Yesterday I traded an O/U and a few boxes of shells for some cash and this great little .40 cal flintlock. It has a 34" swamped A profile barrel and some nice engraving and incised carving. I haven't gotten to shoot it yet, but I hope to get to a local ML match in a couple of weeks to see how it does. It should make a real handy little small game rifle.

A couple of pics of it next to it's new big brother, my .50 Tennessee Mountain rifle.

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wow! are those tiger maple?

Yes. Unless there's a difference between curly maple and tiger maple. But both are essentially full-length curl.

damn those are pretty

Those are neat, nice trading.

That's some nice inletting for the brass.

nigel wrote:That's some nice inletting for the brass.

Yes, the maker did a really great job on inletting all throughout. No gaps, nothing "proud" of the wood where it's not supposed to be.

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Wow.

quite the beauty

Any idea who made the rifle? A profile swamped must be a dream to carry. Looks like the perfect rifle for barking a squirrel out of a tree.

eelj wrote:Any idea who made the rifle? A profile swamped must be a dream to carry. Looks like the perfect rifle for barking a squirrel out of a tree.

Yes, the maker is C.D. Rinker, in West Virginia (no website). I was able to speak with him a few minutes one day last week before committing to the trade. He didn't recall the specific rifle, but he clear that he builds all his rifle from blanks, not from kits.

I'd never held an A profile swamped barrel before, but is is very slender and really well balanced. This one is shorter than I would have picked (it's 34") if I was having it built for me, but now that I have it, I'm not sure I would want one much longer - maybe out to 36, but not much more than that. It's so slender that I can now see where people talk about the thin waist of an A profile being at risk of bending or warping in long ones.

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On the American long rifle forum about 10 years ago one of the historians posted what could be the reason for the swamp profile of 18th century barrels. Crummy hard to see sights were considered essential for good marksmanship. If you could pick up the sights quickly without squinting you would touch off the trigger too quickly. So rather than a continuous taper the full length they swamped them so they could still put tiny little crummy front sights on it. You have a very beautiful Germanic Lancaster county pennsylvania rifle.

When building from a blank just drilling the ramrod channel is a huge crap shoot, very hard to get a drill bit as long as whats needed to work with out wandering up into the barrel channel.

Very nice wood.

CDFingers

eelj wrote:On the American long rifle forum about 10 years ago one of the historians posted what could be the reason for the swamp profile of 18th century barrels. Crummy hard to see sights were considered essential for good marksmanship. If you could pick up the sights quickly without squinting you would touch off the trigger too quickly. So rather than a continuous taper the full length they swamped them so they could still put tiny little crummy front sights on it. You have a very beautiful Germanic Lancaster county pennsylvania rifle.

When building from a blank just drilling the ramrod channel is a huge crap shoot, very hard to get a drill bit as long as whats needed to work with out wandering up into the barrel channel.

I've heard that hypothesis, as well. I don't know if anyone has really found a rock solid reason; last research I read, no one really knew for sure why barrels were swamped. But I'm glad they were; they're really a joy!

I've never tried to build from a blank, and I've only done one muzzleloader kit, from Jim Chambers. But I've had to drill 14-18" holes laterally through guitar bodies on most of the guitars I've built, and I dread that part of the process every time. I can only imagine the challenge doing it under a 40" barrel.

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