
Locks were often recycled. The mountain gunsmiths used whatever was available. They wasted nothing. You cannot be correct using a later lock on an earlier gun, but using an early lock on a later rifle is not inaccurate. I would not pass on a well made and affordable rifle because of an early Germanic lock.
I have been invited to view some large private collections of mountain rifles and none have german locks. I have seen them with english back action locks, but rarely. German locks on mountain rifles just didn't happen.
 
Thanks Mike, you beat me to the issue. I have dealt in antique firearms for over 50 years and as Mike has just said "German locks on mountain rifles just didn't happen".

There may be one or two that had a German lock cobbled in but you can bet is was done years after the use of the arm. I'm not back tracking I know my father and a dozen friends would buy everything that Dixie Gun Works had available in the late 40s and early 50s (guns missing parts - like locks). In those days "wall hangers" were the rage. DGW owner Turner Kirkland and my father were good friends, we would get a lot of old parts, locks included from DGW. Our basement was an assembly line of putting together "wall hangers" every weekend then completed guns were sold at gun shows in and around Eastern PA. "Bastardize Firearms" :doh:
 
Ok, I'm not weighing in on the issue of types of lock on Southern Mountain Rifles :surrender:, I have absolutely NO knowledge of this subject and don't claim to, but I am honestly curious what attributes distinguish a German vs English lock?
 
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Given the broad acceptance of outdated (for the time) Germanic fintlocks used to build what are supposed to be 1820's or later Southern mountain rifles, it makes me wonder how willing folks would be to accept a maker's version sporting a brass JP Beck trigger guard or buttplate. If we follow the logic that they used what they had and parts were often recycled, why not? :stir:
 
I have never seen original "classic" mountain rifles with recycled parts. They have local hand forged barrels or occasionally commercial store boughts. Mounts are always local hand forged with the occasional regional exception of home cast brass mounts. (rare) Recycled parts seem to have missed the Appalachia in the post 1815 period. I suspect one man didn't always make the whole gun, some labor was specialized locally. At least that's my deduction from looking at alot of original guns.
 

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