Inletting for a fancy butt cap

[eddillon]

Any suggestios on how to go about inletting a fancy silver butt cap for a flint pistol.  It has a tricky edge and its tang has fancy cuts also.

[Rolf]

What type of pistol are you maknig? Could you post a picture of the buttcap?

Best regards
Rolf

[eddillon]

Making a kit from Chris Altland.  The "Nazareth" pistol with silver furniture.  Here is a link to one of Chris's web pages that has all the data.
Ed
http://www.firelockpistols.com/nazareth.html

[Rolf]

I don't know how to inlet that type of buttcap. Mark Wheland made the beautiful Beck pistol on that website. It's got the same type of buttcap. Maybe he could offer you some advice.

Best regards
Rolf

[Dave B]

It is always interesting to see how the old smiths did their work. He is an example of a Germanic holster pistol of the Georgian period with a spurred butt cap. They only inlet a very small portion of the edge of the butt. I would have thought they would have had a wooden dome under this cap. This was done in a workman like manor.






I would approach the inletting only after I had shaped out the butt of the pistol. If you want to know what  the inlet should look like. Use modeling clay to shape out the butt stock to the shape you want with the cap in place pop the cap off and you now have the negative of the inlet you will be reproducing for your  pistol. You can make a more permanent  model by using a chunk of hard wood roughed out to shape and again bondo the butt cap in place after having sprayed the cap with wd-40,and now you know what your goal is.  You will have a $#*! of a time trying to inlet that butt cap on to a square chunk of pistol sock. I have seen guys do it but why put your self through the aggravation. I use the same approach as I do on inletting a butt plate. Draw your center lines. Rough out the profile making sure you have your calipers out to check the progress. It never hurts to leave it just a little big at he widest part. Make sure to file the edges of the cap to clean out unwanted bits and flaws. Make the draft bevels where they need to be. Some Masked caps have leaves in the tang section that require an approach from the rear in a downward diagonal towards the final place. Others can be slid straight down into position with out that concern.

[Rasch Chronicles]

Dave,

Clay and bondo... I had thought about doing that myself on my first lock inlets just to have something to look at while I was destroying my first few pieces of wood. I had also thought of creating a positive of the lock, with all the clearance areas taken into account for the same reason. For someone like myself that has a hard time translating and visualizing spatial relationships between parts, I think that would be a big help.

Best regards,
Albert “Afghanus” Rasch
The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles™   
Learn to Shoot, Break the Flinch!
ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

[eddillon]

Dave and Al,
The Bondo thing ran through my mind.  Never thought of cutting off part of the butt underneath the butt cap.  Never thought of finish shaping the butt.  Now it all makes sense.  Thanks for the input.  Any more suggestios would be appreciated.
Ed

[cheyenne]

Wish there was a tutorial on this subject....or some good plans/drawings of these type pistols.

[eddillon]

I think that i'll be finished with the tedious inletting of the butt cap.  I bent the tang away from the back of the pistol grip.  Inletted the butt cap straight down on the butt.  by tomorrow i should be able to start bending the tang back to the rear of the pistol grip and inlet the tang.  So far I have about 12 hours in the inletting process.
Youv can see the progress so far by going to the link below:
http://www.neconos.com/buttcap.htm

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

I don't see any draft filed into that tang extension! 

[eddillon]

Believe me, there is draft.  I filed it myself-about 10 degrees.
Thanks for checking on me.  I need all rthe help I can get.
Ed

[cheyenne]

How'd it turn out?