Spring's here... What to do with all this firewood?

[Angus]

So there's a bash of maple in the wood shed, and I am in the mood to start shooting again after the nastiest winter I've seen in a long time. What exactly does firewood have to do with shooting? My plans to make the sexiest grinner blaster in the Northeast before trapping season comes back around of course!

I got my trapping license this past fall and had a lot of fun with the little bit I got around to doing. I bought an old beater H&R 676 22lr for dispatch with the intent of treating it poorly and getting every penny out of it, costing me a whole $75 to begin with. Well, it was raining here the past two days, and a piece of curly maple was staring at me funny... so I cut it up.

http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff264/DeathPenalty23/DSC_0309.jpg

http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff264/DeathPenalty23/DSC_0308.jpg

Here's phase one of my "sexiest trapline pistol ever" project. Some work on my father's table saw, band saw, and drum sander left me with these. A coat of tung oil and a dozen or so coats of lacquer and the grain really started popping. I'm terrible with spraying so I matted it down some to knock off the orange peel.

Next up I need to have my grandfather teach me how to use his lathe so I can turn a new base pin. The stock one is sloppy as a drunken prom date. Then I'm going to polish and nitre blue the pin, ejector rod housing, loading gate, trigger, and hammer. I'll mirror polish and faux-case color the frame, and polish and reblue the barrel, trigger guard, and cylinders. The goal is to have a pistol that looks like it has no business out on the trapline, but still only cost me $75. It shoots about 1" at 25 yds to boot!

[DanWalker]

VERY nicely done!

[TCLouis]

Looks Great to me!

Now it is too nice to treat roughly!

[Bret4207]

Why not really do it up and fit a J frame adjustable sight to the top strap and a nicer front sight? I like it so far. IIRC you'll have a time getting the color case to look good on the steel they used.

[Angus]

Bret, the object of the exercise was to not spend hardly any more money on it, but have a gun hat looks like a million bucks. I did the fake-color casing last night. You just heat the gun to 200* in the over, take it out, and apply cold bluing with a q-tip. It ended up getting quite a bit of electric blue and purple. I'll get another pic up tonight.

[Swede44mag]

Where is the before picture? You need to take a pic of the origonal grips to show the difference.

Looks good to me but it's how it fits your hand that counts.

[Beagler]

sweet lookin!!

[Bret4207]

A used J frame sight isn't much bucks and you can cut the groove with a cold chisela nd file it to shape.

Be interesting to see the pics of the case colors. We worked a number of those H+R's and they used to have an odd tint to the bluing on the frame, sort of a dull yellow. If it worked for you, good enough.

[Firebricker]

Nice grips and your much more prepared than me I'm down to cutting up dead limbs for firewood nothing combustible is safe at my place LOL. FB

[firefly1957]

Nice job I found some walnut that I made grips for a OLD 32 Iver Johnson they do not look that good.

[Angus]

Here are the pics of the fakey case coloring.

http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff264/DeathPenalty23/DSC_0325.jpg
http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff264/DeathPenalty23/DSC_0319.jpg

The grips fit like an old loafer, which is to say really, really nice. They're a little bigger in the butt than the stock grips and I clipped the little plough-handle point off so it actually fits right instead of digging. Bret, I might just have to look into finding an old sight to put on. Even if I wanted it done a little cleaner I doubt a machine shop would charge much to mill it rough and I could finish it up with a file. Next up, lathe-turning a new base pin. That will be sometime in the next couple weeks, pics to follow.

[Angus]

Fun with a torch... I read up on nitre bluing and wanted to play around with getting color effects from heat alone. So I polished the ejector rod housing with a green scotch bright and torched it. The whole idea was to get a sort of spectrum effect. When I was done torching I was disappointed to say the least. The colors were washed out and dull. Once I quenched it however, the colors lit up like the Vegas strip. I oiled her up, and here it is...

http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff264/DeathPenalty23/DSC_0329-1.jpg

It's after sunset here, sorry for the flash distortion.

[Matthew 25]

Good job, I really wish I could do that. I'd make a pair for the BFR.

[Angus]

Matthew, Blackhawk grips are WAY easier than these. I'm sure a local shop class could cut the blanks to the rough shape. Then you just sand it to final dimension and shape. Blackhawks are much more forgiving since they are two piece with nothing hanging past the frame.

[Southern Son]

Not bad on the steel, but that timber is great.

[Angus]

This summer I'm going to crawl around a couple of the loggers' firewood mounds looking for crotches and twisted nasty pieces.

I cut into a piece of curly beech the other day and it looked pretty lame so I burned most of it. I kept one piece out, sanded it off to 120 and put some tung oil on it and kicked myself in the ass. It was AMAZING inside. Like holographic leopard skin on acid.

It seems like the best grip wood is the **** that gets tossed because it is in too small a section for a sawmill to even think about dicing it up. Such an untapped money tree I've stumbled on. Next up I have plans to cut up another beech crotch for my new 5" M60 in 357.

[Bret4207]

My neighbor has a band mill and he makes 6 and 8 panel doors, cabinet doors, etc. Lately he's been getting some hard (Sugar) maple. It's like Forest Gump said- you don't know what each log will hold. What I thought would be a curly log turned out to be birdseye and another one that we thought might be birdseye had the long flame type grain. Weird.

FWIW- if you can get into the root section of a Maple or Oak there's quite a lot of solid, decent sized wood in some of it and it tend to be highly figured. IME cherry has a flatter root mass, at least around here. Some Elm has decent grain but a lot of it has a greenish/purple tint.