TVM Late Lancaster Kit

is getting delivered tomorrow! It is sitting in the UPS warehouse here in Atlanta tonight. I probably won't sleep well tonight thinking about it. I've been "nesting" in my workshop for the last 2 weeks, organizing, cleaning and finishing up my wife's honeydo list. I've put her on notice that all non-essential honeydo's are on hold for a while.

I'll post up my photos here. I don't know what I'm really going to get, so I'm pretty excited.

Be sure and post pictures as you build! I have been debating getting them to build one for me. I simply do not have the skill to build one right.

Bob,
I'm not sure I have the skill either to tell the truth. TVM will do the metal work that would be the most expensive to mess up. I'll just need to finish the inletting, drilling, assembly and finishing. I've heard that the Jim Kibler kits are the easiest to assemble with the least work and I would have gone that route but I wanted a caliber and barrel length that Jim Kibler didn't offer at the time.

Worst case scenario, is that I booger up the wood and send the metal parts to someone to re-stock for me.

I have refinished a few old rifles and have done some practice inletting. I'm telling myself to go slow, practice on scrap maple first if needed.

If you want a longrifle, check out Jim Kibler and for Hawkens style rifles there are always the Lyman Plains rifle kits that are very affordable and would be hard to mess up.

Cant wait to see your build pics !!!!!

I built 2 CVA Hawken kit guns about 30 yrs ago and they still look
great today....I had the barrels professionally hot blued, and
finger rubbed 10-12 coats of tru oil after inletting the hardware...

I let each coat of tru oil dry a min of 24 hrs to make sure it was
dry and then lightly buffed each coat with 0000 steel wool to
make sure the wood grain was glass smooth....

Good luck !!

in for pics!

I'll keep this thread updated with pics as I go. UPS says its on the truck today and since my office closed due to the snow, I'm working from home waiting for the doorbell. I hope the snow doesn't prevent delivery today. Weird to be a 52 yr old man and be this excited, but I have been working towards this since Nov 2016.

Woot Woot. Showed up today. Much more 'done' than I expected. All I may have to do is some fine tuning of the inlets and thin down the buttstock to the width of the buttplate. I can't tell from looking at the wood if I got the Premium + wood upgrade or not. I hope so since that was extra $$. Looking forward to getting started.

Good luck! The only advice I have to offer is don't work on it if you are frustrated or in a hurry. That's the only time I did bonehead things to my kit.

Lesson #1 has been learned. Pony up the money if you want the pretty curly stock. This one is a one level upgrade ~30% curl from TVM which seems to be "not much curl". An extra $25 would have gotten me a ++ upgrade to 50-60% curl, while and extra $75 over upgrade #1 gets the premium.

I didn't want the premium grade as I've heard it can be hard to work with. I should have gotten the ++ upgrade and spent the extra $25.

I've been told that I can send it back and TVM will work it out with me, but then I'm likely paying $75 shipping both ways and that $150 shipping +the upgrade costs, I can get a whole second stock to work on later.

You need to be real careful inletting your lock. The touchhole should be centered in your pan and level with the top of the pan. Since they have already installed the TH for you then you must deal with the preinlet lock mortise plus the preplaced TH liner.
That stock is more closely inlet than any I've seen. I've never seen one where the barrel actually dropped into place like that one. Usually it takes a good bit of work to get one to do like that.
Before you do anything to that stock I would take the lock and place it over the inlet, line the TH with the center of the pan and see what it looks like.
Once you cut a stock you can't send it back.

Darkhorse,

Yes, the stock was much more completely inletted than I expected. They even bedded the barrel tang with Acra-glass. I was in there so tight I had to take a brass drift and beat the barrel tang out of the stock. That might be great for accuracy but since it will need to come in and out a bunch while I'm working on it, I loosened it up just a bit on the sides. It is still tight in the stock though but not "brass drift and 16oz hammer tight".

I checked the TH and pan last night. It might not be level with the top of the pan but it will be close to the top I think. If you look close at the photo, the lock bolt hole is already drilled as well and the lock is drilled and tapped. The locations are basically fixed for me now.

I'll be working on dropping the stripped lock into the mortise later today.

The lock isn't all the way in but I think this will be ok. As I'm working on the inlet, I'll try to work on the bottom side more as to not encourage the lock to end up higher than absolutely required.

To remove a tight fitting barrel grasp the barrel with one hand about a 1/3 of the way from the end of the stock. Grasp the stock and barrel just in front of the lock.
Turn it over and tap the top of the butt on a piece of carpet on the floor.
This will jar the tang from the stock where you can work the rest of it free.
But I always open mine a little as I too, want to remove my barrel with ease.
BTW The tang should have a draft filed in it, meaning it's tapered from full size at the top to smaller as you go towards the bottom. This not only makes it easier to inlet but easier to remove also.

I updated the post above with the photo of the TH. Yes, the tang is drafted and I worked on it just a bit more.

Question: should I draft around the edges of the lock too?

I worked on filing the tang down some more today but since I had a general anesthesia procedure this morning, I fell out after about an hour or so. I'll be back on it tomorrow after some solid food and sleep.

I always file a draft on the bottom of the lockplate. Yes, I would work on inletting the plate down as much as possible but it doesn't look like they left you much wood to work with.
Just a thought but the predrilled lockbolt hole could be drilled out a little larger to allow the lock to drop down a little more. The lock mortice will hold the lock in the proper position even if there is play in that hole.

Working on the lock today and fussing about where the TouchHole would end up. I messed around and cut some brass sheet shims and figured out I could raise the end of the barrel tang about .030 and get the TH where I thought was about perfect, but then the tang was about .050+ proud of the wood, so yuck that is a lot of metal to take off the tang and would probably result in a divot between the tang and the barrel breach. So no go.

During this I figured out the end of the tang wasn't sitting in the bottom of the inlet TVM cut (and had put bedding compound in there) and the end of the tang was still a bit proud of the wood. So I bent the tang some and it dropped into its slot and below the level of the wood.

This actually lifted the tang of the barrel about .015 which in turn raised the TH just a hair. I dug out an old chainsaw file 5/32" which just happened to be the size of the hole drilled in the tang and filed the bottom of the hole some into an oval so I could get the lock plate bolt back through the hole.

Then back to inletting the lock and got that done today. Tomorrow I'll need to take a little wood off behind the hammer cock so it won't hit the stock at full cock. Then I can start function testing the lock before starting on the trigger. I may do the trigger later - haven't decided yet.

So here is where the TH is now. The tang is abit proud of the wood but I don't think I can really file it down enough and still have it look good, so I may need to live with it. I will need to put some Acraglass into the bottom of the tang since I lifted it just slightly but I was probably going to do that anyway.

Looking good leoparddog. The touch hole now looks to be only about .030 low. Consider this...When you start shooting the rifle you will most likely need to drill out the TH using number drills, one or two drill sizes until you get no hangfires and fast ignition. Those liners with the small hole are intended to be done that way. After the hole is drilled out then it might be too low. You want your fire to jump into the hole, you don't want it to burn into it like a fuse. The flame from the pan travels up and out.
I use Accra Gel for small gaps and to bed behind the barrel and anywhere else it might be needed. It stays where you put it instead of running down like regular accraglass. Plus the gel comes with brown and black coloring tubes to color the gel.
Your inletting looks good and tight.
Notice in this photo where the fouling from the prime has deposited a gray film high above the pan. You can also just see where my TH is located.

Thanks Darkhorse, I can still raise it more at this stage but it will be by adjusting the rear of the barrel at the tang up, then filing the tang back down to the wood. I can pretty easily raise it another .015 and have already ordered the Acraglass Gel. I've used both the regular and gel versions bedding rifles over the years, so yeah, I learned about the runny regular Acraglass when I bedded my first rifle.

Ram rod channel - how much further can I go here?

The factory drilled hole stops where you see it. Where the ram rod stops, if cut to that length, would result in a ram rod that is flush with an unloaded barrel. I would prefer the ram rod to have about 1 inch sticking out of the barrel if the gun is unloaded. Mainly for running a cleaning patch down the barrel in the field.

On my Hawken rifle, I cut my ram rod long so it sticks out about 1.25" inch, not historically correct I'm sure. I don't really want to do that with this rifle.

So I'm considering extending the ram rod channel here some more. I think I'd be fine with just that bit extra. I don't think I should go as far as the bottom of the breach plug, but how far is too far?

I did Acrasglass it last night and this was the result. I found a spot under the barrel tang that needs some more bedding. I may also put a spot or two of bedding down the barrel channel later after I inlet the tenons

Leoparddog, you probably know this, but I'll put it out there anyway. You need to remember to leave room between the fore stock and the barrel for the barrel to flex as it is fired. That gets a little tricky when you have three anchor points along the barrel!

Also for the ramrod, you could change the "other" end fitting to a female screw fitting and buy or make a 2" or 3" long jag to get you a couple of extra inches without making a longer ramrod.

Looks like you are doing far better than I could.

You're spot on Bob. I can get a cleaning jag that would give me an extra 2" or so. I may chisel out that last .5" and call that part done.
Tonight I put a touch of extra bedding under the tang where I had a pretty good sized air gap from the first bedding. I think I'm done playing with the Acraglass. I'm always worried I'm going to epoxy the barrel in place.

I spent the rest of my waiting time this weekend working planning a drill press jig table and went to Rockler for some T-Track. I also quickly made this little chisel holder to keep them orderly on my work bench while I'm inletting