My first attempt at Rococo

Been completing a 20-year-old Track of the Wolf Isaac Haines kit a friend sold to me last month. Got it mostly together and worked down to carving time.

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Nice!

I wish i had that talent. That look good

Hi Ian,
That looks great! The Kentucky Rifle Foundation sells CDs with fantastic quality photos of original guns. They have a couple of Isaac Haines rifles and the photos clearly show many of the carving details used by Haines. They are really useful for projects like this. Here are 2 examples.



dave

Nice work!

I'm no authority, but I'd be thrilled with that kind of work.

Ian! Your First go at it? You are a natural, my friend.

PathfinderNC said:

Ian! Your First go at it? You are a natural, my friend.

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I was going to practice first but I figured this IS practice.

The carving isn't what I find difficult, creating good designs is, at least is is for me. I didn't know about the KRF files @dave_person mentioned above, the grainy photos in books and good photos of modern-made Haines interpretations is pretty much all I had to go on so to supplement the detail I ripped a bunch of photos of baroque scrolls done in a similar style to Haines' carving. Some of it I'm having to make up or improvise anyway due to limitations of the kit I'm using, for example the rammer channel and hole are off-center considerably and the left side by the inlet pipe is very sparse on wood, the inlet pipe was pre-inlet poorly and is far too wide (Bivens castings), and the person I bought the kit from inlet the long, flared, square tang just as it was rather than shortening, straightening, and contouring it in the Haines style. This all affects the carving design, so mine will be an "interpretation" just like everyone else's. I believe this will be the last gun I ever build that didn't start from a board unless Jim Kibler produces something I don't already have in a lefty kit.

Very nicely done.

Well, if I carved a dozen rifles I might get the last one looking as good as your first!

The only hard part about carving is not being too afraid to do it the first time. Carving really is a lot easier than everyone seems to think it is.

Next section done enough to move on. I'll keep coming back to previous areas with fresh eyes and make small adjustments as necessary.

Sweet. Are you copying from anything or are these original designs?

Dang! It all looks great!

PathfinderNC said:

Sweet. Are you copying from anything or are these original designs?

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Mostly copying from images of Haines original works, but I'm altering the style slightly (fewer sharp points to the leaves, for one thing) and making some of it up where I can't seem to find any detailed photos, such as the transition from the forestock mouldings to the entry thimble carving. I'll also have to make up the tang carving so some degree as I explained earlier the person who started the kit and inlet the barrel and tang didn't modify the tang so I have this big flared, squared-off thing to deal with.

Something that's more difficult than I anticipated was drawing some the designs backwards by eye....my rifle is left handed.

That is going to be one sweet rifle when finished.

The talent on this forum never disappoints!

That looks great! I would not attempt

Wow, just wow. Wish I could do that.