Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire My new black rifle.

Lots of folk have been running out since the election to buy expensive black rifles, as if there weren't already Guv'mint microchips in 'em, and as if the BATF won't play special attention to THOSE yellow forms....

HA! I have done you all one better

Tho it ain't actually black...








...or rifled...



...or even considered a firearm in most States. In fact it works sorta like a zippo lighter (pretty clever idea, I'm surprised more folks ain't picked up on it yet).





Near as I can tell using American components, all assembled by a skilled American

Birdwatcher

where is the clip?

In my pocket. It uses these little paper bundles of powder with a big lead ball in 'em. You just bite the paper, sprinkle a little powder into the dish in that lighter-looking thing, and drop everything else down that big hole at the end of the barrel

Amazing!

now that, birdy, is a work of art. truly beautiful.

let's go shoot it! or can you find any powder? want me to unloosen a few 06 rounds?

-tom

Very nice!

Now, please tell me your possibles bag is in multicam!? grin

I've got a home made assault rifle too. 200 years obsolete.

Sweet.

What shreck said! Very nice black rifle!

Now THAT is a nice black rifle! And you won't need to worry about buying a case of ammo for it with the ammo shrtage going on.

Awesome, Birdwatcher. What are the details?

I'm being forced to choose between an AR15 and a Ruger .22-250 bolt-action. To be used for sport and small~medium game. I intend to reload for more fun. I have dies for both. ARs are going for $475~525, while the Ruger is asking $595. ARs are plentiful and polymer. Ruger is nice zebra-stripe wood. Have seen no other like it in 6 gun-shops. Neither has a scope. Which would you suggest, and why. I'll buy one this week. Thanks

Geez, when I aimed you at Ticonderoga last June, I guess I contributed to the delinquency of a looney

Yepper... cause and effect 'Twin, it all went downhill from there...

That'll teach ya to listen to me! Good thing for you that ya wuzn't hanging around me long enuff to light off a few from the Sharps! You'd REALLY be screwed then

When Flints are outlawed,

Only outlaws will have fire.

I said that.

GTC

Beautiful. Details?

Its a fowler from TVM... http://www.avsia.com/tvm/

20 gage (.615 cal), 42" smooth bore, base grade maple stock. Colonial Virginia lock (1" flint) instead of standard Siler (3/4" flint) http://flintlocks.com/locks4.htm

Weighs a bit over 7 lbs, you get to pick the length of pull, the wait is about six months. I went with the base grade stock on account of fine grain weren't valued much back then, especially on workingman's guns. But for about another $100 you can get a gun that is knocked out of the ballpark pretty.

Versatile as a shotgun and period-correct from the French and Indian War through the end of the Fur Trade. I woulda preferred dull steel furniture, but that didn't appear until the late 1700's.

Rifles get all the attention, but it turns out that smoothbores were more usual. Even "smooth rifles" (smoothbores that look just like Kentucky rifles) outnumbered their rifled equivalents in the hands of settlers, even in Rev. War "rifle" units.

There's good evidence suggesting that it was actually the Indian trade with Pennsylvania that drove the development of the rifled longrifle, http://www.americanlongrifles.com/american-longrifle-kentucky-rifle-story.htm We know that Indians along the Ohio had rifles by the 1750's and valued them highly, our own longhunters maybe copying the Indians in that preference a generation later.

In the meantime I got me an "everyman, everywhere gun", correct for Ticonderoga thru the Alamo, that could have showed up in the hands of most anybody. I intend to work up round ball loads for it. And with shot I'll finally have a good excuse for all them doves I've been missing. In fact, I'm gonna miss with class...

Now I have to go out and put honest wear on it, they say too that rubbing used patches on all that shiny brass will get it functionally dull pretty quick.

Birdwatcher

Very nice. Those can be a lot of fun.

Birdwatcher, nice piece you have there. Use it well.

On the matter of smoothbores and contrary to what most think, it was the shotgun that won the west, not all the other popular misconceptions. Average Joe settler had a smoothbore and they outnumbered the other by fair margin. It was smoothbores that predominated in Washington's Army as well, although he did recruit frontier riflemen early in the conflict, much to the dismay of the Redcoats. Different concepts employed in different fashion. The rifles cut a wide swath through the Officer ranks in the King's Army FWIW.

Lest anyone be confused on the subject, flintlocks won the most important war ever fought.

If I hadn't had all my guns turned into slag at the smelter I'd still have this black rifle.