I was looking through the channels last night and found a show that was running a Colonial Williamsburg video of Wallace Gusler making a rifle. That was fascinating. Started with making the barrel out of a piece of flat stock. I never knew they made a tube and forge welded it into shape. After the barrel was made and proofed, they went on to the rest of the rife. Making everything was starting with a piece of something and hammering, cutting, filing and fitting. The amount of work that went into the stock was amazing. And it was all by hand. It showed him casting all the brass parts in a sand mold and fitting them to the stock and filing them smooth and then he engraved them. He even did some relief carved on the stock of the rifle. His finish was one I hadn't seen before. He used a solution of nitric acid with iron filings and then applied heat to the stock to turn it a deep brown. Then he topped it off with several coats of linseed oil. I was blown away when they said he spent 300 hours on that rifle. It was a work of art and it showed him firing it, making bulls-eyes every time.
Roy G
Roy G