The making of a powder horn.

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outstanding work

[Gnome!]

Ok so last week I set about fitting some custom long swivels but first stage was to drill the holes for fitment.


Swivels fitted and ready for gluing in place




This week my good neighbor Anthony, fitter machinist by trade, part time wood turner and fellow shooter of various types of firearms called me down to his place as he is on holidays for a couple weeks. I had spoken to him about brass work or timbers at the start of this journey and it was now a good time for us to work out the end caps and what style I was looking for. After some thought we decided to go timber as there are so many options available and being a little lighter in weight compared to a heavy brass end cap.

While there we looked at different wood types, broke a very nice peace of old unknown timber type that had tones of beautiful wavy grain through it , it was on to sorting through a number of varying peaces of wood that had nice character about them we ended up going with a very well aged Tallow wood and the very hard and rich in colour Australian River Red Gum.

The plugs that will go into the end caps are turned down Rusa dear antlers that I had given Anthony early last year for a project he was working on. I hope to get a couple pics of them being turned but no promises.


Turning down the Red Gum


It was time to set the horn on the end cap for marking as a guide to how much has to be removed to at least get a start of fitment.


A couple hours of working on the wood rasp and you can see the shape taking place.


At last... after four hours of rasping work it has finally started to fit



Working the wood on the sand paper wrapped file then inserting into the horn to see how much further sanding is required.


A little more sanding to be done, but am getting much closer each time.


looking for the high spots after removing from the horn. As you can see the shiny spots around the middle is one of the areas I will focus on when sanding to get it to fit better.


Final fitment and I'm a happy chappy next step is to glue in place with epoxy resin and prepare for the leather work to get them to the near complete stage.

[Gnome!]

I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get pics of the antlers being cut, ground and set but managed to grab this lot and am very happy with the way they have turned out.

One of the antlers that will be cut, linished and fitted to a powder horn.


Rounding down on the linisher



Wasn't happy with the way this one was looking when set in the end cap so it was attacked with the hacksaw then finished up on the bench grinder to a better suited look and fit.




Yeah that looks much better.


A nice deer silhouette drawn on before painting over and sealing.




Looks pretty darn nice now


This one is coming along nicely too


Aye they look good as a pair

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they look amazing

[Gnome!]

Here is an update

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Gots me a dress hat and will be getting me a hunting one soon

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nice