Dillogic wrote:
Jager and the later [Kentucky] Long Rifles are actually easy to make with tools bought from your local tool shop.
If you're talking about building the whole rifle from scratch as they did in the colonial era the process is actually quite lengthy and complex, considering on top of everything else, you have to make the barrel and then rifle it.
The barrel was said to be the hardest part;
• The steel had to be made and forged into bar stock
• The bar had to be repeatedly heated and hammered around a mandrel using a special anvil
• The barrel had to be straightened
• The barrel had to be rifled using a manually operated rifling machine
• The flats had to be draw filed into the barrel
This is a simple description. Actually, each of the above steps were very painstaking tasks.
The stock is said to be considerably easier to make than the barrel but even that took considerable skill and time.
Then the trigger guard, trigger mechanism, buttplate, ramrod thimbles, the ramrod, sideplate, sights, etc had to be fabricated.
If I remember right the locks were made in a factory somewhere else and distributed.
I'm just doing this off of memory and not even giving anywhere near a complete description but it gives you an idea....
Here's a video of just a small part of the barrel making process.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJn4XW2AQG8&list=PL368560CE73DAB01B[/youtube]
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