Mike,
What engraving I know I learned from Jerry Huddleston, so I had a good start on that front. I am collecting parts for a rosewood stocked English style half stock rifle, so I will give your recommendation a try, hopefully soon. I do need more carving practice first as well. I recently tracked down Steven Alexander who built an English style rifle I saw in an advertisement photo 25 years ago. I have had the ad photo above my work bench all these years and will endeavor to make something remotely in the same class as Steven's rifle.
You are spot on about the stock finish. I have been experimenting for quite some time with a myriad of commercial finishes and several leaded linseed oil blends I have been making in small batches. I haven't hit on anything I really like yet except for a finish I bought back in 1971 from the Crane Creek Company. (No longer in business but I have one can left that I am having chemically analyzed by a friend of mine.) This rifle was finished with Lee Valley polymerized Tung Oil sealer. It was not so shiney until I put on the last rub down and then I realized I went too far. Although I have always listened to the debates about varnish / oil, shiney / dull, fast finish, slow finish, etc., without being any smarter for all my efforts, I will probably rub it back at some point. What do you use to finish your stocks?
As far as the extra wood at the wrist, the huge disadvantage for me, out here in the Peoples Republic of California, is that I don't know anywhere I can go to see originals. Without seeing and handling, it is really hard to be intimate with the architecture of a well made rifle from pictures and verbal descriptions. But I get your point.
This is actually my 5th rifle, although I consider it the first in my "modern" era. The first two I scratch built in high school in the late 1960s based on what details I could see in 2 inch square black and white photos in a Dixie Gun Works catalog. I still have the rifles, they shoot great, but they look like $#*!. The next two were built when I was a Midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy in the 1970s. (Not allowed to build guns in your room there so I had to hide all the parts and tools in an elevator machinery room !) They are a matched set for my father and I, built from pictures I had in a Golden Age Arms catalog...not much bigger or better than the Dixie pictures. They are much better rifles, with home made locks, but still not up to any standards you would recognize. Then I started this one (#5) 30 years later...and then stopped almost immediately when I found this site because I found I was on the wrong path again. While waiting (and reading) to get smart enough to build another "good" long rifle, I put together a couple of pistols, a 4 gage blunderbuss, and a Ferguson.
I still work full time as an aerospace engineer, so I don't have the time I would like to devote to getting better at this, but, that's life. All the more reason that I do very much appreciate the time many of you spend in explaining how and why you build these lovely rifles the way you do to novices like me.
One of the older space engineers I began working with when I first got out of the Navy used to call the space craft we built "magnificent machines of exploration". I have often thought of these long rifles, in their era, as magnificent machines of exploration. Certainly no 17th, 18th, or 19th century explorer went off on a journey of discovery without a rifle he could trust.
Ed;
You and I were typing at the same time. Thanks for the encouragement. I will attempt to address the stock issues...the hard part is being smart enough to recognize what the issues are. That's where the advice I get here is invaluable.
dave C
