Anyone built a filntlock or percussion cap pistol using a kit?

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hobgob

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I am looking to build a flintlock or percussion cap pistol. Just wondering what the best kits are and which kit has the best wood quality. I just wonder if there is something better than Traditions. Any tips are appreciated.
 
I got my CVA mountain pistol flinter from Deer Creek. I don't know if there are any left now. The metal was rusty with slight pitting. Took a lot of filing to get down to a good surface.

Deer Creek bought most of CVA's side-hammer stock several years ago. It looked like they put much effort into protecting it from rust.
 
Got a Traditions Hawken type rifle kit for Christmas one year. Everything fit together fairly well (the brass butt plate took some extra effort getting it to line up properly), but other than that it was pretty easy and straight forward to assemble and finish.

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A lot of it depends on your skill set and what you want to build. Track of the Wolf has a good selection of parts and kits. You can order part sets for a lot of different guns or you can go with a great plains rifle kit that has most everything fitted. If it's your first attempt its best to go with a less expensive kit and upgrade down the road after you get the feel for building.
 
I built a Flintlock Pistol about 48 years ago. Started out as a CVA .45 Cal. kit I received for my 21st birthday. The stock was so warped it was unusable, so I made my own from a nice piece of Walnut. Made the trigger and brass pieces from scratch, as the ones from CVA were basically junk. The lock had a very soft frizzen, and wouldn't spark very well. Never did brown or blue the barrel; just left it get a bit rusty with age. The bore is very rough; very poorly reamed if at all, with cross drilled marks all the way. I fired it a few times over the years, but mostly it is a neat looking display piece. I hope CVA has improved over time, but this thing was a joke for quality back in 1971.
 
I've built 2 Hawken Rifles and One Pistol. I found that after the first rifle that kits were great, but I bit the bullet and had my LGS glass bead blue all of them. I didn't have the patience to prep the metal to either brown or rust blue. I have since used some of the newer home rust blue available from Brownells and I think if I were going to build another one, I'd consider going that route. Its time consuming, but you can really get a nice looking job
 
I have built three Pedersoli pistol kits from Dixie and am very happy with the quality of the kit as well as the finished product. One is a flinter and two are cap guns. The .45 caliber Kentucky pistol cap gun is very accurate also.
 
i built three last winter. a flintlock from pecotonica river for a customer of mine. then i built a cva.32 davy crockett rifle kit for me and a cva 45 cal hand gun one for me. they all look very nice and shoot very well. i know how to make any hard wood look better than it was ever ment to be. go for it. i also do my own rust bluing or browning.
 
I built a Armsport 50 cal Hawken rifle from a kit I ordered mail order back in the late 70's.Rifle went together fine but I could never get a decent cold blue job on the barrel. I tried different blues on the market at the time, but nothing looked that good, so I browned the barrel and that worked ok. I've fired it just over 100 times ( one in 48 twist ) and with 100 grains of FF,and a patched round ball I get a 4 inch group at 100 yards off the bench.I haven't fired it now in years HAHAHA hdbiker
 
I still have mine for sale, it says WithDrawn because I got tired of the low ballers.

Just re-listed it and it does have a warranty, please see the ad for details.
 
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Jim Kibler sells a couple nice kits that are easy to build and offers some of the best wood available, it all depends on how deep you wallet goes, both rifle styles are flintlocks. Some folks are leary of flintlocks, but Jim uses some of the best locks out on the market. Pecatonica makes nice kits as well as Chamber’s Flintlocks.com. Yes, these are a step up in price from traditions, but they are worth it. I started out building traditions and cva’s. Good luck with what you choose, fun building no matter how you look at it.

Jimkibler.net
 
people dont realize that if you dont want to put out the price for up scale kits traditions kits can be made to look way better than they were ment to. also they shoot very very well. a hint about the beech wood used for traditions stocks. use medium brown leather dye to stain the stock to bring out the grain of wood then you can oil finish it or high gloss, the finish, its your choise. also if every one wants i can tell you how to rust brown or rust blue or even rust black a barrel that is very pro. and you can do it at home. its not rocket science or i couldnt do it.
 
I built a Flintlock Pistol about 48 years ago. Started out as a CVA .45 Cal. kit I received for my 21st birthday. The stock was so warped it was unusable, so I made my own from a nice piece of Walnut. Made the trigger and brass pieces from scratch, as the ones from CVA were basically junk. The lock had a very soft frizzen, and wouldn't spark very well. Never did brown or blue the barrel; just left it get a bit rusty with age. The bore is very rough; very poorly reamed if at all, with cross drilled marks all the way. I fired it a few times over the years, but mostly it is a neat looking display piece. I hope CVA has improved over time, but this thing was a joke for quality back in 1971.

The thing about black powder kits is that some of them go together quite easily with some fitting on metal parts mostly. Others have serious problems with poorly fitted pre-inletted stocks.

I built an Italian .50 caliber Pennsylvania percussion rifle many years ago from a kit, and it went together pretty easily, with only filing and polishing of metal parts and removing excess wood here and there to fit it to the lock, buttplate, and nose cap. I had to reshape the hooked buttplate some because it was too sharp for me. The supplied nipple was also defective, allowing the hammer to blow back to half-cock!
It shot well though, and sold easily when I placed it on consignment eventually, so I must have finished it well.

On the other hand, I also bought a Lyman Great Plains Flinter kit and had nothing but grief with the stock, which had multiple inletting issues.
Luck of the draw, I suppose.
 
the lymans need to be tweeked, different screws and such. they can be a pain but a really good shooter.
 
the lymans need to be tweeked, different screws and such. they can be a pain but a really good shooter.

My stock was beyond tweaking. The barrels and locks are certainly good though. Almost as good as the old TC Hawkens that they copied.
 
Reworking my great plains rifle is definitely in the cards, don't like wood screws holding the upper tang, need screws to be threaded into the trigger plate. Also the in letting was pretty sloppy, on a factory finished gun.
 
it took me a while to get mine together but it looks nice and really shoots good. i gave it to my son who lives in denver. i also put a much better sight on the back of it. i sure did a lot of tweeking to get it to where i liked it. longer wedges also. one may have to have more than beginners skills for it to be done right. a kit is a kit, i ordered with my money once for a shooter who wanted me to do that. it was a traditions and a very good kit. he took one look at it and said i dont want it, its too hard to put together. i was out the money so i built it into a fine gun and gave it to our pastor at the church i was attending at that time. he loved it and got deer with it. wont do business with the shooter who ordered through me again. it even had a american barrel. turned out i loike the gun so much i ordered 2 more and built them also. a friend bought those , one for him and one for his wife. they also at that time had american barrels on them 50 1/60 twist. best twist for a 50 cal round ball their is. they, all three of them were tack drivers. back then they even had hard maple stocks on them. got them through deer island.
 
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