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Last of the Mohicans Rifle

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Joined
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I need to build a copy of Daniel Day Lewis' rifle he used in the movie Last of the Mohicans. I'm stuck on ,what patchbox did it have , a wooden box , or was it metal ? My copy of the movie is not viewable any longer.
According to a guy I bought the precarved stock from , the gun is not really a copy of any known rifle , but it has Lehigh Valleyish , Pa. characteristics.
I've seen the movie a dozen times , but can't remember the patch box type. Anybody remember???
 
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That rifle is a never was. It was one of the things most wrong with the movie! (Pretty good otherwise)

The builder made three rifles before the producer was satisfied, and is nothing like a rifle of that time period.
Frank House built Mel Gibson's rifles for The Patriot. ( I say "Rifles" as Mel had him build another for himself, and went to visit Frank when he was building it, & tried it down below the house by the creek.)
I add this, because the builder of D-D-L's rifle was paid $5,000 for each rifle.
Frank, when contacted to make Mel's rifle told them, "I want $15,000, but I'll get it right first time!"
Don't know if he did get that much or not...never asked him!

Mark B. trained Daniel D-L to load on the run, live shooting and such, but had no input unfortunately , on the rifle.

All best,
Richard.
 
The rifle was named "Killdeer," and I believe the rifle made for Daniel Day-Lewis to use in the movie was a fully functional firearm built by Wayne Watson. Mr. Watson was a highly regarded builder in his day and I recall he had a very nice website that provided a lot of detail about the rifle. However, the word is that Mr. Watson has tragically passed away. Last time I checked, I could not find his website so I believe it has been taken down.

I read all five of The Leatherstocking Tales earlier in life (three times!) and at one point, took notes regarding passages that provided any physical details of the rifle. I don't know if the movie people or Mr. Watson did the same. I suspect they built a "rifle of great length" typical of the time.

If memory serves (not always reliably, though...) Natty (Hawkeye) mentioned in one of the books that the rifle was built in "York." I think some people assumed this meant York County, Pennsylvania, but events in all of The Leatherstocking Tales (except The Prairie) took place in what is now New York state, and in my opinion, his rifle would have more likely been built there. Surely someone has researched early gunmakers of New York, but I don't know who.

In any event, it sounds as if your client wants a rifle like the one in the movie, not the books. I would research Wayne Watson, on the web as well as on this and the ALR forums, and I would look for more photos to augment the excellent image provided by Tom A Hawk. There is also a fan-based website and forum out there for the movie, but I don't necessarily think many of the participants are "gun guys."

Good luck!

Notchy Bob
 
A very good point brought up. A movie rifle does not necessarily represent a rifle of that time period.
Think about the basics just needed to survive.
Is there an example of a original rifle from that time that could be used as a reference?
 
The rifle was written up in an article in "Muzzleloader Magazine" in 1992 when the movie was made. Maybe the article can be located in a back issue. May/June 1992 can still be purchased on the Muzzleloader web site. (May/June 1992 Muzzleloader Magazine) The rifle is the director Michael Mann's interpretation of a rifle for Hawkeye and is not representative of a rifle of 1757. In Cooper's book, the rifle "Killldeer" came into Hawkeye's possession 20 years previously in the "Deerslayer" so the rifle in the movie "The Last of the Mohicans" is even more out of place. Of course Cooper's description was also not in keeping with such a rifle. I think there were at least two rifles used in the filming.
 
Following is James Fenimore Cooper's description of Killdeer from The Deerslayer. Like most of life's good thing's the rifle is a gift, symbolic of a greater love than the recipient can understand or appreciate

“The piece was a little longer than usual, and had evidently been turned out from the work shops of some manufacturer of a superior order. It had a few silver ornaments, though, on the whole, it would have been deemed a plain piece by most frontier men, its great merit consisting in the accuracy of its bore, the perfection of the details, and the excellence of the metal. Again and again did the hunter apply the breech to his shoulder, and glance his eye along the sights, and as often did he poise his body and raise the weapon slowly, as if about to catch “an aim at a deer, in order to try the weight, and to ascertain its fitness for quick and accurate firing. All this was done, by the aid of Hurry's torch, simply, but with an earnestness and abstraction that would have been found touching by any spectator who happened to know the real situation of the man.

"'Tis a glorious we'pon, Hurry!" Deerslayer at length exclaimed, "and it may be thought a pity that it has fallen into the hands of women. The hunters have told me of its expl'ites, and by all I have heard, I should set it down as sartain death in exper'enced hands. Hearken to the tick of this lock—a wolf trap has'n't a livelier spring; pan and cock speak together, like two singing masters undertaking a psalm in meetin'. I never did see so true a bore, Hurry, that's sartain!”

... Well, well, have it as you say. But this is a lordly piece, and would make a steady hand and quick eye the King of the Woods!"

"Then keep it, Deerslayer, and become King of the Woods," said Judith, earnestly, who had heard the conversation, and whose eye was never long averted from the honest countenance of the hunter. "It can never be in better hands than it is, at this moment, and there I hope it will remain these fifty years.”
 
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the gun was made by a gunmaker turned furniture maker as their was a lot more money in furniture. he made two rifles for the movie set. both the same as the other. he charged them 10,000 for each rifle. i do not anymore about the rifles. in the movie it is said that a silk patch would let the bullet fly faster and further. dont try it it wont work. in fact i may have tried it way back then. silk burns easily. it is no good as a patch. the best patching material is pure linen tigh weave medium weight or the same in hemp material. they dont come apart or burn at all. dont cut either. back to the gun of the movie, dont know anymore about it. some of the indian actors in the movie were from the rez i was working at at the federal hospital there. ive met many of the indian actors and extras over the years working in federal hospitals on reservations. some go back to old movies with clark gable. i think the movie was across the great divide. so much for that, keep us informed if you build this rifle. the stock seems to be a plain type maple with a honey color finish. most likely a very strong stock. i built a half stock mountain man rifle with plain maple and it to was honey colored. really a nice looking stock. very strong.
 
Cooper wrote “The Deerslayer” many years after the time in which the story was set. He used a later knowledge of rifles than what was common during the French And Indian wars.
 
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The Deerslayer was published in 1841, and is set a century earlier in the 1740's on beautiful Otsego Lake (Cooperstown, NY). It's a work of fiction, and no more bound by historical reality than is Hollywood. The Edward Marshall rifle is the earliest surviving American Rifle that I know of, and it dates from the 1760's. Were the Deerslayer an historic person, he likely would have received a rifle that looked more like the Marshall rifle, rather than the much later styled longrifle used by Daniel Day Lewis in the movie Last of the Mohicans. But, since neither Hollywood nor Cooper were primarily concerned with historical accuracy, you too may take as much artistic license as you like.
It's sort of like the Tomahawk my father gave me as a boy. He told me it was the very Tomahawk used by George Washington to chop down his father's cherry tree, and not some reproduction of it. Naturally the blade and handle were later replacements, but everything else was all original as used by George Washington himself and recorded by Parson Weems
 
The rifle from that movie had a wooden sliding patch box with no noticeable carvings. The Shreit rifle(below) was produced in that period and might be a realistic representation of what Hawkeyes rifle could have looked like. As I recall, Hawkeyes rifle in the movie had a more pronounced drop at the comb along with a curve rather the the then the straight line along the bottom If the stock from the toe to the grip area. Bottom photo.
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This has been an interesting discussion. oldwood's client probably wants a copy of the movie gun for the same reason people want duplicates of "The Man With No Name" and "Rooster Cogburn" sixguns (as used by Clint Eastwood and John Wayne, respectively), and a fellow on this forum wanted to have a copy of Fess Parker's "Tick Licker" from the old Daniel Boone television series. The client may or may not know or care about the authenticity of the rifle in the books or the movie... He probably just wants a rifle exactly like the one carried by Daniel Day-Lewis. It's oldwood's job to build one for him.

I thought the movie was great, but it would have been even better if they had stuck with the story in the book. I think it may be beyond the scope of this discussion to tackle that topic.

I believe James Fenimore Cooper was born in 1789, and his first book, The Pioneers, was published in 1823. The Last of the Mohicans was published three years later. This was well within the "flintlock era," before enactment of the Indian Removal Act, and before the Second Seminole War. The French and Indian War was about as distant then as the Korean War is to us now. Cooper was said to have been a keen sportsman and an avid hunter, and very familiar with the firearms of his day. We don't know how much he knew of the guns from seventy years prior. While he was himself from a rather well-to-do family, he was acquainted with some of the old frontiersmen, especially one Nathaniel Shipman, who was sort of a real-life Natty Bumppo. Shipman was a veteran of the F&IW, and he had lived among and fought alongside native people who were allied with the British in that conflict. Shipman's Indian friends remained loyal to the Crown during the Revolutionary War, and Shipman elected to stay out of the fray because he didn't want to fight his Indian friends. For this, he was deemed a Loyalist and was tarred and feathered by the patriots. He survived, and moved farther west, which is where Cooper met him. We wonder if Cooper's description of "Killdeer" may have been based on a rifle carried by Nathaniel Shipman. It is fun to speculate!

I hope oldwood will keep us informed of his progress. Authentic or not, I am sure the rifle will turn out to be a beauty.

Best regards,,

Notchy Bob
 
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Hey folks.....Thanks for the history lessons , photo's , and the volumes of info on J F.Cooper . All is completely fascinating. Now I gotta hurry and finish the rifle I'm working on so I can start the movie gun. I've built a number of Lehigh school guns , so this one shouldn't hold any surprises.
One of the guys mentioned Wayne Watson had passed away. Too bad. He was the LOTM movie gun builder. Thanks again guys............oldwood
 

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