turning a tree into a rifle

northwoods1 · October 07, 2010, 08:29:58 AM

Quote from: SwampDonkey on October 06, 2010, 07:03:37 PM
That'll sure keep a man busy

Great stuff.

Thats the idea it keeps me out of trouble

tmroper · November 21, 2010, 01:39:37 AM

Northwoods,
I just want to compliment your work. I enjoy seeing what other guys enjoy making. I hope you post more of your work in the future. In my spare time I build saddles and engrave silver along with pretty much anything you can make out of the leather and silver of course. I have an old hawken rifle I got as a kit many years ago and have decided to take it out and see if I can get a deer this week just for kicks. I have already taken my elk this season while cutting firewood. Should make it fun to get out and get some excercise anyway. Once again great job on all of the projects posted. Keep at it....

northwoods1 · November 23, 2010, 08:30:01 AM

Quote from: tmroper on November 21, 2010, 01:39:37 AM
Northwoods,
I just want to compliment your work. I enjoy seeing what other guys enjoy making. I hope you post more of your work in the future. In my spare time I build saddles and engrave silver along with pretty much anything you can make out of the leather and silver of course. I have an old hawken rifle I got as a kit many years ago and have decided to take it out and see if I can get a deer this week just for kicks. I have already taken my elk this season while cutting firewood. Should make it fun to get out and get some excercise anyway. Once again great job on all of the projects posted. Keep at it....

Check out this old saddle I fixed up last winter. I'm pretty sure its from about the 1930s' but I don't know anything more about it. It was really dried out but the leather came back to life after I gave it some repeated treatments of pure neatsfoot oil. I put new strings on, and stirrup rigging with some blevins buckles with a twist. I had these old roper stirrups which I put on. Also sewed a new sheepskin on it by hand that took a while!! I love this old saddle it fits my flat backed paints and 1/4 horses perfectly

I want to make some spurs and also some spade bits. Some of the old spurs and bits were really nicely made. I can make any type of saddle hardware, d-rings or rings, conchos or if you need something special let me know. I wouldn't mind becoming a member of the cowboy artists of america that is a great organization.

SwampDonkey · November 23, 2010, 10:12:36 AM

I seen on Antique Roadshow last night a revisit of old episodes with the highest appraised value. A New England made muzzle loader with powder horn and shop notes was $1.2 Million. Only three of his guns known to still exist. :D :D It was cherry. This had been passed down in the family 4 generations and in perfect condition.

northwoods1 · November 27, 2010, 09:13:49 AM

Quote from: SwampDonkey on November 23, 2010, 10:12:36 AM
I seen on Antique Roadshow last night a revisit of old episodes with the highest appraised value. A New England made muzzle loader with powder horn and shop notes was $1.2 Million. Only three of his guns known to still exist. :D :D It was cherry. This had been passed down in the family 4 generations and in perfect condition.

I saw that episode also my friend William Guthman did the appraisal. He was an expert on early american powder horns and wrote several books on the subject. Since that show he has passed away. The actual appraisal was for $120,000 and not 1.2 million. I new a fellow in Sturgis S. Dakota that at one time sold the highest priced gun ever sold in the U.S. it was a 86' winchester that had been owned by buffalo bill, it sold for $575,000. Since then that has been surpassed by one of colonel walkers "walker model" colt pistol being sold. There is a pair of his pistols but only one sold for that record amount they are both owned by separate individuals and haven't been together for a while. I'm now building a rifle which is a documentary copy of an early north carolina rifle circa 1770 that the owner allowed me to completely dissasemble and examine to see how it was made and take measurements, he had just bought it for $160k. I was careful not to booger it up thats for sure :D that gun on the roadshow was a real treasure because of the makers account books from his gun building work and the original horn. Very unusual that it is still in the family and in original condition yet.

SwampDonkey · November 27, 2010, 10:17:51 AM

Yes, $120,000 Welcome Mathewson Rifle & Powderhorn. I must've been half asleep as usual at that hour. ;D

tmroper · December 03, 2010, 05:42:19 PM

Northwoods,
you did a real nice job on that saddle. I would like to see some of your other Items you have made maybe post them here or make another post. I actually make a few bits and spurs also it always neat to see someone else that has common interests. I would have had no idea you were into spade bit horses I usually have 8 horses in my string that i use for my day to day work on the ranch and enjoy making them straight up in the bit. Feel free to check out my website if you like it is
www.catocustomsaddlery.com

I do the leather, custom silver, rawhide braiding & my wife does pencil sketches of cowboying scenes around here. I would sure like to learn more about these black powder rifle and build one not from a kit.
Take care and post more pics

barbender · December 03, 2010, 11:59:06 PM

I think nothwoods is more of a master of these crafts than he is letting on. No amatuer forges his own barrels and disassembles $160,000 antique rifles ;D

I really admire your work, not to bad for a logger ;)

Autocar · December 11, 2010, 10:02:34 AM

Northwoods what a talent you have, Ive make a number of hunting rifles for myself . I bought my barrled actions then make the stock . But my work isn't even close to yours , for sure your very talented. Iam working on a left handed WSM270 with a Kentucky Coffef Bean stock. Yesturday a friend from Tennessee stopped in and I sent some spaled hard maple stock blanks home with him. Nothing like beautiful wood ;)

clww · January 27, 2011, 10:00:43 AM

World-class workmanship! That's one of the coolest threads I've ever followed!
Sell these rifles?

Wrangler55 · January 27, 2011, 01:52:52 PM

Beautiful work, you are a real craftsman and I admire your talent. Working with wood to make gunstocks got me into all this lumber, sawmill and timber business. It does get in your blood. I bought my stock duplicator from a guy who made stocks for Ky & Pa style rifles, only he didn't have a cheep source of wood and was unable to make any money after he bought his blanks. It came with all the cutters to make the barrel channel in different sizes, a steady rest to keep those long spindly stocks steady, and a flat jig to cut the ram rod channel. Since I make varmint/target/benchrest stocks, I've never used those parts.

Your maple finish looks great! What do you use to bring out the tiger stripes and darken the maple? I've had my best success and worst failure with maple.

Hal

jim king · January 27, 2011, 06:09:57 PM

I think you should be locked in your shop and kept out of the woods. That is all high-high class work. You are an artist.

northwoods1 · March 09, 2011, 12:11:07 PM

I thought I would show some pics of one of my latest whittling projects that really serves no purpose whatsoever. Why I got the notion to make it I have no idea. It is a little carved book. I took a piece of apple that I had split into firewood and split it down to get a fairly flat piece. Then I took it into the shop and sawed it down with a handsaw closer to final dimensions which where in my mind at being right around "pretty small" :D
Then I squared it up pretty good with a big rasp and a drawknife, and then a block plane. I never used a straightedge or a square just did it by eye. When I had it squared up and smoothed down with a mill file and a scraper I made it a little more challenging by making it have a dovetailed and tapered sliding lid. I tried to make it fit well enough so that you couldn't tell it came apart by just looking at it. To make a sliding lid like that, first I made the dovetail in the book part and then made the sliding lid part. The only thing I use to make the dovetail in both pieces is a regular small 60 degree triangular file with a sharpened cutting edge put on the end and 1 side filed down to a safe edge with no teeth. Then when I got the 2 pieces fitting together properly I just made it into the shape of a book using knives, chisels and gouges. I was disappointed with the lettering I put on it, it turned out kind of crude. It was so small I could not carve it accurately. I tried to do it with a skew chisel. I haven't carved the recess inside the book yet as I wanted the wood to acclimate before I attempted that. Ultimately it will be hollowed so that something can be stashed in there.

I just noticed there where some posts here that I had not answered. Wrangler 55, I make my own stain for the curly maple and it is an 18th century recipe called "aqua fortis". It consists of nitric acid, water and iron filings dissolved in it. By varying the amount of nitric and iron filings you can end up with a variety of colors ranging from the a light blonde to a deep red. The wood must first be prepared well by whiskering it with water and removing anything that raises up. Then the nitric mixture is applied and that in and of itself will not make the wood look much different. Then the wood has to be heated and for that I use and iron bar that I have heated up in my forge to a red heat. When this is passed over the wood it causes a chemical reaction to occur and the wood will then as if by magic change to a brilliant reddish orange. Because of the varying degrees that the aqua fortis mixture can penetrate into a piece of curly wood because of the varying hardness, a remarkable variation in the striping of the wood will be brought out. A lot of care has to be taken when heating the wood because if it is heated just ever so slightly to much it will burn and turn black

and there is no way to repair that! A lot of guys doing this use a heat gun it is much simpler and easier to control. For finish I make my own traditional varnish which consist basically of linseed oil, pure gum turpentine and some sort of hardener such as copal , dammar, sandarac or a variety of other things. With those ingredients a person can make a wide variety of finishes that vary in hardness. A lot of times if I do not want a real hard finish I will mix up a "long oil" varnish that just simply has more oil on it. For a firearm stock a lot of times this can be beneficial as it can be easily repaired and maintained by the gun owner. But it does take time to prepare the ingredients like for instance the linseed oil I use is prepared from raw linseed oil which I buy and then "wash" in water to further remove impurities and then boil it to make true boiled linseed oil. The boiled linseed oil you buy nowadays is not boiled at all it has chemical driers put into it. Then I let this oil sit in an open container in the sun and it begins to slowly polymerize over a long period of time. Like months and years. It turns in to a thick substance like a jelly. Same thing goes for the turpentine, it is allowed to polymerize into a thick jelly. The reason for this is it would take forever to dry if it was put on wood in its fully liquid form. Finishes are fun to experiment with and it takes a lot of trial and error to come up with recipes that will fit the intended purpose.

clww, I do sell these guns and if more folks would want one I could lock myself in my shop like Jim was saying! That would not be a problem for me

SwampDonkey · March 09, 2011, 12:49:47 PM

Hey, that's pretty clever. You could also hollow it out for a match box or to hide a key or some such idea.

Lud · March 09, 2011, 07:34:00 PM

Looks good. Think of it as a prototype and see what others you can come up with. Good stuff!

Dodgy Loner · March 09, 2011, 09:06:03 PM

Quote from: northwoods1 on March 09, 2011, 12:11:07 PM
I make my own stain for the curly maple and it is an 18th century recipe called "aqua fortis". It consists of nitric acid, water and iron filings dissolved in it.

Northwoods, I have always wanted to give that a try. The sticking point has always been finding nitric acid. Where do you get it?

northwoods1 · March 11, 2011, 12:19:09 AM

Quote from: Dodgy Loner on March 09, 2011, 09:06:03 PM
Quote from: northwoods1 on March 09, 2011, 12:11:07 PM
I make my own stain for the curly maple and it is an 18th century recipe called "aqua fortis". It consists of nitric acid, water and iron filings dissolved in it.

Northwoods, I have always wanted to give that a try. The sticking point has always been finding nitric acid. Where do you get it?

I think your best bet would be to look for a local supplier of chemicals. It seems the shipping of this stuff is prohibitive and it can get pretty costly.
Another place you can get a similar substitute is here:
http://www.trackofthewolf.com/Categories/partDetail.aspx?catId=5&subId=66&styleId=225&partNum=AQUAFORT-2&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1&as=1
but this stuff is not actually nitric acid w/iron dissolved in it. It is a chemical substitute I believe it is called ferric nitrate. I have tried it before but did not get as good a result as from the mixture I made up using actual nitric acid and real iron. Another thing I noticed is that the bottle had to be fresh, with age it seemed to loose its potency.
I got my nitric acid from one of my friends that also taught me how to forge gun mounts, here he is in a youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGpa_SkxmvI