Chambers New England Fowler Finished!

[Noeyebrows]

Well, that was a journey! My first build, a 10 gauge fowler that started as a kit from Jim Chambers Flintlocks. Took about 7 months of casual work in the evening. I made a sideplate and customized some parts. I liked some of the English style carving from Grinslade’s book that inspired a shell carving. Decided that I need a many more hours of engraving practice before I work on the fowler. Here’s some pics.-

 

[Horse]

Beautiful

 

[Dutch7]

well done - the time spent in practice paid off.

 

[woodsnwater]

wow!

 

[Stykbow]

That’s a beaut!

 

[TDM]

Well done!! It’s beautiful!!

 

[Fly Navy]

Very nice, well done.

 

[PathfinderNC]

Wonderful!

 

[KC Clem]

Nice work, it should age beautifully and become quite a family heirloom.

 

[Rich44]

Super-duper​

I like that you made it personal with side plate and other parts.

 

[garypl]

Excellent job! I think like you about engraving the metal - better to have no engraving than detract from a beautiful rifle with poor engraving! We have to know our limitations

 

[sleepingbulldog]

Nice job, it definitely does not look like a first time build!

 

[Mulemauler]

Very well done!

 

[pilot]

Very nice!

 

[rickystl]

Excellent !!! Great looking gun. You would not guess a first time build.

Rick

 

[Trapper Scott]

Oh my! Excellent craftsmanship.

 

[Birddog1911]

Can I ask you how you practiced the carving? I want to do that to a rifle, but I have no experience, and it seems daunting.

 

[JRBCo.]

That's a dream gun. Beautiful work.

 

[Noeyebrows]

Can I ask you how you practiced the carving? I want to do that to a rifle, but I have no experience, and it seems daunting.

Hunt down every source you can find, videos, books etc. I bought some maple board at home depot with some curl in it and shaped them like the wrist of the stock. There are kind of two approaches to relief carving, some stab in an outline with various straight and curved chisels and gouges, then relieve away the cuts. I think this suits folks that already have a nice big collection of chisels and gouges.
Others use a V parting tool to do the outline work, this is the method I used. Usually a 60 degree V chisel or a number 12 pfeilI I believe as an all purpose outlining tool. You can chase it with a small mallet ot engraving hammer. Then you model your carving with whatever you have- gouges, scrapers, riffler files, sandpaper etc. Oh, and you need to learn how to keep your chisels crazy razor sharp or you will have a bad time with extra curly maple.

 

[ligonierbill]

I made one of those this past year. It's certainly no where near as nice as yours! What are you loading? After a bit of reading, I loaded a 0.760 patched ball over 100 gr. FFg. Could not get the chrono to read, but it seems like a healthy charge. (3 1/2 dram is the old blackpowder shotgun shell load) For shot, and this may turn out to be a turkey gun, I am working on 90 gr FFg and using either a 100 or 110 powder measure for shot. With #6, that's 1 1/3 and 1 1/2 oz. Suppose I could go with more shot, but I don't want to get carried away.