Bennypapa said:
Rich,
Would you mind listing some of the possible hurdles one might encounter with a Hawken and how those difficulties differ from Penn/Kentucky style builds?
I'd like to know for my own information but I bet the three Hawken building amigos mentioned above would need to know as well.
Thank you,
Ben
OK, let's get started on my difficulties building Hawkens from scratch (3x) and from a precarve (1x). These are memories of building in the 1980's; haven't built one since then.
1) The barrel has a hooked breech that has to be well fitted, cleaned up nicely but still snick into place tightly and not rattle. You'll have to then solder or epoxy it to make it rigid to inlet it. Harder than a flint breech by far.
2) The long tang is a beast to inlet. It must be taken straight down, not down and back, because it swells at the rear screw some. The profile must match the stock perfectly before you start. If you have to mess around and re-bend it mid inlet, now it may be too short or too long for the inlet you started. If you end up taking wood off the wrist, the wrist will become thin vertically and that's not right for a Hawken. The wrist shaping is very important but relies entirely on the shapes and profiles of the tang and trigger you bought. More on the trigger below.
3) The barrel is fastened by keys- harder than pins, and the keys will have escutcheons. Getting keys to inlet cleanly and hold tight in your underlugs and stand up to regular removal is hard compared to pins.
4) The barrel will need a rib and you'll have to solder or drill and tap it. If you solder it, get ready for over-shooting with the solder and cleaning it up so you can brown or blue the barrel. If drilling and tapping blind holes and using machine screws, don't break your taps off or drill into the bore. I'd rather just build a fullstock.
5) Next the lock plate must be cut out so it closely matches the snail on the breech and inlet nicely and be tight. That's harder than it seems.
6) Now your double set trickers have a long, long bar on them and this too must perfectly match the curvature of the underside of the stock. If you bend the bar in the center section where the trickers are, the internals need fiddling to work right. The DSTs have to be set up to work set and unset.
7) Drilling the tang bolts to be perpendicular to the tang and tap well into the tricker plate is tricky. There's no room for wobble and any sloppiness sticks out like a sore thumb.
8) Now you have to inlet a steel buttplate with a lot of curvature and the modern castings are harder than titanium it seems. There's no give so the inlet has to be perfect. Can't gently peen it down like a brass buttplate.
9) The shaping is everything on a Hawken but it's subtle too. No carving, moldings, anything to take the eye away from imperfections in shaping. There's no place to hide. Get it right or it looks bad.
10) I was hoping for a top 10 but ran out at 9, lol.