Yes, the blacking is excellent and the engraving work is also and how clean his workshop is. Only a very very few people (like Churchill trained Kirk Merrington) know how to invisibly sleeve a shotgun barrel by soft soldering and hence the TiG process is a great aid and joint hidder. I have had my hand at soft soldering sleeving and know how difficult it is, and know that I am not an expert at it and will not be, and as a result know how to see and where to look for the sleeving lines faint or not.
If you want to see the sleeving lines across the barrels stop the video at 13:06 and look at the line that crosses through the letter "N" of the engraved word "LONDON"---(13 minutes and 6 seconds) and you can also see it by stopping the video a 12:55 and looking at the letter "N". It is faint but outside in the sunlight it will glow.
The worse of all visible sleeving line work that I have ever seen was the done by Westley Richards when they were learning how to do sleeve barrels, or whoever was doing it for them.
In his day Malcolm Cruxton of Price St. Birmingham did excellent invisible soft soldered sleeving and I remember Malcolm telling me how other gunsmiths would visit his shop to watch him and learn the technique. Now in his 80's he continues gunsmithing at his home shop after the Price St. premises were demolished by the city of Birmingham.
Kind Regards
Stephen Howell
Steve,
Even the best can’t hide the line all the time. There is a guy who’s local to me that has a Smythe BLE that Kirk sleeved at the height of his USA work, undoubtedly when he was doing his best work….and the sleeve line is clearly visible, the work is of course excellent (barrel striking , profiling, etc), another friend had a Blanch SLNE that Kirk sleeved a decade or so ago, the line was clearly visible on it too, in fact, it took copious amount of blacking cycles to try to blend and hide it, I’m talking 20+ cycles.
Have you ever seen the sleeving work of Nick Mackinson? He worked for Wilds in Birmingham and his job was doing the machining on the back ends & tubes for sleeving. His sleeve work I’ve see is pretty damn good too. Unfortunately, even some of his stuff isn’t “invisible”. John Fosters work was the same. The only truly “invisible sleeving I’ve seen that is consistently invisible is the tig welded jobs coming out in the last few years. Pretty amazing stuff.
Who does that here in the states? 1 maybe 2 guys I’d guess.
Several points of yours I’m in 100% agreement, WR sleeved guns can be absolutely atrocious. Especially when marked on the outside of the barrels. Yuck.
TIG welding for sleeving was a huge leap forward.
I think what also gets left out of the conversation is the striking and profiling of the finished tubes. That is by far probably the most aesthetically important part of the job. Having that correct profile is hard to do, takes talent, skill, trained hands and eyes, and takes hours to accomplish. I wish the video would’ve shown some of that work too.
I think the young fella did a pretty fine job.
