Filling gaps for inletted parts

[gumboman]

My 2nd gun building project is in process. I am inletting all parts with mallet and chisel along with some exacto blade scribing. No matter how careful and meticulous I am, I end up with gaps around my inletted parts. It is fun but it can be exasperating.

I look at pictures of rifles on this forum and in my magazines and see that the stock wood around the inletted parts looks like it grew around the part. There are no gaps between the metal part and wood. The fit is tight and precise.

I wonder how this is done. Is there a trade secret as to how the gun builders fill little gaps in inletted parts. Or are they just so good that when the part in inletted there are no spaces or gaps?

I once read years ago a theory written by one contemporary gun builder that the old time gun makers soaked the wood in water which caused the wood to swell around the inletted part. Is this accurate? Does it work?

Any tips or secrets forum members can share would be greatly appreciated by this novice builder. Building and shooting muzzleloaders is a joy to me and I am striving to get better at the building part.

[smylee grouch]

It helps to file a slight draft on the edge of the part to be inleted and cut to the inside of the line slightly. I asume you are using something as a transfer agent like candle soot or inletting black and only cuting out the shaded wood.

[gwill]

I'm just learning all this myself but the best pieces of inletting advice I've gotten from the experts has been to file a draft on the metal parts and to stick with a few very sharp tools. I've also learned "if it doesn't feel right or if I get in a hurry" to just walk away. Otherwise I'm sure to make a mess.

[Randall Steffy]

Your better builders are inletting without significant gaps and I would be surprised if they ever use filler to fill minor gaps. Dampening the wood prior to whiskering it will tighten the wood around an inlay, but not enough to fix a rough fit. I apply finish with the inlays in place and find very minor cracks fill in the process, Get your Pfeil chisels and gouges scare sharp. They cannot be too sharp.  A new Exacto blade is sharp enough but too flimsy for me. I need a knife twice as stiff as the Exacto. Draft. inletting black and careful work do the rest. Also study the tutorials for best wood removal steps to ease the job. Good luck.

[mark esterly]

you may have better success with a good set of palm chisels instead of the hammer and chisels.

[David R. Pennington]

Dittos to every thing else that has been said, but I would add lighting and magnification. I find the older I get the more I need more of both. I also agree with sharp tools being a must. I am constantly honing tool edges. Don't wait till tools are butter knife dull to re sharpen, but keep a leather strop and fine stone handy and dress up edges often.

[PPatch]

Practice your inletting on scrap wood so you gain a better understanding of the process and develop your skills. The "draft" folks are talking about is not acute, being less than five degrees. Once you have that take that exacto and scribe around your inlay, holding the knife at an angle following the draft you filed to the metal. use a sweep (I use a 3/16ths wide number 3 gouge/sweep sharpened and honed to a razor edge) to remove wood from the interior of the inlay. Try and keep the background under the inlay level as you proceed deeper. Once you have the inlay as deep as it must go and pined in place you can wet a Q-tip and wet around the edges of the inlay; this will cause the wood to tighten around it some but not a lot. If you have dug out gaps around the inlay then the wetting technique won't help much.

With practice you can learn to inlay. I used poplar wood from the Big Box store for my practice, use whatever you have on hand (not pine).

Good luck, you can do this.

dp

[Dphariss]

5x Optivisor with the swing over loup. Brownell's.
And SCRAPERS. Properly sharpened and carefully used will work wonders for eliminating gaposis.


The two shop made scrapers on the left are the ones I use most for finalizing inlets. One end flat the other skewed. The green ones came from Brownell's and have been reshaped. If sharp they will remove wood at an amazing rate or just a tiny bit as needed. These are through hardened and are not "burred" with a burnishers as softer scrapers like those on the right must be. Hard scrapers are sharpened on the SIDES to restore a sharp edge.
So they will cut in an direction and I use them for carving as well.

If you are taking out this much when finalizing the inlet where it will SHOW its probably way too much.

 Chisels will not work for the fine inletting needed in the final stages.
Mallet and chisel is for ROUGHING THE INLET no finalizing the shape and fit.
File a draft on parts.
Inletting process:
Properly position and draw around the part. The draft will allow the line to be inside the final inlet. Stamp or cut this line chisels and/or a knife (works better in the sharp curves).

Back cut at 45 degrees+- with chisel and knife to prevent chipping and make the line larger.
NOW cut out the over burden with gouges or chisels. Stopping short of final depth. Now with scrapers start to refine the edges to full size and inlet to full depth using inletting black, soft pencil, whatever. When it fits STOP. Very light mallet, I use the smallest dead blow or a screw driver handle can be used to tap the part to show the witness mark by the inletting black.

You need to learn the tools you need. Learn how to sharpen them. Learn how to use them to produce the desired result. THEN the speed will come. Just like in driving, in inletting, especially in the final stages, SPEED KILLS. In this case the quality of work.
My wife just walked by (she has likely stocked more guns than any 5 people here doing probably 3-6 a day at Shiloh for several years) and I told her of using a mallet and chisel in inletting and she produced a silly grin and a "phhttt!" sound. She was working on precarves but they still had to be final fit to .001" max gap.
Use the right tools, properly sharpened for the right application and results will be much better.
When scraping the final inlet I just remove the black then retry the part unless I KNOW I need a little heavier cut. I just finalized a lock and sideplate yesterday and should have taken a photo or three I suppose.
Chisels can be used to scrape too, and I do it at times, but they do not work as well as a dedicated scraper with the right edge.
 OOPs. The knife needs to have the top sharpened back 1/4' or a little more to create a sharp double edged point.
Dan

[B.Habermehl]

Extremely sharp tools are a must. Filling a one to five degree draft on the parts is next. A steam iron and a wet rag will close small gaps that result from compressed wood fibers. Sparring use of transfer color on your parts helps. Tons of tips on our sight history. By all means use the search feature.
BJH

[ken]

A exacto blade is too flimsee. I took one and ground it down to about half it size. Then put a slight drift on the parts. If I can I will clamp the part then trace around it. Sharp tools is a must,and always cut away from the edge . ken

[KLMoors]

I agree with all of the above.  For the gaps you have now, don't fill them with a filler material. You can make some tiny slivers of wood out of your scraps and shavings to fill those gaps. Stain the area around the gap and stain the sliver you are going to use. Then glue them in. 

You will be surprised that with some practice and lots of patience, you can inlet pretty intricate parts with very few gaps.

[mjm46@bellsouth.net]

If your chisels are not sharp enough to pull a thin shaving on end grain maple they are dull, sharpen them more. A leather strop with compound will help to sharpen, doesn't always need to be a stone.

Here's a tip that can be helpful: even with very careful inletting sometimes you'll get a small gap. What can be done to fix the gap is to spread the brass. By that, I mean to use a small dull cold chisel and strike dents on the wrong side. These will spread the brass cross wise making it slightly wider to fill the gap. The shape and depth of the strike will affect how much and in which direction the metal will move. Try it on some scrap and experiment. In general metal will widen across the strike and not lengthen. A dot like a center-punch or a ball-peen spreads in all directions. When it is replaced it fits, and may need some more filing to fit. The metal responds the same as what a black smith does with iron. Using different peens he can direct the shape of the piece. It's the same on a small scale and without as much or any heat needed. Try it. Hope this helped.

[tallbear]

Gumbo man

If you scroll down this page you will see a tutorial with pictures of how to inlet with no gaps.Pictures of the tools are included.

Link;http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=19231.msg181604#msg181604

Mitch yates

[Majorjoel]

I pretty much concur with much that has been said. Just would like to add this little helpful (to me) tidbit. One of the hardest things I have run across doing inletting is a way to hold an inlay in place while trying to scribe around it.  I found that if my plan was to pin the final piece down into the wood, I would pre drill the holes into the prepped inlay. Then position the part exactly where it is going. Mark the hole positions through the inlay onto the stock and drill small pilot holes. Making my pins from brass, steel, or silver, I put everything in it's place and tack it down. (IMPORTANT) ONLY drive the pins in halfway! This will secure the piece in place while you scribe  neatly around it. Using pliers, gently pull the pins out and remove inlay to get to the underlayment removal. The rest comes naturally.

[Dphariss]

Filling gaps is another skill.
Its best in small gaps to initially steam the wood with an electric iron and some wet folded diaper flannel or paper towel to see of this will raise the grain and reduce or eliminate the gap when is dry. Let it dry for at least an hour before re-installing the part.
Next way is the pean the part slightly. But this will depend on the shape of the part and how large the gap is pean on the BACK with a smooth faced light hammer on a smooth surface like a FLAT anvil.
The next is to glue in slivers of wood. One can cut them from inside the inlet sometimes as in locks ect where deep internal cuts are present. This way the grain matches. Not the curl, but the basic layout of the wood. They need to laid in the way they were cut. Put the part back in place with a little wax on it. Then wedge or drive the glued slivers in place. If it takes several "layers" even these will usually end up looking like a wood flaw when the gun is finished. But the slivers or whatever shape they are need to be put in TIGHT to reduce the visible glue lines.
The worst fix is visible bedding compound or sawdust and glue mixed. These can be used but I use wood slivers in almost every case and never use the sawdust thing.

Dan

[blaksmth]

Depending on the part being inletted there are little tricks a person can apply, on stock inlays as around barrel pins and such you can dome the inlay slightly then when you have it inletted you can tap it with a small hammer and it will flatten out some and tighten it up.

 use a good thin knife to draw around the part being inletted, I use an exacto and go around the part many times then as I go deeper I will replace inlay and keep a line cut around the inlay allways deeper than the part being inletted.

I hope this explanation  helps some

[gumboman]

Thanks to all of you who have graciously provided ideas, tips and guidance. All great information. I now have something to work on. I see now I will have to invest in some scrapers. I have been using my chisels for scraping but can understand the importance of having the right tool for the job even if it is as simple as a scraper.

I like the steam iron idea. Will have to try it.

Got triggers and butt plate installed this weekend. Happy with the butt plate. Not so happy with the triggers.

[BrushCountryAg03]

A Swiss Pfeil Marking Knife is what I now use and should have used from the beginning.  Not even a 0.5mm Pencil Lead will get you as close as the edge of a sharp knife will.

[jerrywh]

 Believe me when I tell you that nobody is so good that they never make a mistake. Sometimes wood just comes off because of the grain structure.  I agree with everything Taylor has said. A lot of excellent inletting can be attributed to the selection of the right piece of wood to start with. The same goes for carving. Another thing is to place close attention to the design of a piece such as a patch box so that there are no areas that are near impossible to inlet to begin with.  Study the design and ask yourself how difficult that will be to achieve  with the wood I am working with. Don't set your self up for failure from the start go. Ron Scott is one of the very best nad I have observed that he is a expert at wood sellection.

PS. There is an old book called the traditional woodcarvers manual. I suggests that you get it and apply the basics to inletting. You will find that it contradicts most of what you may have learned from the other so called experts. 95% of all the carvers of long rifles do it the hard way. It is possible to do excellent work and do it the wrong way but errors will show up more often than if it is done correctly.
  I learned a lot from Ron Scott

[Majorjoel]

I also forgot to mention that I have invented a magic solution. You apply it with a paint brush to the stock. Let it set for 15 minutes then simply press your inlay into the wood. Be aware that if you wait longer than 30 minutes the wood re hardens and you have to start all over again. My magic potion turns wood to soft clay for that brief time period.   

[Bear62]

I use an exacto knife with the point ground down some, I find that an exacto knife blade that hasn't had anything ground off of it is way to flimsy and the tip will break off in the wood (which always sucks!).
 I scribe around the part I am going to inlet with the knife and then use a set of inletting tools that I got from Larry Gardner. He makes them in sets with 3 different sizes. I think he gets about 40.00 per set and I think they are well worth the money spent. After scribing with the knife you take up the part and go on your line with the tools. Then you can cut your relief with your knife and remove the field. The inletting tools stab to about the depth that most inlays are.
 You can get a hold of Larry on his web site www.Artandarms LTD.net
 Also one of the things I do is wet the wood with the inlay in the wood and let it dry slowly this will swell the wood and will eliminate SOME of the smaller gaps. It's by no means a "silver bullet" but it will help. In the end it comes down to taking your time and being CAREFUL about what you are doing

[bob in the woods]

One thing that I do for intricate inlays is to first scribe around the part being inlayed. A scribed line is finer than a pencil line.
Then, I will work from the centre out, i.e. cutting out the majority of the wood necessary , working out to the scribed line.
This has been especially helpful when working with difficult wood.