This project was started in 2010, then abandoned and stuck in the "corner of shame" in 2011 after I attended my first stocking class at the NMLRA Gunsmithing seminar. It began life as a Tip Curtis precarve and was intended to be my personal squirrel gun, however the build was badly botched and for years I thought the stock was a total loss, and only the parts could be salvaged.
Some of you that have been around here for a while may remember me posting progress pics and asking numerous questions back when... I received an abundance of great advice however didn't have enough understanding of how to properly implement much of the advice, and I severely lacked an understanding of architecture. As the years went by I was still lacking a proper squirrel gun, and from time to time I would pick up the rifle and wonder if it could be salvaged.
Here's a couple photos of my first misguided attempt at relief carving - not only was the carving non traditional and poorly executed, but the rifle was far from ready to be carved on. Also notice some chip-outs along the tang that were "repaired" with acraglass. Yuck!
After some critique I attempted to make the tang carving resemble an Acanthus leaf. Perhaps a slight improvement, perhaps not.
Also notice the relief carving and lock panels are cut too deep.
Besides poorly executed carving, improperly shaped and oversized lock panels I had poorly shaped upper and lower forestocks, an oversize badly fitted commercial muzzle cap, a nasty oversize cheekpiece, poorly inlet ramrod thimbles and too many other issues to mention. So one day a couple of weeks I decided to see what I could do to salvage the poor girl. The first thing I did was to rasp off all that nasty, overly deep carving and reshape the lock panels. Yes, there was enough extra wood that I was able to remove all that carving and do nothing less than improve the architecture of the wrist and lock panel area. I also reshaped the forestocks and scrapped the commercial muzzle cap, and filed some metal off the top of the tang. Here it is after all the rasping and filing:
When I started this gun I had no idea that I could change the size and shape of the tang, so I inlet the tang as it came from the factory, with the exception of a bit of filed draft. IMHO the tang was too long and I wasn't thrilled with the shape, so a little modification was in order.
Oops! Houston, we have a problem....
The answer to that problem is a plug. A round, football-shaped or irregular patch is much easier to fool the eye with than a rectangular one. Here I will use a technique similar to what I might do for wood replacement on a restoration. Notice the plug is not only rounded but also tapered with a slight draft. The wood must be carefully selected and cut so the grain direction and structure mimics the grain of the stock at the point of application. I find it helpful to mark some alignment points on the patch as well as the stock.
For me, it works best to treat a patch like it was an inlay, with a bit of an exception. Here I scribe around the patch piece and begin to inlet it.
Here is the main exception - I use carbon paper to check the fit instead of inletting black or smoke and carefully file away the marks left on the patch, instead of cutting in the inlet. If done properly you will get a very good fit.
Time for a little glue:
I let the glue set overnight, then rasped the patch down and re-inlet the tang.
The patch would likely blend well after staining, however I will be doing some relief carving on the gun and can use the carving to my advantage in camoflaging the repair. Here are a couple of rough ideas how that could be done. I'll decide what will actually be carved later and will try to post some updates.
Thanks for looking,
Curtis
