C. Oerter rifle progress

[flehto]

I've built quite a few Bucks County  LRs  and the cheek star on my BCs isn't as "leafy" as yours and Oerter's. ....never saw such a "leafy" star on a BC.....although I really  like that star and would have used it on a BC, but  I no longer build so it won't happen....Fred
 

[t.caster]

Fred, your star is quite nice and leafy too. I have always admired your work and I'm sorry you have stopped building rifles!

[bob in the woods]

Beautiful work !    I'm not a real fan of german silver wire as it just doesn't look 'right' to my eye.

[Mike Brooks]

  Tom; by the iterm quilting i mean it rolls over while seat the ribbon. being new to the wire inlaying i guess there's a learn curve. got a dvd of James Turbin and he uses german silver for the new guy, maybe its the way to go

You're having one of two problems, maybe both. You need to either widen your groove or deepen it. Just light taping should seat the wire. I use dead  soft sheet sterling and cut my strips off with scissors. I find anything harder than dead soft is difficult to work. If i'm using brass wire I still cut it off of a sheet wit scissors. At that point the strip is so hard you can't straighten it out. I anneal it when it's in the curl from cutting off the sheet then it works fairly well but not as good as dead soft silver. I use a multitude of home made tools...bits of broken off hacksaw blades and little screw drivers sharpened and shaped to my needs.  Sometimes I do some fair wire work, sometimes not so much.