Hope you enjoy the photos of this
intensive project. Everyone always wants to know how long it takes
to make one of my rifles. Answer: I don't have a clue - don't
want to know. Yet; this one has been in the shop for nine months.
Here's an image which is much larger
than life size. You can begin to get an idea of the effort required
to do this type of work. This is carving steel. It's one "Tap"
at a time. There's no short-cut. Hours, days, weeks go by. When
one of these rifles is complete - it's unique. It's a massive
exercise in concentration.
The Alpine is a Classic Muzzle Loaded
rifle with Double acting Double Set Triggers.
The trigger housing is carved brass.
The front trigger is the "set", the rear is the "hair".
Note the clam shell design of the rear
stock. The butt stock contains some of the rifle's mechanism -
thus the parting line.
Showing the Barnes Multi-Aperture Peep
Sight. As the rear post is rotated, new
windows (on different levels) come
into line. Alot of folks seemed to think that was "the cat's
whiskers".
What do you mean . . . upside down?
I wanted you to reach into the picture
with your right hand, place your three extreme right fingers around
the pebbled area, and slide your thumb up into that pebbled contoured
area between the two relief carved panels. Your index finger can
choose either trigger from there. This is one sweet rifle to shoot.
With one practice session before the
match on Saturday, I mounted the sights I'd finished on Friday.
Here's my actual target from the big bore match. Those holes were
punched by 430 grain hunting slugs at 700 fps.
I was cheated some by my own fill gauge
which has proven to be about 300 psi light in error. During earlier
ballistic tests, the rifle had fired these slugs @ 737 fps off
3,000 psi. (filled with another fill gauge). I had weighed the
slug @ 432.6 grains. The shot yielded 521.88 ft. lbs. of muzzle
energy.
I wanted to compete with a realistic
hunting set-up. Open sights for fifty yards, and a massive slug
for penetration. I was pleased with the results. A "target
slug" of half the weight would have had the potential to
group tighter and would be much faster. My Raptor slug has proven
it's extreme accuracy potential many times as shown elsewhere
on the site.
