Father-and-son gunsmiths recreate weapons of Lewis

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THE BLADE, TOLEDO, OHIO
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S U N D A Y , M AY 9 , 2 0 0 4
SECTION B, PAGE 6
Back
in time
CYAN
Father-and-son gunsmiths
recreate weapons of
Lewis and Clark expedition
MAGENTA
By STEVE POLLICK
PHOTOS BY STEVE POLLICK
Above: Willis Boitnott,
left, and son, Richard,
admire their 1803 flintlock rifle. Right: Mr.
Boitnott at the bench.
you could say is, it goes that-away.”
Mostly, the younger Boitnott
said, the big gun was meant to
impress Native Americans whom
the expedition met along the
way. It would be fired, for example, as a friendly warning as the
expedition flotilla approached
villages. In a pinch, though, “you
could wipe out a whole canoe
of Indians,” the elder maker said.
The .54 flintlock rifles were
bread and butter for the original
expedition. Paddling canoes and
poling a keelboat up the mighty
Missouri meant physical exertion that causes even the most
demanding modern athletic Iron
Man feats to pale by comparison.
Crew members, for example,
would consume up to 8 to 10
pounds of wild game per day.
Each. Deer, elk, antelope, and
grizzly bears daily fell to the 1803
rifles, till the expedition nearly
starved in the then-barren mountains. Civilization had not yet
driven wildlife to mountain
refuges.
“This was the first rifle made
in the Government arsenals,”
the elder Boitnott noted. Previously, he explained, the arsenals
produced only smoothbore muskets. “This is the pilot model.”
Indeed, by December, 1803,
changes were being made in the
original design already afield
with Lewis and Clark. “It has a
thirty-three-and-a-half -inch barrel. They run about nine pounds.
“This one here,” the elder
said, “is a copy of the original
1803. They brought me the blueprints.”
“They” in this case included
Bob Anderson of
BLACK
Willis Boitnott, clad in bib
overalls, a frayed old sweater,
and a soiled feed cap, surveyed the
cluttered workshop that could
be a time machine. A time
machine because if you squint just
a little bit, you might think yourself transported back 200 years to
the U.S. Government Arsenal at
Harpers Ferry, W.Va.
Mr. Boitnott, 79, could have
been one of the gunmakers who
built the rifles and deck-mounted swivel-gun for the historic
Discovery Expedition of Lewis
and Clark, 1803 to 1806.
Goodness knows, he and his
son, Richard, 52, have accomplished what few today could
do. They built 11 muzzleloading
firearms, practically from scratch,
in 18 months. They faithfully
reproduced what the Harpers
Ferry makers built for the famed
explorers, often using all-butforgotten techniques.
Better still, their arms are
being carried up the Missouri
River today by the reenactment
expedition as it follows the explorers’ historic trek to the Pacific, in
what turned out to be a futile
search for the fabled Northwest
Passage.
“To me, just a nobody living
in the middle of nowhere, to get
involved in this is beyond my
expectations,” said Mr. Boitnott,
who lives on a historic, ramshackle family farm in rural Miami
County, Ohio. He is too modest.
He once traveled the world with
the United States’ international
muzzleloading rifle team.
“I was fixing, not shooting. I
was the armorer for them.”
Richard, on the other hand,
is a fixer and a shooter. Some of
his records at the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association
annual matches at Friendship,
Ind., still stand.
Speaking of fixing, two of the
ponderous, 35-pound brass blunderbusses and an 1803 flintlock
rifle, 54-caliber, were in the Boitnott shop over the winter for
repair and restoration while the
reenactment team was in winter
quarters in Missouri.
“It’s about a 7-gauge shotgun,”
Mr. Boitnott said of the blunderbuss. They made eight of
them, six of which already are
in museums or private collections. They are a copy of an English pattern of the era.
The blunderbuss was used
as a swivel gun on the bow of
the Lewis and Clark flagship, a 55foot wooden keelboat. The senior gunmaker described their
first trial shots from the big brass
gun:
“We loaded a dozen 30-caliber balls, 250 grains of black
powder — something like that.
We fired at a four-by-eight plywood board. Some of the
balls hit the ground, some
hit the trees. It made quite
a racket.” Son Richard,
like his father a toolmaker by trade,
added, “about all
YELLOW
BLADE OUTDOORS EDITOR
Marysville, Ohio, a descendant of making the jigs and the tools
a Lewis and Clark crew mem- first. The men have their own
ber. He and Mr. Boitnott belong blacksmith shop. “It was quite an
experience,” Willis Boitnott said.
to the same Masonic lodge.
“He complained that there “Like any farmer growing up here
was no one to build the guns on the farm, if you couldn’t buy
and we said, ‘we can build ’em.’ it you made it.
“We did a lot of scrounging
And we ended up doing them
all.” Bud Clark, a retired Ford and calling and writing [for rare
parts]. But we just
engineer from Detroit,
plain had to make a
also was in on conof things.” The
vincing the Boitnotts to
To me, just a lot
brass bars they used
build the guns. He is a
descendant of William nobody living in to bore and fashion
blunderbuss barClark himself and
the middle of the
rels cost $200. The
owns one of the Boitnott blunderbusses.
nowhere, to get elder gunsmith at
one point described
The elder Mr. Boitnott learned the rifle involved in this is “saving” one of the
barrels when the bortrade from an old
beyond my
ing tool started to
Washington Court
expectations.
drift off-true.
House gunsmith who
Walking through
was steeped in historic
Willis Boitnott,
the workshop, Mr.
gunmaking methods.
“He was like myself. Maker of historic guns Boitnott cautions not
to walk into a pot of
He was a farmer,
molten lead sitting
learned from an old
gunsmith. A lot of the methods we in the middle of an aisle. He had
used are hand-me-down meth- made some new mainsprings —
flat springs — for a blunderods.
“I started in ’48 playing with buss, first making them red hot
muzzleloaders. I was just a farm with a torch and quenching them
boy. I didn’t have much money.” in water, which made them “glass
The walnut stocks on the Boitnott hard.” So he was heating them in
guns came from trees harvested molten lead “for 15 to 20 minutes
... to draw them back so they’ll
on their farm.
“By dumb luck I had the wal- flex.”
How many hours did they
nut here. I hated to use up all
my good walnut, but it’s got to be have in the 11 guns, which included three of the 1803 rifles? “We
used sometime.”
Working from the old blue- don’t even know. We just come
prints, they built locks, stocks, here in the morning and work.”
and barrels, often first Their main production year was
2002.
‘
’
Willis Boitnott testfires the massive
blunderbuss after
repairing a spring.
050904_RP5_SUN__B6 1
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Their family history A Boitnott gun is mounted on the bow
included a gunsmith. of the keelboat in the Lewis and Clark
“I had a great-grandDiscovery Expedition reenactment.
dad on each side of the
Civil War. The Confederate one, he worked
on guns, too.” That
ancestor became a prisoner of war and ended
up, after the war, being
released in South Carolina with only the
clothes on his back. He
had to walk home to
Virginia.
The Union ancestor, from Indiana, was
killed in Jackson, Miss.,
leaving Mr. Boitnott’s
grandfather an orphan. Closeup of the lockwork on the 1803
He was taken in by a
rifle shows fine details, including
childless couple and
was treated like their authentic proof marks.
own son — right on the
Miami County, Ohio,
farm where the Boitnotts live today.
Richard Boitnott is
as quietly proud of his
trade as his dad is. “He
built my first gun for
me and I outgrew it and
said [to myself], ‘I guess
you’ve got to make your
own.’ ”
His dad admits, “I’m
getting to the age where
I’m slowing down.” But
he adds, “I want to
build myself one of these The Boitnotts engraved a memorial to
1803s if I find the time.” the Lewis and Clark expedition crew
Contact Steve Pollick at: on the blunderbuss’ brass buttplate.
spollick@theblade.com
. 419-724-6068.
or
5/9/2004, 12:12:20 AM