This fusil was designed with elements from a picture provided by the customer.

He had ordered Bess hardware from the Rifle Shoppe, which had been backordered for an indeterminant time. Back then, there were also no commercially available, tapered, round smoothbore barrels being offered. I contacted a machinist friend to make one. In the meantime, I upscaled the picture into a useable template and cut the stock from a walnut blank.

Upon receiving the barrel, it was inlet into the blank, as was the lock. Here, you can see the precision achieved by a hand inlet component, as opposed to one that has been hogged out by a router. All inletting was done using only chisels.

The customer chose a Queen Anne lock for this project.

There was no sideplate which lent itself to the physical dimensions of the lock. Measurements were taken, a template drawn, and one was fabricated from brass stock.

With all components now on hand, inletting and stock shaping commmenced.

We wanted to achieve a certain look to the gun, instead of leaving it as plain walnut. I had a quantity of ebony sawdust left over from another job. I extracted the color from it using a solvent, which was then used to stain the wood. The result was that desired, but this was a "one-time shot" only.

The completed gun:

Inserts were made and soldered into the thimbles to accommodate the 1/4" steel ramrod.

Both the lock and barrel were polished and left bright.

Both sidepanels are too large. If done today, I would reduce them to 1/4" or less clearance around the lock, and copy the profile on the opposite side. However, if the actual gun is viewed physically, they aren't as large as the pictures appear.