doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DIY Gunsmithing @ doublegunshop.com Making a pair of Victorian gun case Turnscrews

After waiting more years than I can remember and unable to purchase a genuine pair of Victorian gun case Ebony pear handled Turnscrews for my 1860s Purdey case, the only thing left for me now is to make a pair close to their original design.
Today on this side of the pond true �Black African Ebony� sales are restricted to almost impossible, with the majority going into fine musical instrument manufacture. That now only leaves me to upcycle (a very new in buzz word here) what Ebony we can find. Now due to the untimely death of Queen Victoria�s husband Albert, then dark woods became very popular with Black Ebony being at the top of the list so much so the demand for this black wood Victorians nearly removed every Ebony tree in Africa.
In the photograph is what I intend to make the Turnscrews from one of six inch files a favourite item used to make workshop screw drivers from if the Acid re sharpening process did not work so rendering the file useless, though for my purpose it will be a new file. Plus, one of the ebony Elephants these where very popular here up to the 1950s. These two elephants had been abused and left in damp conditions and not now items of artistic beauty, the one on the left is made of African black Ebony the other is Madagascan ebony an even more rare wood here so gets the reprieve. After sawing the largest two pieces of Ebony I could it became obvious that I would not be able to mount them up directly in the Lathe, I glued a couple of sacrificial ends to each of the blocks to take the Lathe drive and tailstock centre then squared them up. I do have a dedicated wood lathe and though I do not like turning wood on my meatal lathe I decided it was too much trouble to use the larger wood lathe to turn a couple of small handles, you will see my 920 is covered with polythene sheeting to keep the dust and turnings out of things. I just clamped a piece of round bar stock in the tool post to use as a tool rest then using a small gouge and skew chisel to shape each handle.











Finished handle.




Drilling for the blade tang.



Will make the Turnscrew blades ferrules and fit them to the handles. Then age them in the next posting.

Thanks for sharing!

The magic relationship between carbon steel and fire even after a lifetime in engineering it is still fascinating.




Heating the file to red heat and letting it cool slowly, we call this process "breaking the temper" on this side of the pond in other words returning the steel to a workable condition.



The steel is now soft enough to be worked on and cut with hand tools.




The final rough shaping before initial surface finishing




Back to the fire magic again this time we heat and rapid cool in water or oil this will make the steel glass hard. Steel in this condition is rather impractical for most purposes so tempering the steel next will give it a hardness for what we want to use it for, in this case a screwdriver blade.




Tempering small steel objects using an open flame rather than some form of constant temperature method can turn things into a form of lottery. So I will use the tried an tested method used by clockmakers for hardening small objects to a very specific hardness. Sand in a metal container and applying heat to the sand and not directly to the metal. Because sand is such a poor conductor of heat the tempering colours move over the steel surface extremely slowly enabling you to choose your required temperature and in consequence the steels hardness before you rapidly stop the process with water or oil. The sharp eyed of you will notice I used a domestic gas hob for this, because it is easy to balance the cut off bottom of a small tin filled with sand also she who must be obeyed who would put a stop to that sort of thing in her kitchen was visiting friends.



Next post the Brass parts aging and putting things together.

This ranks at the top of DIY posting. Great pictures and simple, straightforward narrative.

Thanks, damascus.

OBTW, nice to see at least one of you Limeys are beginning to come over to the use of the term "screwdriver". Probably a slip of the old tongue.




SRH

I'm enjoying the tutorial damascus. Thanks for the great pictures and taking the time.

Stan it was indeed a slip of the tongue because all my working life those things that turn screws I have always known and called them screwdrivers. And not earning my living Engineering in the gun trade the name Turnscrew is rather an alien term to me, so I thought I would use the correct Victorian name for the things. It just goes to show that you cant teach an old dog new tricks or more down to earth I should not try to be a smart ass.

Nice work Damascus, thanks for posting.

I admire the sand bath method of tempering Damascus. What i used to do was heat a piece of mild steel red hot , and put whatever i was tempering on top and watch for the colour i wanted. But i will have to try this.

Because of the limitations set by the size of the Ebony blanks, I could not use standard size Brass tubing for the ferules, plus the ferules had a curved chamfer at the blade end so each was made from Brass bar stock.




The ferules where the last Items to be made, from this photograph you can see that all the parts look rather too new to pass off as a hundred plus years old.




Now I have no intention of passing these Turnscrews off as genuine antiques, I just made them with a lifetime of gathered knowledge and the best of my ability. Though when I have shuffled off my mortal coil and they are removed from the gun case and handled, it would need to be a clever person to detect that they are not what they propose to be.

All that said I decided to age the metals with a do it all mixture who's formula was given to me many years in the past, it really is a do it all mixture. It will age rust steel also impart that black look of age in a couple of hours also it will age tarnish Brass. For the Ebony it will be white/clear wax mixed with Cigarette Ash from my local Village Pub well I am a non smoker. What do you think so far?




Put the Turnscrews together time and I do like to use the Victorian method of heating the blade tang to burn its way in to the handle, and held there by rust, doing it this way does not put any stress on the wood and causing a split. Now because the blades are so short heating the tangs to red heat could change the blades temper that we went to so much trouble to get right. so if you look at the vice the jaws have two Aluminium heat sinks to prevent the heat passing to the working end of the blade.





Now the permanent rust fixing though this will take some time to make the unmovable bond to the steel. When you have managed to get the tang into the handle with about an eighth of an inch to go pour some water in to the handle hole you have just made and then fit the handle to the tangs full extent. You can see that I use a well used rubber mallet for this part, the water you have placed in the handle tang hole will slowly cause the tang to rust slightly and grip the wood.






I hope that this may inspire one or two of you folks to make things, you dont need a fancy lathe to turn wooden handles a DIY drill can be adapted. I have one more project to undertake next, this will be adapting a 1970s Pig skin and wood guncase to a toe under to hopefully squeeze in my Webley 700 one and a half. This project will be my last and final effort, not to exaggerate things I suffer from Macular Degeneration and in consequence my eyesight is failing for fine detail.


Ernie aka damascus

Excellent work! I appreciate all the little tips and tricks too. Thank you for posting.