This short dissertation is under the heading of FWIW.....
I have only owned 3 GPR's over my lifetime of shooting, with the last one being a flintlock "kit", that I put together, maybe 12 / 15 years ago, many of the old-timers here will remember my raving about that particular rifle, and the new unexpected accuracy I was getting at 75 yds..
The GPR, IMHO, was at the time the "most often seen" new rifle on the Ranges that I shot on, and all for good reason.
Back in the day, sometime before Import / Export increases, Yankee Dollar re-evaluation, Trade agreements, and 9/11, had all happened, this Lyman Import represented a pretty good investment for a "
one of the better shooting, Hawken looking, rifles" on the market at at right around $200 it was a good deal.....and, with all the changes of times in between now and then, it may very well still be, even at today's sometimes flat-out ridiculous prices.
About the 2nd GPR I ever owned, I got the opportunity to take a close look at the inside of the barrel through a friend who owned a nice bore-scope at the time.
What I saw inside that barrel was not at all what I had expected.
Instead of the nice smooth, shinny, lands and grooves I had expected to see, it looked more like a strip of land that had been fresh plowed, then cleaned-up with a disk and harrow before planting.....not at all what I had expected, and compared, to a early model T/C barrel.
But that "look" did not appear to have any effect at all on the accuracy of those rifles, not back then, and not even now.
Fast forward until today and we find ourselves with more "custom" Rifles, and stand alone barrels, available to many in the market.
Many of those barrels are polished, shine like new money, and are often praised as state-of-the-art barrel making.
Not that many years back I came into possession of my own bore-scope and I have closely examined many rifle barrels since that time.
I've not only looked at the dozen or so rifles I personally own, but that of friends, neighbors, and those just curious.
I have come to the conclusion that the "remarkable" accuracy that the GPR quickly became noted for, was due, in most cases, to its Twist Rate, and had little to nothing to do with how nice that barrel looked inside, rather how well it performed.
Back in the early days of T/C, back when a lot of their rifle parts was sub-contracted out to then up and coming new, and sometimes unheard of manufacturers, they too released quite a few barrels with a Twist Rate other than 1:48.
A few of those older barrels are still around, and they are now demanding much more than than the original cost of the entire rifle when new, often up to 4 or 5 times more!
Is that because they are "Pre-Warning, Pre-Model, but bear the T/C Stamp"? Or is it due to someone's rifling other than T/C?
Many of those barrels were marked with that Manufacturers "stamp" in some unobtrusive place on the barrel, and that's when all the problems started.
The new bean counters at T/C decided that practice was "counter productive" and betrayed the brand.....completely disregarding the new sales figures and upswing in popularity, those sub-contractors were discouraged from adding their "mark or small stamp" to those barrels, and the practice of producing a 1:48 ROT went unabated for years.....accuracy of those 1:48 barrels was, of course, good.
But when it came to the lowly round ball and patch, at many different distances they could barely keep up, still yet they excelled in the "longer than diameter" projectiles that was quickly becoming popular.
The T/C story I just related is not "documented".
Supposedly a fire, sometime in the mid 1990's, destroyed all or most historical records regarding the T/C Muzzleloader.
This story has come to me, over many years, from old-timers that actually worked for T/C for a lot of years.
Up until the time of Corporate Resettlement / Redistribution, when those employees lost not only their jobs, but their investment in the company too.
Is this just a story of disgruntled employees, feeling they got the short end of the stick?
If that were true, then employees of Rice, Green River of Utah, Green Mountain, Douglas, and other employees of "then new and upcoming barrel makers" who had once worked as T/C sub-contractors, would know nothing of their story....but that's just not the case.
Why is all this important?
-Many folks are interested in such things because they own one, or both of these rifles, and both represent a hallmark in affordable rifles for our own hobby of Traditional Muzzleloading.
-T/C is credited with being the one manufacturer that created the entire Muzzleloading craze that took place shortly before the Bicentennial in the 1970's. They did that with dependable, well made Muzzleloaders, that looked a lot like the fabled Hawken Rifle.
Uncle Russ...
