• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades
  • Friends, our 2nd Amendment rights are always under attack and the NRA has been a constant for decades in helping fight that fight.

    We have partnered with the NRA to offer you a discount on membership and Muzzleloading Forum gets a small percentage too of each membership, so you are supporting both the NRA and us.

    Use this link to sign up please; https://membership.nra.org/recruiters/join/XR045103

Rupp Barrels

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

JohnCanadian

32 Cal.
Joined
Nov 9, 2015
Messages
27
Reaction score
8
I'm looking at a Bethlehem rifle and wondering if the 38" barrel on it is too short. The only period rifles I can see have much longer barrels.
Thanks
 
It's a Sitting Fox rifle. All that's been described to me is a "rupp rifle". I think it's John Rupp, I haven't got to see much of the rifle.
 
I made this gun with a 38" barrel. If I were choosing, I would chose something longer, but it was not my decision.

Picture 101_800x600.jpg
 
The Rupp in Kindig’s Golden Age book has a 42”’barrel, .58 smoothbore. Cool rifle. I find the 38” barrels look better on rifles hoping to be earlier, 1750s through 1760s.
 
Hi,
There is a John Rupp rifle in David Hansen's book on long rifles with a barrel 34-35" long. So a 38" barrel could work but I prefer Lehighs to have much longer barrels even 47-48" long.

dave
 
Saw a Lehigh repro several years ago with a 46" barrel. The builder named it "Gulliver", because when you stand next to it, you look "small like a Lilliputian".

I kidded the builder and asked, "Why the front sight post, when you can just shoulder the rifle and touch the muzzle to the target?"

LD
 
Rice’s Allentown barrel is based On an original and is 45” long. Quit a nice barrel. I own a Allen Martin Rupp with a 48” barrel.
you are likely to find more important issues like architecture of the stock than barrel length, if that’s important to you.
 
Lehighs have a lot of tricks up their sleeves that make the architecture particularly tricky to get right. A lot of that if done wrong can make them cheek slappers. A 38" barrel can certainly work, but that micro-carbine length barrel (for a Lehigh) will contribute to more muzzle flip and more cheek slapping. Rupps are a little beefier in the cheek area and less likely to slap you than some of the others (Hawk, Moll, Long, Kuntz). but they still can if that area didn't get the proper shape and attention.

Because of this difficulty (for the original makers (there were over 150 gun makers in Lehigh County) as well as us contemporary folks) I suspect that contributed to them being a fad that faded. They really only span about 25-30 years tops. Beautiful, but trendy.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top