I built this .45 caliber percussion muzzle-loading pistol, to be auctioned at the 2015 NRA-ILA Dinner and Auction. The organization "Knife Rights" asked me to make the pistol as part of their "Freedom's Steel™" fundraising efforts to support the NRA's Institute of Legislative Action. All funds raised from the pistol's sale, go to the ILA.

The .45 caliber barrel used on this pistol, is of Bernard pattern damascus steel. A hooked, patent breech-plug was used with the barrel. I did some engraving on the tang of the standing breech. The breech-plug, standing breech, trigger, trigger plate and hammer are in French gray.

There were 81 steel rods, stacked into the billet used to make all of the damascus used on this pistol. There were 41 rods of 1084 steel and 40 rods of 1018 steel. The rods were stacked in a 9 x 9 checkerboard arrangement in the billet. All of the steel rods were ¼ inch square and 6 inches long.
This stack of steel rods was forge welded into a solid block. The block was drawn out by forging and then cut into two pieces. These two pieces were additionally drawn out into rods that were 1/2" square. These two rods were then twisted along their entire length, at a rate of 3 1/2 revolutions per inch. The two rods were then forge welded to each other and used to make all of the damascus steel for the pistol.

I designed and built the lock used on this pistol. I made hardened steel jigs, to shape the tumbler and sear. By using these jigs, I can shape the tumbler and sear to fit with perfectly each other. The parts are placed in the jigs, and then cut down to the jig with saws and files. The jigs make it possible to build more of these precisely and identically shaped parts. This pistol's lock-plate, is made from the same damascus steel as was used to make the gun barrel.

The trigger guard also incorporates the same damascus used elsewhere on the gun. The guard was forged to shape and then hand finished.

The sterling silver front sight blade, is soldered into a windage adjustable steel base.

The wood used to make the pistol stock, is cherry wood that came from the site of George Washington's childhood home. I shaped the pistol stock from a block of wood obtained from "Historical Woods of America Inc.", located in Woodford, VA.






Below is a link to a short video, that covers a small portion of the work that was done on the main parts of the pistol. This short video was assembled for advertising purposes of the pistol. I have a bunch of video clips that were shot during the pistol build. I will later make a much longer video, with more thorough coverage of the work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3VLJCW65rM&list=PLlKXU98jzgYMIgQEgYUxKEsaO2oi6tJu9&index=2

wow!

Steve, that is spectacular!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Beautiful work Steve. Is the contrast between the 1018 steel and the 1084 steel layers the natural color of the materials, or did you do some sort of blue and etch as is done with the iron and steel Damascus we are all familiar with?

Many thanks to you and the organization "Knife Rights" for the efforts you're making to support the NRA-ILA.

Steve,
Good on you.
Mike

Fantastic job!!

gun porn!
Very nice

Awesome!

Awesome. Are those lock making jigs one's you have devised yourself?

Really nice work.

Your work is amazing, I hope to see your longer video soon!


.

wonderful!

Steve, that is beautiful work. I make custom knives but buy the Damascus blades. I have the most outlandish pieces of wood, but also do lapidary and use jade, MOP, Ty Rex dino bone, tigereye and other wild materials.

I have been collecting segments of Damascus and twist shotgun barrels a friend gives me after cutting them off to make Cowboy Action doubles. They like 22" barrels. I have been wondering if these when flattened could be forge welded onto a center piece of knife steel so the beauty of the Damascus and Twist could be added to the cutting quality of fine knife steel. Any thoughts on who might be able to do this?

Pete

Nice Steve, thanks for showing it. I'd also like to mention the contouring you did on the breech, hammer and trigger looks very nicely done. Hope the bids go through the ceiling.

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!

Beautiful work Steve!! That should be some auction!!! Hope all goes well and they bring a double premium price! Please feel free to continue to share photos of your work. This is fabulous! I have a couple of Damascus knives by the late Jim Wurtz that I treasure so it is always nice to see quality work in that arena. Thanks again for sharing.

Now, I feel like the cave man making a sharpened stick

Very nice work, Steve.

Reckon it was the same cherry tree George cut down as a boy when, "he could not tell a lie" about it?

SRH

There is a gun shop near me that parts out a lot of junk or broken guns. He disassembles these guns down to the molecular level and does not mark anything as far as make or model. He goes to gun shows with bins and boxes of assorted springs, hammers, firing pins, stocks, etc. and you have to know exactly what you are looking for. The guy has a lot of rifle and shotgun barrels he sells very inexpensively. I bought several junk sets of double barrels to practice rib soldering and relaying. I also found a few sets of good barrels from better quality guns like Ithaca and Baker which I snatched up for $5.00 apiece. Since most makers don't stamp their barrels with the company name, you have to be able to recognize a barrel by the underlugs, etc., and I wondered how many desirable ones I left behind.

The guy told me he had a knifemaker in recently who bought a bunch of Damascus barrels to forge weld over a central core of tool steel which could be tempered and hold an edge. Interesting, but I wondered how many nice Damascus barrels that could be used to resurrect a vintage double will end up being cut up and made into knife blades.

My damascus knives were hand forged from billets. I watched one being made. 320 layers in them. You will have a much greater appreciation for the makers and the blades after watching the process. It is a slow, hot, tedious job. "No barrels were harmed during the making of these blades".

All of mine made by Habersham Forge (Ivan Boggs).

SRH

Stan,
The cherry wood that I used for the pistol stock, was from a tree that was too young to be directly associated with George's lifetime. It was growing over the foundation of the home where Washington lived. The tree was removed for archeological excavations of the site. But you have to wonder if this tree was a descendant of a tree that was alive during Washington's time.

I don't recall having met Jim Wurtz. I know of Ivan Boggs, but don't recall having met him either.

I would hate to see someone butchering perfectly good damascus barrels to make knife blades, or anything else from them.

In thinking about welding barrel damascus on a steel core, I think one would have to be pretty dang good at forging the blade and also grinding it. Forging and/or grinding the blade unevenly, would cause the damascus overlay to not match on both sides of the knife. I also wonder about finishing out the damascus overlay. The old damascus gun barrel material, is not like the modern steels that we use today for damascus knife blades. Finishing the barrel metal overlays, could be more troublesome than finishing modern steels. Don't mean to dissuade you from trying it. Just saying you may want to make sure it is worth the effort, before investing too much time in the work.

Stallones,
My first knives were pretty ugly. Like any craft, it takes a while to gain skills. I've been making knives for nearly 30 years. Don't hesitate to email me with any questions you have about knifemaking.

If any of you really want to learn how to make forged knife blades, you should consider taking one of the "Introduction to Bladesmithing" classes that the American Bladesmith Society puts on. I'll be teaching one of these classes in June, at the New England School of Metalwork, in Auburn Maine. I think my class is full. But these classes are taught at three different locations in the US, as well as in Belgium and South Africa.

Incredible! Just incredible!