Looks like I showed up here just in time while the thinly veiled insults from my friends are showing signs of emerging. Thanks everybody for the very kind words and I will be sure to post some more photos. To answer the questions that were brought up -
I hope this one will be displayed at the CLA show but can't guarantee it . It should be finished by then but I don't know what the owner's plans are. He has been incredibly patient waiting for this one to be done.
The scalloped molding will be on both sides of the comb, I had scraped the pencil lines off the cheekpiece side if that's why you wondered. Here's a picture of the two edge of comb inlays ready to be inlet -
Rolf, you had asked about the style / school. Not easy to describe - this one is not a copy of a particular builder's work, more so an attempted fresh take on established techniques and concepts. I try to place a gun regionally by incorporating my own twists on expected features and details, and try to place it on the timeline by showing influences from work that would have been earlier, also sometimes trying to link these to similar details that would show up on later guns. The hard part is trying to make it all feel like it's plausible and not thrown together.
I do have my own story about where this gun might have come from. but for me it's kind of cool to hear what other people see in it rather than fill in the blanks and shut off people's imaginations.
Couple more pictures - The customer had supplied me with some silver coins to use for inlays. I melted down the clippings to cast a little slug then hammered it into a piece to use for a barrel signature plate. That's just a little pile of fire bricks to help hold the heat around the crucible. I set it up in my wood stove to suck some of the heat out of the shop.
Almost forgot - Ron, I had to scrap the patchbox release under the muzzle cap project, couldn't get the temper right on the pushrod and kept exploding forends off guns. That kind of nonsense gets expensive in a hurry.
