Very cool stuff, Peter.
Here is my very own version of "Killdeer". It's an old Tennessee Mountain Rifle, from Dixie Gun Works. They were selling them back in the late '70's and early '80's, both in finished rifle and in kit form. I bought mine in kit form from an old gentleman who was the proprietor of The Knife and Black Powder Gun Works from whom I had purchased one of the old Thompson Center Hawken kits.
I was about 19 when I purchased the Hawken kit from him, which he sold me with a good bit of skepticism. "I wanna see it when yer done, kid." So, thinking I had done o.k. for a first try, I brought it in to show him several months later. He said "wow, not only did you not completely ruin it, you actually did a pretty darn good job".
Then he told me he had been sitting on a "pretty special" rifle kit, but was having a hard time finding time to finish it. Then he said that he wasn't willing to sell it "to just anybody", but he would be willing to let me have it at his cost. That's when he brought out the Tennessee Mountain Rifle. I bought it on the spot.
Well, it took me a year to finish it. It took the longest to finish the cherry wood stock. He told me that once I had it fully inletted, the barrel fit, the furniture all fitted, to rub one coat of boiled linseed oil into it every day for a week, then every week for a month, then every month for a year.
That was 1980/1981. I've hunted with it off and on since then, taking several mulies. It's purely a round ball shooter, .50 caliber. It's of the "Tennessee Poor Boy" pattern, with all iron furniture (which I browned myself), and a grease hole instead of a patch box. It has a 41" barrel with a 56" twist, and shoots as well as I can hold. It mostly hangs over the fireplace now, but I still shoot it every now and then.
Here she is:
