carving on red maple

[yip]

  need advice about some carving on red maple. trying to put together a B/C LR and the stock is red maple, i got this blank at a good price and have it purnear done and thinking about some  simple carving and wondering if it'll be clean craving and not ragged

[bama]

Red Maple will carve nicely but is softer than sugar maple so it does not do so well with fine detail carving. As with carving any wood the sharper you keep your chisels the better the job will be. Try to keep your design a little more on the simple side. I built this rifle in 2007 and it is red maple and I think the carving came out pretty well.

[J. Talbert]

Red Maple will carve nicely but is softer than sugar maple so it does not do so well with fine detail carving. As with carving any wood the sharper you keep your chisels the better the job will be. Try to keep your design a little more on the simple side. I built this rifle in 2007 and it is red maple and I think the carving came out pretty well.

That said, you are likely in the best position to judge the suitability of that particular piece of wood, having inlet the parts and shaped it to this point.  Every piece of wood is different so there are no guarantees.  If you have any scrap from the stock I would try to execute some similar carving on the scrap and see how it goes.

Jeff

[yip]

   tanks guys i ave nuttin to lose at his point i'll just go slow.

[flinchrocket]

Did Bucks County rifles normally have incised carving?

[yip]

 flinch;  your right but i'm speaking about behind the lock and side plate side.

[P.Bigham]

Depends on the Red Maple.  I've seen some pretty dense and some I wouldn't use at all.

[flehto]

When stating to build, I purchased sugar maple blanks from  Freddie  Harrison at pretty high prices, so then went to Dunlaps and bought red maple blanks in various grades and these were quite hard. Had no problems carving the red maple and irregardless of the wood type, chisels have to be sharp.

Yes..original BC LRs are incised carved and through the years the carving has "washed out" to varying degrees....so my BCs are all relief carved......Fred

[FALout]

Fred, I just start to drool when I see pics of your work, very fine example of BC longrifles!

[flehto]

Thanks for the kind words. Always admired the makers of the original Bucks County LRs which have a unique style but are very comfortable to shoot. Have built a couple of Becks but my 2nd choice was the Lancaster LRs.....but w/o the Daisy headed Pboxes. John Brooks was an original Lancaster builder who made a few LRs w/ a very different style Pbox which I adopted...it's shown below.....Fred


how can i copy a photo from facebook

[yip]

  Fred; you should consider making a dvd on the building of the Bucks County rifle, you do fantastic work