At age 15 I read an article in The American Rifleman ( borrowed from a neighbor) about making a muzzle loading pistol much like this one. This was 1955; there were no kits, and so parts were hard to find, especially so in eastern Montana. I bought a piece of black walnut at the local lumberyard. Our town "gunsmith" gave me a piece of octagon barrel from a Winchester 32 Special and a short piece of round steel he said came from a Ford Model T drive shaft. He said the steel was too hard to make a breech plug from, and so I took it to our town blacksmith who annealed it. The smith then turned and threaded a shank and bored and threaded the barrel section to fit. A buddy from school took an interest in my project and came up with a lock pirated from a cheap Belgian shotgun. I had a catalog from Dixie Gun Works (about 20 pages; I still have it.) I ordered the remaining hardware, a bag of 00 buck shot, and a pound of FFF. Several weeks passed as I tried to fit and shape the parts. Finally I got a phone call from the Milwaukee depot. A parcel had arrived from TN. A few days later my pistol was complete. My friend and I shot it some. It went bang and made smoke.. Whether we ever hit anything I can't recall. It was no accomplishment as an artifact, but , looking back, it launched a life-long attempt to make guns that won't end up in the landfill. I still have most of the Italian percussion caps from Dixie, and they still work.
| 