Took me a couple of days to figure out the thread title and click on it - thanks so much for the kind words, guys. Considering just how much talent is displayed on this site on a daily basis, I'm quite grateful for the comments and of course it's always nice to get an ego boost! I did this without aging because I really wanted to document - imho - the way I believe someone like Peter Angstadt or Stoffel Long or Jacob George, all working in rural areas of eastern Berks Co. and dealing almost exclusively with rural customers, may have supplied a rifle to a purchaser.
For anyone interested in the finish, the rifle is plain maple scraped down, hit with a single treatment of a mild aqaufortis to create a golden/warm brown base. Burnished down with coarse cloth quite heavily, then sealed with seedlac. I made up a 'varnish' using lead boiled oil with some cheap brown colophony resin, then mulled in a bit of transparent iron oxide by eyeball until it became something of a red-orange chestnut color (did not want to go too red in this region) and rubbed it on in a single coat. When dry, a single very thinnned coat of plain oil, then wax. With a couple of sunny days for polymerization, the entire finish can be done in only a few days and no residual tack or stickiness at all, and no modern products used. Two coats of the colored varnish would have created a very red 'Lehigh' red violin varnish, although I probably would have used a better resin/gloss agent for a Lehigh.
Thanks guys!
