The human condition is such that we all live with a contradiction. Consider the Classical syllogism: "All men are mortal. I am a man. Therefore, I am mortal." When pressed, we reluctantly assent to its truth for our species, but nearly all of us refuse to believe it in our heart's core. The eventuality of our own death is postponed, pushed off into the indeterminate future, far from now. And even then, we fondly hope, a medical miracle may defeat death, if not forever, at least until we're really, really old.
Atul Gawande's Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (Metropolitan Books, 2014) goes a long way to blowing this fantasy out of the water. Doctors are very skilled at performing operations to deal with specific problems. But Gawande--a surgeon himself--points out that by recommending and performing these operations, doctors are being unwittingly cruel because their patients consent to them in the hope that they can continue to live longer--much longer. The MD knows this is a stop-gap operation but doesn't want to depress the patient with that information. The patient, meanwhile, is desperate to hold on to life, to do everything possible rather than "give up," and often doesn't want to disappoint the family. Too often, this gap in communication remains unbridged. The doctor does not admit that such surgery, even if successful, will only extend the patient's life a relatively short time--a few months--and may well make the patient's quality of life even worse. The patient, on the other hand, never divulges to the doctor that the additional span of life being hoped for is on the order of twenty years.
Being Mortal casts a wide net, covering the historical reasons why hospitals became the place to die and how they have begun to be succeeded by hospices, which offer palliative care focused on a patient's quality of life. What sets Being Mortal apart, however, is less its analysis of the medical practices involving the terminally ill than its empathetic exploration of what happens when individuals approach the end. Among other things, this is a book about specific individuals, and Gawande makes every one of them memorable. Gawande is refreshingly candid about how difficult it is to engage in straightforward, honest conversations with a dying person. Although I don't believe he ever uses this term, Gawande argues for a collaborative model of care for the terminally ill. The doctor not only provides information on what can be done but also asks the patient about his or her preferences about how to live and how to die. He argues that the family needs to be brought into this collaboration as well, both to become informed about the patient's wishes and to ensure that the doctor does not make all the decisions.
The last part of Being Mortal deals with the death of Gawande's own terminally ill father, a surgeon himself (his mother is also a doctor) who eventually opts for hospice care. By writing about his own family's experiences, he illuminates a better way of dealing with the limited time left to an individual and how this process in turn can help the family cope with that death when it comes. Described this way, it may sound barren, even cold. It is not. Rather, it is a moving account that makes the reader empathize with the entire family.
.
This is a heart-warming book, humane in the best sense of the word. Atul Gawande's Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End deserves to be read by every adult in this country: it is that good and that important.
Hits and Misses
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Saturday, October 10, 2015
Vickery's Advanced Gunsmithing: a Review
W. F. Vickery's Advanced Gunsmithing, which first appeared in the Samworth series of publications in 1940, has been reprinted this year by Skyhorse Publishing. As the subtitle states, this is "A Manual of Instruction in the Manufacture, Alteration, and Repair of Firearms," and for once this is precisely what this book is about. After a preliminary survey of shop equipment, Vickery explains "Barrel Changing and Its Adjustments," proceeds to "Chambering, Boring, and Reaming Tools," and then gives a clear account of "Rifling Tools and the Rifling of Barrels." Actions and their alterations come next, then "Sights, Scopes, and Small Parts." And so Vickery proceeds: after rifles, shotguns; then rimfires; then pistols. The following chapters discuss hand tool procedures, soldering and brazing, heat treatment, and bluing. The last two chapters cover making cartridge dies and reloading tools.
I mentioned earlier that the subtitle is accurate. So, too, the title: this book covers advanced gunsmithing. The beginner like me can learn from it, but not as much, I imagine, as the more experienced gunsmith will learn. As in any craft, the more you know, the more you realize what you don't know. Advanced Gunsmithing is valuable both for Vickery's broad coverage and for the insight he provides into methods of work current seventy-five years ago. Like other Skyhorse paperback reprints, it is relatively inexpensive, so it should be a useful addition to any gunsmith's reference library.
Vickery is one of the clearest writers I have ever read, in no small part because he knows how to move from one aspect of a given task to the next. It seems a bit odd, therefore, that this carefully arranged exposition has neither a table of contents nor an index. I have never seen the original 1940 edition of Vickery's Advanced Gunsmithing or the limited edition published by Wolfe in 1988, so I don't know whether these omissions were present in the original or due to Skyhorse. In any case, be advised: it's a good idea as you read to make a running list on the end pages of the topics that interest you.
I mentioned earlier that the subtitle is accurate. So, too, the title: this book covers advanced gunsmithing. The beginner like me can learn from it, but not as much, I imagine, as the more experienced gunsmith will learn. As in any craft, the more you know, the more you realize what you don't know. Advanced Gunsmithing is valuable both for Vickery's broad coverage and for the insight he provides into methods of work current seventy-five years ago. Like other Skyhorse paperback reprints, it is relatively inexpensive, so it should be a useful addition to any gunsmith's reference library.
Vickery is one of the clearest writers I have ever read, in no small part because he knows how to move from one aspect of a given task to the next. It seems a bit odd, therefore, that this carefully arranged exposition has neither a table of contents nor an index. I have never seen the original 1940 edition of Vickery's Advanced Gunsmithing or the limited edition published by Wolfe in 1988, so I don't know whether these omissions were present in the original or due to Skyhorse. In any case, be advised: it's a good idea as you read to make a running list on the end pages of the topics that interest you.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
A Savage 99 in .250/3000
Nearly twenty years ago, I tried to bargain for a consigned Savage 99 in a gun shop. Its caliber was .250 Savage or, as it was originally named, .250/3000. I liked its tang safety, but its 20" barrel felt a bit muzzle light to me. What bothered me even more was its heavy trigger pull. John Barsness's informative articles on Savage 99's* hadn't yet appeared, so I didn't know then how easy it was to adjust the trigger pull. The price was $500, as I recall, and I didn't want to go over $450. The consigner said no deal, and because of its muzzle light balance and its heavy trigger pull I wasn't especially disappointed.
Since then, I have read the two articles by Barsness as well as the book he recommended, John Murray's The Ninety-Nine, 3rd ed. (Westbury, NY, 1985). As so often happens with firearms enthusiasts, the acquisition of a little learning soon leads to the acquisition of another gun. Recently, when I came across another tang safety 99 in .250 Savage being auctioned on GunBroker, I decided the time had come to try this legendary rifle and caliber. Its barrel was 22" long, and I hoped that additional length might solve the muzzle lightness. I won the auction for a bit less than twice what I had wanted to pay for the earlier one (pretty much what I'd expect, given inflation), and this time I was pleased.
Thanks to Murray's description, I could tell before bidding that this was a very late 99-A, made in Westfield, MA, not long before rising production costs forced Savage to drop the 99 from its line. This one was a revival of the older 99-A, a saddle gun, but without the saddle ring. It featured a tang safety, Electro-Cote coating instead of bluing, and unlike earlier 99's it was drilled and tapped at the factory for a scope. It retains the magazine rotor, but one made of stainless steel rather than the traditional brass.
Most important for my intended use of deer hunting, this reincarnation of the 99-A in .250 Savage has 1 in 10" rifling, so it should stabilize a 100 grain bullet. Designer Charles Newton apparently had wanted this twist in the first place for a 100 grain bullet at about 2800 fps, but Savage wanted to exploit the 3,000 fps obtainable with an 87 grain bullet, so the publicity value of the first American rifle to achieve 3,000 fps outweighed any ballistic disadvantages from the slower twist and lighter bullet. [For reloading the earlier 99's with a 1 in 14" twist, see the articles in Handloader by Barsness* and by Terry Wieland#.]
The rifle arrived, exactly as advertised. I ran some dummy rounds through the action, tested the safety, tried the trigger--the pull was even heavier than the earlier one, I'd guess somewhere in the region of ten pounds!--passed the background check, and took it home. Some Wipe-Out removed quite a bit of fouling from its barrel. I took off the butt stock so I could lighten the trigger pull. Taking a deep breath, I turned the bolt screw counter-clockwise. It worked: the trigger pull was lighter! Thank you, John Barsness! I lightened it some more. We'll see if it holds there. If it moves, I'll follow Barsness's suggestion to keep it in place with a washer.
I then looked at the butt stock and fore end. The latter had some factory plastic filling the gap between the action and the fore end. Time is money, of course, so this probably was a cost-cutting measure, taking less time than fitting the fore end to the action by hand. I'm not keen on that plastic, but it is invisible. What was visible was the outline of a snarling panther a previous owner had incised on the left side of the butt. I'm not a fan of gunstock carving, but whoever had done this was quite a good artist. I rather liked it, but you had to tilt the rifle to catch the light for all the lines to show up. I knew I couldn't cut the lines any deeper without screwing it up, so with no small degree of reluctance I sanded the panther to oblivion.
Like every other 99 I've ever picked up, this 99-A had a short length of pull. As early as 1918, Townsend Whelen pointed out in The American Rifle that Savage stocks were about a half inch too short to fit the average man, but apparently nobody at Savage ever saw reason to change. (How tall was Arthur Savage, anyway?) I'm six feet tall and have a 35" sleeve, so I decided to cut off the curvature of the butt and to install a 3/4" recoil pad, giving me the 13 3/4" length of pull I like. I did want to duplicate the pitch of the butt, hoping that this would help keep the butt on my shoulder for a follow-up shot, so I used a sliding bevel to replicate the original angle. Making sure to tape the underside of the butt to prevent it from splintering, I put the butt stock in a miter box and shimmed it until the saw blade followed the line I had marked with a China pencil. Cutting it off was straightforward.
The lines of the butt stock looked a bit off to me, so I picked up a straight edge. The line of the comb was straight, but the underline of the butt--the belly, as it's sometimes called--wasn't. Not as pronounced as a fish belly, which has its own opulent Victorian charm, the curve just represented careless attention to detail. A few minutes with a block plane took care of that problem.
The more I looked at the stock, however, the more I thought its proportions were out of whack. The chief problem was that the flared cheeks behind the action (the portion in front of the wrist) came too far back. As a result, the back edge of the cheek interfered with my trigger finger. That the lines were dubbed over as a result of mass production didn't help the stock's appearance, either.
The solution seemed to lie in shortening and delineating the stock's panels. I got out some French curves and found one that had the right scale for that portion of the stock. I decided to have that section end farther forward, in line with the back of the trigger guard, and to echo both the trigger and the top of the wrist with a slightly downward curvature.
Here is a photo of the planned alteration. The line with dashes indicates the way it left the factory; the solid line represents the curve I was going to follow in re-cutting these panels.
I also slimmed down the area right behind the receiver tang, removing as much as I could of the hump just visible in the photo above.
Here's the butt stock after cutting the new panels, mounting the recoil pad, and refinishing. The aniline dyes followed by alkanet oil have given the bland wood a richer tone:
These altered panel details probably wouldn't be noticed by anybody other than a Savage collector or another stocker, but to me they improve the flow of this rifle's lines. The rear of the outward flaring portion is now far enough forward that it no longer interferes with my trigger finger. I like the crispness of the newly defined panels, but if I were to start over again, I'd move them forward just a little more, perhaps making the curve line up with the trigger rather than the rear of the trigger guard.
Here's a photo of the entire rifle:
Now I've got to load some 100 grain bullets and sight it in. I am hoping Dame Fortune lets me find a whitetail with it in Maine this fall.
------------
*John Barsness, "Savage Model 99: A User's Guide," Rifle 221 (Sept. 2005), 46ff; "Handloading Savage Cartridges," Handloader 238 (Dec. 2005) 84ff.
#Terry Wieland, "The Perfect .250-3000," Handloader 297 (August 2015), 32ff.
Since then, I have read the two articles by Barsness as well as the book he recommended, John Murray's The Ninety-Nine, 3rd ed. (Westbury, NY, 1985). As so often happens with firearms enthusiasts, the acquisition of a little learning soon leads to the acquisition of another gun. Recently, when I came across another tang safety 99 in .250 Savage being auctioned on GunBroker, I decided the time had come to try this legendary rifle and caliber. Its barrel was 22" long, and I hoped that additional length might solve the muzzle lightness. I won the auction for a bit less than twice what I had wanted to pay for the earlier one (pretty much what I'd expect, given inflation), and this time I was pleased.
Thanks to Murray's description, I could tell before bidding that this was a very late 99-A, made in Westfield, MA, not long before rising production costs forced Savage to drop the 99 from its line. This one was a revival of the older 99-A, a saddle gun, but without the saddle ring. It featured a tang safety, Electro-Cote coating instead of bluing, and unlike earlier 99's it was drilled and tapped at the factory for a scope. It retains the magazine rotor, but one made of stainless steel rather than the traditional brass.
Most important for my intended use of deer hunting, this reincarnation of the 99-A in .250 Savage has 1 in 10" rifling, so it should stabilize a 100 grain bullet. Designer Charles Newton apparently had wanted this twist in the first place for a 100 grain bullet at about 2800 fps, but Savage wanted to exploit the 3,000 fps obtainable with an 87 grain bullet, so the publicity value of the first American rifle to achieve 3,000 fps outweighed any ballistic disadvantages from the slower twist and lighter bullet. [For reloading the earlier 99's with a 1 in 14" twist, see the articles in Handloader by Barsness* and by Terry Wieland#.]
The rifle arrived, exactly as advertised. I ran some dummy rounds through the action, tested the safety, tried the trigger--the pull was even heavier than the earlier one, I'd guess somewhere in the region of ten pounds!--passed the background check, and took it home. Some Wipe-Out removed quite a bit of fouling from its barrel. I took off the butt stock so I could lighten the trigger pull. Taking a deep breath, I turned the bolt screw counter-clockwise. It worked: the trigger pull was lighter! Thank you, John Barsness! I lightened it some more. We'll see if it holds there. If it moves, I'll follow Barsness's suggestion to keep it in place with a washer.
I then looked at the butt stock and fore end. The latter had some factory plastic filling the gap between the action and the fore end. Time is money, of course, so this probably was a cost-cutting measure, taking less time than fitting the fore end to the action by hand. I'm not keen on that plastic, but it is invisible. What was visible was the outline of a snarling panther a previous owner had incised on the left side of the butt. I'm not a fan of gunstock carving, but whoever had done this was quite a good artist. I rather liked it, but you had to tilt the rifle to catch the light for all the lines to show up. I knew I couldn't cut the lines any deeper without screwing it up, so with no small degree of reluctance I sanded the panther to oblivion.
Like every other 99 I've ever picked up, this 99-A had a short length of pull. As early as 1918, Townsend Whelen pointed out in The American Rifle that Savage stocks were about a half inch too short to fit the average man, but apparently nobody at Savage ever saw reason to change. (How tall was Arthur Savage, anyway?) I'm six feet tall and have a 35" sleeve, so I decided to cut off the curvature of the butt and to install a 3/4" recoil pad, giving me the 13 3/4" length of pull I like. I did want to duplicate the pitch of the butt, hoping that this would help keep the butt on my shoulder for a follow-up shot, so I used a sliding bevel to replicate the original angle. Making sure to tape the underside of the butt to prevent it from splintering, I put the butt stock in a miter box and shimmed it until the saw blade followed the line I had marked with a China pencil. Cutting it off was straightforward.
The lines of the butt stock looked a bit off to me, so I picked up a straight edge. The line of the comb was straight, but the underline of the butt--the belly, as it's sometimes called--wasn't. Not as pronounced as a fish belly, which has its own opulent Victorian charm, the curve just represented careless attention to detail. A few minutes with a block plane took care of that problem.
The more I looked at the stock, however, the more I thought its proportions were out of whack. The chief problem was that the flared cheeks behind the action (the portion in front of the wrist) came too far back. As a result, the back edge of the cheek interfered with my trigger finger. That the lines were dubbed over as a result of mass production didn't help the stock's appearance, either.
The solution seemed to lie in shortening and delineating the stock's panels. I got out some French curves and found one that had the right scale for that portion of the stock. I decided to have that section end farther forward, in line with the back of the trigger guard, and to echo both the trigger and the top of the wrist with a slightly downward curvature.
Here is a photo of the planned alteration. The line with dashes indicates the way it left the factory; the solid line represents the curve I was going to follow in re-cutting these panels.
I also slimmed down the area right behind the receiver tang, removing as much as I could of the hump just visible in the photo above.
Here's the butt stock after cutting the new panels, mounting the recoil pad, and refinishing. The aniline dyes followed by alkanet oil have given the bland wood a richer tone:
Given that this later 99-A was factory drilled and tapped for a scope, I've mounted a Leupold VX-3 1.5-5x20mm in the pleasingly old-fashioned Weaver rings. Scoped, it weighs one ounce over eight pounds. Here's a photo of the entire rifle:
Now I've got to load some 100 grain bullets and sight it in. I am hoping Dame Fortune lets me find a whitetail with it in Maine this fall.
------------
*John Barsness, "Savage Model 99: A User's Guide," Rifle 221 (Sept. 2005), 46ff; "Handloading Savage Cartridges," Handloader 238 (Dec. 2005) 84ff.
#Terry Wieland, "The Perfect .250-3000," Handloader 297 (August 2015), 32ff.
Sunday, September 6, 2015
A Lab Puppy's First Swim
Our Black Lab puppy Bête Noir is exuberant, perhaps even excessively so, in nearly every way except one: she has shown no interest in swimming. Thanks to our friend John Bailey and his two water-loving dogs, Keel and Buddy, Bête at nine months learned to wade in a pond, but she was emphatically not going to follow their example and swim. She remained a wader, and not even a very deep-water wader at that.
Now, I don't want you to get the impression that I was concerned about this characteristic of hers. I was completely reconciled to owning the only Lab in the entire US that didn't swim. I told myself that it wasn't really that big a deal: I could always shave, and then none of my friends would recognize me, any more than they did after I grew a beard. So I was stoically prepared to have a non-swimming Lab.
Several days ago, just after Bête became nine months old, the two of us went out to Jennings Pond in Danby, NY, where there is a swimming beach marked off with guard ropes. It was late enough that the life guard had gone home. Given that Bête always wants to go where I go, I reasoned, I would wade around with her and at some point perhaps wade out to where she would have to swim. As we splashed around together, she gradually waded in deeper, to the point where she could just touch the fine gravel bottom.
Then she decided it would be fun to bite the little buoys spaced every three feet or so to keep the swimming area's boundary lines afloat. I did say that she's exuberant, right? Starting about ankle deep, she lunged and bit the first one, in a foot or so of water. She then lunged and bit the second one, in a foot and a half or so of water. I hit the third one with my hand to give it some motion, and she lunged for it, mouth agape. Surprise! No bottom under her paws! She look startled but not scared as she dog paddled forward and bit that buoy as well, then turned around and swam back to the bank. A few minutes later, in she went again, and she appeared altogether comfortable swimming from then on.
I then tossed a dummy out where she could wade. She brought it in and dropped it. Good girl! I tossed it a bit farther out, but still where she could wade. She brought that back, and dropped it. Good girl! The third toss was into deeper water, but not far out. She promptly waded in and then with no hesitation swam for it and brought it back. Good girl! Not wanting to press my luck, I stopped there.
Caroline said after I got home that I was beaming like a proud father!
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Grilling Corn on the Cob: Simple Perfection
For those of us fortunate enough to live where sweet corn is grown, corn on the cob is one of the delights of summer. But what is the best way to cook it? The method I use has changed over the years. I started out by bringing a large pot of water to the boil, adding the shucked corn, bringing it back to the boil, putting on the lid and turning off the heat. Ten minutes later, it was ready to eat. Slathered with butter and salt, it was delicious.
Friends of mine simply microwaved the corn: two minutes for one ear; five minutes for two ears. This method produces corn that is excellent, but somehow I don't find it as satisfying as the next method, grilling.
Grilling corn on the cob has the great advantage over boiling of not heating up the kitchen by bringing a large pot of water to 212 degrees and over microwaving of adding more flavor, but the process I followed was time-consuming. First you pulled back the husks, removed the corn silk, replaced the husks, and then soaked it for twenty minutes or so. I grilled the ears on low heat for about seven minutes, turned each ear 180 degrees, and grilled for another seven minutes. The grilling added some flavor, and I no longer cared about adding butter. The only drawback was that husking the grilled ears left flakes of charred husk scattered around.
Recently, I read somewhere--I am sorry I can't give credit either to the writer or to the magazine--about a variation on this grilling method. The article said that it wasn't necessary to remove the corn silk or to soak in water. I was skeptical about putting the ear directly on the grill, but I tried it. This method does in fact work, and work well: the outer leaves get charred, but the corn is delicious. I should note that it cooks faster this way, so check it after five minutes or so to see if it's ready to turn over.
The article also claimed that it isn't necessary to shuck the ear. Instead, after grilling, use a sharp knife to cut through the ear approximately at the bottom row or so of kernels (which of course are covered up by the husks). Working from the sheared end, the article claimed, it's much easier to remove the husks and corn silk. That also turns out to be correct. There are no charred remnants that the breeze invariably blows into other food.
Caroline eats it as is with no seasoning; I add only some ground pepper. Either way, corn grilled this way is simple perfection.
Friends of mine simply microwaved the corn: two minutes for one ear; five minutes for two ears. This method produces corn that is excellent, but somehow I don't find it as satisfying as the next method, grilling.
Grilling corn on the cob has the great advantage over boiling of not heating up the kitchen by bringing a large pot of water to 212 degrees and over microwaving of adding more flavor, but the process I followed was time-consuming. First you pulled back the husks, removed the corn silk, replaced the husks, and then soaked it for twenty minutes or so. I grilled the ears on low heat for about seven minutes, turned each ear 180 degrees, and grilled for another seven minutes. The grilling added some flavor, and I no longer cared about adding butter. The only drawback was that husking the grilled ears left flakes of charred husk scattered around.
Recently, I read somewhere--I am sorry I can't give credit either to the writer or to the magazine--about a variation on this grilling method. The article said that it wasn't necessary to remove the corn silk or to soak in water. I was skeptical about putting the ear directly on the grill, but I tried it. This method does in fact work, and work well: the outer leaves get charred, but the corn is delicious. I should note that it cooks faster this way, so check it after five minutes or so to see if it's ready to turn over.
The article also claimed that it isn't necessary to shuck the ear. Instead, after grilling, use a sharp knife to cut through the ear approximately at the bottom row or so of kernels (which of course are covered up by the husks). Working from the sheared end, the article claimed, it's much easier to remove the husks and corn silk. That also turns out to be correct. There are no charred remnants that the breeze invariably blows into other food.
Caroline eats it as is with no seasoning; I add only some ground pepper. Either way, corn grilled this way is simple perfection.
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Restoring an 1887 Scott Shotgun Stock
Having successfully browned the Damascus barrels of this 1887 Scott hammer gun (see my previous post), it's now time to restore its stock. To say this, however, is immediately to raise the question of what "restore" means. These days, it is often understood to mean "make like new again." In the antique furniture trade in the 1920's and '30's, all traces of age were removed to make the piece look brand new. This process was known in the antiques trade as "skinning," and its widespread practice eventually made pieces that still retained their original finish much scarcer and therefore more valuable. To me, over-restoration is as wrong-headed as a lovely woman in her later years resorting to Botox to replicate her youthful appearance. As John Donne declared almost three hundred years ago, "Neither Spring nor Summer Beauty hath such grace / As I have seen in one Autumnal face." The aim of restoration should not be to make an old gun look new again, but to bring back the grace of its autumnal beauty.
This particular hammer gun has decent walnut and some engraving, but it left its Birmingham factory in 1887 as one of the "plain" guns offered by W. & C. Scott and Sun (the Scott 1872 catalog shows a similar model but with the earlier, higher hammers). In contrast to today, engraving was relatively inexpensive in the 1880's. It probably never was stored in a trunk case, which would have protected its finish, and it was used hard. Compared to the interior wood of the fore end that's protected by the barrels, the color of the wood has faded, much as if it had been bleached by the sun. Its original checkering survives only in a few place, having been replaced by much coarser lines outlined by deep grooves. The border grooves remain, but the gun has been used so hard that even the second set of checkered lines is worn away.
In these circumstances, what sort of restoration is possible? I am going to remove what remains of an earlier refinishing. (How do I know it's not original? No original finish would show brush marks!) I'll do as little as possible to make it look well cared for: gently remove the sloppy finish with stripper and steel wool (which, unlike sandpaper, doesn't destroy the patina), apply some coats of alkanet oil, then a sealer coat of spar varnish, and follow that with some coats of TruOil. Finally, I'll dull the finish slightly and top coat with alkanet oil, slowly replicating a London (or, for this gun, a Birmingham) oil finish.
What to do about restoring the checkering is a problem. Removing the second checkering's grooved borders would remove far too much wood in the wrist--and that is already perilously slim. It is thus impractical to attempt to get back to its original look. Is some checkering better than none, even if it is from a later, crude refurbishing? Or is it better to leave the wood alone and have its "checkered history" (forgive me) evident? Food for thought.
Ideally, I first would separate metal action and trigger guard and plate from the wooden stock before working on the wood, but someone earlier buggered up the action screw so badly that I can't budge it and don't want to take the risk of making things worse. I'm just going to have to be very, very careful finishing the wood around the fences.
Here's a shot of the butt and the horn-tipped fore end after stripping off the old finish:
This particular hammer gun has decent walnut and some engraving, but it left its Birmingham factory in 1887 as one of the "plain" guns offered by W. & C. Scott and Sun (the Scott 1872 catalog shows a similar model but with the earlier, higher hammers). In contrast to today, engraving was relatively inexpensive in the 1880's. It probably never was stored in a trunk case, which would have protected its finish, and it was used hard. Compared to the interior wood of the fore end that's protected by the barrels, the color of the wood has faded, much as if it had been bleached by the sun. Its original checkering survives only in a few place, having been replaced by much coarser lines outlined by deep grooves. The border grooves remain, but the gun has been used so hard that even the second set of checkered lines is worn away.
In these circumstances, what sort of restoration is possible? I am going to remove what remains of an earlier refinishing. (How do I know it's not original? No original finish would show brush marks!) I'll do as little as possible to make it look well cared for: gently remove the sloppy finish with stripper and steel wool (which, unlike sandpaper, doesn't destroy the patina), apply some coats of alkanet oil, then a sealer coat of spar varnish, and follow that with some coats of TruOil. Finally, I'll dull the finish slightly and top coat with alkanet oil, slowly replicating a London (or, for this gun, a Birmingham) oil finish.
What to do about restoring the checkering is a problem. Removing the second checkering's grooved borders would remove far too much wood in the wrist--and that is already perilously slim. It is thus impractical to attempt to get back to its original look. Is some checkering better than none, even if it is from a later, crude refurbishing? Or is it better to leave the wood alone and have its "checkered history" (forgive me) evident? Food for thought.
Ideally, I first would separate metal action and trigger guard and plate from the wooden stock before working on the wood, but someone earlier buggered up the action screw so badly that I can't budge it and don't want to take the risk of making things worse. I'm just going to have to be very, very careful finishing the wood around the fences.
Here's a shot of the butt and the horn-tipped fore end after stripping off the old finish:
I managed to raise one dent and lessen the depth of another by applying a steam iron to a damp rag held against the wood.
It then was time to rub in alkanet oil. Three coats later, with several days between each coat, the wood has regained some color and its figure is more pronounced:
Next came a coat of spar varnish, rubbed down with 0000 steel wool. The satin spar varnish was followed by sanding in TruOil: I applied two coats of TruOil and then a third sanded in with 400 grit paper moistened with more TruOil. After the sanded-in coat dried, I rubbed that down with 0000 steel wool, burned off the steel wool particles over a gas range, and then applied two more coats of TruOil, sanding in the third. I did this a total of three times. I then applied a coat of TruOil and rubbed it down with auto rubbing compound. Another coat of alkanet oil followed, again rubbed down with the auto rubbing compound.
The old saying about applying an oil finish goes, Rub in linseed oil once a day for a week, once a week for a month, once a month for year, and once a year forever. The spar varnish and TruOil have accelerated this process, so I'll just rub in alkanet oil once a month for a year. The stock now has partially but not completely filled pores. The wood no longer looks ravaged, but relatively well cared for.
This Scott shotgun has had a hard life, but with its barrels browned (and then rubbed back) and with its wood refinished, it looks now as if it has aged with some degree of grace:
.
Friday, May 29, 2015
Browning Damascus Barrels
Let me say at the outset that I'm writing as a novice about browning Damascus shotgun barrels. I've previously browned exactly one barrel, a Getz octagonal barrel for my .50 Pennsylvania long rifle, and of course that was a new barrel, not an antique one, and it was steel, not the twisted combination of iron and steel that defines Damascus. So why, you may be thinking, should I write about doing this for the first time? Simply because I'm going to record both what I do wrong as well as what I do right--that way, I may save some others from replicating my mistakes.
There is a lot of information on the web about Damascus barrels, everything from how they were made to identifying types of Damascus construction to how to refinish them. I had managed to compile a sizable folder of this information, but then a virus struck my computer and I lost it all. But I had already decided not to make my own browning formula, so I simply ordered Laurel Mountain Forge's Barrel Brown and Degreaser. Their instructions on the web are critical, especially their caution against rubbing the surface with multiple coats: that can cause a metallic copper colored film to form, which impedes the browning process. This particular Barrel Brown offers the advantage that the surface to be browned does not have to be entirely free of oil, as the formula cuts through that. Several sources on the web noted, however, that for Damascus barrels at least the initial application of this solution should be diluted 50% with distilled water.
Another useful source for browning is Oscar Gaddy's A Rust Blue Primer (the steps one follows for a rust blue are the same as for browning--up until boiling the barrels, which turns the red Ferric Oxide to the blue-black Ferric Ferrous Oxide, better known as a rust blue).
Like many aspects of gunsmithing, the process is relatively simple. Doing it well is another matter. That's where experience counts, and experience may be considered as the ability to have learned from your mistakes--and no small part of that is knowing how to correct the mistakes you've made.
Here are my Scott's barrels in a "Before" shot: the browning has pretty much disappeared.
Next came degreasing. Even though Laurel Mountain Forge claims that this step is not necessary, I decided to do it anyway. I had bought at a hardware store some rubber stoppers to plug the barrels, but they fell out all too easily. I returned to the store and bought some corks. These were not a great fit, either, but I sanded them down until they stayed in place. After putting on vinyl gloves (check to make sure they don't have powder on the outside), I first flooded the barrels with Formula 409 and then rinsed it off with hot water. When that had dried, I rubbed the barrels down with a cotton pad moistened with rubbing alcohol.
Two things I learned from degreasing are that you have to figure out 1) how to support the barrels while you apply the solution, and 2) how to support them during the time they rust. I suspended the barrels from a parachute cord slip-knotted to the underlug and looped on a nail in the garage (there's more humidity outside).
I cut Laurel Mountain Forge's Brown 50-50 with distilled water. Wearing vinyl gloves, I applied the solution with the 1" foam brushes Gaddy recommends. Using a foam brush didn't work for me: I couldn't control the amount of solution I was applying. I quickly learned that to avoid runs I had to apply the solution horizontally, not vertically. Try to cover evenly, overlapping as little as possible.
The length of time it takes to rust obviously varies with the temperature and the humidity. In Ithaca, NY, during a rainy week near the end of May, I began by checking on the rusting after three hours or so. Laurel Mountain Forge suggests not letting the rusting process go past 24 hours, or pitting may develop.
Card off (that is, rub lightly) the barrels under running water with degreased steel wool (I prefer Lee Valley's extra-fine steel wool, as it comes already degreased). My first attempt turned out gray, not rust brown, and rather streaky. You can't have made a mistake, I thought to myself, so I took a deep breadth and kept on trying. I dried the barrels: using hot water makes this faster. I discarded the foam brush and substituted a cotton sterile dressing, folding it into a pad. Again, I took long horizontal strokes the length of the barrel. Being careful not to touch the wet barrels, I suspended them to rust for five hours. More applications, rusting, and carding followed, and a light brown color began to emerge. Re-applications made the brown deeper in color and more even.
Here's how the barrels looked after seven applications:
There is a lot of information on the web about Damascus barrels, everything from how they were made to identifying types of Damascus construction to how to refinish them. I had managed to compile a sizable folder of this information, but then a virus struck my computer and I lost it all. But I had already decided not to make my own browning formula, so I simply ordered Laurel Mountain Forge's Barrel Brown and Degreaser. Their instructions on the web are critical, especially their caution against rubbing the surface with multiple coats: that can cause a metallic copper colored film to form, which impedes the browning process. This particular Barrel Brown offers the advantage that the surface to be browned does not have to be entirely free of oil, as the formula cuts through that. Several sources on the web noted, however, that for Damascus barrels at least the initial application of this solution should be diluted 50% with distilled water.
Another useful source for browning is Oscar Gaddy's A Rust Blue Primer (the steps one follows for a rust blue are the same as for browning--up until boiling the barrels, which turns the red Ferric Oxide to the blue-black Ferric Ferrous Oxide, better known as a rust blue).
Like many aspects of gunsmithing, the process is relatively simple. Doing it well is another matter. That's where experience counts, and experience may be considered as the ability to have learned from your mistakes--and no small part of that is knowing how to correct the mistakes you've made.
Here are my Scott's barrels in a "Before" shot: the browning has pretty much disappeared.
The first step was to remove what little remained of the old finish and get a relatively smooth surface. I started with 220 grit on a sanding block and followed Gaddy's suggestion to stop polishing with 320 grit.
Next came degreasing. Even though Laurel Mountain Forge claims that this step is not necessary, I decided to do it anyway. I had bought at a hardware store some rubber stoppers to plug the barrels, but they fell out all too easily. I returned to the store and bought some corks. These were not a great fit, either, but I sanded them down until they stayed in place. After putting on vinyl gloves (check to make sure they don't have powder on the outside), I first flooded the barrels with Formula 409 and then rinsed it off with hot water. When that had dried, I rubbed the barrels down with a cotton pad moistened with rubbing alcohol.
Two things I learned from degreasing are that you have to figure out 1) how to support the barrels while you apply the solution, and 2) how to support them during the time they rust. I suspended the barrels from a parachute cord slip-knotted to the underlug and looped on a nail in the garage (there's more humidity outside).
I cut Laurel Mountain Forge's Brown 50-50 with distilled water. Wearing vinyl gloves, I applied the solution with the 1" foam brushes Gaddy recommends. Using a foam brush didn't work for me: I couldn't control the amount of solution I was applying. I quickly learned that to avoid runs I had to apply the solution horizontally, not vertically. Try to cover evenly, overlapping as little as possible.
The length of time it takes to rust obviously varies with the temperature and the humidity. In Ithaca, NY, during a rainy week near the end of May, I began by checking on the rusting after three hours or so. Laurel Mountain Forge suggests not letting the rusting process go past 24 hours, or pitting may develop.
Card off (that is, rub lightly) the barrels under running water with degreased steel wool (I prefer Lee Valley's extra-fine steel wool, as it comes already degreased). My first attempt turned out gray, not rust brown, and rather streaky. You can't have made a mistake, I thought to myself, so I took a deep breadth and kept on trying. I dried the barrels: using hot water makes this faster. I discarded the foam brush and substituted a cotton sterile dressing, folding it into a pad. Again, I took long horizontal strokes the length of the barrel. Being careful not to touch the wet barrels, I suspended them to rust for five hours. More applications, rusting, and carding followed, and a light brown color began to emerge. Re-applications made the brown deeper in color and more even.
Here's how the barrels looked after seven applications:
Following Laurel Mountain Forge's suggested procedures, I carded the barrels and then neutralized the surfaces with baking soda dissolved in hot water. I rinsed that off with more hot water and allowed the barrels to air dry.
Next came oiling. I heated the barrels over a gas stove until they were uncomfortably hot to hold and rubbed in a coat of motor oil (10W-40 is what I happened to have on hand). After 12 hours, I wiped off the motor oil with a clean cloth and applied a sparing coat of CLP BreakFree inside and out. Here's how they came out:
I really liked the richness of this brown, but it rather obscures the Damascus pattern. You have to look hard to see it. Etching the barrels would bring out the contrast between the iron and the steel, but I couldn't decide whether I wanted to do that.
The next day, after re-assembling the gun, I decided that the barrels looked too good, too new. They needed to lose some of that rich luster. I first tried rubbing them with extra-fine steel wool--it didn't make that much of a difference. I then thought of auto polishing compound, which is less abrasive than auto rubbing compound. I applied the polishing compound on the underside where it wouldn't show if it turned out to be a terrible idea. I liked its effect, so I polished away.
Here's a view of the polished barrels. Only one barrel and the rib are in focus, but you can see that the contrast between the iron and the steel has been markedly improved by the auto polishing compound:
The next day, after re-assembling the gun, I decided that the barrels looked too good, too new. They needed to lose some of that rich luster. I first tried rubbing them with extra-fine steel wool--it didn't make that much of a difference. I then thought of auto polishing compound, which is less abrasive than auto rubbing compound. I applied the polishing compound on the underside where it wouldn't show if it turned out to be a terrible idea. I liked its effect, so I polished away.
Here's a view of the polished barrels. Only one barrel and the rib are in focus, but you can see that the contrast between the iron and the steel has been markedly improved by the auto polishing compound:
My last step consisted of warming the barrels with a heat gun and then applying two thin coats of Renaissance Wax, buffing each coat. The barrels now have a low luster.
In my view, the barrels now look right for the effect I want: not a shotgun that looks as if it had just left the Scott factory yesterday, but one made in 1887 that's been used pretty hard but been cared for. Here's a shot of the barrels and part of the action. Rather than one element standing out, they all seem to go together:
In my view, the barrels now look right for the effect I want: not a shotgun that looks as if it had just left the Scott factory yesterday, but one made in 1887 that's been used pretty hard but been cared for. Here's a shot of the barrels and part of the action. Rather than one element standing out, they all seem to go together:
Useful Sources
Print:
David Baker, "The Blueing or Blacking of Gun Barrels," in Desmond Mills and Mike Barnes, Amateur Gunsmithing (Boydell Press, 1986).
John Bivins, "Metal Finishes for the Custom Gunsmith," in Gunsmithing Tips & Projects (Wolfe Publishing, 1989).
William R. Brockway, Recreating the Double Barrel Muzzle-Loading Shotgun (George Shumway, 1984).
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