Looking for trigger guard pictures, re-post

[flashpanner]

I am looking for pictures of a Lancaster style trigger guard. I am building a TOTW Isaac Haines style (Tracks's part number TG-BIVINS-L-B). I am scratch building this part.
I need top view shots showing the two areas that inlet into the stock. Rough dimentions also would be helpful. Trigger need not be finished, in the rough is fine.
Guess I don't ask for much, by the way can I get it biggie sized with fries?

 

[Vaino]

Buy one from TOW and you'll have a full scale model to make one from and then the purchased TG could be used on your next LR........Fred

 

[Roy]

Even if you just get one of Track's catalogs They have full scale pic's of buttplates and trigger gards.

 

Why would you go to all of the work involved with scratch building and then copy exactly a commercially available part?

There are about a gizillion TOTW IH copies out there, if you copy Tracks' parts how will you tell yours from any other TOTW IH copy?

You are making a copy of a copy! I saw that movie, it dosen't come out quite right.

If you have photos and measurements of the origional, work as best you can from that and give credit to the slight variations in your product to the hand of a diferent craftsman. That is what hand building is about.

No one can duplicate exactly without the gun in your hand. There are subtle blendings of lines/thickness and texture of wood that no photo can show.

 

[flashpanner]

Why make a duplicate of a commercially available part? Two reasons, first to do as much scratch building of as many parts as I possibly can. I want the practice of casting, or forging. Second, to add slight variation to be different and emulate a possible small time from 1780-95's gunsmith.

 

[paulvallandigham]

When you cast a part, there is shrinkage of the molded part as the casting cools. It happens in all casting. The companies that do this kind of work have extensive formulas to determine how much larger a part of given dimensions has to be in the molding form so that when the casting shrinks down, it will be the same size as the original. Without all those tables and formulae, you can spend a life time making molds and molding forms and not get it right. I learned this the hard way when in frustration about not being able to buy a LH Large Musket lock many years ago, I found some people here at the University who ran the foundry, and tried to work out parts to make the correct size casting mold, which would then produce the correct sized lock parts. I am still working on it, more than 30 years later. Buy an existing casting, file it down to your dimensions, bend it, cut some off, braze some more brass on, or do whatever you wish to change the shape to make a unique trigger guard, but save yourself the grief of trying to cast something new.

 

[Zonie]

As was said, there are a lot of things effecting the shrinkage of a casting. The alloy, the pouring temperature and the size are the main drivers of this.

Just as a rough ballpark guess though, if your casting brass which solidifies at about 2000 degrees F, the part will shrink about .022 per inch.
Using this, if the trigger guard was 6 inches long, the mold or pattern will have to be about 6.132 long.

Have Fun!

 

[flashpanner]

Your suggestion is worth considering :hmm: Thanks