January 30, 2011

First Pistol, Gun Number 3

 We had a few snow days that hooked to Thanksgiving break leaving me wondering what to do with my free time.  I decided to finish a pistol I had started a couple of years ago. 
 It came out pretty good overall.
 This was the first gun that I have ever tried carving on, it was fun.  I need a lot more practice, but am pleased overall with how it came out.
I stained the wood using Aquafortis.  It is an old traditional mixture of water, nitric acid, and steel shavings dissolved into the mix (at least I think that is what it is).  The process is to soak the stock with it and then apply heat which burns the wood with acid.  The light and dark stripes you see are due to the wood being curly maple.  Curly maple has stripes of dense and less dense wood, thus allowing the acid to sink deeper into some parts of the wood.  I love this process!



You can see the location of the touch hole is perfect on this gun.  The touch hole should be even with a line if it were drawn across the top of the pan.  This pistol should be almost instant ignition due to its touch hole location and it being a Jim Chambers White Lightning vent liner.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good job on your pistol and your blog. A few more pictures of your girls mixed in would also enhance the value of the guns.