Rusty, another design flaw modern makers don't deal with is the barrels on most real Hawkins rifles were tapered from the breech to the muzzel. You can't really fix that flaw and use the same stock, unfortunatly, but it really shouldn't matter.
Nearly no one can afford an exact copy of the real thing in Hawkin, or much of anything else as it is just cost prohibitive.
My Nor' West Gun isn't pure correct, nor in my Brown Bess, nor my Kentucky long rifle.
Each one has design flaws, cast v springs and the like. These are flintlocks. Jim Chambers took over the Siler Lock Co., and has one of the best flintlocks there is. These even have the flash pan separate from the lock plate, which is what most flintlock plates were like once.
My bess has a cast lock plate and there is a line cast into the plate which makes it appear as the pan is another part, but the plate and pan are all one piece of metal just the same.
The L&R lock is the same way, and someone took a lot of time and trouble to mimic the pan line to show it is 2 pieces, but it isn't.
On the other hand the worst lock I have is on the Trade Gun and it has a pan that comes off the lock plate. This is a very good lock and nearly correct, and the term worst is due to the fact Trade Guns were made to be cheaper. It hasn't little nice things like a 'fly' and or fancy internals like the L&R and Siler locks do.
Of couse neither does the Bess, because it was military, but the Bess is built much more rugged than the trade gun lock is.
All of these locks are better than some others for modern replica guns so far as i am concerned.
many locks are looked at and inspected lightly, and then some engineer designs a lock that has a look, but the engineer doesn't know why, and therfore what he is doing, and isn't himself familar with what makes a flint lock a good flint lock.
So we all share these problems about being 'correct'.
What custom makes sometimes do, is buy parts and then alter the parts heavily, and then can mke the parts closer to correct, sometimes nearly perfectly correct, untill it comes to the wood, where it was grown and the metal.
A very few custom makers will make their own steel from scratch, but we are talking about a very few people who can afford a lot of work most people never see or appreciate.
No guns back then were made of recycled chevy and toyota which I might guess we all do now on way or another. No one like Green Mountain is going to tell anyone where they buy their steel either.
Modern building, usually means too much wood still on the finished product. Almost ALL real guns I have ever seen had very little wood remaining forward of the wrist.
Most of these had less than 1/8th inch along the barrel, and nothing like the common 1/4"/ 6mm we are accustomed to to these days.
Assuming you didn't spend more than 2,000 dollars for that gun it is as close as you can expect to being correct.
Historically fruit woods, maple and walnut were used to build gun stocks.
In that order they are harder to easier to work the wood. In that same order they wood weighs more to less.
All of these have stable character once dry.
For the most part depending on which fruit wood passing maple, to walnut the grains is tighter to more open, walnut being the most open grain.
These things were taken into consideration back then, but I don't know if it is any more. So far as i can tell Pear and then Apple were the most common fruit woods, but there is not many surviving examples with in my reach to study.
I live in New Hampshire just down the road from Green Mountain Co and just up the road from TC Center, just incase that is interesting somehow.
