Gun Building DVD's ...

[pulaskius]

It's been umpteen years since I last built a TC Hawkens from a kit and I now have 3 stock blanks and 1 pre-carved stock waiting for me to do something.

Either I didn't learn too much way back when or I forgot most of it :grin:

I got 3 of the James Turpin gun building DVD's from TOTW and what a delight these are !!

Building Muzzle-Loaders 1 is about Flintlocks and BML's 2 is about Percussions and the third one I bought was on Pistols. There's a wealth of info on these DVD's and you'll need to get # 1 even if you don't plan to build a flintlock as the percussion DVD refers back to the first one for some basic instructions.

There's about 6 hours of detailed instructions total for the 3 DVD's and for me they were money WELL spent

 

[J.D.]

I have Turpins pistol building DVD, and they are good, however, allot of information is left out of the DVDs, due to editing constraints.

Books fill in the details.

Personally, I like "Recreating the American Longrifle", but "Gunsmith of Grenville County is good too."

A good DVD for building kit guns is "Building the Chambers Kit rifle".

God bless

 

[jdixon]

Mark Silver just did a video this year with Pioneer on stocking long rifles all with traditional hand tools. A lot of work with spoke shaves and draw knives. He spends a good portion of the video explaining the various tools, how to use and what to look for in one when buying. It if probably one of the better videos I have seen in a while, worth the purchase, especially if you are into the traditional methods.

 

[pulaskius]

I have Turpins pistol building DVD, and they are good, however, allot of information is left out of the DVDs, due to editing constraints.

Books fill in the details.

Personally, I like "Recreating the American Longrifle", but "Gunsmith of Grenville County is good too."

A good DVD for building kit guns is "Building the Chambers Kit rifle".

God bless

I have watched about half of the pistol DVD so far and some of the missing info might be on the rifle DVD's 1 and 2 as he refers back to them vs repetitive instruction.

For instance if he shows you how to give the stock a hand rubbed finish and what products to use in DVD # 1 he doesn't repeat the stock finishing process in # 2 and I'll guess it's not on the pistol DVD either.

Instead of hearing the same detailed info over and over each DVD covers different material in depth ... of course that means having to buy more than 1 DVD to get the whole story.

Being able to watch blind rivets installed and explained and things like the butt plate and ramrod installed with simple and easy to follow techniques is a great help to me

 

[pulaskius]

Mark Silver just did a video this year with Pioneer on stocking long rifles all with traditional hand tools. A lot of work with spoke shaves and draw knives. He spends a good portion of the video explaining the various tools, how to use and what to look for in one when buying. It if probably one of the better videos I have seen in a while, worth the purchase, especially if you are into the traditional methods.

That sounds like one I would be interested in owning ... I like having a solid background in the basics ... that kind of information builds confidence ... at least for me it does

Thanks !!

 

[Rolfkt]

I have Mark Silver's dvd and found it a bit disapointing. It's mostly about different handtools and very little about stock design and arcitecure.

The best building dvd I've seen is Mike Miller's building a kentucky pistol. It's the one with most detail I've seen so far.

Best regards

Rolf

 

I have ones by Hershel House, Turpin, Homer Dangler and Ehlert. I plan on picking up Silver's next week at Friendship. There is something to be learned from each of them, but if I was going to list them in order I would say

1. Ehlert - My fav of the ones I own, but don't watch late at night. Ron's voice will put you to sleep.
2. House / Dangler (these two are two close to call)
3. Turpin - Several things mentioned in this video that are not covered in the others such as making some of your tools, but the video is dark and sometimes hard to see what he is doing.