Chapter 26

Karen

Spring came. My class was done. I was disappointed in my students. They had all done a superlative job building ... but they were KITS! The hard part was done. Uberti Santa Fe Hawken kits come assembled. There’s no guess or by gosh. They fit! Everything fits. The guns were beautiful ... as good as mine ... and mine was a beauty.

The wood was a wonder to behold. It shot straight and true. I had built the rifle with a long barrel... 35 inches.

Then I drilled six “S size” holes in the face of the muzzle three inches deep and parted the barrel at 33 inches leaving a two inch stub that I pinned with six 0.125 inch diameter 2 and 7/8 inch pins. The stub ends of the pins were threaded to 1/8th NFT and fitted with a slot for a screwdriver. The pins were screwed in to the stub barrel leaving 7/8ths of an inch of the pins extended. This stub was fitted to the barrel, reamed and rifled when the barrel was rifled ... a false muzzle. Loading was accomplished by short starting a .525 lubricated pillow ticking patched round ball through the false muzzle and into the 33 inch barrel then using the ramrod to seat the patched ball on the powder charge. The false muzzle was then removed, the lock primed and the round applied to the target.