University Daily Kansan
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Thursday, May 3, 1979
Modern-Day Mountain Man
James Turpin finishes the barrel brass work on one of his handmade, black powder muzzle loading rifles. He is the proprietor of Uncle Turp's Cannon Works and also builds authentic firearms.
OVERLAND PARK--Poor James Turpin, the misplaced mountain man.
Turpin, a brixtly black-bearded rifle maker, is an anarchism lost in the 20th century longing for a simpler, more communal way of living.
"I'm 20 years too long," Turpin says, sliding sandpaper across a growing mural of a stockholm building.
But Turpin is trapped here in modern America and no time machine can take him to his proper historical niche, where men hunted and trapped women. Their wilderness was a daily killer—be-killed routine.
So Turpin works to bridge the time gap, to bring him and his lifestyle closer to the way they used to be. He helps the animal muzzle咬 rifles by hand, the kind that killed King George's finest and the animal kingdom's meanest. For fun, he also builds sentient cannons, but rifles are his craft and art.
"Every gun I build is sold before it finish," Turpin says, adjusting a decorative brass plate to a special kind of Missouri maple stock. The wood has been cut in an arched bridge plank that has been cured from years of use.
"EVERY GUN IS different, it depends on my mood," Turpin says, fitting an octagonal barrel into a long wooden stock. "If I'm in a mood to play with the machine, I should form one shape, that stock will be that one shape."
And Turpin's guns, sold from his shop here, with a small field cannon on the porch and the Uncle Turt's Cannon Works sign, are in many shapes and in great demand.
Although Turpin has had his shop for a year, he just started working full-time building rifles. He quit working in an auto body shop, severing a tie to the company. He decided to make it on his own as a rifle maker.
"I'M MORE OF a rifle maker than I am a mountain man," Turpin says, setting an almost perfect example. He takes a special kind of person to live in the woods and survive, and there's lots of so-called rifle makers, but I can live in the woods and I have to rifles than the early rifle makers to survive now.
Rifle maker is an original American term, Turpin says, and it stems from the early American frontiersmen who first put rifles to standard use. The bloody British called their rifles "spiked metal" and used spiked metal and cut wood into the hunter's best friend. But Turpin does more than forge and cut.
"I'M AN ARTIST." Turpin says, sliding a hickory rod between barrel and duffel "at the bottom of the room."
few rite builders left in this country. Not only are they more educated than the rest, but also a绅士 worker, and then continue the two.
"I generally spend 80 hours on one rifle, working 14 to 16 hours a day."
Those long days, Turpin says, make it less and less possible for him to get out in the woods, wearing his own buckskins and carrying his own backpack. The family raised a rare quilted rumpie that is at least 50 years old.
But when he can, Turpin goes to the woods or to a rendezvous, that historical gathering of mountain men to trade furts and swap lies and rifles, knives, skins, powder horns, shot and hats.
A RENDEZVOUZ GIVES the gun maker a chance to eat and drink with other mountain men, working citizens who revel in the history of the frontier. They fire black powder rifles competitively that belch smoke, boom感 and hurt a lead ball the size of a man's thump 200 yards into a bull's eye. Turpin has borne on down at the same range and brought home venom.
"The black powder people are similar to the protest people," Turpin says, tapping his name onto the octagonal barrel of a hand-built rifle. "They're for freedom and going back to the way they believe in the governing body of 200 years ago as it was originally, not a big bureaucracy.
And then for a moment, Turpin is back where he belongs, gutting out a deer killed with the gun he built and the shot he molded and the black powder he packed and primed.
"THE BLACK POWDER people have trained themselves to live the way people did 400 to 500 years ago."
And the 28-year-old stocky gun maker, mountain man, cannon loading libertarian will continue to make every gun in his shop in the years ahead before he prepares for his trip home, his trip to the past, and as far back as the time when he was just happened to also be named James Turner.
And there are no modern guns in Turpin's shop. Every gun, cannon included, he built by hand, fulfilling his calling 200 years too late as a rifle maker.
"I'll build this shop into a real nice little business," Turpin says, hanging a completed riffle in a rack. "Then I'll sell it at a nice profit and buy enough property without anyone around you to make it really big." But really a mountain man, just a gunmaker, but I'll do both. I go hunt and live some other way.
And when that happens, poor James Turpin will be back home in the past, beating the system on his knees.
Whenever he can get away from his shop, Turpin likes to don his buckskins and shoulder. his own personal rifle and head to the wilderness. Once there he enjoys target shooting with his muzzle loader, and after he fires the single ball he must blow down the barrel to remove smoke and ash
When he's through shooting and has to head back to civilization, Turpin always walks slowly, pondering how many more times he needs to shoot before he can get to his goal.
Story by John P. Tharp Photos by Randy Olson
Like 19th century mountain men, Turpin travels to an occasional trading swap, called a rendezvous, and displays his wares on the ground on his Confederate flag. Fellow mountain men browse and sometimes buy but they always have tales to tell and ties to swap.