Not a real good photo, but the best full rifle shot I have. This was built form a kit offered by Pecantonica River. Initial expense was $420. WIth the exception of the lockplate and the barrel wedge escutchens the other parts were very nice clean sand castings.
The barrel is a Green River 45 cal cartirdge barrel of 6 grooves .450x.458" and 18" twist. It comes with a shop ground finish and required draw filling.
The rifle comes with a patent breech (powder chamber in the breech) and a breakoff breech which is commonly called a hooked breech. Pull the barrel wedge and lift the barrel out of the stock. The otherwise really nice kit is missing a couple details I feel necessary for a rifle of this type.
The first is that there is no blow out plug on the bolster and the other is that the lock isn't a 5 pin, which a match rifle should have. Instead it comes with probably a $50 L&R. It will set off the cap, which is about all the good I have to say about it. A 5 pin with the sear hung on it's own pivit allows a much finer trigger in both feel and function. There was no other option at the time. One thing the L&R does have is an extremely short fall. he checkeing on the hammer was done with a thread chasing file :P
The straight grained Black Walnut stock was extremely well inlet and there could not have been an improvement made there. Any mortices were left 1/32nd wood for final fit, if that much. I found it odd that no forend tip is in the kit, nor do they even offer one. I had to go to those lunkheads at Great American Gunstocks for a block of Ebony to finish it off.
The standing breech tang was very short and unsuitable for mounting a tang type sight. Somehitng else I thought odd. I cut the existing one off and welded on a longer one out of HRS. When it was blued you can barely see the difference between the 2 steels. I then silver soldered on a lug for mounting the tang sight. The story about it on a different post.
I think the front sight turned out really well and looks 'period'. As back in the heyday of these match rifles, all the windage was done via the front sight. HEck, you were standing up to reload and the front sight is right there and handy! This particular sight actually belongs to the Swedish Ag42B gas operated 6.5x55 semi-automatic rifle.
I cut the base of whcih is supposed to go around the barrel. Then I filed in 3 flats to match the octagon barrel and soldered it on. These are available from Springfield Sporters pretty inexpensively. Or WERE. anyway. They come with 7 different height front blades and hoods.
So that's the rifle. All in all a really nice kit for the money, but room for improvement. You can buy the kit complete as they offer it, or you can leave parts out you don't want. I guess you could fit thimbles and drill the stock to accept a ramrod and turn it into a heckuva BP hunting rifle. Basicly it's a muzzle loading 45-90 in power and ballistics launching a 540gr boolit over 85.0 grains or so of BP.
...................Buckshot