Well, as many of you know I do alot of volunteer work at museums within an hour of my house. Recently two have contacted me about doing some building demos at their events. I agreed, being that I am in the middle of building a couple of guns at the moment. After giving it some thought though, I wondered... have I gotten myself into something too deep?? I have PC chisels and mallots and plan to place a cloth over my vise so it appears to be a period piece. Does anyone have some advice on a good way to effectively do a gunsmithing demo for a crowd of say 10-30 people? Thanks!
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Building demos...
- Thread starter dkloos
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:hmm: How hung up on PC are the museums? It only means a lot to a cohsen few.to the rest of us ,oh well.
I don't think these museums will be too touchy about it. I am focused on it for my own satisfaction though, because the other tradepeople there are usually fully loaded out with period equipment from doing this sort of thing quite often.
CrackStock
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Ypu might look for a post vise anyway. They are not too expensive and mighty handy. From there, you look for somekind of support prop for the other side of the gun.
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Doc Arroyo
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I volunteer at a state park in the gunsmith shop. I have found a few things to be constants.
If you want to be actually getting any constructive work going, have a partner there that can do a 2 to 5 minute spiel on the basics. Most visitors will think that they don't know enough to ask questions, and are just impatient enough to want a "sound bite". They are shocked and amazed with lock, stock and barrel and an explaination of the flintlock mechanism.
Having a stock blank, an unfinished gun and a similar finished gun is a big plus to explain the process. Don't be surprised if they are amazed with things like draw filing, and simple carving demos. I find that consentration is tough at times, so I will prep wood for practice pieces for any days that I want to do a carving demo.
Hope that this helps! :hatsoff:
If you want to be actually getting any constructive work going, have a partner there that can do a 2 to 5 minute spiel on the basics. Most visitors will think that they don't know enough to ask questions, and are just impatient enough to want a "sound bite". They are shocked and amazed with lock, stock and barrel and an explaination of the flintlock mechanism.
Having a stock blank, an unfinished gun and a similar finished gun is a big plus to explain the process. Don't be surprised if they are amazed with things like draw filing, and simple carving demos. I find that consentration is tough at times, so I will prep wood for practice pieces for any days that I want to do a carving demo.
Hope that this helps! :hatsoff:
Thanks alot... it certainly helped. Luckily I have one Fusil in an almost finished state, and a rifle that is about 40% done. I plan to go through the lock mechanism, maybe differentiate between the smooth fusil barrel and the rifled barrel, and perhaps even do a demo during the day on carving using scrapped wood for the visitors.
