Tryon Rifle

[Cosmoline]

With the weak dollar the European made smokepoles are getting mighty dear. So I pulled this one off gunbroker for about half retail price. It's been around the block and could use a refinishing and cleanup, but it looks nice. It's in .54. I'm considering it my Heller purchase, though I got it to eventually make into an homage to the great Joe Meek.

The back action is really interesting and very fast. I'm not sure why these fell out of favor in later cap rifles.

 

[4v50 Gary]

Back action locks were known way back in the days. It was just a variation of the theme with the hammer in a backward position with relation to the mainspring. I examined a French & Indian era flintlock wall gun that had a back action lock. Externally the only thing that gave it away was the length of the lockplate. Once I removed the lock, you could see it was back-action.

 

[scrat]

thats a nice rifle and a good find. i would leave it just the way i got it.

 

[Cosmoline]

It balances well but some of the iron fixings have sharp corners and aren't flush with the wood. I swapped out the rear buckhorn for a more practical (and realistic) notch sight. Always hated buckhorns, and it's not as if actual mountain men would have ever used them.

The profile is very odd. It's ovoid in shape instead of the usual rounded ML. It balances very well offhand, but I'm not sure how well it will carry afield. One thing I'm contemplating is getting a short "field" barrel of the same slow twist to take with me hunting. I'm not sure if anyone makes these though.

We'll see how she shoots on Saturday.

 

[Gaucho Gringo]

Cosmoline , that is a name that is familiar to me, Joe Meek. My dad grew up and was friends with one of his great grandsons. I used to go over to his house with my dad a lot. Anyway hanging over the fireplace mantle were two of old Joe Meeks rifles. One was a flintlock and the other one was a percussion cap rifle that had been converted from a flintlock if I remember correctly as it has almost been 50 years since I last saw them. Being that was interested in old guns I got to handle them several times. On one occasion I got to dry fire the flintlock, what a shower of sparks. It sure startled me as I wasn't expecting it. Anyway Cosmoline, do you mind me asking your connection with Joe Meek?

 

[Cosmoline]

That must have been a treat. I wonder what became of those. The one I'm looking at in particular is in the Oregon Historical Society collection. They were kind enough to send me some photos. It has "DEATH" written across one side of the stock with some notches. I don't know if it is "Old Sally" herself but it was one of his fur trade era rifles. One of my books identifies it as an "early Kentucky style" mountain man rifle but offers little additional information other than it was originally made for German pioneers in Mexican Texas. It has a thick ovoid stock and the back action very similar to the Tryon, but not quite as fancy. Also it is a full stock with a shorter barrel.

My connection to Meek is not familial. I just grew up in Oregon and he was an instrumental part of the state's early history. My own pioneer ancestor ran one of the first steamboats on the Columbia back in the 1850's so they might have known each other.

I'm thinking of having the barrel engraved with his birth and death dates on alternate sides of the octagon above the stock line. Both to say he was born and died in Washington County, USA.

 

[Gaucho Gringo]

I don't know what happened to the guns although I wonder almost every time I hear the name Joe Meek. I would suppose they are still in the family as he had several children. My dad passed away almost 30 years ago and it has probably been almost 45 years since I had any contact with the family. Yes, it was a treat to handle the guns although I didn't gather the full meaning until years later. It is good to meet a fellow Oregonian from the Portland area in which I have lived for all my 58 years.

 

[Cosmoline]

I was driven north by the job market ten years ago. Everytime I went back to stumptown that Katz and her people had destroyed more of it. Even Powell's has become something of a tourist trap. And now they're turning my old workplace at Meier & Frank into a luxury hotel. I guess that's progress. I like it up here better though. It's like Oregon was when my grandparents were living down there.

 

[Gaucho Gringo]

Yes, the town I grew up is gone. I have lived in the same 40 block area all my life. I grew up on NE 31st and Siskyou and now live on NE 65th and Stanton, one block south and 34 blocks east of where I was raised. The kids are grown and only have one left at home. As soon as he leaves me & my wife are selling the house and getting out of here. For the gun related content of this post, when I was in high school I used to go duck hunting where the Costco on NE 135th off of Sandy blvd is. Also another good place used to be I 405 near Beaverton. Why do you think they have trouble with flooding in the area when we have heavy rains? Because it was built over a big marshy area that was duck heaven because of all the grain fields around the marshes and swamps. Washington county was the breadbasket of the California Gold Rush. Portland was shipping great qualities of wheat to San Fransisco when LA was a sleepy little Spanish town and Seattle was a forest of trees to the bay. It was on the backs of the Tualatan Valley farmers that Portland built its riches.

 

[Mp7]

with the dollar this weak - we should liberalize our gun laws around here, and empty out the gunbroker shopwindow

nice rifle.

 

[Cosmoline]

I hear ya Gaucho. That land was some of the richest in the entire world. Almost any temparate crop can crow and flourish there, from grains to berries. My folks had a place out in Cedar Mill when it was still rural but in the past 20 years the McMansions swarmed around and now there's high density condos. All these outsiders came in to enjoy Portland's "livability" and have been destroying it in the process. You should come up to south central AK ;-)

with the dollar this weak

That's one reason I'm looking on the used market for Pedersolis right now. Their price is heading north very quickly because of the exchange rate.