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Vintage ‘Turner Kirkland’ 40-cal flintlock

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Joined
Dec 30, 2004
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I picked this little flinter up for someone who wants to try a flinter without spending an ‘arm & a leg’ to start. They don’t like the ‘humps’ on the Pedersoli KY or PA flintlocks, so I had suggested a gun-in-the-white by Jackie Brown or a Kibler Southern Moutain Rifle.

Well I saw this one at a recent show for pretty cheap, although the vintage shellac finish needed a refinishing. It was also pretty ‘blonde’, being a European beech stock. I refinished and stained the stock (Tapaderra’s ‘Winchester brown/red’ stain), then applied 8 hand-rubbed oil coats and 2 of wax, then tuned up the lock. I think it came out pretty good!

It wears a Belgian-proofed 13/16” barrel 40” long and has a lock marked Italy, that sparks great. No issues there. This is also built like a ’real’ longrifle, meaning all pinned together and not just built cheaply using screws to attach items like ramrod pipes and trigger guards, as many of the relatively inexpensive import flinters do.

I’m told these were imported for a few years in the early 60s and the barrel is marked Turner Kirkland with the city & State below it.

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Nice work refinishing the rifle. Hopefully it is the cause of another flintlock addiction.
 
I remember those days quite well.
As a young teenager I spent a lot of time slobbering over his catalogs.
I have a Flint Pistol that is marked the same way.
He was a friendly guy and easy to talk to.
 
just started my Kibler .40 Southern Mountain Rifle. Super easy build (i've gone as far as a stock from a blank, so this is very easy by comparison,). Graceful and lean. nice lock and the finest trigger i've pulled in many years (cnc machined), pricey, but a great way to go if you can pull the coin into one pile ...

i only do this about once every two years, so it boils down to a few bucks a day...
 
Well, she journeyed up to VT and we shot it with the 'new Owner' over the weekend and he loved it! Actually, I let him and his son do all the loading and shooting. So ... we successfully added another NEW shooter to the flintlock family! ( ... just gotta get him to stop 'peeking' to see if he hit the gong!)

Many thanks fo Rich Pierce for joining us and helping me to introduce the 'new guy' to our pursuit in the right way, many thanks Rich!



 
Dixie Gun Works "Kentucky" Rifle. Later models had the "candy stripe" ram rod. Nice find! Many people confuse these with the much later "Tennessee Mountain Rifle"
 
Almost 60 years ago I bought my first DGW catalog. That rifle, as I seem to recall, was offered in .40 and .36. The .40 was touted as "the" deer caliber with the .36 being "the" all around rifle. I drooled over the pictures and read then read some more. This was long before "magnumitis" infiltrated muzzleloading and before rules with minimum caliber restrictions for deer.

It was just happenstance that when I got my first flintlock it was a Numrich Arms .45 "minuteman", and it was a good one with a maple stock, great sparking lock and a 39" straight barrel. Cost was a bit more than the DGW longrifle but I never quibbled over the details.
 

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