Abraham Nowlin was born in the Virginia Mountains in the year of 1823. He learned gunsmithing there until moving to Missouri, and settling in eastern Hickory County. He carried on his gun building way of life, which in those days was meager at best.There was one particular gun that he had trouble selling and that was a 45 cal. The locals said,” Cost too much to shoot”! So Abe heated up the barrel and started hammering it shut, and then reboring it to a 25 cal. He dubbed it, “The seed tick rifle”. Not long after he sold the rifle to Faith Thomas. After many years Faith grew weary of the iron hardware and came to my good friend, (Rod Gates) father, who was also a gunsmith, and happened to be kin to Faith, and asked him to supply it with brass trimmings. He did, and kept the trigger guard and butt plate. Those two items have been lying around for many years, until one day that I happened onto them in Rods shop. I asked the normal questions and was well supplied with some info in which you have just read about.
I had been kicking around the idea of building a southern gun for a good while, those parts just seemed to call out to me, so the journey began. Several months and many wrong turns later, I managed to finish up this little rifle, in 32 cal. trying to pattern it from those two parts. I had the barrel made my Mark Dehass, and the lock by Homer Sales did a good bit of work in the outside appearance of the lock, to remove its Germanic appeal. Everything else I forged out myself. There are many mistakes on this build as I am still learning. This was my first one from a blank, and my 4th overall. I am pleased…for now. We’ll talk about my screw ups later.
You might wonder about the afore mentioned rifle? It was traded for an outboard motor in later years, and its whereabouts is now unknown. I am sure that the boat motor is by now, out of order, but I bet that rifle ain’t.
The first couple of pics are of the original trigger guard and butt plate. The butt plate was held together only with a copper rivet.
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