Hi,
I started on the wire inlay. The scene within the cheek piece carving will be a brass sun face surrounded by brass wire rays. Then there will be silver clouds partly blocking the sun. It will have a naïve folk art style. First, I removed the inlays. I drilled the holes for the pins that will permanently attach them and used the holes to pop them out with an awl. I glued them to wood for engraving.
It'll engrave them and then after permanent installation, I'll touch up the engraving with them on the rifle.
Here is the penciled design.
Every time I drew clouds they looked like floating dog *^*%$ but I kind of like them so floating dog *^*%$ it is.
I am starting out with 0.013" thick fine silver wire. That is quite thick but I want that width for the upper edges of the cloud, which represents the area most in the sunlight. The rest of the inlay will use 0.008-0.006 sterling ribbon. My goal is the fine silver will be bright white providing a bright halo effect around the edges of the clouds while the more gray colored sterling will actually provide a bit of shading. I wrestled with using engraved silver inlays for the clouds. My plan is if I am not happy with the silver wire, I can dig it out and inlay solid silver sheet over the incised cuts.
My wire inlay tools are simple. I use incise chisels made from hack saw blades. Many folks use curved gouges and flat chisels for stabbing in the designs. Frank Barlett used sharpened screw drivers. I cannot work effectively with those tools for this task. I need to huddle over the work and have short handled tools that I can place with precision.
I have some special pliers that help me a lot. They form different diameter curves in the metal ribbon before I insert them in the wood.
When the ribbon is placed in the incised cut, you need sharp flush cut pliers to snip it off to length.
Then just tap it in with a hammer.
I'll show cleaning it up and finishing it off in the next post.
dave
