I build my own.

My latest one built two summers ago while housebound with a hip replacement. 44 inch 50 caliber Colerain 1:66 twist. Maple stock, L&R Classic left hand lock. Double set triggers. All iron mountings.

Use only Holy Black and of course roundballs with legit bear grease rendered by a friend as patch lube. Hip was still too mucked up last deer season so didn't hunt much. Gettin' after it this year though. Need to get 'er bloodied and broke in.

Beautiful rifle. Enjoy your time in the woods with it this fall.

Thanks.

I wish I had used a swamped barrel on this one.

It's a bit heavy and a little obnoxious to balance offhand.

other than the gun being built backwards that is one fine looking rifle!
i have a SMR in .45cal that is slightly nose heavy. i took off the toe plate and bored 3 .25 holes 2 inches deep. filled one with lead and tried for balance. needed the one and another 3/4's filled to balance right at the entry pipe. ymmv
i really love the southern mountain and Tennessee mountain rifles.
who am i kidding? i love them all!
the satisfaction of building one can hardly be matched by anything else. shooting them at 100 yards and getting 2 inch group comes close though.

Handsome rifle. What protocols did you follow for darkening the maple?

Nice rifle.

Thanks.

2 treatments of aqua fortis to start.

Then I used TruOil tinted with bone black and burnt umber dry pigments to add an aged effect to areas that would be handled and areas that would get grimy from use. There's 5 coats of plain TruOil over that, and a couple coats of Renaissance Wax to top it off.

Gorgeous rifle!

Thanks for sharing.

LHS

Really nice! I shoot lefty too, and I think you did good here. May I ask was it kit or did you source all the stuff one piece at a time?

A plank, and a pile of parts.

I tried a kit one time, semi-inletted, metal in the white, from a fairly well known kit maker. I spent more time fixing what they jacked up than actually building it. Won't do that again.

Next up is some form of smoothbore fowler. Have everything, plus some extra stuff if I decide to go one way or another, but still deciding what to do. That's pretty much the hardest part of it I think. I've bounced back and forth between half stock walnut and full stock maple. Thinking I'll order another full length maple with some good stripe in it and go with that. The one pictured is plain grain maple.

2/3 round 62 cal smooth bore, single trigger, flinter.

wow - very nice!!

Yup, to me a muzzleloader is about Tradition. If made into a modern rifle to gain a special season over other hunters (I call that cheating) such guns have sales appeal to those that are just trying to find a way to cheat and get a special season. If I go out with an 1874 sharps black powder breach loading single shot rifle or even a 44 mag handgun with iron sights and a 4" barrel I must hunting regular rifle season.
So I for one am 100% into old style muzzleloaders and have earned most of my living (about 80%) making them.
Now I am working towards retirement, so I am not taking new customers but I have made them for over 50 years.

Good post.

I'm heading towards retirement myself, about 8 years. My plan though is to quit the welding for a living and start building traditional style muzzleloaders, and specializing in left handed offerings. There's a serious deficit there on the market for those who can't build their own. Not planning on getting rich with it, just doing something I REALLY enjoy for a change.

Don't know that I would call it "cheating" necessarily but the whole "modern inline" thing has definitely put me off about the whole special regulations hunting season idea. Around here anyway, the special season for muzzle loaders in October was conceived as a means for traditionalists to engage in sport without having to compete with the army of "regular" hunters - for guys with flintlocks and percussion guns to ghost through the Indian Summer woods. Then the idea took hold amongst the hoi polloi that ML rifles can be made that shoot as "hard" as centerfire rifles and use thereof was an easy way to rack up one's score and fill more freezers. Not much consideration toward keeping old traditions alive, rather a golden opportunity to kill more. (And that's based on empirical observation - every single one of my buddies and acquaintances who turned to ML hunting in the special early season, and there were a lot, did so as a chance to shoot a couple extra deer, period.) Net result: the early Fall woods are about as crowded as they are in "gun season", with guys in stands armed with scoped inlines capable of long distance kills and looking down their noses at the odd guys with flintlocks still hunting across the ridges and ravines.) Then the F&G people threw a sop to us and gave us another short season to ourselves - after Christmas/New Years when the weather usually turns cold and crappy, thank you very much not!

Yez had to get me started, din't yez?!!

I think of Modern Muzzle loaders as Dumbing down the sport for those that don't want to learn the skills our forefathers needed to put meat on the table.

Beautiful rifle.

Know some folks that build their own.
Nice stuff and very cool.

I just dont have the desire or patience to do it.

Our MZ season is late, not early.
Snow on the ground makes it way fun.

I keep thinking about upgrading my left handed Lyman but I want a flintlock with a faster 1:28 twist to shoot lead free sabot bullets. I wish PA would swap the late season flintlock to October and allow an inline season after Xmas. 40 years of freezing my butt off after Xmas and most of the nice bucks are dropping their antlers. I love 2 weeks in the fall with a flintlock.

Fookin' A Brother, Fookin' A!!!



That could be something I wrote, verbatim.



We should get a season with the Stick Slingers.

And I'd love a good Flintlock twisted for better bullets.
(DGAF about lead free, but much prefer better than round balls)
Modern bullets from a traditional gun give the hunter no advantage over round all. They do make the gun a quicker, possibly better killer.
I will never, ever call a less effective killing device "More Sporting".

Have you actually tried sabots? ALL of my 1:48's shoot 240-250gr XTP's very well with between 70 and 100gr loose 777. One does ok with 300's, as well. This includes my Lyman Deerstalker. Because of the barrel length, I keep that one at 90gr of powder. I think a longer barrel is better for larger charges. Now, slower than a 1:48 will almost certainly present issues. I am in Pa too. The late season is good for finding them in their beds, but otherwise just stinks. I agree that the early season should include bucks, too. I get the idea that the game commission guys must not hunt....

Very nice! Hope you get to burn some powder during hunting season!

Very nice

Never had any inlines myself. Sidelocks only.
I was thinking about having a one-and-only
rifle built some years ago after I'd been using
and hunting with B.P. guns for a few years,
but even back then all the buildings I'd talked
to only wanted to turn out really nice top end
highly embellished and artistic masterpieces.
Nobody wanted to build a rifle to drag through
the briars and creek bottoms with a plain
stock with no figure and no inlays and such.
Used to could buy a suitable factory made
job that would work fine with maybe the
smallest of tweaking and clean up.
All that stuff is fairly rare these days.
Seemed to start after Turner Kirkland
left the building

Very nice

Never had any inlines myself. Sidelocks only.
I was thinking about having a one-and-only
rifle built some years ago after I'd been using
and hunting with B.P. guns for a few years,
but even back then all the builders I'd talked
to only wanted to turn out really nice top end
highly embellished and artistic masterpieces.
Nobody wanted to build a rifle to drag through
the briars and creek bottoms with a plain
stock with no figure and no inlays and such.
Used to could buy a suitable factory made
job that would work fine with maybe the
smallest of tweaking and clean up.
All that stuff is fairly rare these days.
Seemed to start after Turner Kirkland
left the building

A "poor boy" is a common build these days, and you can even get semi finished kits in that style from some of the upper end kit makers. No bells and whistles, just pure function. I like building a plain rifle myself. Iron mountings, semi fancy or plain wood. Something the common man would have had built back in the day.

This is my plain Jane 50 cal. The wood turned out with a lot more curl then I thought it had. Lefthanded Siler lock, 42 inch Paris & Sons Swamped 50 Caliber, and parts I pickup here and there.

This is my wife's Rifle, she wanted something a little more than plain. Small Siler lock, 38 inch Douglas 45 Caliber barrel.

Very nice rifles.

thank you