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Old 04-11-2009, 09:46 AM
CStolz338 CStolz338 is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Kansas, u.S.A.
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Default Re: Gunsmith Learning to Engrave

Quote:
Originally Posted by gravertom View Post
Welcome Colin!

I bet we would be interested to see some pics of the tool you made too. Do you make your gun parts from scratch also?

I imagine you could find plenty of up and coming engravers around here to engrave stuff for you while you get up to speed. Sorry you have had bad experiences with delivery times in the past.

From the engravers side, sometimes stuff just comes in waves all at once. It works best when folks call first, if they have a rush order. When work shows up unannounced, it can mess up delivery times, when your plate is already full.

I'm not saying you did any of that, but lack of communication can cause trouble!

On the other hand, sometimes artists are quirky people. And sometimes very busy people too!

Looks like your engraving is off to a good start. Also, don't set your sights too low. There was some fabulous engraving being done in the 18th and 19th centuries, even in the US!

Take care,

Tom
The man I primarily send my guns to for engraving is a great guy, does excellent work and has treated me fairly in every regard. We always work out the details months in advance of me sending him anything, so none of that is really the problem. Here comes the but, this last gun I sent him in January is still at his shop, due to his compressor breaking down and him not being able to afford parts or a replacement compressor. And I fully understand his not being able to get the work done, broken equipment is broken equipment. What I don't like though is being at the mercy of someone else, and having to tell my customer I can't finish your gun right now because I don't have it. It's hard on my reputation and it's also hard on my pocket book, if I had the rifle back, I could have it ready to ship in under a week with the little bit of work I have left to do, and I would have a paycheck in pocket. Thankfully my customers have all been very understanding about delays, and I also never guarantee a delivery date, I just give an approx. date. Like I said I understand his difficulties and don't hold him in any less regard in getting the engraving done, I'm just tired of being at the mercy of someone else when this is something I can learn to do myself. I'll continue to do business with him in the future because we do have a long standing relationship and he does excellent work for me.

I do build a lot of my gun parts in house for a couple reasons, the first one is what my customers are paying for, some of them pay the extra to have a gun built completely by me, so every part including the barrel(s) and lock(s) are fabricated in my shop. The other reason I build a lot of my own parts is because once you get up to a certain size of gun(really big Bore Rifles) nobody makes parts for them. Then the last reason is the types of guns I build, mid 1800's boxlock muzzleloaders, there is only one person in the country who casts actions for that style of lock, and he only does two types. So I machine some of my actions from bar stock because I can't get them made any place else. I have a fairly well equipped machine shop, with most of the major metal working tools, I also have a couple decent forges(propane and coal) and the equipment to forge most things. I also do some small casting work, end caps, grip caps, the occasional trigger guard, etc..

As to my homemade engraving equipment, well this ought to be plenty embarrassing compared to what I see most people on here using but since you ask.
As I said before I dug through the patent office looking at old engraver designs and just adapted them to what I had available. I turned the hand piece parts in my lathe. The body is 4140, I heat treated it and tempered it. The piston is 0-1 tool steel hardened. It works on the vacuum draw system with a return spring for impact. I can vary the impact by changin the spring and I can vary the speed with the foot control. The vacuum motor came out of a medical breathing treatment machine, and the rheostat foot control is off of an old sowing machine. I use standard gravers in it, mostly E.C. Mullers and a handful of Lancaster that I picked up at an auction a couple years ago. Nobody else at the auction bid on them and I bought about 100 different knife, sqaure, onglette, and liners with a dozen or so handles for $5.00, heck of a good deal. My vise is an old bowling ball cut flat with a drill press vise bolted to the top of it, and the base it swivels in is off of a broken Wilton 6" vise. Here's a few pics:



Nothing fancy about it's what I have or was able to build, it was all pretty much junk lying around my shop.
I also have a Vigor EN-775 pantograph engraver with several sets of letters that I picked up at the same auction for $80.00. I use it to layout my letters, then I chase over the shallow markings to get cuts deep enough to match the rest of the engraving.

If you have any question feel free to ask, I can't tell you much about engraving but I can tell you how to scrounge up equipment on a shoe string budget.

Colin
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