flintlock

[charles starks]

well here is my first finished piece with my Lindsey classic .
sorry the photos are not real clear but Steve has been gracious enough to line me out on how to take better photos so in the future i will have this problem corrected .

I know there are faults and its not near the quality of you folks but things are comeing along nicely and the work will get better but so far im real happy with how this turned out .

[mckeenh]

From what I can see the work looks very traditional. I studied the early american type of engraving for a while and I suppose the right term would be early Germanic because the early gunsmiths were mostly German, But by todays standards it doesn't even appear to be Germanic. Don't be ashamed of your work, it looks clean and very apprapo for the firearm. The gun looks good too. I can't wait to see better pictures.

Neil:yesnod:

[jdveritas]

Nice work, like the man says its clean. I do love flint locks.

[SVD]

Me too!
Nice, clean work that fits the piece. :thumbsup:

For some reason today I'm on a 'normal viewing distance' kick when it comes to evaluating engraving.

Step away from your scope, take off your visor, and look at it like you would if it were someone else's gun. Now how does it look?

[charles starks]

thank you for the kind replies folks .
im surly enjoying the new classic graver

[Roger Bleile]

Charles,

From what I can see your engraving looks right for the type of gun and time period. As I mentioned in your "Thoughts" thread, overly sophisticated designing and engraving doesn't fit with most American rifles of the flint period. I was just at the NMLRA Spring national matches in Friendship, IN where I got to look at several period pieces.

The problem you may face in the future (especially using the Lindsay) is that your ability to design and cut will begin to exceed the niave scrollwork found on the originals and it becomes difficult to cut scrollwork that way when you are capable of doing finer work. I think another of the difficulties engraving on American flintlocks is in engraving animals. The engravers of the time usually used a very styalized way to depict dogs, deer, bear &c. It was not crude or niave but had a certain look to the animals that is difficult to duplicate unless you are copying from an original. I have always conjectured that since most engravers lived in cities they had never actually seen a deer, bear or tiger since there were few, if any, zoos and no photos so they just copied ill conceived pictures they could find.

Last Sat. I examined two long rifles made by L.G.Ward of Springfield, IL. These rifles were both extensively engraved and one was signed "William Fairthorn, Engraver" on a narrow inlay just forward of the heel of the buttplate on the comb. As close as I could tell the other rifle was engraved by the same hand. In my experience, it is very unusual to see a gun of this period fully signed by the engraver. Curt Johnson, the owner, has researched Fairthorn and found him listed as an English born engraver working in New York City. What I noted about both guns is that the scrollwork was rather crudely done while the lettering was excellent and the animals on the inlays were cut in the usual styalized manner. What this tells me is that Fairthorn was what I call a general engraver whose work was mostly in inscriptions, stationary dies and some jewelry and silverware. At the time the only "gun engravers" worked in or in close proximity to gun factories in Conneicut, up state New York and Mass. with the exception of LDN who was in NYC.

Anyway, I didn't mean to hijack your thread with all the historic stuff above but I thought you might find it interesting based on your other posts.

C.Roger Bleile

[charles starks]

thanks roger .
i understand what your saying . there is a distinct diffrence from the period americian engraving on rifles and eroupian engraving of the same time fraim .
i was even on this peice having a problem with not going to modern when drawing things up .
so what i did was take sections of the works of peiod peices and combind them into something that was more my own and not copies . that seemed to work .
beings this was a smooth rifle i also mixed and matched engraving exsamples from fowlers and rifles .
my real proble right now is i want to engrave everything . its simply to easy to go way , way over board and come out with something thats not anywhere right.
as such once i had the drawings transferd , i sent photos to Steve Zehn and had him give the ya or nay prior to the graver touching anything . worked out rather good that way

[SVD]

'Because you can' is the reason (often the only reason) behind a lot things.

Some of them are good, or at least neutral, at least.

With a powered graver it's so tempting to go ahead and fill that blank space - especially if you're using a scope. The scope also pulls you into doing things so small you need the scope to see them. Ah well, at least they provide a near subliminal 'feel' to the piece.

Good work keeping the discipline to do it 'right' all the way through the project! :thumbsup: