What did you do in your shop today?

[Garry Keown]

Turning the blank over I made a start on the Bottom Metal and I have a bit of a cheat here as I cut one down that had the magazine and trigger bow damaged so it makes an ideal candidate for an in letting guide.

 

With the guide in place I can mark round it

 

 

So with a inch flat and a small 1/2 round carver the outline can be cut in and start getting down to depth

 

 

[billyO]

Here's what we did yesterday.  Prepped and welded up 4 1080/15N20 billets, while teaching/coaching my brother through his first damascus billet.  (Next time I think I'll have him cut the bandsaw blade into pieces and grind all the pieces clean...) Each billet is 15 alternating layers of 0.125" 1080 and 0.070" 15N20.  The largest billet has 2 pieces of 15N20 between each 1080 layers. 

 

I'm starting to think having access to the press is worth the hassles of living with roommates.

Edited April 15, 2020 by billyO

[Jeremy Blohm]

The axe I posted a few pages back that cracked on me I reforged it quenched tempered and a crack appeared again. So did it all over again. This time it looks like everything went good. 

[Jeremy Blohm]

Ok it's more than a few pages. It is back on page 104

[Joël Mercier]

6 hours ago, Jeremy Blohm said:

Ok it's more than a few pages. It is back on page 104

Third time's a charm they say...

 

On my side, I did the final grind(and some mistakes) on my KITH entry. So it ended up thinner at spine and less wide by around 1/8". On the bright side, the hamon looks quite good and where I wanted it. 

[Garry Keown]

A bit more on the stock today and there was not a lot to get the rest of the necessary removed to get the cut down plate down to depth.

 

Then the magazine well could dimensions could be marked in and some more wood removeds and to do much of the mag wall I find the smooth side of a farriers rasp to be the ideal tool. With the stock set level in the vice it is not difficult to use the rasp marginally off level to file in the draft of the mag well. chisels, scrapers and smaller files are needed to finish getting the metal in. Being able to turn the wood over and see from the other side makes this a reasonably simple operation.

 

 

It is then that the bottom metal can be settled into its rightfull place

 

 

To prevent the stock splitting I drilled in for the action stock bolt and cut in for a threaded rod between the trigger and the rear of the mag well and epoxied it in place.

 

[Brian Dougherty]

Wow, that is a beautiful floor plate/trigger guard! 

[Gerhard Gerber]

I've seen the work of a German master gunsmith working locally, helped him out with some annealed spring steel for a part he needed to make.

Just like Garry his work amazes me, I do not have the skill or patience , and soon I'll be closer to 50 than 40...

 

Can't wait to see the end result Garry!

[Alan Longmire]

Gotta love interchangeable parts when it comes to stock inletting.   I often use files on wood.  But, I bet you're glad that Mauser isn't chambered for .22 LR!  That rasp would never fit.  

[Garry Keown]

1 hour ago, Alan Longmire said:

Gotta love interchangeable parts when it comes to stock inletting.   I often use files on wood.  But, I bet you're glad that Mauser isn't chambered for .22 LR!  That rasp would never fit.  

This the answer to that  dilema Alan. http://iwasaki-y.com/english/index.html 

As soon as the post starts to move again I am going to ghet my agent to get me an 8 inch fine and flat from here https://www.craftsmanstudio.com/category-s/346.htm

I have a logier (french) hand stitched rasp that is a beautiful tool for stock shaping but these Iwasaki files have small cutters like plane blades instead of teeth and leave a very smooth finish so they will be my main shape finishing files for knife handles over the engineers bastard cut files I use now. They leave the deep scratch / tooth marks deep into the wood so a lot of  sanding is needed to remove them and the Iwisaki files will stop that.

[SteveShimanek]

Garry, you are doing some very fine work there! I wonder if you would be interested in doing a wood trade...I have a Hawaiian Koa rifle stock blank that i would trade for an equal amount of NZ swamp kauri, if you are interested. I did not see a private message button on your profile anywhere, so put it here.

[Alan Longmire]

Oh, I have some Iwasakis already, never fear!    They are the shizz for final fitting of hawk handles.  Among other things, of course.  

[Garry Keown]

2 hours ago, SteveShimanek said:

Garry, you are doing some very fine work there! I wonder if you would be interested in doing a wood trade...I have a Hawaiian Koa rifle stock blank that i would trade for an equal amount of NZ swamp kauri, if you are interested. I did not see a private message button on your profile anywhere, so put it here.

Have sent you a PM Steve

[Conner Michaux]

I’m forging another little blacksmith knife out of a small off-cut of Damascus I have. I’ll get pics soon. 

[Garry Keown]

Before I started the barrel channel today I decided to put a handle on this chisel. It was my fathers and was given to him when he left one school by the one of the teachers because of his liking for woodwork so that would have been in 1935 or 6. It has had the handle broken off and used like this for as long as I remember and it has been in my shed for the last 23years so it was time to put it right. The piece of oak is from some board cut from a tree my father helped cut down and dress in about 1955 so it was apropriate to use it for this.

 

It is one of the chisels I use for the barrel channel (I did grind the shape on it some years back) but the most used one is a smaller 1/2 inch round end and a 1 inch flat befor I start in with the scrapers

 

 

It was a good place to leave it for the week with everything settled into place. Next I will fit the a spacer to the butt pad and get that and the grip cap attached so I can start to cut in the shaping lines.

[Conner Michaux]

Low layer Damascus quick n dirty etch. Pay no attention to all the little slips from the grinder 

Edited April 17, 2020 by Conner Michaux

[Zeb Camper]

You're making 'mascus now? 

[Chris Christenberry]

Finished my Fullering Jig today.  Anxious to put it to work.

 

[Conner Michaux]

1 hour ago, Zeb Camper said:

You're making 'mascus now? 

I wish, but Unfortunately not yet, that’s coming soon though. This was forged from a small billet I got from A maker on Instagram called 50.50 forge 

[Joshua States]

@Garry Keown your gunstock project is a joy to watch develop. The new handle on that old chisel made my eyes misty. There's a lot of history and love there.

 

Well, all I did was start on some file work. This is a frame for a coffin handled Bowie.

[Gerhard Gerber]

Completed the fork to round out the set, happy with the result, sad that the Walnut burl was just a lucky find, not likely to be repeated.

 

Not quite sure how the describe my weekend, disappointed, rudely awakened ...... Finished and put an edge on the first 1070 blade, have to admit I was slightly surprised by the size of the secondary bevel, which indicates it is not as thin as I thought. (I know, measure don't think)

The knife is for me scary sharp, it shaves with no effort, it cuts receipt paper cleanly with a fast swipe, push cuts paper and just goes with any direction change...

What it does not do, and I was sure it would, is cut a free standing tomato

I admitted my failure here, not for love or money will I share the testing video 

[Garry Keown]

First job today was to cut the spacer material round the butt pad and fit it to the stock and it was when I ground the toe that I realised the mistake the customer had made when he asked me to add a 1/8 spacer to the pad as the grinding revealed the spacer that was part of the pad but hidden under the surface layer of rubber. Too late to do anything about now though.
Next was to mark in the cutting lines from the butt pad width down to the grip cap width and through the wrist out to the full width again at the front of the tang and cut them on the bandsaw.

With some prelinary work on the comb and the front of the grip the line for the transition from grip to butt was drawn in

and rasped down with coarse rat tail rasp, refined with a bastard cutand then the rear of the grip could be shaped before starting on the rest of the butt.

 

The tools used to this stage and for all the main shaping are the fine side of the farriers rasp, the (very expensive) hand stitched french 1/2 round wood rasp and again a bastard cut 1/2 round rasp.

 

With it sanded first with 80 grit emery then on to 180grit paper it started to look like a rifle when it was all put together again.

[Alan Longmire]

Garry, is there any cast off to that stock?  When I was doing flintlocks I liked to add a fat 1/4" of cast off to help line up the sights automatically when shouldered. 

For those who don't stock rifles, etc, cast off is offsetting the center of the buttplate away from the shooter. Think of having a pivot pin at the trigger that allows the butt to swivel. It makes the difference between just "nice" and a true custom fit to the shooter.  The bespoke shops in London like Purdey, H&H, etc. used a "try stock" on which everything was adjustible. Length of pull, cast off (or cast on), drop, cheekpiece, and so on. The result is a true tailor-made fit.

[billyO]

7 hours ago, Gerhard Gerber said:

Completed the fork to round out the set

Those look gorgeous...The mohair turned out better than I thought is would.

[Brian Dougherty]

3 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

The bespoke shops in London like Purdey, H&H, etc. used a "try stock" on which everything was adjustible. Length of pull, cast off (or cast on), drop, cheekpiece, and so on. The result is a true tailor-made fit.

 

You should see the stock adjustments on my 10m air rifle!