Greetings, all,
I just finished (?) this pistol after several starts and stops over the past year. (I won't say finished for sure unless it sits in one place for a few weeks without my finding something to add or change!)
My goal here was to reproduce a long-barreled English horse pistol of the period around 1690-1710 using burled maple, similar to these examples:
http://jamesdjulia.com/item/lot-2524-good-and-rare-pair-of-flintlock-holster-pistols-period-1690-1720-signed-g-frugone-49805/http://jamesdjulia.com/item/2480-358/Burled maple does not grow on trees, so to speak, and it was a little difficult to find a good burled maple stock blank. I was able to get one from Jim Kibler, and I believe this piece came from the same piece of wood he used to stock his spectacular fowling piece:
https://www.jimkibler.net/burl-stocked-fowling-piece.htmlThe piece I got was a little daunting, having numerous large cavities, but there was indeed a pistol stock inside it waiting to get out.
The wood was not English or European walnut but probably western bigleaf maple. Another name for this pattern of figure is "stump wood", since wood cut from near the stump of a large old tree may be compressed into whorls and ripples. I don't think this piece could have come from a single "burl" growing from a site of damage on the trunk of a tree.
Note that in the pictures of the original pistols, there are several cracks extending through the "burled" portions of the wood. Dave "Smart Dog" Person in his ongoing tutorial on British fowlers on this site noted that burl or stump wood was very prone to cracking and consequently the popularity of this wood lasted only over a short span historically. I found this piece of wood to be the most difficult and frustrating blank I have worked with. After cutting down the blank and inletting the barrel channel, there were large gaps passing through the wood from the outer surface and into the barrel channel, as well as deep voids around the grip area. You could actually see light passing through the voids in the fore-end. These gaps were filled with colored Acraglas. (Jim warned me about this in advance and said it would require a fair amount of patching.) After finishing shaping and carving the blank and just before finishing, the stock suffered a rather short fall to the floor (caused by an over-exuberant puppy) which resulted in a complete break through the fore-end passing through the rear pipe pin holes. This was repaired with colored epoxy (and the puppy wasn't thrown in the stew pot), but it broke again at the same site later during finishing requiring repeat epoxy repair using high-strength T-88 epoxy. Another crack appeared in the fore-end as the front pipe pin was being tapped in. This also was repaired with epoxy.
Bottom line is, burled maple is beautiful wood but very unpredictable, difficult to work with, and prone to breakage. I would think twice before using it again.
The lock I used is another Kibler product, the Dolep lock casting set, which I assembled as I previously described here in this tutorial:
http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=41684.0The barrel is a twelve-inch smoothbore .62 caliber octagon-to-round barrel from Muzzleloader Builders Supply, which I modifed to a sixteen-agon just behind the round section.
Trigger and triggerplate were handmade by myself. Spurred buttplate, butt cap, and triggerguard also came from MBS. Pipes were highly modified castings from TOW. Front sight is a modified silver casting from TOW. Ramrod is ebony, tipped with burled maple and a brass end cap.
The sideplate and thumbpiece were designed and cast my myself using Delft clay technique, as I previously posted in this tutorial:
http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=45872.0Wood was finished with Kibler's tannic acid and iron nitrate (I swear I don't have stock in Jim Kibler's company!) and touched up in some light spots with LMF stains (Lancaster maple and ebonizer), finished with many thin applications of LMF stock sealer and an application of dark brown Briwax. Metal parts will get a coat of Renaissance wax.
All that being said, here are some pictures:
file and image uploader
lightshotI'd like to be able to take personal credit for the nice grotesque mask buttcap, but this is a casting from MBS. I toyed with the idea of creating my own buttcap casting using Delft clay, and I still might in the future, but this one will do for now.
Thanks for looking, hope you enjoyed. Comments and criticisms are welcome!
Gregg
