Using gold wire on barrels

[Martin_G]

I read an older post about putting wedding bands on an octagon barrel and it got me to thinking about uses for gold wire.

On an octagon barrel where some builders have had their name engraved or other types of engraving ,is it possible to have the signature or other work highlighted using thin gold wire?

Personally, I've never seen this done but I was curious about it. There was an article online where a gunsmith had built what was essentially a presentation grade Hawken or Plains type rifle for a customer with wedding bands at the breech and just short of the muzzle. Between that rifle and then seeing several 1700's rifles with silver wire used in the inlays piqued my curiosity about using gold wire on steel.


Thanks,

Martin

[ChipK]

Contact Ron Scott, he has done it with great success.

[Dave B]

Martin,
Doing gold work is a lot of fun. I have done barrel bands on a couple of pieces and it makes a big difference if you use the pure gold wire vs 14ct gold. My first try at a barrel band was using the latter and it was difficult but turned out very nicely.  I have watched a signature inlaid with gold wire at one of the gunmakers fairs. Robert Evans came and showed us how it was done. If you can cut the line you can inlay it with gold. It looks great when your done and the metal is rust blued and the gold in contrast stands out.

[davec2]

The process is not particularly hard, but does require some patience, skill, and practice.  Here is a practice piece done in 24K gold and heat blued steel.



Here is a practice barrel band, also in 24K gold, flushed off and engraved.

[kutter]

Stay with 24k gold. It's the softest (pure) and easiest to work with. Anything else, even 22k will be noticeably more difficult to deal with if inlaying lettering.

Engrave the lettering as you normally would. No need to cut them any deeper than normal. The edges must be undercut (dovetail) to hold the gold.
You can use a punch shaped much like a wood chisel to do the job. For lettering, especially script where you are working with alot of curves, use a very small width,,tiny is a better word. You don't want to span the line and leave a stab mark on the radius outside your cut each time you punch and undercut.

You can use the same technique only stabbing in the undercuts with a hand graver. The point shaped the same as the punch above. A tiny flat graver works well and is usually available on the bench.
The soft metal of most M/L bbls works easily and you don't need a cavern for an undercut.
Nor does it have to be a continuous undercut up and down each side of every line.
You can jump the width of the tool or perhaps a bit more in your stabs and the gold will take just fine.

The main thing to do is not to disturb the top surface edge of the engraved cut. If you do, the gold will fill that area and leave the line with those jagged little 'saw teeth' ofthen sen on gold inlayed lines.

If you do inadvertly punch one of those up, carefully push the burr back down again with a flat punch and go on. The entire surface is going to be polished off once the gold is layed in and any imperfection will be gone.

Once everything is undercut, if there are some tight turns in the line that you think could use some extra grabbing power to the gold, you can upset some tiny burs in the bottom of the engraved lines. Just random spaced criss-cross burrs pushed upwards create teeth to hold the soft gold. Make sure they are lower than the top surface of the barrel so they don't show through the gold once faced off.

When satisfied with the prep, take your wire and set an end into the cut and hold it into the cut with a small flat punch and carefully set it into place.
The gold wire will swage into the dovetail cut and leave a small excess above the surface. That's good. You don't want the punch to rap the steel and leave marks. That's just extra polishing work at face off time.
Pull the gold wire into position with the line and tap it into the cut and keep going. As you come to overlaps, you have to plan ahead where you want to stop and cut the piece and where to continue  it and come around a loop. Cut the wire with the flat graver by jabbing pushing straight down on the wire and pulling the free end upwards.
Don't overlap a joint. That top piece will just come off when you polish it and leave a hollow. Cut, and start again on the other side of the joint.

Lettering can be tedious, but take your time. Polish off the excess when done.
If rust blueing or browning when done, avoid a rotary brush as it will matt the soft gold as well and cause it to take on a very dull look. Steel wool works well for that instead.

[Captchee]

  i would add that for practice i use simple copper or silver  .
 Bring it to dead soft and practice  your inlaying and undercutting . You will find very quickly what Kutter says about burrs is true

As to 24 ct . I would agree it’s easier to use . But if your trying to match existing bands on  many older pieces , your probably going to find that  24ct will be off on the color .
 I also find that  for 12,14 and 18ct gold , the key is to bring it to dead soft . It work hardens quickly also so  you have to set it right the first time .

[bjmac]

Kutter, it sounds as if you have a great deal of experience with this and I appreciate your answer. However (isn't there always one?) I would love to SEE your answer in the tutorial section. Thanks
BJ

[NSBrown]

Nice job Kutter and Captchee with the explanation. Very well described. Now all we have to do is just do it as instructed.

[Rolf]

Dave, I really like that gold barrel band you ingraved. How thick is the gold inlay?

Best regards
Rolf

[kutter]

Good points that Captchee makes about matching old work color when restoring.
I do mostly new work and use 24k.
The lower karats can be a wrestling match trying to do small detailed inlays with them like lettering.
The pics in Davec2's post shows beautifully inlayed line both in the script lettering and the border.
The lettering can be particularly time consuming and seems to be where many engravers fall short when inlaying work. Rough edges, 'saw teeth', overly thick/thin lines, smooth loops in the letters going out of shape, etc seem to erupt during the undercut process.
This is a very nice piece of work.

Line inlays in the lower karats aren't too bad but as stated, you don't get much of a second chance at setting the wire as it work hardens on you.
(When I started engraving, all the inlay we did was in 14k and some sterling silver because the outfit I did the work for demanded it be done that way. Not knowing any better, I thought that was the way 'gold' inlay went. The first time I worked with 22 and 24k wire was a new universe.)

Annealing the gold wire before use is a must.
I anneal even the 24K stuff too and it makes a difference in it's working quality too.

Simply drag it thru the flame of the kitchen stove or a propane torch while hanging on to one or both ends of a piece with pliers.
It'll get red in a snap, so keep it moving! or it'll melt in two on you.,,,and that's it. It's annealed.
No need to quench or do any mystic chants over it. Fine diameter wire will be cool enough to handle in a few seconds. Back to the bench.

If your silver wire is blackened with oxidation, drag it through the gas flame and the oxide coating will disappear, the silver wire remaining nice and bright. It'll be annealed at the same time (which you may or may not want depending on the application).
Silver depending on grade, work hardens fairly quick too,,.99f is about like working w/18k gold for me.

Copper works nicely. I've used it in multi colored inlays along w/silver and different karat golds on occasion.
A little of the lesser metals goes a long way in those type of inlays IMHO. Too much beyond some accent markings on the figures and they become cartoonish looking.

Steel on steel inlay isn't difficult if the right type is used. I use it alot to plug holes and dovetails instead of welding. You can also do raised overlays that way that appear to be chiseled of the base metal. Lots of work.

If I have any pictures it'd be of past work on those fancy back loader guns. I'll check and see what I have. I used to have some in-progress pics.
My lettering and even inlay work skills have fallen of recent. I don't do anywhere near as much as I used to.

[Captchee]

 here is a link that  might help you  in better understanding whats involved . it wont take the place of practice  though
http://www.engravingforum.com/showthread.php?t=4269

[davec2]

Rolf,

The engraved gold band is about 0.025 inches thick after being flushed off.



To add to Kutter's post about using different metals, here is copper inlayed in steel and sculpted above the surface.  The shield is about 1/4 inch tall.



And here are some sculpted flowers in copper, silver and different color gold alloys (Jerry Huddleston taught me how to do all this inlay work.  Can't thank him enough!)



But, as noted by others, nothing works like 24 K gold and everything else needs to be annealed and still takes much more effort to deal with.

[Captchee]

yep Jerry knows his stuff .
 but he still cant shoot for   
 since i  know he will probably read this  LOL
see you tomarrow jerry 
 unless its to cold for your OLD bones LOL

[Martin_G]

Sorry for such a late reply! My computer died the morning of the 6th and I didn't get the correct parts until last night. It seems that the manufacturer sent me the wrong hard drives the first time around. Glad it was covered under warranty.


I appreciate the replies that I received concerning the use of gold wire. What is the best diameter to use for signatures, and does anyone have a favorite business to buy 24k wire from?


Thanks,

Martin

[kutter]

I've bought all my gold and silver from T B Hagstoz in Philadelphia, PA.
I've delt with them for over 35yrs.
http://www.hagstoz.com/
Order by karat, diameter, length.
They catalog and sell their wire in B&S gauge sizes. I don't know if that's a common in the industry or not.
Click on the 'conversions' link on their home page and it'll give the diameter in .000" (& m/m.etc).

(They have wire in different shapes too,,, oval, square, triangular, 1/2 oval or round, ect.
They'll anneal the wire if you want no charge before shipped,,I usually anneal it before use anyway again.
Metals available in sheet stock too.

I've always stocked 20, 24, 26, 28 & 30ga 24K round wire for my work.  Some green and red gold wire too (18k) as well as well as a bit of 14 & 18k yellow gold wire.
20ga is about .030"
30ga is about  .010"

For inlaying lettering numbers, signitures, etc,,I'd stick with 24k. Plus it won't tarnish like an alloy gold.

Call them (800#) to place an order, tell them how many inches (or feet!) of what karat gold (round) wire and of what diameter you need.
They'll tell you the price, shipping and you can put it on a card.
The gold is sold by the pennyweight (Dwt) and the more you buy, the better price you get. They usually tell me if I'm right on the edge of getting a better price if I buy a bit more of one dia or another.
It's worked for me for a long time.

What you'll need as far as diameter of wire depends on the width and depth of the lines you cut. You may need a couple or even 3 different diameters in doing some script lettering as the lines increase and decrease in thickness naturally.

Doing lettering like block where the lines are the same thickness, you can do the entire layout with one dia wire. The work goes fairly fast in those instances as you're not constantly changing wire sizes.

One inch of wire will generally inlay about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2" of cut line,,assuming a line of non-varying width like a border. It need not be overly deep. That just eats gold wire ($).
The excess gold will swedge forward as it sets into the dovetail and teeth that you made to hold it.
You want a minimum yet some excess on the surface to avoid tapping on the steel with your setting punch.

If you run into a line that is wider than the gold wire you are setting, you generally cut and start setting a larger dia wire for that area. Make a clean butt joint w/no overlap and it will go un-noticed when polished off.

One trick to span a relatively short piece of line with a bulge in it's width w/o using a separate piece of wire is to jump the 'gap.
Set the wire up to the wide area, skip it leaving the small loop in the wire that naturally occurs as you set it along a line. That'll be the extra gold to fill the space.
Now jump to the other side of the pesky wide width in the line and set the wire again to keep it from moving. You now have an excess of gold wire in the form of a little loop or hump over the space to be filled.
Carefully guide that wire down into the space with your setting punch and lock it into place.
The soft 24k will swedge together and fill the void w/o having to splice in an extra piece of larger dia wire.

Doing the operation is almost a nonstop action in setting the wire once you learn it, does away with the splicing in of a separate piece into the line with it's a joints and the handling of the tiny pieces of gold. That can be very time consuming.
 

[Captchee]

 i would agree with Kutter .
 but what i do is draw my wire down  using a draw plate .
 thus i dont buy alot of diffrent wire sizes other then 12 gage  which i can double up if i need larger  or draw to make smaller .

 also pay close attention to the wire you buy  exspecialy if your going to draw it down . filled wire  doesnt work well . but it will work for inlaying  even if you double it .
 what im ggetting at is unless your going to usesolide 24kt  wire  pay attention to  what  you buying .
 the bands on this SXS are 14kt 14 gage   filled  wire thats been doubled up so as to give  the required width to fill the  inlet