Silver Mounted Naval Academy Pistols – Finished !!! After 54 years !!! by David Crisalli: Part 7

Glad the pictures help.  I am fairly well known as a Ludite but I have to admit that having a cell phone with a camera in my pocket has been a big help.  I had to disassemble some test equipment out at my desert test site and taking pictures as I went so I could get it all back together again was a huge help.  And yes, shaping the portion of the fore stock where the rear pipe goes is a huge help….as long as you don’t cut away too much wood.  However, trying to "dig through" a lot of excess wood to get the pipe installed never makes for an easy or well done inlet.

Daryl….Taylor is correct.  This rosewood and ebony are about equal in working difficulty.  I have seen pictures of Taylor’s wheel lock…..magnificent !!

I’ve built several pistols now with these spurred butt caps and there must be some sort of trick that I have missed completely on how to do these.  Without a doubt, trying to get these butt caps installed without looking like I did all the work with my left foot and a hatchet has been a real pain in the ….well….neck !!!  After several hours of work, I have one done.  And to explain a bit, I needed to cut the long spurs off my original wax patterns before I cast the butt caps because the curve was incorrect.  The intention is to cast longer, less curved spurs and solder them in place on the butt caps.  But as long as the cap spurs were short, I thought I would inlet the caps as they are, and do most of the hard part, and then add the longer spurs later.  So here we go….. here is where I started….

This was just trying to figure out where the bulk of the wood had to be removed…..

These next two show the work in progress….and again, this rosewood is like cutting iron…..

Here is what it looks like after several long hours of removing wood one molecule at a time…..

And here is the spur pattern laid in place.  I will cast four of these in sterling silver, silver braze them to the butt caps, and then finish inlaying the long spurs.

Here is the current status of both pistols…..coming along….slowly….

Had to stop for a bit to dodge the most recent California fire storm…..It often looks like Mordor around here….. 

Back to work. Next items on the list are the butt cap spurs and the trigger guard. I made a mold for the spurs and pumped the waxes.  They will get cast in silver in the next batch of castings.  Meanwhile I started in on making a pattern and first mold for the trigger guard finial.  As noted earlier, I will make the trigger guards in three pieces…the finial, the bow, and the tail and then silver braze them all together.  This first picture is a pattern made up of other items I have carved and cast for other projects and some pink dental plastic….

This next photo is the pattern with a silicone rubber preliminary mold…...

And here is the mold with the first poured wax pattern.  This pattern will be refined slightly in the wax, then cast in sterling for final refinements.  The final pattern will then be used to make a vulcanized rubber mold from which the patterns for the final trigger guard parts will be made.

I had a plank of very black, half inch thick Gaboon ebony so I decided to make the ramrods for these pistols out of that instead of “ebonizing” a hickory rod.  I cut two square pieces, rounded the ends in a metal lathe and then transferred the blanks to a wood lathe to get them down to about 3/8 inch in diameter.  From there I used a Tom Curan scraper to get the rods down to the correct size and tapered.  (God bless Tom for this great tool…I always think of him when I use it…..  )

Started in on some of the stock carving on these pistols.  I don’t want to go overboard but did want some embellishment around the lock panels and at the barrel breach tang.  This rosewood is both a delight and a nightmare to carve.  It is an exceptionally hard wood but it is also very particular as to grain orientation with respect to the direction of the cut.  As a consequence, even to do this minimal amount of carving, I have had to keep the tools as sharp as possible and cut in various directions even within a short linear distance.  A cut direction that works for a half inch or so often must be completely changed for the next half inch.  All this makes for a very slow carving process.  Not done but here is the progress thus far……

Copy and photography by David Crisalli.

Ax by Rich McDonald

 

Photography by Jan Riser.

Silver Mounted Naval Academy Pistols – Finished !!! After 54 years !!! by David Crisalli: Part 6

 Getting ready to cast the ram rod pipes in sterling silver…..This shows the wax patterns attached to a sprue former

Then a ring (piece of steel pipe) is placed around the wax patterns and the investment (sort of a high temperature plaster) is vacuum mixed and poured around the patterns…..

Here is the wax pattern (attached to the sprue former) for one of the butt caps ready to invest.  I cut the spurs off because the spurs on the original that I made a mold of were too short and the wrong curvature for these pistols.  I will need to cast longer spurs and then assemble them to the butt caps before inletting onto the pistol stocks…..

Here is the pattern in the ring prior to the investment pour…..

I had time to make the first butt casting in silver.  Here it is as cast and in my gravers block to start some clean up of details…..takes more than two ounces of silver to make each butt cap.

Had a chance to cast the ram rod pipes.  When I made the brass pattern, I made it with a short cylindrical section on one end.  The intent here was to make the pipe mold so that the resulting pattern, when cast, could either have the cylindrical section cut off to be used as a forward or middle pipe, or have the cylindrical section left on so that a rear ram rod pipe tail could be attached by soldering.  I then made up a wax pattern for the rear pipe tail and cast that.  It will be dressed down somewhat and then a mold made for the tail piece so that I can pump wax patterns for both the pipes and the tail piece.

Polished the pipes some….and here is how the tail piece works on the rear pipe……Need to make a mold now for the tail piece.  Also, I may need to make two more pipes as I may use three on these pistols….

One thing I didn’t anticipate when I came up with the inserted plastic straw to form the ID of the pipes was that the heat of the melted wax and the pressure of the injector (only about 8 psig) would cause a deformation of the inside of the pipe.  I saw it before I made the casting but thought it would be easy to correct in the metal.  It was not as easy as I had thought it would be and took me quite some bench time.  In thinking about it, and deciding to add another pipe to each pistol, I came up with a modification to the procedure to keep the ID consistent and round.  I made a brass mandrel that was a slip fit inside the straw.  Now to pump the wax, I cut the required length of plastic straw, slipped the brass mandrel inside the straw piece and placed both inside the rubber mold. I jacked the injection pressure up to 15 psig and got nice, clean, wax patterns with a round, consistent ID.  I will probably recast all six pipes now with the new wax patterns.

Here is a new wax pipe with the straw and, just visible at the ends, the brass mandrel installed…...

While I was at it, I made the rubber mold of the rear pipe tail piece so that I can make two identical copies for the final pipes…... 

I have been making these types of castings in silver, gold, brass, copper, etc., for more than 65 years.  The amount of shrinkage, as is true with all castings large or small, varies with overall mold dimensions, thickness in the various cross sections of the cast part, how the mold is gated and vented, whether or not “chills” are used, and the material being cast.  In many cases with decorative items, like jewelry and the gun parts for these flintlock pistols, the final dimensions are not that critical as all the mating surfaces will be made to match the casting.  However, like making a dental crown to fit a prepared tooth, the final dimensions of the casting must be very precise and the appropriate steps must be taken to make that happen.  For parts like the silver work for these pistols, and after the noted 65 years of doing this, I can just rely on my “feel” for how things will come out.  And if I guess wrong, I just do it all over again….

Casting a few more ram rod pipes…..I may like this second set better than the first ones.

Made the casting for the second butt cap……..

Pumped waxes for the rear ram rod pipe tail pieces…..

Will get these castings done in the next few days and then install the ram rod pipes.  With those installed I will be able to finish shaping the fore stocks.  After that I’ll make the long ears for the butt caps and take on the very tedious task of installing the butt caps. 

Busy with work again…..but had a chance to cast the updated version of the ram rod pipes and to invest the waxes for the actual pipe tail pieces that I will use on the pistols…..

Six new versions of the ram rod pipes….

Using the brass insert was my initial try but I couldn’t get the brass back out of the thin wax pattern without deforming the wax.  I then cut about a 2 degree draft on a second brass insert and tried again….without any luck.  In my frustration I went to lunch at Jack-in-the-Box and came back to the shop with the straw idea.  If I were going to make a few hundred of these I would take the time to solve the problem, but this got me through making the few ram rod pipes I needed for this project.

Tail piece waxes (2 and a spare) being invested for casting in sterling…...

Not making a lot of progress these days, but if I can get the silver ram rod pipes finished, I can inlet them and finish shaping the forearm.  Here are the cast rear pipe tail pieces…..

While I was at it, I had an order for 14 karat gold submarine officer warfare specialty insignia…..here are the wax patterns…..

This is the rough casting on the full size and miniature insignia….

Had a break in the aerospace work and had a chance to finish the assembly of the rear ram rod pipes.  The tails were silver soldered in place and a rough finish completed on the pipes.

The next step is to install all the pipes and then finish shaping the fore end of both pistol stocks.  The trigger guards will be the next effort in the silver work area.

Well, the silver pipes are all finished and I got them inlet into the stock today.  One of my least favorite tasks is inletting rear pipes and it was especially difficult in this rosewood.  I think it would have been easier to inlet them into a stock made of granite !!!

Drilling for the retention pins will need to be very exacting.  The web between the bottom of the ram rod groove and the barrel channel is only about 0.080”so that is how tall the tabs are on the pipes.  Not much room to miss with an 0.062 pin…. 

Copy and photography by David Crisalli. The italic copy is David's response to a question asked on the ALR site.