Thanks Taylor, Greg and Joel. Couple of things about the build. Taylor your right the forearm is very short. I had built a copy of the rifle attributed to Wm. Antes the Moravian builder and had that in class were we started this gun. Since Ian and I wanted the gun to have an early Germanic feel with the wider butt stepped wrist etc. we used this gun for the starting point. The other things that are a little different are how low the comb to wrist is and the short forearm. It looks a little odd at first but what we like about it is that at it's end is the perfect balance point and especially since we put a little swell on the sides it feels really comfortable to handle. The other thing I like about it is it tends to streamline the whole gun and make it appear longer than it is. Obviously this as you said is a matter of personal opinion. Joel, I guess you would say we have a rather loose way of working on these guns. There was no thought out master plan at all just talking about various options when we were together in class and then working on them individually at home hopefully building apon what the other had done. We did however agree we wanted something original but based on tradtion and we wanted to work in brass to play off the wrought iron on most of the elements to add some contrast and interest. In class Ian forged the wrought iron buttplate and I believe started on the trigger guard as hardware making demonstration. I was demontrating making the iron pipes so we used those on the build. I think I cut out the sideplate and Ian filed it to shape. Same with the trigger. We were able to pass it back and forth during the two weeks as time permitted to start on the shaping. I'm pretty sure that's about as much as we could get done at the class. Ian took it home and finished the shaping, made a iron nose cap, trigger plate, trigger guard forging and filing, cleaning up the buttplate, handmade and installed the sites and tuned the lock. It was barely functional to begin with now it's a mean killing machine. Now he claims he made a ramrod as well and sent it along but none was to be found so I had to labor over another rod. I could be forgetting something but after these operations he mailed it to me to work on. I did some minor work on the wrought iron hardware like adding the file work and details at the top of the buttplate including the brass lines, triggerguard I added the brass work not much else Ian had it inlet already. From there I started to add the brass inlays. I wanted something different but also something that might have been even if we haven't seen it. I choose to utilize brass backplates or escutcheons that were prevalent on early american William and Mary furniture. These pieces were about the right size and had the look I was after reminding me of the Moravian star type inlays. It kind of grew from there. I made another one cut it in half and used that on the comb in front of the buttplate and with the remaining piece I added that to the inlet pipe as an extension. I made the cheekpiece plate to acentuate the cheekpiece escutcheon. I was really worried about overdoing it so the only other thing in brass that I did was to outline the wonderful box Ian had made in brass wire. From there I did all the carving and molding and proceeded to the finish and aging. Great fun we each have freedom to do or change anything we want. Well this is probably way more information than anyone wanted to read. I'm going to go make dinner now.
