Well another Rock Island Auction is in the books. They sold $7.8 million worth of guns in 3 days. If you get a chance, you can watch the auction online. You don't have to be a bidder. The speed that they sell the guns is amazing. They will sell 600-800 guns in one day for 3days. One every 30sec. or so. If you blink, you missed your lot.
I put in some sealed bids that came in. I got three rifles.
The first is a rifle by Mike Brooks. It has a 38" .54cal. barrel with a slender special order swamped Getz barrel and a Chambers Late Ketland lock. Stylewise Mike says it was a more western style but the customer wanted the patchbox, sideplate engraving, and checkering which gives it a Melchoir Fordney look. The wood is exceptional, but the color covers it.
The second is a rifle by Clay Smith. It is an earlier design. It has an L&R Jaeger lock with a 37" .60cal. swamped Getz barrel. Stylewise it would fit into the Christian Springs/ Moravian area.
The sideplate is of thicker brass and is sculpted. Gives it a nice look.
The third rifle is unsigned. Rock Island said it was built by Scott Hall(?). It has a swamped 37" .58 that appears to be the Edward Marshall profile with an L&R Germanic style lock. I don't know that there is a style for it. However that guard is one of my favorites. Probably why I bid on it. It has a lot of well-done engraving that I would guess was done by someone other than the builder. If he could engrave that well, he would have signed the piece. The quality of the woodwork doesn't match the quality of the engraving. Being a typical L&R lock, I had to polish all the internal lock parts to get it smoothed out. The builder also used some brass screws where iron would have been more correct. The big barrel gives the rifle a bit of heft and some extra wood in the foreend. It could be rebored to a .60 or .62 to save some weight.
I need to revisit the slightly blurry sideplate and toeplate pictures at a later date.
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