TVM Flintlock Fowler Kit

Am Shooting Journal ^ | 6/3/2019 | M Nesbitt

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Tennessee Valley Muzzleloading’s Fowler is just one of several excellent muzzleloading guns they make, either as finished guns ready to shoot or as kits. I have built guns from TVM’s kits before, so for this Fowler, I ordered one again. The kit I ordered is called a “TVM Kit,” which means several important steps are already done.
TVM also makes the “Builders Kit” for more advanced ‘smiths where more work is needed. Getting the TVM Kit does cost a little more, about $150, and to me that is well worth it. The TVM kit for the Fowler has a base price of $850 but options (like the sling swivel) can increase that.

The TVM Kits come with the barrels fully inletted, the butt plates fitted, and the locks fully inletted. In addition, the screw hole through the stock, the breech plug and the lock plate is already drilled. That’s important because the alignment of the lock and barrel needs to be good. Although these tasks are done for you, there are still a lot of things to do on the TVM Kits.

The first real step in assembly was to more properly fit and attach the butt plate. That is a good place to start and the butt plate then protects the butt of the stock. From there, we located the position for the barrel lugs and the middle lug also became the location for the sling swivel. The barrel is held to the stock, ahead of the lock, with cross pins in addition to the main lock bolt, which also goes through the back of the breech plug, and the tang screw, which extends down to thread through the trigger plate. That’s where progress is measured in sawdust!

Then the gun was complete, as far as assembly goes. Allen did the browning for me on the lock, barrel and trigger. In addition to that, he had heat blued the screw heads. The only thing left to be done was to finish the wood and that was my department. So we took all of the metal pieces off of the stock, gave the maple stock a coating of walnut stain, and I took the wood back to my base camp for the striping and finishing. Read the rest of tvm flintlock fowler kit.