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Old 04-10-2009, 03:16 PM
CStolz338 CStolz338 is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Kansas, u.S.A.
Posts: 135
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Default Gunsmith Learning to Engrave

First I'd like to say Thank You to Steve Lindsay for all of his wonderful websites and especially this forum. There is a wealth of information here that is so helpful to the beginning engraver. So Thank you to Steve and Thanks to all of you who generously contribute to this forum.

About me: I'm not an engraver, let me say that again I'm not an engraver. I'm a Muzzleloader Gunsmith. I primarily build big bore rifles and the occasional double rifle. I apprenticed under Steve Zihn 10 years ago, for about 2 years. Then I was a part time/hobby gunsmith until 3 years ago when I inherited my family farm in Kansas after the move I decided to go fulltime building muzzleloaders. I also started doing hand engraving about that time, just simple stuff, borders etc.. with just a few gravers and a chasing hammer. But anything more complex I have been sending out to other engravers. Unfortunately the turn around time has been killing my business, so a few months ago I decided I needed to get serious about engraving my own firearms, so I wasn't at the mercy of someone else for getting my guns to my customers. So after reading up on this site and several others I decided I wanted a power graver, but being poor buying one was out of the question. So I dug through the patent office online and found a bunch of expired patents of engravers dating back to the 1800's. I adapted a few bits and pieces from various designs and built my own power graver. For my needs I didn't need fancy equipment I just need to be able to reproduce a similar style of engraving to the gun engraving of the 1800-1880 range. After a couple of weeks of getting my homemade engraver to work the way I wanted and another month or so of practicing in my spare time I think I might be able to handle most of the engraving my customers will want.
Anyways here's my latest practice plate:



You can see in the close magnification a couple of place were I skipped out of my transfer, but overall I think with more practice I will be able to produce a nice engraving that will be representative of 1800's gun engraving. Hopefully I'll be able to set enough aside from not having to farm out so much of my engraving to afford a real engraver in the future.

I welcome any comments or constructive criticism of my work, hopefully it will help me get better. Again Thanks to all the people who contribute here and help us beginners get going.

Colin
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