Hawk New England Fowler

[PathfinderNC]

Beautiful!
What do you call that feature where the trigger guard is mounted on the raised moulding? It certainly is eye catching and I imagine it lets you make the stock that much slimmer.
Great photo of Willow- And your vista is inspiring I am sure!

 

[Brokennock]

Great work and great pics.
Thank you so much for sharing.

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
More done today. I had the pleasure of my friend Josh's company today. He filed and sanded lock castings for a long land Brown Bess and an Elliot carbine. For those who don't remember Josh, he is blind and we posted "Building Blind several years ago. I carved the outlines and background for most of the decorative carving and moldings.









It is all still a bit rough and I will be cleaning up the background and edges later after cutting the raised beads along the barrel channel and ramrod groove. To do those, I use a cutter I made and installed in my old antique marking gauge.



That cuts the initial lines and then I go back and deepen them with a checkering tool. Then I remove background along the bead with a dog leg chisel and bottoming file to give the bead some relief.



Then I go back over the beads with the marking gauge cutter to round over the tops. There will be beaded moldings along the top of the barrel channel and along the ramrod groove.



I did one side and then asked Josh if he would like to try the other side. I set him up and away he went. He did the job perfectly.

dave

 

[Capt. Jas.]

Wonderful work!

 

[dave_person]

Hi Folks,
Getting the stock finished. The forestock moldings are all done. They actually sit up in relief so are not simple lines. I final shaped much of the stock today but tomorrow I concentrate on the butt portion. It needs more clean up and definition. Very soon I will start the final finishing and whiskering of the stock. Cherry has such fine grain that it often needs some help to be interesting. So I will probably stain the stock black during whiskering. After scraping off the stain and whiskering the stock, black pigment will still be imbedded in the grain. That will act as a "drop shadow" giving the grain in wood a halo effect and make bland cherry come alive. Anyway, here is where I am. It is a slim, elegant gun.














dave

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
It's black!






The dilute black stain is Brownell's nigrosine aniline dye dissolved in water. It highlights the scratches and rough spots as well as embedding a little black pigment in the grain. When I eventually stain the cherry the black will give it a bit of a halo or glowing effect.

As I scrape the stain shows up the scratches.




You can really see the shape of the hollows or fluting along the comb.




This photo of my previous version of this gun shows the color and effect I am going for.




dave

 

[dave_person]

Hi Folks,
I had a bunch of more time limited work to get done so I put the fowler aside for a while. I also was struggling with the carving. It is a good piece of cherry but cherry is not a good carving wood. Anyway, I stepped back for a while until I was ready to have at it again. Fortunately, the carving on the original is simple and not what you see on high quality jaegers and long rifles stocked in maple or European walnut. It cuts easily with razor sharp tools but just does not preserve any crispness. But then the original doesn't either. Anyway, I roughed out all the details of all the carving. I need to come back and clean it up but I will do that after I inlet the silver wrist plate. I mingled the photos with those of the original gun.









dave

 

[fjrdoc]

I just finished reading all of this thread. Very educational and addicting. Thanks for being honest about your struggles Dave. It's encouraging for us mere mortals to see that you have frustrations. Thanks for sharing all this info with us.

 

[srspicer]

I too just read from start to finish the entire thread. Outstanding work. I especially love the brass work. It lends the most to any stock when done with finesse. Looking forward to the stain and finish process.
Well done overall sir!

 

[fjrdoc]

Dave, are you building this rifle for yourself or has it been commissioned by someone? Your attention to detail is amazing.

 

[dave_person]

Dave, are you building this rifle for yourself or has it been commissioned by someone? Your attention to detail is amazing.

Hi,
It is for a very patient and long suffering customer. It has taken us 3-4 years to get here. It is just a difficult project to accomplish.

dave

 

[rich pierce]

But it’ll be right when it’s done!

 

[dave_person]

Hi Rich,
Yeah, it is a little bit like making sausage.

dave

 

[Tommy Bruce]

What an absolutely stunning fowling piece! I believe it was mentioned in the thread already but the attention to detail is incredible! Your customer will forget the suffering as soon as he shoulders this beauty!

 

[PathfinderNC]

This will be another amazing gun. I am growing very partial towards French and French-influenced fowlers and smoothbores, thanks in a great part to your splendid work, Dave.
And, of a personal note, this is the first time I ever read a comparison between gun making and making sausage

 

[Pete G]

This will be another amazing gun. I am growing very partial towards French and French-influenced fowlers and smoothbores, thanks in a great part to your splendid work, Dave.
And, of a personal note, this is the first time I ever read a comparison between gun making and making sausage

Not for the faint at heart!

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
I made the wrist plate. None of the decorated hardware on this gun was made by any colonial New England gunsmith. No one in NE could make this stuff. It was all fine quality French export work. That was something Barnabas Mathis promoted and incorporated on his guns. He also promoted the French architecture used on this fowler. So to build this gun, I have to merge Mathis' talents and designs with high quality French work beyond the capabilities of any NE gun maker. There is nothing for this gun that you can buy stock and everything needs fabrication and refinement. That said, it is one of the greatest New England guns ever made so it is worth the effort. I cannot possibly make a bench copy because I don't have the original gun in my shop. That means I don't have complete information about all the details despite having examined the gun closely. Moreover, some of the features like engraving were obscured by centuries of patina (muck). In addition, I could not get such a long barrel with a breech almost 1 1/4" in diameter. I had to settle for less width. Anyway, I've dealt with all of that and the gun should be a treasure and very faithful to the original. I did not copy the original wrist plate. I don't like it very much and I cannot work out the engraving. With these kinds of inlays with complicated edges the engraving has to natch the design. I prefer to design the engraving and then design the escutcheon. The original has a slight oval domed center. I decided to accentuate that creating relief that looks like a cabuchon surrounded by a silver frame. I've never done this before so I made a hardwood form using a gouge.





I annealed the 0.04" thick sterling silver sheet and tapped it into the form with a hardwood dowel rounded on the end.







Then I placed by card stock template over the raised oval and traced the outline





I cut out the outline with a jeweler's saw and cleaned up the edges with files. Then I annealed the silver and hand bent it to a metal cylinder slightly smaller than the diameter of the wrist on the gun. Remember, the bottom of any wrist plate mortise is smaller diameter than the wrist. If you don't grasp that, inletting wrist plates will always be difficult.



The mortise for this plate is very shallow and I will inlet it then glue it in place with Acra Glas while I finish the gun. Then I will pop it off with heat and engrave it. After engraving, it will be reglued in the mortise and pinned. It will sit proud of the surface of the wood like the original.

dave

 

[fjrdoc]

I assume the barrel is a custom piece from FCI/ I didn't see a 50 inch barrel listed on their site.

 

[Hatman/2nd line]

Thanks Dave, your work is just wonderful!

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
I did not like the plate. After looking at it on the gun it was too large, too narrow for its length, the dome was too pronounced, and the metal thickness too thin to inlet easily. So I scrapped it and made another using thicker silver. I made a new design that looks better on the gun.






The previous plate is closer to the original but it just does not fit the space well. My curve of the top of the wrist is narrower than the original just behind the lock panels. That is because the breech of the barrel is a bit smaller diameter than the original. So on the original, the width of the wrist is wider right behind the lock panel then narrows toward the comb. In my case, the wrist is narrower behind the lock because of the barrel and maintains that width to the comb such that at the comb, the width is identical to the original. Consequently, the original design does not fit well at all. My new design is far better and will fit the space as well as inlet much more easily. I glued it to a curved surface of wood and am going to engrave it before inletting it. It will sit proud of the wood a little and will be glued and pinned in place.

The original fowler was built for John Hawks (1707-1784) a resident of Deerfield, MA. He was the commanding sergeant at Fort Massachusetts in North Adams, MA when it was besieged by French and indian troops during August 1746. The garrison number 30 (including several women and children) under Hawks and the attackers were close to 1,000. They held out bravely until their ammunition was gone. Then they agreed to terms from the French, surrendered, and were taken as captives to Canada. Half of them died enroute but they were treated well by the French and one woman even gave birth during their trek north. Hawks was well regarded by his captors because of his intelligence, bravery, and care of his soldiers and their families during captivity. The commander of the French and Canadian troops was General de Vaudreuil, who became the royal leader of New France during its last years and the French and Indian War. Based on eyewitness accounts, he was impressed with Hawks and treated him very well. Hawks was exchanged in short time and became a valuable diplomat working to keep communications going between New France and Massachusetts as tensions ramped up again prior to the F&I War. Hawks was a patriot during the Rev War and died in 1784. He was clearly a man who you wanted in command when things were not going well. What has this to do with the Hawks fowler. The quality of the French hardware is beyond anything typical of New England guns. I suspect that Sergeant John Hawks was given a gift by the French of a high quality civilian gun before 1750 and that those components were restocked
by Barnabas Mathis to become the Hawks fowler sometime during or after the F&I war.

dave