Hi Jon,
Boy O, the designs are beautiful and ambitious!! It should be a great exhibition of your decorative skills. With respect to designs, I have a few suggestions but they are only in line with my artistic tastes. I am not fond of the wide edge of the cheek piece. My eye says make it half as wide. Perhaps, look at making the carving around the nose of the comb more leaf-like and a little smaller. Even just a little smaller would make it look better to my eyes. Jon, my wife, Gail, was a very great designer, and she taught me an incredible amount about filling space and paying attention to the "white spaces" between focal decorations. In a sense, they are also part of the design, the relief your eyes get and the context that focuses the eye on where you want them to go. With that in mind, I think the design in front of the cheek piece is too large and bold. There is a lot going on in the wrist area and it does not need the big scrolls from the cheek piece. A smaller, more compact design and one that dives lower relative to the beaver tail on the sideplate panel would look better IMO. The design behind the cheek piece is very good, in fact, I used almost the same design on my "Star of Bethlehem" rifle, which was in turn inspired by a gun by Jim Kibler. Around the patch box, I would eliminate the outer design. Keep the rest of the decorative border but eliminate the outside molding. Make room to show off the wood after all the wood is not a blank canvas like a painter experiences. It is an integral part of the design. Good luck and I am looking forward to the finished gun.
dave
