Grand Opus? Maybe not. But I hope to make a CNC gun into a one off. Rich, you asked about experience, fair question. All my working life I was a working artist. Ad agency Art Director, owned and ran my own design studio. Not the ideal resume for this work, but maybe. I have built (read clean up, sand, stain, seal, blue and bolt together 3 kits.) A Kentucky pistol from Traditions, a Kentucky rifle from Pedersoli and Bounty Hunter from Pedersoli. I did not apply any great artistic efforts on them other than working to get a clean smooth even runout where wood meets brass.
But, I have done wood sculpture for clients in the past, admittedly more modest than what I see in my minds eye for this Colonial, but that’s more a matter of scale than ability. I have a set of wood carving chisels, and mallet used lately mostly in pumpkin carving. Brass work will be new to me if you don’t count polishing, and I don’t.
I hope to work in the Recoco school of design. It seems well suited to the late 17th century. Think “C” scrolls and botanicals. I don’t have anything like a layout yet, still collecting research. This whole line of art is new to me, but art itself is not. I see “Bella” that will be her name, as something less than a French lady of the evening, but more than the girl next door. Time will tell if I can pull this off or not, but I’ve never shied away from a challenge. I hope to post a step by step from opening the box to first group on a target. No matter how she turns out, I plan to have fun
