Scaled-down Schreyer (1985)

A fellow at Friendship was trying to produce a boy's rifle, no doubt inspired by the kiddie's match I helped to start on the Primitive range. After some horse trading, I agreed to make a prototype. This is it, with a .40 calibre barrel, held by my son, Andrew.

Left-Handed Isaac Haines (1984)

Isaac Haines, who lived and worked in Strassburg (southeast of Lancaster) was a great (and original) gunsmith. An American customer had bought an Isaac Haines kit ten years previous, and asked me to finish it. This was the second time that I had to mirror-image the decoration (the Henry Albright was the first). A real challenge - but - once the lock and buttplate are correctly inletted, it seems to go all right.

It was also the second time I had the opportunity to work on a domed lid patch box.

Silver John Armstrong (1983)

I met Dan Hartzler at Friendship back in 1978, and we became friends. Thanks to Dan, I first visited the Kindig collection and photographed fine rifles in other private collections. I made him a recreation of the famous "silver" Armstrong rifle in .54 calibre. Dan has hunted and shot most of the big game aimals with this rifle.

The "Golden Age" Rifle (1981)

This started out as a Shreyer recreation, but creativity took hold of me. Here was the first time I had inlayed silver into brass, and really used silver wire. Ten years later, my friend John Carruthers rescued the rifle, aplied stain and varnish to it, and showed it to me. I couldn't remember the gun, and thought it was a great contemporary longrifle. Finally, I saw the signature!