TVM or Custom Kevin Blevins muzzleloader

[adkarcher]

Does anyone semi local to Winston-Salem have a muzzleloader by either one of these? I am considering purchasing one, but would love to handle one first if possible. Specifically looking at a Tennesseestyle rifle or the Natchez for TVM.

Thanks.

 

[D. Buck Stopshere]

I carried about a dozen TVM rifles in my black powder store until the recession of 2009 drove me to close. For the money in a finished rifle they are hard to beat. If one is talented to build their own longrifle, the either a nice kit form Jim Chambers in Candler, NC or from Jim Kibler would be a worthwhile investment for about $900.

You are however, in luck being in the Winston-Salem area. A friend of mine in Garner bought a Jim Chambers Kit and found it to be overpowering to build. So, I recommended my friend and longriflemaker, David Ricketts, Jr., in Greensboro to finish it for him, so, my friend took my advice. David has built about a dozen longrifles and fowlers since he started in his spare time.

You just have to decide how much finesse you want in a finished rifle. A TVM rifle has all American-made parts, about $700 worth, not including the labor, which is provided by my friend, Matt Avance and his crew. Matt also offers at some savings, an unfinished kit that you assemble and finish yourself for a few hundred dollars less.

FWIW, I'll buy any TVM rifle I can get my hands on to resell. I bought a nice TVM SMR from a customer that bought from me in the '90's. He paid $600 for it back then and took deer with it. I bought it from him this year, for $750 and sold it to the North Carolina State Muzzle Loading Rifle Association for $900. They are raffling it off to be given to a lucky ticket holder at the 2021 NCSMLRA Shoot in September 2021.

You cannot lose for a finished rifle from TVM.

 

[sky hawk]

My Dad has two TVM rifles, and he is not far from you, but I can't volunteer him. Neither is the styles you are looking for. The first one is a .50 Southern rifle, as best I can tell, with browned furniture that he bought from Buck at the DDC years ago. The name on top is Garner. The second is a .58 early Virginia from Roundball, which is even further from what you are looking for style wise.

They are good rifles, and function very well. He's killed deer with both.