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Originally Posted by laEspadaAncha
Evan Johnson was one of only two gunsmiths in North Carolina with rifle boring machines in the mid-19th Century.
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I have seen these old rifling rigs in museums and I am always somewhat overwhelmed when I consider the skill and labor that went into making one of the barrels, let alone the entire rifle (even though locks were usually bought from a specialist).
My first long rifle was fairly plain, like yours lacking a patchbox but with a well proportioned and crafted tiger maple stock. Enthusiasts chided me - to my horror - that if they had it they would promptly redress that deficiency. It had been flint and was converted and then reconverted with some overly worn parts. But, just as North Carolina guns are scarce, this one turned out to be from a maker who had migrated from PA to the Hudson Valley region of New York just before the Revolution and so it too is a bit uncommon. I will present it once I have my photo studio back and manage to dig it out from the back of the armoury.
Espada, if you will allow me a couple of days, I will dig out the originals of the Christian Beck rifle pictures. The ALR forum software downsizes the images and so the versions I retain are a little sharper. I enjoyed that bit of detective work and I am convinced that there are at least four blood-related Christian Becks that were making rifles. The eldest Christian Beck had a son also named Christian Beck, but that son apprenticed under a different maker and worked in a different, though very plastic style. I cannot imagine a man as proficient as he in engraving giving all of that skill up to place a single line of rocker engraving! Despite documentation deficiencies, the rifle over my mantle must have been made by a cousin of the eldest Christian Beck as it has features more in common with the eldest Christian Beck and his famed brother J.P. Beck, but in a rifle clearly a generation later than these golden age masters. But there is much more research to be done to prove or disprove this observation.