Engraved before or after?

[Dave B]

Tom,
Thanks again for sharing these amazing photos of Kuntz's work. It has been very instructive to see up close the engraving that you can only guess at in the normal photos in the books.

[Acer Saccharum]

Dave B, I got a good camera. It makes such a difference. A camera is a real tool, just as important as a book or a lathe.

Note on the last photo, the thickness of the edge of the buttplate. Way too thick for today's 'standards', but look at what Jacob Kuntz did: right where the patchbox meets the buttplate he engraves a line, which immediately makes the thickness of the buttplate casting disappear to the eye. Genius points for Jacob.

Also note that his line wanders closer and closer toward the wood as he approaches the box opening. He lifts the tool out of the cut, backs up, and starts cutting again, a little closer to the center of the BP casting. This would have been engraved as an afterthought, once the BP was in place, and the PB was also in place.

Jacob says: "$#@*, $#@*, $#@*, somebody is going to see this 200 years later"

[JTR]

I’ll briefly continue with Tom’s off-topic theme.
As for inlays, on 6 rifles that I looked at this morning, the inlays, or inlets with missing inlays, the thickness varied from about 25 to about 40 thousands. 4 of the 6 rifles had inlays measuring about 25/30 thousands thick.

On the patchboxes, 5 of the 6 had the boxes inlet flush on the lower sideplate, but stood above the wood on the upper sideplate. I’d guess that since the toe of the stock is thinner than the comb area, that the wood of the comb has shrunk more causing the plate to stand above the wood.

As for whether the engraving was done before or after the part being installed on the rifle, I believe in most cases it was done after. I only say this because of the expedient use of time. To engrave the part first, you would have to inlet it first, then remove it and engrave it, then re-install it.

I know current wisdom says to hold your graving tool in a more or less static position and turn the work to be engraved into the tool, but I’m not sure the ol’ boys subscribed to this current bit of wisdom. Engraving the name on a barrel being a good example of the difficulty of this method. I think they just tapped the tool around following the design.

That’s not to say that some, Kuntz for instance, didn’t do it differently. Too bad they didn’t have this forum back then to describe their techniques!
John   

[Acer Saccharum]

John, once the hardware is installed, you really have to 'walk around' the gun to engrave it well.

Also, I thank you for your inventory of inlay thicknesses. That's valuable info. Another place to look for metal thickness is the pipes, but that is for another topic, another day.

There is a difference in cast patchboxes, and sheet metal cast boxes. I assume that 100% of cast boxes would be filed down flush with the wood, engraved on or off the stock, builder's perrogative.
Sheet metal depends on the maker's process, how thick the metal is, etc. I am going to go out on a limb and say 80% is engraved ON the gun, once it's installed, the likelihood of returning it to its original location is nil.

I believe Kuntz was a bit different in his approach to building, so you can't take his work for the norm. If he was receiving guns in the white from Rupp, then he could engrave his stuff ahead of time, and install it when the gun arrives. He could also engrave parts and send them to Rupp for Rupp's guns. Engraved OFF the gun would make sense in this scenario.

Note that I do not have any connection to the past, what really happened, nor do I make any pretence that ANY of the above is factual.

[Acer Saccharum]

This is a detail shot of the a nail in the finial of the patchbox. I looked at a lot of different fasteners before settling on this one.

See the vertical lines that follow the scroll? They are not the same depth as the scroll lines on the finial proper. See the cross hatching lines? (the ligther lines that go right to left) They stop at the nail, where they would have gone across the head of the nail IF the nail were in place and flush with the finial.

While this is not proof, this adds to the possibility that the finial was engraved first, THEN installed.



Having fun yet?

[Dave B]

Hey look at the corners engraved into the section of the upper  left hand side of the photo. I was wondering if they did cheat a little when it came to making the wood fit perfectly into the corners. He made little tick marks simulating a sharp corner to the casual observer. You would never have seen this detail unless close up photos were to document it.

[Jim Kibler]

Here's another thing to consider.  If you are using pins with raised heads or screws with slightly domed heads, as is certainly common for flint period rifles, it becomes quite difficult to use a process involving filing and sanding in finishing an inlay flush with the surface.  If not able to file, a slightly proud inlay seems practical and preferable to me.   Like has been said before, we shouldn't be afraid to question some of the modern gunbuilding ideas and standards we have.