Thanks to all for the appreciation!!
Keith
The finish on the pistol's damascus parts, is not what I had hoped to accomplish. I really wanted to have the finish come out like we are familiar with seeing on old damascus gun barrels. In the end, I wound up having to resort to techniques like we use on knife blades. The pistol's damascus is very black and white. The 1018 is bright finished, with the 1084 blackened with cold bluing solution.
I thought that there should be no reason why I couldn't finish the pistol's damascus parts by using rust bluing and etching. I was literally very short on time to complete the pistol, so I tried to use Mark Lee Express Blue. I've used the Mark Lee solution to blue entire guns, so I know how to use it. But, it didn't work at all on a test piece of the damascus. Don't know why. Could have been anything, including the water that I boiled the parts in.
Needing to quickly get some type of finish on the parts, I resorted to what I knew best; finishing as I would a knife blade. I first did a deep etch on the parts. The 1018 was white, but the 1084 was only a medium gray. So I colored the parts with Oxpho Blue, to deepen the contrast Once blued, the 1018 was cleaned to a bright finish with 2000g sandpaper.
Demonwolf
I did design and build the lock making jigs. I've made tumblers in a milling machine before. It requires an indexing head and a lot of time consuming set up of tooling. I know that the lock makers didn't use such equipment 150 years ago, but I've never been able to find information on what tools they did use. It seemed strange to me that it was not easy to find information on the tools and techniques of the old gun-lock makers. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places. But, it is easy to find the tools of watch makers and other crafts. Why not gun-lock makers tools? If anyone knows where old gun-lock maker's tools can be seen, or where one could find written information on the tools and methods of the lock makers, I would be very interested to hear it.
Making a guess as to how they would have made the parts, I figured that they would have had hardened jigs to shape the parts. The jigs make it possible to quickly turn out identical parts. Always having parts that are the same, would make the task of fitting the lock together a lot easier. I have no idea whether my jigs and methods are actually similar to what the old lock smiths did.
I use drawing software on my computer to design just about everything that I build. I used it to design this pistol, including the lock. With the tumbler and sear already designed on the computer, it was no problem to also design the jigs to make them. My jigs are made from O-1 tool steel. They are fully hardened and not drawn back by tempering. A file will not cut them.
When making a tumbler, I start by putting the lathe turned tumbler blank in the jig for filing the hammer square. If you noticed in the video, there are four.078" holes through the jig, around the hole for the tumbler axle. The first thing that I do, is run a drill bit though one of the holes and drill through the tumbler. This hole in the tumbler will be what I use to index the tumbler into position for all of the shaping operations in both jigs. Once I file the first flat of the hammer square, I index the tumbler to the next small hole in the jig and file the next flat. Eventually doing all four flats. The tumbler then moves to the five station jig.
In the first station of the five station jig, the bents are cut into the tumbler. There are two indexing holes at this station, to rotate and position the tumbler for cutting both bents. The next three stations are used to cut way portions of the tumbler. In the fourth station of the five station jig, the small indexing hole through the tumbler is split in half. In the video, I am placing the tumbler into the fourth station. The remaining half of the hole becomes the hanger for the main-spring stirrup. The last station cuts out the area below the tumbler's mainspring arm.
I can reverse the two pieces of the five station jig and make tumblers for both left and right side locks.
Gary R
I'll get to work on the longer video. Takes quite a while to make a movie from short clips. Especially when I am not great at video editing.
Pete
I would love to see photos of some of your knives!! I have a few diamond lapidary wheels and have wanted to try making stone handles. Just haven't had time.
I see no reason why the barrel damascus couldn't be welded to a 10 series steel core. I checked to see how far Master Bladesmith, Bruce Bump is from you. He's about five hours away, in Walla Walla, WA. I know that there is a bunch of bladesmiths out in your area. You might try checking the American Bladesmith Society web site. There is a button at the top of the main page that has contact information for bladesmiths. Or maybe, I can show you how to build a propane forge and you can get an anvil and weld your own blades. You could get hooked on pounding steel!
