W. J. Terry, Gas City IN, Gunsmith/builder?

[oldracer]

As the title states, has anyone ever heard or worked with that person? I bought a chunk gun a couple years ago and it has a Douglas XX stainless barrel with false muzzle, Lewis lock and a Lewis double set trigger. The stock was about the ugliest thing I had seen BUT those parts are great! I bought a nice piece of figured walnut and made a rifle that punches nearly 1 MOA 50 caliber holes with round balls at 50, 100 and 200 yards with 80 grains of powder.

I was cleaning the underside of the barrel and checked my stock to make sure I had engraved my name and date inside (I had) and I thought let me take a close look at the stock. I did and in very, very small letters is the printing of W.J. Terry and under it Gas City IN. Hard to read so I did a search and there is an obituary for a W.J. Terry at age 79 but no other info. I may had a pretty famous gun, more so than I thought as the builder sure picked about as great of hardware as you can get. I called Douglas and there was one older sounding man who remembered making a barrel like that as they are rare but did not want to give out info, privacy rules I guess?

Any help would be appreciated.
John

[mazo kid]

John, the Terry name stems from quite a while back. I remember it from the shoots at Friendship, Indiana. If I had known you liked the "ugliest" rifle that much, maybe....I should have tripled the asking price!? Seriously, glad you like it and have built it back into a nice rifle. It shot just as good with that old stock on it though.....

[oldracer]

Well crap, I just saw the name last night! It was very small print probably with a small stamp? Maybe once I get my single shot pistol finished I'll get a chunk of dark brown leather and remake the cheek piece (about 5 layers) as I put that on a slug gun I built up a year and a half ago with a Ron Smith gain twist barrel and a $4.00 piece of walnut that turned out to be a piece of French super fancy grade! There are a couple of pieces on the rear bottom of the stock that are missing and I have a bunch of brass plate to make replacements. It will be even more of a conversation piece then I imagine.

When I called Douglas about caring for a stainless barrel, one of the old timers there remembered making it as they don't make many it seems. Said it was a loooong time ago so that would seem about right.
John

[oldracer]

Well, I bought a chunk of leather today and some dark brown dye and will start making a new replacement cheek piece tonight as I don't want to remove the original again from my slug gun. Should take a week or so with the dye application and all and then make the two missing brass stock inserts. I guess a move of the hardware will be next?

[oldracer]

Well an update, I got the multi layer leather cheek piece made, stained close to the same color and mounted. Whoooo, when you get to 5 layers of 1/8 inch leather it becomes hard to work with. My next part of the project is to cut two brass inserts that are missing on the bottom of the rear portion of the stock. I also need to pull the butt plate to make sure the break that shows at the rear has been solidly repaired. About a week to go I imagine?
John

[bgmkithaca]

W. J. Terry was well known locally for his muzzle loaders and was something of a legendary shooter as I recall-it has been quite a few years back. He did some work on one of my muzzle loaders once and turned it from a so-so shooter to WOW. It was at least 50 years back and don't recall the details any more. He had a rifling bench along with quite a bit of metal working tools- if he wasn't busy you could learn a lot listening to him. One of my old pals lived close to him and knew him quite well- wish I had known him better myself. I don't know if the rifle mentioned has any special value or not but am pretty sure that the old heads at friendship would be interested in it.

[oldracer]

Not sure either about value as I got a chunk gun that shoots 4 inch round ball groups at 40 rods or in the case of our range, 200 yards. It has a Douglas XX stainless barrel rifled as Pope did it and Lewis Lock and trigger! The trigger guard appears to be home made and is steel. There was a break across the rear corner of the butt area and I plan to pull the butt plate to see if it is solid enough. I plan to cut out the two missing inlays on the stock bottom as they were probably removed to do the stock repair.
John

[oldracer]

Well I have the rifle restored into its original stock and all. One issue was I had shortened the trigger since I stock I made had much more curve but I saved both pieces so I reinstalled them, especially the one with Lewis' name and Denver stamped on it. It appears the metal is a pretty hard stainless of some alloy as it was a bugger to drill the small holes for the screws. The rifle looks just about the same as before! Dang, now I have a really fancy walnut stock that needs some parts!
John

[PapaG]

I knew Webb from the old days at Friendship. He built some great slug guns and also shot them well. Not cheap. Good guy. I always spent one day on the slug gun range watching those guys make the ground shake while shooting scores that would put my varmint rifle to shame. What a loading process. Clean, powder down through a tube, false muzzle, paper patch, two piece swaged slug, starter, rod (some with a spring gauge), primer adapter on sealed ignition, and finally wait for the flags to drop before shooting. Always wanted one and still kicking myself for not buying an original Billinghurst for $500 back about 1980. All moulds, stages, and other accessories. Too poor or cautious. Saw that gun sell for $20k not long ago.

[oldracer]

In my research I found that Web AND his daughter still hold a bunch of records at Friendship at various shoots. I called them several weeks ago and talked a bit with several people who knew him well and left my name and number in case he had any living relatives. A few days later his son in law called me and I talked with him AND Misty for probably 45 minutes about all he had done including getting into their Hall Of Fame in 2000! It seems he really liked Douglas barrels but Robert didn't recognize the pictures of the rifle I had sent to him. I guess over the years he mad many, many winning rifles and most were not real pretty it seems, just super functional? I took my "Terry" rifle to the range yesterday and it put 10 round balls in a 4 inch circle at 100 yards which was better than any of the guys shooting "black rifles" were doing for sure. Several watched over my shoulder and thought the rifle was "unusual looking" what with the leather cheek piece and huge barrel. I guess I am lucky enough to own a small piece of history now.
John