While on the subject of brass furniture I'll mention a few things about trigger guard castings I've bought.
Almost all of them are WAY too thick.
There's a couple of reasons for this.
First, metal shrinks as it cools so if the casting pattern exactly duplicates an existing part and is used to make the cavity for the casting, the casting will be undersize and too thin.
The surfaces of a sand casting all need to be cleaned up to remove all traces of the rough sand that formed the cavity. To make allowances for this, the casting is made a lot thicker than the original.
The areas of the casting that form the bow are very thin on the original trigger guards.
If the new castings were made that thin, the molten metal would solidify so rapidly that it would block off the molten metal that should be filling the area downstream.
The moral of this is, the bow areas of as cast trigger guards is much thicker than it should be.
When I first started building longrifles I was happy when I got all of the rough cast surface on the castings removed.
I then sanded and polished them and proclaimed them "done".
The problem is, for some reason, they never seemed to look like the slim, lithe trigger guards from the past. They looked rather "chunky" or fat.
I've corrected this error on my newer builds but it was not as easy as saying, "Oh, just remove exactly .046 of material from each surface."
In fact, there is no good number that can be used because different areas of the castings have different amounts of material added to the surfaces.
The best advice I can give to new builders is, try to find good photos of the old original guns.
Pay particular attention to how thin the trigger guard bows look. Use multiple views if they are available.
When thinned down to the thicknesses of the originals, you'll be amazed at how slender and lithe and beautiful a trigger guard can actually be. :thumbsup: