Cross grain chisel work

[guncobbler]

Just got the barrel inletted on my ERA 75 cal fowler. The breech was a challenge with the need to cut all the cross grain. The stock had been roughed out with router leaving a quarter circle of wood to be removed by chisel. Using a sharp 1/4" wide chisel to cut across the grain I would get some internal splitting if I attempted to take too big a bite. I ended up pulling out the Dremel to rough it out. Doing the final clean up with a chisel took some time but the tiny shavings came out very clean. In hindsight I could have prepped the wood by honeycombing it with a small hand drill. How do you rough out big areas of cross grain like the bottom of the breech inlet? Thanks, GC

 

[Birddog6]

It is seldom a chisel ever touches one of my rifles. I use carving tools & rasps & sanders & etc. For the barrel inletting at the end of the breech & the tang I do that with carving tools. Usually the V cutter tool does 75% of the intricute shaping & carving on a rifle . My favorite carving tools are Flexcut. I probably have 30+ dif carving tools but have about 5 Flexcut tools that do 90% of it all.

:results:

 

[rich pierce]

I generally build from a blank and inlet the barrel myself. Even if it were a router-cut barrel channel I'd use the same techniques. For square cross-grain cuts such as in a patchbox inlet, at the breech, etc, I do the heavy work at an angle wider than 90 degrees with a strong chisel and a mallet. The chisel must be very sharp but have a strong edge, not a really fine angle. As I approach 90 degrees I switch to a handmade chisel with a thin blade and a finer edge. This is sharp enough to shave with and I begin to bring the mortise to 90 degrees stepwise, with about 4 cuts before it becomes 90 degrees. I still use the mallet until I am doing shaving cuts. Stropping the chisel every now and then makes a big difference.

If you're using precarves and need to remove a little wood here and there, you can probably forego the mallet and heavy chisel work. But I like that work. I am a little weird but enjoy cutting barrel channels with nothing but gouges and chisels, and slabbing off angles on a blank with a huge gouge, drawknife and spokeshave. If you have soft wood, all bets are off, nothing will work well.

 

[dlemaster]

I just inlet a barrel for a Wilson's Chiefs Gun this weekend. I use carving chisels that I keep razor sharp. Don't try and remove a lot of wood at one time. I use barrel inleting rails to make sure I control the width of the barrel channel, and then use wooden round bottom moulding planes to remove most of the wood from the channel.
If I'm inleting an octagon barrel I use a tool I forged out of a thick file to work in the flats after I'm finished with the planes.
Hope this helps.

Regards, Dave