Brass-Barrel Rifle (1996)

Ever since George Shumway's Rifles of Colonial America was published in 1980, I have admired the famous "brass barrel rifle", apparently made by an unknown in Augusta county, Virginia, circa 1771. I had spent a few years trying to find someone who would make me a brass rifled barrel. Ed Rayle of Grassaway, West Virginia, makes them. I spent four hours with the original, measuring and photographing every inch. This is the result.