Another Blunderbuss

[davec2]

I have not posted here in a couple of years. After the PhotoBucket dust up, it was a problem to try to get any photos in the posts. So I am trying again by posting some work I have been doing for quite a while. Here goes .......

A while back, a fellow asked me to modify a steel, 4 gage, Ed Rayl blunderbuss barrel with cannon muzzle rings and some engraving. (I can post some information about that if anyone is interested).

At any rate, having watched the progress on another blunderbuss I am finished, Andrei sent me all of the parts he had collected, and a great piece of walnut for the stock, and asked me to assemble yet another one of these shoulder fired artillery pieces. I don't mean to bore you guys with "more of the same", but each of these builds is a little different and the eventual owners can keep track of my progress (and other's comments) by watching here.

Well, here is what I am starting with.....the barrel as previously described, a Chambers English lock, an outstanding piece of walnut, and miscellaneous cast butt plate, trigger guard, ram rod pipes, trigger assembly, etc. Andrei wants this one carved and engraved, so it will be more on the fancy side of things rather than just a "working" style coach gun.









I got as far as bandsawing the stock shape out and pulling the breech plug on the barrel in preparation for sending both up to Dave Rase to have him inlet the barrel for me. (He doesn't like doing these blunderbuss barrels but has been kind enough to do them for me anyway.) While waiting for the inletting to be completed, I will start on polishing all of the metal parts......one of my least favorite parts of any build. But, as my Mother used to say, "worst things first !" .....It always makes the rest of the job go easier.

 

[davec2]

Finally had a little time to get back to this project.......Dave Rase inletted the barrel for me a little while back.



I shaped and bent the breech plug tang to contour and got that inlet into the stock:



Soldered on the barrel lugs....the front one is heavier as it will also support the front sling swivel.......







Polished the lock parts in preparation for engraving:



Of all the parts of building any gun, the two things I find the most tedious are installing the butt plate and installing the rear ram rod pipe. So I started with the bigger of the two tedious tasks......rough shaping of the butt end of the stock:



Beginning the inlet......





Finished......

 

[davec2]

I forgot to take a picture of the raw casting of the trigger guard before I started in on cleaning it up, but this is a similar guard that has the same starting condition as the one I am using. I did some clean up with files, but most of the guard was scraped with a utility knife blade and then finished to about 400 grit. It is ready to engrave now.



I did take a before and after on the forward ram rod pipe. The two pipes were finished / cleaned up the same way as the trigger guard and are ready to engrave.





Inletting of all the lock internals is complete.....



The frizzen has been annealed in preparation for engraving and the rest of the lock finished to the surface I want as well. Engraving is next.



Side plate ready for engraving except for drilling the lock bolt holes. I will do that first before I start in on the engraving.



And last, I thought I would take a "before" picture of the trigger.....more on that next time.

 

[davec2]

Ok....I restarted this thread with the very best of intentions to start right in with the work. No sooner had I gathered all my tools and parts and work interfered yet again. But right after the police chase / car wreck yesterday (another story), I did get started on the side plate. Here the side plate is superglued to a block for drilling and counter boring. (I had to stop long enough before hand to make the correct size pilot for the counter bore.)





With the side plate machining done, I located and drilled through the stock for the front lock bolt and then established the rear lock bolt location and drilled that. The web between the ram rod hole and bottom of the barrel channel is very thin, so I had to put a groove across the bottom barrel flat to let the front bolt pass. And, of course, I had to drill a clearance hole through the bolster on the breech plug.

With the bolt holes drilled through the stock and lock plate, I tapped the lock plate holes through the stock with a long "pulley" tap. Using some 8-32 temporary screws, the side plate was held down tight to the stock to start the inletting process. I cut around the profile with a pointed carving knife and then started to remove the background wood about 1/2 the thickness of the side plate.







To do the final seating, I blackened the side plate with a kerosene lamp (much faster than a candle) and made the final adjustments on the fit.





The completed side plate installation.



So on to the trigger, trigger guard, and ram rod pipes. Once I have all the parts in place, I will start the engraving. More to follow (assuming I survive the next police chase / car wreck !!!)

 

[davec2]

Had some time to start the engraving of parts. Started with the side plate. First photo is of the plate superglued to a block and painted with Dykem.



Next one is some of my sketching with a stylus and just getting a feel for where I want things to go



Third photo shows the first outlining cuts



Fourth photo is the completed boarders and some shading



This one is of the finished side plate



And then I put the side plate in the stock inlet just to see how it is going to look



Working on the trigger next.

 

[davec2]

I did have some time while making the crown to do a little more on the trigger and engraving on the lock for the blunderbuss:













But now, I need to do a little more on the trigger...

 

[davec2]

Had not had a lot of time but did manage to draw file and further finish the barrel steel in preparation for additional engraving. Not sure how Andrei wants the barrel finished (bright, browned, ???) Need to check in with him. Also managed to start the inletting of the two ram rod pipes. Will finish the lock engraving next, then the barrel and the rest of the brass parts.

 

[davec2]

A tad more progress:

Frizzen engraving:





I love building these things but......my least favorite part of every gun, rifle or pistol...or blunderbuss, is inletting the rear ram rod pipe. For those of you who really know what you are doing, please, someone make a video of how to do this task. I have to be doing this the hardest, slowest, least efficient way possible and I'm almost positive there are some tricks to this that I am missing. Here is the start for me....and I end up removing wood, apparently, one molecule at a time! I can polish and engrave a complete lock faster than I can inlet a rear pipe !!!



An hour and a half later.....and still not done !!!

 

[davec2]

Lock polishing & engraving is complete.......










Back to the rear ram rod pipe.....

 

[davec2]

Still working on the rear ram rod pipe But I did get in touch with the fellow I am building this one for and asked how he wanted the barrel finished and what he wanted engraved on the butt plate. He decided to keep the barrel bright (and there is a lot more engraving to be done at the breach end) and he liked the engraving I did on the butt of my own blunderbuss. Now....if I can just remember how I did this.......and improve on it.....





I did this several years ago now and I hand sketched the design, as I usually do. Might be tough to do it again without too many changes....

 

[davec2]

Have not had much time to work on this but I did manage to get the trigger and trigger guard in.....and I did finish the rear ramrod pipe. I will shift back over to the final engraving work on the barrel, butt plate, trigger guard , and ram rod pipes before completing the stock shaping. Slow, but deliberate progress.....

 

[davec2]

Time, tide, and formation have slowed down progress again, but I have all of the parts in place now. The stock is still just a profiled block of walnut, but before I finished the engraving, I will knock off anything that doesn't look like a blunderbuss. This is one of the parts of a project like this that I like the most....releasing the fine lines and artful shape that have been silently trapped for many decades inside that piece of walnut. As it is today:

 

[davec2]

I had a little time (between midnight and zero three hundred hours) to have at the stock with a spoke shave and gouges. Not done yet but much closer to a finished shape that it was a few hours ago. All that stuff on the deck is the walnut that had trapped this blunderbuss inside the plank....and it is all the stuff that didn't look like a blunderbuss to me. And I will not be repeating the mistake I made on the very first of these that I built and that was succinctly pointed out to me by John Ennis. When I showed him the first 4 gage blunderbuss I built some 15 or so years ago now, I asked him for a candid critique. The very first thing he said was, "Well....it's OK but you left enough wood on the stock to build two of these."

I have been very careful to not leave too much wood on any build since John was kind enough to be honest with me.....

 

[davec2]

I took off some additional wood ......and I cleaned up the bench and the floor. I like the chaos for a while....makes me feel like I'm making progress. But then it starts to drive me even a little nuttier than I already am...

 

[davec2]

I started in this afternoon refining the stock.....I thought it was nearly done with shaping it when I left off back in March. But in looking over the contours, I remembered a piece of advice I saw here on ALR one time. Someone was asking how much wood do you remove when shaping the stock. The best answer was, "take off everything you think you need to....then take off more until you start getting nervous that you have removed too much......and then take off even more."

So, looking at the floor in these photos, I apparently found more wood to take off........

 

[Brokennock]

Good to see you back here. I have been wondering where you've been.
Thanks for sharing your excellent work.

 

[davec2]

Been scraping and smoothing out stock contours. Not much to take a picture of, but time consuming. However, I did cast the sterling silver thumb piece (along with a couple of others) and am getting ready to inlet it. Slight problem do to lack of planning on my part.....I usually retain the thumb piece with a screw from the underside of the stock hidden under the trigger guard inlet. Was planning the same thing this time around, but the through hole for the screw will be right where one of the trigger guard pin lugs is. I will have to drill deeper for the head and use a shorter screw so that the trigger guard lug has room under it. Should have thought a little further ahead...

 

[davec2]

Well.....no matter what, the one thing I can count on with this project is interruptions ! At any rate, I finally got the stock whiskered and the sterling thumb piece inlayed last night. Because of the size of the piece and the curvature of the stock, this one is a little tricky to inlet without gaps . Here are a few pictures.

Initial layout for location and drilled hole for threaded bolster:



Placement on surface:



Taping the bolster for the attachment screw:



Outline cutting:



Inletting:





Finished:



Now for the stock carving.....

 

[davec2]

Started with the fore stock and lock panel moldings. Went fairly quickly so I moved on to the breach tang carving.....

Rough carving of lock panels and fore stock molding:





Layout for the breach carving:



Roughed out carving:



Some smoothing of the background and start of sculpturing:





None of this is finished yet, but that is all the carving that I'm going to do on this one. I will get the backgrounds all smoothed up and then switch over to the last of the engraving.

 

[davec2]

After polishing and engraving, the lock is now case hardened. I don't know if the fellow I am building this for wants the colors left or polished off. I have done it both ways but I will let him decide. The colors do hide the engraving.









Here is one I did where the colors were left:



And one with the colors polished back off:



The stock scraping, whiskering, etc., is done....but I have learned to pretend that it isn't and start all over again. By doing that I will lessen the chances that I will find areas that I missed as I am applying the final finish