doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Horn Trigger Guard Question

I have a Drilling which has a broken horn trigger guard which is not repairable. Yesterday, at a gun show, I found a new horn trigger guard which appears unused at a very reasonable price.

The new trigger guard is just a little wider than the grip tang inletting, so it will need to be slightly narrowed and shortened to fit, and the tang screw hole will have to be located and drilled. But the fit to the curvature of the pistol grip is slightly different, and my question is whether horn can somehow be bent a small amount. The tang section of the new grip is overly thick, so it can be dressed down as well, but being able to bend it slightly would make things easier. I could also deepen the inletting in the stock, but would prefer to leave it original.

I have heard that it can be bent with steam. jojodo on ebay, who is selling the Mike Petrov collection items, also sells horn like you need. He may know about bending.

Thanks Daryl. I had heard that thin sections of horn could be bent, such as when getting a buttplate to fit a curved end on a buttstock, but I could not recall the safe method to do that without breaking the horn.

I don't know if we're thinking the same type of horn, but I've flattened horn a couple of time by the boil method and then clamping between flat plates. I'd consider forming a clamping jig with the shape of your lower tang/pistol grip to control the bend. Careful to be ready to control thin spots in the guard as it may not bend where you want it to. The better way may end up being Daryl's suggestion, but I'd try to alter the guard not the stock. Best of luck with it.

I also seem to recall reading about shaping horn by boiling. I have seen photos of old black powder horns that were given a more flattened profile by either boiling or steaming. I'm assuming this is buffalo horn craig. On the underside where it is not finished and polished, it looks exactly like the sections of water buffalo horn that Joe Dobrzynski has had for sale here a few times. The exterior is very well shaped and highly polished, and a very uniform near black color. In fact, since I will have to dress it down somewhat to fit my existing inletting, I'm also curious about the best way to get the same high polish after shaping. Since it is a somewhat soft material, I assume that the same polishing compounds that I use to buff automotive clearcoat might also work well on a felt wheel.

Naturally, I'd like to find out the best and safest method, because lucking out and finding this semi finished trigger guard should save me a ton of work as compared to starting out with a raw block of horn.

See jojodo here

http://www.ebay.com/sch/jojodo/m.html?_ipg=50&_sop=12&_rdc=1