Quote:
Originally Posted by Alk8944
No, it is correct. It is those who turn them around so they resemble a "Baughman" that are wrong.
Overall it is a very nice rendition of a late S. Hawken rifle, from the last years when he was working in Denver. Actually, a 32" barrel is fairly short for a Hawken, the originals averaged about 34", with some early guns 42" and possibly longer. There is one glaring error on it, and that is the barrel wedges. While the vast majority of rifles which had the barrels retained by wedges had the wedge heads on the right, a true Hawken typically had the wedges inserted with the wedge heads on the left side. Average caliber for a S. or J.&S. Hawken was .53 caliber using a ball of typically .526 diameter.
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Thank you for the great insight and information. While I am certain you are correct about the wedge heads on most Hawken Rifles, the pictures of the actual rifle that Kit Carson gave to the Masonic Lodge in Santa Fe show the wedge heads on the right side of the gun. I can't post the pictures here because they are copy-written, but if you follow this link you can see Kit Carson's Hawken Rifle the last time it was examined/photographed (1999 I think).
Kit Carson's Last Hawken - a set on Flickr