The Life Of A Frontier Gunsmith - An Interview With Mike Miller

I'm here at Martin station this beautiful sight and I've got Mike Miller and we're talking about gunsmithing and the life of the gunsmithing 18th century give me an idea about you know you're on the frontier and you're a gunsmith what what's your life like what are you gonna be doing well I'm not gonna be building guns every day because in this area we're at the Cumberland Gap it is the jump-off place this is one of the last forts and last pieces of civilization in the area so I would be working on guns when I had the chance I would also probably be over in the blacksmith shop repairing things and taking care of things like that because for my persona that I do I'm doing here I am a master blacksmith the master gunsmith so I can build if I can make barrels I can make locks I can cast triggers and cast all those trigger guards and everything so I can deal every single piece of the gun generally however it would have been more economical if I was ordering the parts to beasts in here and then I would assemble the parts here I would stock the guns and I can make them pretty I could do the carving I could do something graving on them that would have been one of the more wealthy settlers here mm-hmm because I'm important I mean that's kind of one of the most crucial tools that is in front of one reference that I found of a North Carolina gunsmith was that he was a german-born man trained as a gunsmith in Germany came over here and was building guns in Pennsylvania for a while he was a Moravian they sent him to the Salem area Bethabara North Carolina and he refused to do militia duty and they said we can't have this this is like mutiny you can't do this and he said well you do what you want to but I'm not going and they say why not and he said because if I get hurt who fixes your guns should they excuse him his duty they find him no way then he paid grudgingly the fine every month and so occasionally people come in here and they'll say you're gonna do the battle on us now I'm if I get heard then who's gonna fix their guns off but that's how that works and those guys a lot of them were German they were somewhat arrogant because they had a skill that was very valuable out here in the woods I have in this spot we have made we made an entire gun here and I forged the lock for it Williamsburg's forged the barrel it was board up and reamed up in Williamsburg and then it was brought back here and rifled and then Andy Thomas the gunsmith here most of the time cast the brass parts and assembled the whole gun and then he once he carved it I engraved it and then it was finished and it was raffled off and gone so we did basically what could have been done here by one or two gunsmiths that were working full-time here doing this work we would repair the militia guns which we did all morning long today and most Fridays and Saturdays we fixed it yeah and Sunday morning we'll be fixing them left or they break them Saturday and it's the same thing somebody screw broke I go Forge your screw come back file it up fit it and tap it and and screw it in the gun and it's gone so you can't go out to a store you've got to make it from this is the act yes every piece here iron was very valuable so that's one of the reasons why the guns built here would have had brass mounts casting brass it was easier and cheaper they iron a piece of small scrap of iron could make a lot of screws screws were very expensive because most of them were handmade you couldn't just you know get a blank and then screw it into a die and you're done it had to be forged filed and then the wood screws were almost all handmade cutting the hard imagines modern day yes every screws handmade yes turning all those threads on and I've done that a lot and it that screw goes in that hole and it don't swap them because they won't fit mm-hmm I've gotten where I can probably fudge and it would work but I don't like to do that they would use draw plates and draw out the wire to make the Pens with they they could do whatever they needed to do to make every single piece of a gun or the pieces of guns that were already built and repaired what's it sound like in a gunsmith shop in the 18th century it depends on the day a lot of times the gunsmith shops were reasonably quiet it was a place that people hung out as long as the gunsmith would tolerate them sometimes I throw things and get them out I'd do the same thing in my place if they're too loud get out if they're ok I'll I'll work with them if I'm filing that's all you hear is scratchy noises if I'm forging a hammer or [ __ ] or the malach it's noisy there's not a lot of loud it's just a lot of annoying nothing like watches they reach a line draw filing the barrel if you Forge the barrel here you've got the Ford scale on the outside of the barrel so you got to scratch that off or you will ruin a file in a minute and even then files were expensive and that's why a lot of them use planes to shape their stocks they used scrapers and because there weren't a lot of sand paper or something like it available so they would view scrapers to smooth the stock up they would burnish it down with sticks of wood and rotten stone and cloth and things like that to make the finish Hollow how long do you think it takes a gunsmith in the 18th century to turn out a weapon I've built every single piece of a gun not on the same gun it takes me a week to make a barrel and that's with somebody helping me with the anvil and hitting and the boring is I need somebody to help reaming I need somebody to help rifling I can kind of do myself but it helps if there's an apprentice standing around it takes me two and a half weeks to make a lock all the little fine fittings and all the screws you've got to make and it's just that little bitty stuff and it takes forever with these tiny little files and then it takes a day to cast the brass and file it up make it ready to go on the gun and it takes me about three weeks to make a decently carved wood patch box Gunton if I'm using if I'm doing a metal box I may take an extra day no because we've got to cast a little more brass and then we've got to cut it out and fit it up so a month and a half or so two months if we're working at it so guns probably gonna be the most expensive piece of equipment but that somebody's going to have a horse a dog and a gun or probably what they really need to be reliable as far as your actual possessions your gun was probably one of the most expensive along with your horse yeah and it's delicate it needs repaired and you have to take all this care of it right and there's they had a lot of times like Lewis and Clark took those the means to fix just about anything mm-hmm they freshed a barrel on a gun with an anvil that they drove into a stone that they carried on with them and so they they were able to do that and they made the cutter they made all the pieces to make the cutter which is just little bits of steel not not iron right and they had to be able to hold it into the fire and he treat it so that it would cut they they were able to fix broken stocks they were able to fix missing the a lot of times I found on the rifles the [ __ ] is broken off at the neck they were able to brazen them back together occasionally he found one that was forged but that ate up a lot of metal the bracing was a little easier it didn't always last long right but they get you there most of the time so a pretty a pretty wealthy person really making guns because it's one of the most important things it's an expensive thing tell me about this idea about why guns aren't a lot of the guns we see are they're very artistic they are not extremely utilitarian some might be right right and they don't work they all work the same they all function the same but some a lot of it had to do with these guys were somewhat prideful even though they were extremely religious about the only thing that you could take to town with you was your horse and your gun if you went to town and you had a gun that had a broken stock no patch box no carving he's a bomb and he might not even have a job and he might even be kind of an alcoholic you know he might he might have drunk up everything he got a lot of the market hunters would be given a nice rifle when they go and by the time they get back they alcohol that they have they hold a gun back and so he leaves their gun so means of lively right and so you know I used to compare it to some of the trucks you know did you lift your truck did you put big wheels on it tires on it you put pinstripes on it you put a grill garden lights and yeah yeah and all that stuff it said you had a gun that had a big patch box a nice carving and gravy right well I mean they're concerned especially when they're in society they're concerned with what they're wearing yes that says that says we're whether they're rich or poor whether they care about themselves with it do they have a special hat do they have if they're in a big city they do they have a pocket watch and is it a fancy one so a guns doing the same thing it is it tells you something as soon as the guy walks up and says that might be a shooter because if he's dressed like I am in in woods clothes and he's carrying a rifle like the one I've got that guy is probably a good shooter might be a good hunter he's at least successful because he's got that expensive rifle so tell me about the tools of the job so there's it takes a lot of tools where did they come from do you make your own tools there were carving and engraving tools available that you could purchase but they had a guild system where they had masters journeymen and apprentices and when you were about 14 years old they would indenture you or some other way get you a fourteen-year-old kid come in here that had some prospect and he would do things like sweep up the floor pump the bellows get the charcoal do them menial tasks learning what's gonna go happen when he starts to learn the actual build they will say you need this tool and here is my tool go make one and he'll he'll walk him through how helping him make the tools duplicating what the master is cut out of the master's box and so as that apprentice progresses he will accumulate the tools needed to do his job as a journeyman so he can leave them leave the shop or as a master if he's built his masterpiece and proved it he can take off and have his own shop and he's got every piece of equipment that he needs even today I had a cousin that owned the wood craft we're in Lexington and I would go up and do shows up there and carve and my payment was generally wood carving tools so all my hand tools and all the ones that were just kind of cog together and put up I was able to do my carving set is wood craft and it's they're all perfect and these tools only get used to carve I have another whole set that I use to make the gun this one carves the gun so it's part of the process you both need the tools and because you are making tools you can make the yeah exactly and that way when you finish you can present a masterpiece and if you present the master base and it's accepted then you are a master you can go have your own shop if you're a journeyman you got to go work for another shop so that's how most of that worked but yeah if I need a tool today and I need some you know to do a specific task I'll make it my scrapers are mostly handmade because I needed stuff to get into certain cracks and crevices and little nooks and crannies and it's great it's great that didn't work to fix it and sometimes the tool that is readily available isn't the perfect tool isn't right quite exactly I've got a couple of chisels that were something else when I bought them and I've bent them and shape them and fouled him until it there right reharden of timber them and got them back and how they do what I need him to do so the gunsmith is he's got beautiful expensive guns he's got maybe inexpensive guns tell me about how much a gun costs for someone in the 18th century okay the the monetary system now and then is different so it's hard to compare the Virginia riflemen wanted to be paid in in Virginia script when they went up to Pennsylvania because Pennsylvania scrip was not worth as much but they got paid in the Pennsylvania strip so they went home and not happy so it all depended on where he lives because there was no standard but basically if you were going to do it then and today it's about a month and a half worth of pay for a middle dup an upper-middle-class job so whatever you make as a middle-class citizen is probably what you the gunsmith was going to make on the rifle that he builds for you if you couldn't pay for a brass patch pocket eNOS but didn't pull one on it there are some patch boxes that don't have the side arms on it they apparently couldn't afford it ok or didn't want it right so it's all in the taste of the customer and sometimes in the temperament of the gun builder some of the cheaper guns like Fowler's they were the run-of-the-mill everyday guns that almost every household probably had one or two in it even if they had a rifle they still have one or two Fowler's laying around they everybody had to do must militia duty in the colonies so specific ages of the men so they had to have a fire lock it could be a rifle or a musket and they had to show up with a certain amount of stuff so if you were a farmer you didn't particularly care about hunting at all the only thing you might shoot is the cow at the end of the year when you're gonna butcher it or a hog there might be a mountain lion Panther coming through and so you might need to take a shot at that so well they're gonna buy a surplus musket that's imported they're gonna buy as a Fowler fowling-piece they were cheaper to import than they were to make here the way the barrels are made on muskets and Fowler's is different than the way they're made for the rifles it's harder to make them more difficult to make the forging part of it and there wasn't any money in it so I could buy a musket and have it sent over here and it was cheap really cheap right how many pieces from the 18th century have you handled I can unsafe for sure dozens mm-hmm I got to be friends with Wallis Cussler and he's a really good source of finding those things from Colonial Williamsburg no Hank loo has the Jamestown Show in Kentucky every year there's a lot of original guns there the Kentucky rifle shows the contemporary rifle shows and then anywhere I can find real guns I'm gonna go look at them until everybody wants to get into this if you want to do guns now those two dimensional pictures that you're seeing in the books are great now seeing them on videos is a step up handling it holding it knowing the balance seeing that well they're skinnier than I thought they were or they're a lot heavier than I thought they were why are they heavier and if for me for marketing I can handle a heavier gun than a lot of other people because I do it all the time but I can get somebody I made a gun for a 92 year old man he wanted a nice 1790s rifle well I found a barrel that's very thin and I was able to downscale and still make an adult-sized rifle that a 92 year old man could hold off hand and he would squirrel hunt with it so you know I have to go with what my customer needs but there is nothing like holding on to one that's that if it could just talk where's it been who's it saying what did it do and especially one that you know where it's been in a lot of what it's done and say this is a real gun this is not a toy this is a beautiful piece of art that is deadly and it does its it did its job very well back when it was in use and so that's what I like to build those things are so awesome to hold on to and just to examine wallace has allowed me to take some apart and really look inside you know like how tight did they make the lock mortise and some of these got pristine lock mortises and so you see exactly the craftsmanship that was the care with no one who ever sees right it didn't fancy it yeah they don't want you to unscrew in them all the time because it'll mess up the screws now but I've gotten to look inside some of them and it's neat to see that the workmanship is not it didn't look like it was cast into it the wood is free it's the parts are free to move around in there because they're supposed to but there's certain pieces that are exactly fit and to some degree that holds the piece still so that it doesn't move around when the wood starts getting loose and things like that in the translation we've lost something and the same thing with guns you know they they every every gunsmith on the frontier made his own part no it was not economical to do that it's not economical today I've made one gun barrel I know how but it's much less expensive to call one of the manufacturers and pay $250 today as opposed to three to five thousand yeah it doesn't doesn't make sense especially when they might not be able to tell the difference but to have it done and that one might be better yeah okay I don't do it every day they do and same with locks I bought my brass pieces in in Philadelphia and and Princeton anywhere up in Pennsylvania where the bigger cities were they had foundries they cast up Lancaster style guards but plates and trigger guards and side plates barrel them up and run them down the wagon row and so Georgia was making Lancaster guns until later when they decided to pair off into their own schools and so each area made up guns the way they wanted to made because now they can have foundries there's a more local industry right and we're not restricted anymore about somebody across the ocean telling us we can't do it and so we can do our own thing and southern rifles became skinnier lighter and more deadly northern rifles were pretty and more probably more you've got an opinion here slightly because I live in the south and you're mostly guns I builder southern tell me about working with your hands all day and on on a piece like this it was really interesting that when I went from I'm a police officer and I do this two or three hours a day I wasn't putting that much long-term effort eight-hour ten-hour effort into it I was putting two or three hours into it so I didn't really want any big deal when I went full-time after about two weeks I was soaking my hands every day I couldn't unclench my fists my hands were swelling the calluses I I would go on a week's vacation and come back and my hands are soft and I'm saying can't go to the forge and because I got tough on them back up and little things like that they're all how do you do this every day that's because I do it every day and I'm okay with it and I built out the little muscles to do what I need to do tell the folks exactly what you do and how they can get a hold of you okay I live in south-central Kentucky in a little place called Edmonton it's fifteen hundred and eighty-six people give or take the week I build American long rifles or European guns I've done Fowler's Yeager's English German Swiss Austrian whatever and pretty much all colonies as well as up to about the middle of the caplock era kind of lose interest after that but if you tell me that you're you want a specific gun that's what I'll build you if you'd like more information about Mike Miller we'll put that down in the description section if you're interested in more gun building and gun videos make sure to check out this link

Channel: Townsends

Views: 255,663

Keywords: townsends, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century, 19th century, jon townsend, 18th century cooking

Id: tpNMmKL2vkg

Length: 20min 54sec (1254 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 10 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/MeatShots]

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[u/BrianMS_1020]

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