VIRGINIA RIFLE

[pipascus]

I just got, and am building, a Jim Chambers Mark Silver Virginia Rifle in .58.

How important is it to stick to a precise style? Is it about the basic lines, leaving room for personal enterpretation, or is it about rigidly following a particular maker's design?

How much leeway for personal design/decoration do I have when building my rifle?

Any suggestions for sources showing Virginia Rifles/Makers?
I'd like to look at as much reference as possible.

Thank ye,
:hatsoff:
El Casador

 

[rich pierce]

It's your rifle so you should build as you please. The Mark Silver rifle is styled very early, I believe. The best source of pictures is Shumway's Rifles of Colonial America volume 2.

 

[Flintandsteel]

The Mark Silver kit is designed after the Johanes Faber rifle #117 in RCA 2.

It is a fine kit. I finished one a month or two ago and posted photos here.
As far as personal interpretation.... it is up to you.
If you want to copy an original, that's up to you a well.

Jim's kits leave some extra wood for you to do what you want. You can also re-shape as you desire.
Jim's kits are style from originals in collections and are very true to that style.

Good Luck

 

[aragorn]

I actually based quite a lot of the decoration on my York rifle, pics recently posted, on the Mark Silvers Virginia rifle - so that's how much leeway I took! I also shaped the wrist architecture to look more English. I was imagining how an English gunbuilder from the south might have decorated and shaped a Pennsylvania-style rifle, had he moved to York c 1770.

It's always worth remembering that we only have a tiny fraction of original early rifles to go by, so there's a lot of scope for informed imagination and variation.

The best books (though expensive) are Shumway, available from TOW, which gives you just about all the known rifles of this early period. Also worth checking out some of the rifles on Mark Silver's website for comparison. I think he has a fine interpretation of the more baroque style decoration likely to be found on early Virginia rifles.

 

[BS]

I told you that I wanted it in a 60 cal! :hmm:

Enjoy your build, it looks like a great choice! :grin: