A few months ago, after warning the owner that it would be some time before I could even really look at the project, let alone get into working on it for him, I had a Jim Chambers Early Lancaster kit delivered to me. True to my word, I unpacked everything and looked it over just to the extent of making sure all necessary parts were present, then set it aside till I had time to start in on it.
I noted how extensively (and correctly) the stock was shaped, and how the barrel and lock appeared very close to completely inletted. Inletting items such as the breechplug tang, trigger and triggerguard, ramrod pipes, and so on, seemed like they'd be the most major portions of assembling this kit into close enough to a complete, functioning rifle that the owner could finish it up. I've been building muzzleloaders for nearly twenty years and within the last five years or so have seen others acknowledge what I know myself -- I'm pretty good at what I do. I foresaw no problems.
Well, last week I finally had breathing room enough to get into it, and after studying it closely and actually applying a chisel to a couple of details I went in the house, half-sick to my stomach, and called the customer to inform him I would be shipping his 95% precarved and inletted kit back to him, that I don't have the proper set-up or anywhere near the time to put this kit together. Oddly enough, later the same day, after a conversation with the owner of the Chambers kit that went far better than I had anticipated, a new customer called, wanting a Track Of The Wolf kit assembled. I told him what had just transpired with this Chambers kit and he admitted that, though he's halfway handy with tools and at making things, the Track kit had him beaten. I told him I wasn't interested in attempting it, myself, but by the time our conversation was over we'd cut a deal for me to build up a new rifle from scratch, using his parts and one of my stock blanks -- which is how I build rifles, from blanks and piles of parts. And I do it well, so I refuse to consider being defeated by a kit project to reflect poorly on my abilities.
Anyone contemplating the purchase of one of these kits ought to consider that. I start from stock blanks, often cutting my own blanks out of actual planks of suitable wood. I inlet every last part myself, and at one time or another I've scratch-built literally every piece of a muzzleloading rifle except the barrel. However, my methods involve lots of work with power tools and performing most of the critical processes in the build while the stock is still largely flat-sided and square-cornered. When I inlet a barrel and breechplug, a lock, a buttplate -- most everything -- I do so with flat surfaces and ample wood reinforcing the areas on which I'm working.
This is where the Chambers kit defeated me and why I would caution anyone thinking that this is a quick and easy path to ownership of a much finer muzzleloader than they could otherwise afford, if they had to buy it completed and ready to go.
The swamped barrel channel was complete except for squaring-up the breech section and inletting the breechplug tang. However, the stock had sat for well over a year before it was sent to me. If the barrel had (except at the breech) fit properly when the kit components were shipped -- it doesn't now. The channel will require extensive scraping its full length. The forend is shaped down to the point of being almost fragile and I lack any arrangement of clamps or vises to hold it rigid while I'm shaving wood from the channel. I don't NEED such an arrangement, building a gun up from a blank. More to the point -- most novices to gunbuilding won't have any such arrangement and, as a matter of fact, won't even be aware of what sort of a set-up they need.
The wrist area of the stock is 95% shaped, meaning that where the wood mates to the breechplug inlet it slopes up to just fade into the metal, once the job's been done correctly. The assembler of the kit has to both inlet the breechplug and avoid chipping away wood along the edges of the inlet, in the process. For those not aware -- curly maple is a notoriously bad wood for chip-outs and unexpected splitting. It's the price you pay for all that pretty tiger-striping, which makes the wood grain wavy and any bit of it fragile when it gets thinned down.
The lock is 95% inletted, but not to its proper depth or to such a degree that its internals have clearance to fit and move properly. Everything has to be slightly enlarged and deepened at the same time, and since the lock and sideplate panels are close to fully-shaped there is very little wood on which to position a router; everything has to pretty much be done by hand, with chisels and small gouges.
I could go on, one point after another, but I won't. What I'm driving at is this -- while "95%" of the shaping and inletting is done, what remains is the 5% (I would venture to guess it's a higher amount than that, but I won't quibble over the claim of 95% of the work being done, which is after all just a marketing term) that calls for the experienced hand of a really good builder of these rifles. Not a kit assembler; a builder. Due to the amount of work that HAS been done, and the amount of wood that is gone as a result, the techniques used to complete the inletting involve meticulous hand work and taking a fairly long amount of time at it, which are precisely the things most novices are uncomfortable with tackling and the reason why they opt for these kits over the option of just building a gun from scratch.
I'm not faulting Jim Chambers or Pecatonica River (Track Of The Wolf's supplier, so far as I know -- but if it's not Pecatonica it's some similar outfit) for marketing these kits, or for calling them kits, which would seem to imply something like CVA, T/C, or Lyman kits -- a bit of fitting, maybe some minor hole drilling, a lot of sanding, then finish, and -- go shoot. But as a professional who's based his entire output on bypassing a lot of the traditional methods of gunbuilding in favor of power tools and modifying the entire build process to accomodate the use of those tools, who had never until this incident really taken a long, experienced look at one of these kits and what assembling it entails -- a huge lot of what is necessary to get one of these kits together, and looking and functioning correctly, comes down to having the skill and the tools to do old-fashioned by-hand gunbuilding.
I have the skill, I have most of the tools, but I lack certain critical items and I also lack the time to spend several weeks, possibly several months, doing what has to be done to this kit in order to turn it into an actual rifle. I also have the experience and honesty (honesty with myself, which is something apart from the sort of honesty that has to do with being truthful with others) to realize that this project is beyond my capabilities and resources.
I would caution anyone considering the purchase of such a kit to likewise, honestly, evaluate their capabilities and resources. If you balk at the notion of inletting a barrel or lock, or get nervous at the simple idea of cutting and carving and chiselling and gouging on a nice piece of curly maple, believe me when I say that everything you dread and want to avoid is going to be there for you to do on one of these kits, if the one I'm sending back to its owner is any accurate indication.
[hmm] Thanks for this post Mike,you may have just saved me about 600 clams.I was all set to order a kit from TOTW. Might order a lyman instead for a project.Better to ere on the side of caution than to have expensive kindling.
I see your points here and this is one of the things that I was concerned about the several times that I have considered one of these kits. I have yet to attempt a scratch gun build but the latest barrel routing tutorial is making me want to start, thanks.
As I see it, from a manufacturing point of view, I think that it comes down to process sequencing. When I am setting up a new product for manufacture, a large part of the front end work is determining the flow of steps that allow for any tooling or fixturing wrinkles along the way. You will need extra material to hold while you mill this feature, etc.
I know that when Mongrel builds or roughs in a build as he has for me, he finishes each step in an order and there is enough meat around each item to adjust if necessary to the blank or at least grab a chunk in a vice later for fixturing. When I received the fusil and the cherry half stock, I was able to clamp them to a railing and wale away with my rasps and such knowing that the critical inletting was safely put to rest and at worst, I would have an ugly block of wood that shoots great.
I now see these kits as following another builder who didn't finish any of the steps but left no wiggle room for the finisher, basically making him backtrack to what would be the beginning and because there is no material to spare requiring more skills than should be needed. In comparison, my TC kits and Mikes roughed in rifles have allowed for some ..er.....personal touches. Really, I wanted it to look like that. &)
Thanks for the great post, it steered me clear again. thmbsup
I could have said it a lot shorter and sweeter than I did in my original midnight-written post. What it comes down to is this: I never had a mentor of any sort, learning to build guns, but I read everything I could and taught myself the techniques and processes that it seemed like a majority of builders agreed on, and then over time modified a lot of the ways I did things and even came up with some new ones. BUT -- the one thing I do and that all information I ever had access to said I ought to do, was inlet parts first, shape the wood around them next. In the event anyone doubts that, I advise them to read the Herschel House portion of "Flintlock Rifles" in "Foxfire 5", which is considered a classic tutorial on the building of a muzzleloading rifle by one of the genuine masters of our time or any other. Every possible step in the way of parts installation is done BEFORE Herschel begins working the stock down to shape. The same applies in Chapter Thirty, "The Custom Black Powder Rifle", in Sam Fadala's "The Complete Black Powder Handbook", in which he follows gunsmith Dennis Mulford step-by-step through the building of a fine fullstock rifle.
As Blackfeet picked up on in my first rambling post -- these pre-carved, 95% inletted kits reverse the process, giving the novice builder a close-to-finish-shaped stock with a fair amount of detailed inletting still needing to be done. There is nothing "wrong" or "incorrect" in them doing so. They're giving their customers what they ask for. Most people going into this are most intimidated by how to get the right "look" to their rifle, so they see that graceful, near-complete stock and breathe a sigh of relief as they're plunking down multiple hundreds of dollars. As for the inletting to be done -- the sellers of these kits are perfectly within their rights to assume that anyone plunking down multiple hundreds of dollars has made sure he knows what he's getting into, and has the ability to see it through, before parting with his money. Unfortunately, this is a craft -- and actually most crafts are this way -- where a certain amount of experience and education are required for an individual to even begin to realize how many things he doesn't know and has still to learn.
I'm still learning. This encounter with this kit rifle has been a major step in my education. There will be more and I promise to torment you all with my long-winded reports as I come up against them.
I experienced this myself when I purchased a fusil dechasse kit from sitting fox. The work they performed was flawless but left me lacking on what I had to prform to complete it. It was pretty much done bass ackwards! I ended up consulting a real builder in order to move foreard and ended up sending it to him to actually complete it in the white. And in all truth, the lock mortice and ramrod opening are still too close together so the rod doesn't quite seat all the way.
Before I contacted Mike ( Mongrel) about building a rifle for me...I had considered buying a kit from TOTW and attempting to build one myself. I had thought a kit, once the inletting and barrel channel was all done, breech plug installed and a few other gunsmith services applied to the build, that this might be the ticket. A friend of mine proved my thinking as incorrect. He purchased a TOTW kit...and it needed TONS of touching up, as Mike and others had stated. My buddy ended up having to take it to an experienced builder to finish...what started out as a 800 kit... ended up around 2000 after it was finished. Thanks for the post as it confirms that my freinds experience was not a fluke..but the "norm".
where a certain amount of experience and education are required for an individual to even begin to realize how many things he doesn't know and has still to learn. thmbsup
I am glad that I was able to see these thruths, before I got the money together!! Thanks to folks like Mike, and others on this and other forums, I quickly saw that I did not know what I did not know. As I absorbe information, I gain confidence that when I do make the leap, I'll know where the ripcord is. skrt
Thanks to all
The ripcord is always a nice thing to know how to use.... dntn
After several years I have taken the first step and bought a pistol kit from Azwidget - Now I will actually start the process and hope everything turns out pnic
That's a different level of kit -- still some challenges, but everything's pretty much ready to put together. Good luck! It should go well.
built 2 pecatonica kits with the second being done mostly in the salon of my sailboat i call home. it went pretty well with a few slips and boo boos that are no big problem and probably appeared on many an old rifle. love watching you guys with the shops and tools build in the old way and several times wished i had a vise and square spot to clamp on but i was able to work around it as i knew no better. kits are great but do not waste an artist or professionals time filling in for your failings. if you want a kit build it. if you want a built gun, honor the craftsman and his half minimum wage rates they usually ask and buy the hole thing LOCK,STOCK and BARREL.
Mongrel and other builders charge NOTHING for the thousands of dollars worth of tools, their maintenance, and knowledge of how to use them that makes the completed job possible. and if you see someone walking thru a tools store with that DEER CAUGHT IN THE HEADLIGHTS look, it is one of us pro craftpersons looking at that one tool that is SO COOL we just have to have one
have never tried one of the fancier kits myself ! have considered it , but that`s not exactly where my skills are ! closest I`ve ever come was a markwell arms pistol kit I bought back in 1978 , nothing fit , and I mean NOTHING !to make matters worse it was my first kit ,so it was a real learning experience ! since then I`ve done several tc, cva , and lyman kits . most were fairly easy a little shaping, sanding , and finishing , and you get a good looking shootable rifle . other than that ,redoing badly assembled kits I picked up at yard sales and such . or the occasional hand built rifle that was beat to h*ll I`ve no interest in trying my hand at one of the higher priced kits . could`nt look at myself in the mirror if I screwed it up ! I have a lot of respect for those who can build a nice rifle ,pistol ,or smoothbore from a piece of wood and a pile of parts ! thmbsup
I have been exploring this forum for almost two months now and it feels like I have finally discovered the family that I didn't even know I had. I have never met any group that seems to look upon the world in the same slightly off center way that I do. I had a cabinet shop for many years. Outside of banging together boxes, check stands, store racks, I have had the opportunity to play around with other projects. I have built a driftboat, snowshoes, an airplane that I flew, extended an antique bar using only handtools from the 1800's. Suffice to say that all those projects cost me to make instead of the way it should have been. I also had a CNC machine that mostly was for drilling holes in cabinet parts but I could do other things with it. I am good friends with a gunsmith and we wound up using the CNC to make stocks for a lot of his project rifles. No BP, just modern firearms. Over a years time we made upwards of 3 dozen stocks out of a variety of exotic hardwoods. We could do all the inlet milling with no errors(outside of programming mistakes) and no wobbles or other oops, all within a 10th of a millimeter. This took really no skill outside of math to do. What's my point? This was all done on wood stock that had been milled square, plumb, and true. As long as you have nice flat surfaces to clamp with, most people can be fairly capable wood workers. That 5% of these kits is really 110% of the real work and that's hoping that the wood has just been milled. It only takes a few days in cold, hot, or humid weather for unsealed wood to change size and shape. Can't count the number of times that customers came in with a project that they wanted us to finish with a box of parts that were warped to the point of being only good for firewood. I am not an artist nor do I consider myself a "master craftsman", but I do have considerably more experience working with wood than most people and I think that I would rather make a stock from scratch any day of the week before I would tackle one of those kits. srndrAlthough I do have a friend that said he is getting a CNC duplicator, hmmmm..........
It's taken me a while but I've finally begun to realize why building from scratch is actually easier than from some kits. I've run into several guys who've built very nice rifles (with carving, relief and incised no less) from scratch that looked to me to be very fine. One of the nicest was a guy's first build from scratch. I don't have the tools for a scratch build and my hands are not up to the challenge. Mongrel is very good at removing everything from the blank that doesn't look like a nice, trim rifle. They're HIS interpretations and not some kit builder's. Using power tools is not, if what I've noticed is accurate, rare or unusual. Power tools are fairly unforgiving and are not recommended for the casual builder.
I'm going to amplify on one specific point that Blackfeet, Ranger, and I all touched on originally.
In addition to all parts ideally being inletted before any major stock shaping is done (which as we have established is not the case with the high-end kits), even more ideally the barrel should be completely inletted before the first positioning of the lock is even attempted. A repeat customer brought me a kit -- I turned down his request that I assemble it -- we settled that I would just finish the barrel and lock inletting. The precarved stock has lots of excess wood, so THAT wasn't an issue, this time. However -- after doing a perfect inlet of the barrel and breechplug tang I discovered that the 95% inlet for the lock and the 95% inlet for the barrel were nearly 1/4" off; in order for the vent hole of this flinter to just barely clear the breechplug face, the barrel had to be set back an additional 1/8".
If you study the inlets of the barrel and lock, with those parts removed from the stock, you realize that the wood there is very, very fragile, in some points so flimsy that it might as well not be there. If the barrel is fully-inlet you can do that sort of delicate lock inlet, but in this case the barrel was having to be re-inletted with the lock mortice already hogged out. Wood cracked. Glue has been applied. I don't feel as though I was privileged to handle and work on a high-end kit gun; I feel as though someone brought me somebody's else's 50% complete, SCREWED-UP rifle build and requested that I fix it. Blackfeet and Ranger nailed it -- instead of the building steps being completed, completely completed, in the traditional (and correct) order, one process following the other in a logical sequence, all steps have been "95%" completed and have to be finished entirely out of sequence.
Yes, it's possible to complete one of these things to not just satisfaction, but to perfection. It requires having the skill to do it and also no deadline on the work necessary. I do not have the luxury of working on any project only when my mood and the alignment of the stars and the omens read in the goat guts all agree. If it can't be done on the same timetable and by the same methods that apply to my scratch-builds -- never, ever, ever again.
The rifle I just finished was sorta kinda a kit but not really as I got the pre carved stock first and bought or made everything else I needed second . Actually for me doing my first built froma pre carved and inletted stock was a good learning experience as all inletting was sorta in the right general location . After I started placing parts where they were supposed to go I realized just how important and why the correct location of everything crucial and if one part is off a little something else is affected . Now this is coming from a guy that has never did any wood working at all I'm a steel and metal guy as a living not wood so after 3 plus months of head scratching and cussing now and then I figured things out enough to assemble / build a half respectable looking and functiong rifle. Like I said for me a kit was a great teaching tool as to what where and how things go together and are co dependent on many of the other parts being in the correct place. On saying that if I had to do it over again I wouldn't shy away from a pre carved stock but I would not use a pre inlet one .
An old post, but a very good one.
I just ordered my first components kit - from TVM. I had not read this before I ordered, but still I am basically of the same mind.
I am really looking forward to the challenge, and I think the approach may have some validity. Unlike a professional gunsmith or someone who produces rifles for sale and profit, I don't have a timeline or the pressure that accompanies it. I have the luxury of being able to take my time with this and to not get in over my head until I understand what I'm doing. To that end I picked up the PA Longrifle Building book, and a couple other reference tomes for the art. This forum and the knowledge here and elsewhere from smiths is a huge benefit to guys like me that want to be involved in the art, but really don't know where to start, where an apprenticeship is not available.
As a relative novice to gunsmithing, but not to woodworking or metal work (mainly defarbing muskets and doing rifle refinishes and restorations), I am using this build to learn as much as anything, because I am fascinated by it and love longrifles. Also, I have the advantage of a very good friend who is an accomplished modern smith and who has offered me his shop and his expertise to help out if needed. He's never worked a longrifle - he's a bolt gun guy through and through - but he knows his stuff and is kind of fascinated with the idea as well.
I'm pretty sure this won't be my first build, but I felt that starting with a blank would not be the best route for me. I am just not there yet confidence-wise. Another issue is that the only place I want to use power tools will be drilling the pins and the tang/trigger/lock bolts (I don't know how to do it otherwise). Other than that I would like to do it as old school as possible.
Even this one thread has been a good learning tool for me. Issues with thin wood and backchanneling the barrel for fit are good tips and I can use them.
I gotta start somewhere, so we'll see what happens.
Thanks for posting this.
Rich
I hear you and applaud your effort. I am an inveterate tinkerer. I am the one that took apart the new vacuum that the parents brought home to see how it worked and also the one that too apart the door in the brand new 1971 Ford wagon to see how the electric doors worked. I still have the scars from that one. I have built two rifles from scratch so far and have three more in various beginning stages before I got sidetracked by building the cannon. I hope that I will be able to get back to them sooner rather than later but with my short attention span, later seems more likely. However, I could have never done it without the constant support and advice from members here at this forum. I have a bit of a stubborn bone that causes me to sometimes ignore some of that advice and barge on ahead on my own, then when I owned up to what I had just screwed up, that advice and support was still there. Why am I throwing this out? If you ever get stuck in any part of your build, there are folks here that can guide you on the right path. And this valuable info is given freely and willingly, all you gots to do is ask. So if you run across a stumbling block or want to know why something works the way it does, do not hesitate to ask. Good luck in your new project and don't forget to take pictures.Lot's and lot's of pictures.
Interesting! I am on the verge of ordering a (sort of) kit from Chambers, but I've managed to avoid the problems noted above. I say a (sort of) kit because I'm getting all the parts that come in the usual kit, but not the pre-carved stock. I'll be getting a stock blank that I plan to carve myself. I was looking forward to that part already, now I'm even happier to go this route.
Although I have to add that while I was researching suppliers, Chambers was always rated as the best, with top quality components and service. This thread is the only negative report I've read - I wonder if it was an anomaly.
Jamie
Looking back on it, and re-reading the entire thread -- I would not classify my original report as negative, so much as honest. Jim Chambers is too straight-up a person to deliberately mislead anyone or to continue allowing people to be misled by getting the wrong impression of what completing one of his kits entails. Most retail sites that sell this sort of kit do mention that there are no instructions, and that barrel, breechplug, and lock inletting will have to be completed. They don't often mention the potential difficulty of doing so. First off, many of their customers won't find it difficult at all, and secondly I firmly believe that, in cases like this, a potential buyer has a responsibility to honestly evaluate not only the potential difficulties of the project, but his or her own capabilities. Having an experienced mentor is also a huge help.
One thing I mentioned in my original post, that made all the difference in the non-assembly of the kit I was discussing, was that the owner had been intimidated by what he had bought and had allowed it to sit for a long time. Wood warped and changed its dimensions. This was 100% HIS fault and not that of the seller of the kit. So, yes, in a sense this constitutes an anomaly, but one over which the seller of the kit has no control and for which he shouldn't be held responsible.
Quote from: mongrel on October 29, 2015
Looking back on it, and re-reading the entire thread -- I would not classify my original report as negative, so much as honest.
....the owner had been intimidated by what he had bought and had allowed it to sit for a long time...
I agree completely. It is good information.
I've seen a number of postings elsewhere from guys who bought component kits thinking it was akin to a "snap together" model. Somehow they thought were actually saving hundreds of dollars by just having to turn a couple screws, sand a buttstock and stain it and maybe blue a barrel. Once they see what "kit" actually means for one of these kinds of longrifles (and the reason they are much less expensive than the built and finished ones), they vapor lock. They didn't count on hundreds of hours of work to complete it. They don't know where to start.
That's one of the reasons I came here. Guys like you, and a few others around, who are experienced builders, know what it takes because you have developed skills, experience and success with it. That kind of advice and experience is worth more than money to rookies like me who want to do it the right way and enjoy the process.
Keep your powder dry.
Rich