tenn. poor boy. my favorite flinter

[eastbank]

ken ishler of mill hall pa. built this tenn poor boy left hand .50 flinter serial number 11 from a dixie kit from the 70,s and it has been used every year since then, a very durable rifle. my grandson wanted to show off his rem 1858 .44, i hope you dont mind. eastbank.

 

[Das Jaeger]

Nice Rifle !

game getter obviously .

Got any pics of the Son shootin that beast , hee hee hee , its bigger than he is A true Warthog in the makin there with that boy Nice ....

Das Jaeger

 

[Ratdog68]

All that young man needs now is a 'coon skin cap so he can take over ownership of the rifle too.

 

[eastbank]

as a matter of fact he has a coonskin cap, and here it is. also a pic of him with my 1860 henry. last pic is of a croney i shot while checking the volicity of a load,i forgot i set the trigger and it went boom to soon, the ball went right thru the LCD and killed the croney.my other grandson who is in the pic,thought it was funny. eastbank.

 

[NobleSniper]

Nice looking iron and a fine looking grandson

 

[alemonkey]

Very nice, I love the poor boy rifles.

 

[Cosmoline]

Great rifle! It's given me some ideas for mine. I like that grease hole.

 

[Olmontanaboy]

Nice rifle, here's mine:

 

[Iggy]

Pore boys? Nah, got no use for them.


54 Flinter.



40 Flinter



.40 Flint pistol from same barrel and piece of wood as the one above.



Wife's .40 caplock half stock.

Nah, got no use for them at all.

 

[Ratdog68]

And, a fine lookin' brood you have no use for too. Send 'em to me... I have a good use for 'em.

 

[eastbank]

i like them as they were used by the comman man, no patch box,no silver inlays or frills. just plain solid rifles that a man raiseing a family on the frontier could afford. solid as the iron furiture they used. eastbank.

 

[BCRider]

So.... is that chronie stuffed and mounted on the wall o' trophies now?

Some VERY nice hardware in these pictures. And that's one happy looking boy holding that '58. The little brat peeking out from behind that rather emarrased and sad looking guy on the other hand.....

Of course now I've put the jinx on myself and I'll likely ruin something of my own when I head out to the shop to tinker in a little....

I love the rifle and pistol combo made from the one length of barrel stock and wood. I'm thinking I need another project on the list.

 

[eastbank]

the cronie is stuffed alright, in the i,d rather not talk about it box. the charge of 80gr,s fff and a tight patched round ball killed it dead, i don,t know what speed the ball was going,but the cronie was going about 20fps,after i hit it. i called cronie about their warrenty, and i could hear them all laughing in the back ground, when the man said their is no warrenty against nitwits. eastbank.

 

[Ratdog68]

Yer not the first... I was watchin' an archery video... some feller had JUST received a chronie as a Christmas gift from his parents. Well... the first time he was going to use it, the film crew was there with camera running. His hot-shot compound bow's broadhead tipped arrow did UGLY things to his new chronie. Yeah... he took a pretty brutal ribbing... and it made it into the video too.

 

[badpenny]

iggy that's as purty a pistol as i've ever seen,i really like that

 

[Dithsoer]

Seriously now, where Poor Boy rifles really that common? I rarely see one at antique auctions and such. Of course, that could be because they were used until they were "worn out" (or at least replaced) so few exist today, or are they more prized , being owned by the common man and used to actually feed his family rather than for wall hanging, and hence passed down and just saved by the family? How widespread were such rifles? One more thing: did some of our more well known historical gunsmiths build them also, or were they just built by men who concentrated on just this style/design?

 

[4v50 Gary]

Poor Boys were very common and were working rifles for the very poor. For the most part, they lacked engraving, inlays, relief carving that characterized their fancier cousins. Sometimes they would have a patchbox, but it was more common to find a grease hole in the stock. During the depression, the poorboy put game on the table of many mountainfolk. I believe that either Walter Cline (MuzzleLoading Today) or Ned Roberts wrote about them.

 

[scrat]

Iggy those are some fine works.

 

[kwetu]

According to the scribes the guns that have survived were mostly the more expensive ones which weren't shot so much as they belonged to more afluent people while the Poor Boys were used until the barrel wore out. Then they would have been 'Refreshed' by having the barrel reamed and re-rifled and off they would go again until that barrel wore out. Frizzens were 'Re-soled' where a new strip of hard steel was brazed onto the frizzen when it wore out. Eventually there was nothing left of them and what was still good would have been used to make another rifle.
kwetu

 

[Cosmoline]

I've seen a number of poor boys and related smooth rifles for auction on GB. There's a fellow out of Penn who sells a lot of lower-end, beat-up front stuffers.

The biggest difference between the reality then and our recreations now is that we seem to adhere to a very narrow range of acceptable styles. The working guns from the period have no set style at all, and often seem to be uniquely suited to a particular user.

 

[eastbank]

i was shooting my poor boy yesterday and boy does it like the hornandy .50 cal 240 gr bullet, i clean the sticky grease off the bullet with carb cleaner and lube well with crisco,putting it also in the small hollow base. from a rest with 80 grs 2f it will shoot just about one hole at 25yds from a rest. i have to test it with different charges of powder and at longer ranges, but it out shoots round balls. eastbank.