Almost done with my Virginia rifle!

[Tennessee.45]

Well I'm almost done with my first rifle, it's been a challenge and I've made my fair (or unfair :idunno: ) share of mistakes. I'm not sure which was more aggravating the thimbles or the nose cap which I still have to play with. I still have to inlet the butt plate, cut the rear sight dovetail, finish shaping the stock and put a finish on everything, and of course cut the ramrod to length

I wanted to build the rifle based off an Early Winchester school, but that's not how it turned out. I was given some iron parts and decided to stick with iron. I thought I had ordered a .54 C weight but received a .58 C weight Rice barrel, the lock is a Davis "Early English" lock and the maple stock has really nice figure.

Looking at the picture the middle ramrod thimble looks too close to the front thimble but I measured three times and middle thimble is exactly 11" in front of the entry thimble and 11" behind the front thimble

 

[dlgraley]

Looks good from here. Did you build from a blank?

 

[dlgraley]

Hard to tell from here; is the stock completely covering the side flat of the barrel?

 

[Tennessee.45]

I used a pre carve, I felt a bit overwhelmed since this was my first but my next one I'll be using a blank, the side flats are just over half but under 3/4, I'm working on those now...

 

[wattlebuster]

Looks good from here :hatsoff:

 

[dlgraley]

I started with two Chambers kits, and am currently finishing up with a blank.

 

[JohnN]

Too me the front thimble looks too far back. I'm no expert though.

 

[Tennessee.45]

The picture does make it look too far back but in person looks just right

 

[Chowmif16]

Tennessee,

As we talked about on the "other" forum, I think the RR pipe thing is an illusion, just like you said here.

It's looking good, and I can't wait to see more pictures.

One thing I just noticed by zooming in:
Hard to tell from this photo, but the wood around the RR entry thimble seems to extend past the curvature of the transition from the toe of the entry thimble to the pipe, if that makes sense. I happen to be working on the same part on my rifle and just looked through the books. I think the wood should match the profile of the toe-to-pipe curve. If it's an illusion again, my apologies!

Cheers,
Norm

 

[Tennessee.45]

Assuming you're talking about the entry thimble, the wood is proud there, I've been trying to get the wood down In the flats, it's still a bit to high for my liking

 

[frogwalking]

The front thimble needs to be back a ways, and the forearm thinned down so the ramrod is easy to grab and pull out. It looks fine.

 

[54ball]

You may be in for some trouble bringing those barrel rails down. It's best done while the forestock is still in the square. It's a lot easier to bring the rails down and drill the pins while it's in the square.

Do not feather edge the fore stock rails into the side flat of the barrel until the height is brought down to where you want it. If you thin the rails before you bring them down, you risk chips tears and splits. It's really thin be careful and take your time. A rasp can grab and tear out that thin wood, it's best done with files or very carefully with scrapers.

Mark where you want the rails to be with a straight edge. This will avoid the roller coaster look if you do it by eye.

 

[Eric Krewson]

No trouble bring the rails down; I use a sanding block called a "sand devil". You can load it with different grit belts, I used 100 grit to take rails down on my last 3 builds. Takes about 1/2 hour going slow and putting the barrel in a and out to check progress.

I use the same block to blend the cut down rails into the rest of the stock. I actually make long sweeping moves with the block but needed one hand free to take the picture.