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Hello from the UK

I have just spent the last two evenings watching these rifles being made by modern experts on You Tube and they look magnificent. The craftsmanship is unbelievable and they most certainly are not replicas.They are the real thing My question is why was Curly Maple the preferred wood, was it more plentiful than Walnut at the time?
By all accounts it is not an easy wood to work with.

Welcome Stockman. Maple is very prevalent here in America, curly maple is tree to tree ......... where you find it. Curly maple is not a species, but is an anomaly that occurs in maple trees occasionally when the grain, for some reason, grows in an irregular, but pretty pattern. I cannot say definitively why so many Kentucky style rifle were built with maple, over walnut, because American black walnut is very common and widespread as well. But, I'll hazard a guess. Having worked with both walnut and curly maple (there are several curly maple longrifle blanks resting in my shop right now) I believe part of it may be that, IMO, maple is a bit lighter than walnut, but stable, and with a longrifle that would be important. Curly maple with very tight curl is not easy to inlet at all, but it can be done with patience, else I would not have been able to pull it off. The old time gunmakers had a lot more patience than most of us have today.

I think it was style someone noticed a nice maple stock and wanted one plus there was lots of maple trees. virginia a Commonwealth not the girl used walnut on some of their rifles but over time maple became the traditional wood .some had ash ,cherry .i was at a shoot years ago and a guy had a rifle made of cherry wood it didn't have the gawdy look of a curly maple stock but the workman ship swamped bbl. Carving fit and finish made you look at the gun as a complete work of art.

If you really have an interest in longrifles probably the best place to go is the americanlongrifes.org forum. Some of the builders you may have watched post there.

Maple (and others) is also harder than American black walnut.