If you own a Pedersoli Kentucky Pistol, and are also interested in building your own pistol "from scratch", you may be interested in this.
After building my first advanced "kit" rifle from Pecatonica River, I thought it should have a matching pistol.
As I already had a Pedersoli Kentucky pistol I had built from a kit, I decided to use it's lock, trigger and barrel and buy a block of Curly Maple from Dixie to carve my own.
This is how it turned out:
There are several advantages in building a pistol using this method.
Anyone who has carved a pistol (or rifle) from a block of wood knows one of the hardest parts is to keep the proportions correct. That is to say, what's the width? How much curve does the grip have? How slender is the stock under the barrel? Where do I put the trigger?...
With the existing pistol in your hand, you have the answers to many of these questions.
Another advantage for those who have never carved a stock deals with costs.
Some folks want to build their own gun but are afraid that investing $100+ into a chunk of wood and then finding that they don't have the skill or patients to finish it will leave them with a dam expensive piece of firewood and a box of parts.
If you already have the pistol, the only cost will be the price of the wood. If you mess it up, you still have the original stock so you can reassemble your original gun and only be out the $20-$35 cost of a very nice Curly Maple Blank.
On the above pistol, I went a little farther than just the wood because I wanted it to match the rifle I had built, so I bought a German Silver trigger guard, thimbels, nosecap and star inlays. (Yes, I knew the original guns were done in brass, but I said to H with tradition and built what I wanted in the rifle. What I wanted had German Silver furniture).
You also might notice I added a barrel pin (thru the center of the star) to pin the barrel to the lock. To do this, I had to solder a underlug to the bottom of the barrel.
Oh, these are the only two pictures I have of the pistol and I had to scan them into the computer. I can't show any other pictures of this gun because I sold it.
With winter coming, a project like this is something to think about.
After building my first advanced "kit" rifle from Pecatonica River, I thought it should have a matching pistol.
As I already had a Pedersoli Kentucky pistol I had built from a kit, I decided to use it's lock, trigger and barrel and buy a block of Curly Maple from Dixie to carve my own.
This is how it turned out:
There are several advantages in building a pistol using this method.
Anyone who has carved a pistol (or rifle) from a block of wood knows one of the hardest parts is to keep the proportions correct. That is to say, what's the width? How much curve does the grip have? How slender is the stock under the barrel? Where do I put the trigger?...
With the existing pistol in your hand, you have the answers to many of these questions.
Another advantage for those who have never carved a stock deals with costs.
Some folks want to build their own gun but are afraid that investing $100+ into a chunk of wood and then finding that they don't have the skill or patients to finish it will leave them with a dam expensive piece of firewood and a box of parts.
If you already have the pistol, the only cost will be the price of the wood. If you mess it up, you still have the original stock so you can reassemble your original gun and only be out the $20-$35 cost of a very nice Curly Maple Blank.
On the above pistol, I went a little farther than just the wood because I wanted it to match the rifle I had built, so I bought a German Silver trigger guard, thimbels, nosecap and star inlays. (Yes, I knew the original guns were done in brass, but I said to H with tradition and built what I wanted in the rifle. What I wanted had German Silver furniture).
You also might notice I added a barrel pin (thru the center of the star) to pin the barrel to the lock. To do this, I had to solder a underlug to the bottom of the barrel.
Oh, these are the only two pictures I have of the pistol and I had to scan them into the computer. I can't show any other pictures of this gun because I sold it.
With winter coming, a project like this is something to think about.
