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Longrifle Display Rack

comments (0) February 13th, 2010 in Reader's Gallery

BenchMarc, member

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The full inscription reads: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

What you can see, to some degree, is that the shelf has been dished out. In hindsight, I could have done a better job of laying out the scrolls, but this project was full of firsts.

The full inscription reads: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

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A few years ago, I treated myself to a really nice, handmade Pennsylvania Longrifle. Flintlock. I wanted something suitably nice to display it on the wall. My wife deserves credit for allowing me to do so in our NYC apartment livingroom - at least until the birth of our first child. Presently, the Display rack lives under the bed and the rifle is sequestered in the closet. They are awaiting our purchase of someplace with a den or man-cave where they can live free and proud.

The rack is made from Ash. I didn't spend a lot of time deliberating over the design, but I am happy with the way that it came out. I'm sorry that I do not have a picture of the entire thing. The project was intended to be an exercise in incised carving and scroll work. I found that carving incised letters really isn't that difficult, so long as your layout is good and your chisels are razor sharp. The open grain of ash yields and tears a little, if the edge isn't nicely honed. As I do with most of my carved work, the rounded sections are carved with a straight, chip-carving knife. The star was a little tricky to carve the facets evenly. I did not intend to carve it that deeply, but I had to keep digging in order to balance out the carving.

The rifle supports are intended to be evocative of thumbed hands. They are the first examples of my attempt to use tapering facets to add dimension and visual interest to what would otherwise be ordinary shapes. Again, I'm sorry that I do not have better pictures to illustrate this.

Design or Plan used: My own design