When I was in high school, I met an older man named Red in my neighborhood who built his own muzzle loaders. We got to be friends, and I would go
over, and we would shoot his muzzle loaders in his back yard. I would also watch him work on his rifles. After shooting his black powder guns and watching him build on them I decided to try my hand at building one for my self.
I decided to build a simple black powder pistol to begin with. It was going to be very plain and have just the need things to shoot good. Red gave me a 32 caliber barrel off an old rifle that he had. I bought an old back action lock, trigger guard and trigger and a pistol blank of curly maple wood.
After I got some carving tools I started by inlaying the barrel with the breach plug and back tang on it. Then I installed the drum witch holds the nipple for the percussion caps on the barrel and inlaid that in. The barrel had the front hold down and front sight soldered on at the same time. To hold the barrel in the stock there is a screw through the back tang and a pin put in through the stock and front hold down.
Then the lock plate is inlaid in with all of the working parts on the back of it removed. Next the lock is put back together and inlaid back into the stock by removing only the wood that is needed so it would work good and smooth.
Next the trigger is set in to line up with the lock in order to trip the lock to fire the gun.To hold the trigger in a hole was drilled and a pin set in through the wood and into the trigger to give it a pivot point to work from. After this is done the pistol is able to be fired.
Next I inlaid the trigger guard in. Then I started to work the stock down to the shape that I was looking for. I used a wood rasp with course files to do this with. This is were you have to be very careful not to take too much off or you will be starting all over again.
Once I got my stock worked down I sanded and sanded with going over the stock in between sanding with a wet cloth to raise the grain in the wood. This makes the wood harder and also the grain will not raise up when you put on your finish. The finish I ended up with was natural with no stain.
The pistol ended up be a good shooter. I shot a lot of rabbits with the pistol. I use to track rabbits and other small game in the snow. That brought quite a few good meals.
If you would like to see pictures of this pistol and learn more about black powder guns you can go to BlackPowderGun.com
