Crazy Horse !

Mike Dubber

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I have been working on a new project for the past months preparing for the FEGA Show in Las Vegas. My concentration has been on “Crazy Horse.” During summer travels we were in South Dakota where we visited the mountain statuary – Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. I had plenty of information about Crazy Horse when we returned, and I already had a Colt SAA underway with much of the routine engraving and border inlay finished. The grip fitting been completed months ago and the Colt was set up perfectly for Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse was an excellent study, and all the time I spent engraving was matched by the hours I spent researching his character; developing ideas about the themes is a whole other story.

Always hoping to challenge myself with new engraving techniques and processes, I first decided to create a “screwless” panel on the right side…that being an open field for inlay work without those three mindless main frame screws protruding through the surface. Weldon Lister sent me a suggested method of removing those screw holes so I jumped in and did that first. I’ll only show the first step here and talk more about the Weldon’s method of “iron inlaying” in another discussion…as well as photos of the creature I decided to inlay in the expanded area.

The second most challenging thing I undertook was to inlay a piece gold in the Mother-of-Pearl grips. Although the Pearls were beautiful as they were, I needed one more theme inlay to complete my list for Crazy Horse. So, I thought, Barry Lee Hands does beautiful gold on pearl inlay all the time, why not jump in there and give it a try?

Crazy Horse was an elusive character – he never allowed himself to be photographed. Korczak Ziolkowski started the world’s largest sculpture on the South Dakota Mountain in 1948. Work is still underway today with only about 1/3 of the monument completed. So like Korczak, my cryptic vison of Crazy Horse is the same as others who have attempted to create his image.
Crazy Horse’s “Visons’ repeatedly included the Red Tail Hawk…and they also created a very private and unassuming individual in the man. Considered to be the most fearless of all the Lakota warriors, his battle dress included a simple Red Tail Hawk feather in his hair and a stone tied behind his ear. As in many previous battles, he painted a red lightning bolt on his cheek and led his warriors to the crest of a rise above the Little Big Horn and wiped out Custer and his contingent of the 7th Cavalry in about 8 minutes.

The Red Tail Hawk Portrait and the crimson bolt are shown here on the Pink Mother of Pearl Grips. I’ll talk about all of that more later on. Meanwhile; you can see this piece and many others like it that are beautifully Master Engraved at the 2018 FEGA Guild Show in Las Vegas.

Please come visit us there !
 
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Big-Un

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The suspense is killing me! When can we expect to see more, especially how to fill the holes. So far, I'm guessing you weld a small plug in place and file it down.
 

FANCYGUN

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Looks real nice mike. I like what you did with the gold border near the grips. Nice little detail. See you in vegas. Should be a great show with some great engraving
 

Mike Dubber

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No welding involved Big Un - this is a simple iron inlay thing - the very stuff Frank Hendricks talked about during the early FEGA seminars. I just wasn't listing in at the time, or didn't have the skills and guts to go for it!
 
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Mike Dubber

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Marty - thanks for the comment about the gold border work near the grips. As you already know, and as others will soon learn, all Colts SAA's are not created the same. These Single Action Army Revolvers require a great deal of fitting as they are produced. Colt craftsmen fit, file and polish the individual frames, trigger guards and backstraps as a unit. Although each SAA looks the same, the grips must be fitted to each and every different gun. The fitting, filing and polishing causes slight differences in each individual firearm, and while you can easily inlay borders around the entire side panel on one gun, it's going to be a much operation different on the next. Moreover, the engraver really needs to be careful about doing the border inlays on one side without thoroughly examining the opposite side to see that they can be done the same - often they cannot.

In any case, when inlaying a border around the SAA side panel like in the Crazy Horse example, the engraver needs to understand that he must cross breaks/separations in the three metal parts (frame, trigger guard and backstrap) a total of 4 times - or 8 times total to create a contiguous borders around the both side panels of the SAA. That takes time, and that adds to the cost (I would say about four additional hours) to the total engraving time.
 
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FANCYGUN

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The backstrap and trigger guard can also get very thin where the mounting screws are. I always cringed when engraving those areas let alone inlaying them. Nice little extra contour you gave the gold.
 

Sam

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Mike, you knocked it out of the park on this one. Just beautiful, and I'll be anxious to see it at FEGA!
Freaking grip inlay is killer!
 

Big-Un

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No welding involved Big Un - this is a simple iron inlay thing - the very stuff Frank Hendricks talked about during the early FEGA seminars - I just wasn't listing in at the time, or didn't have the skills and guts to go for it!

Thanks for the explanation, welding the part would be extremely difficult and probably cause unwanted distortion.

Your work is incredible and much admired. Also, thanks you for the insight on Colt finishing and what needs to be aware of when working on them.

Bill
 

fegarex

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Awesome work Mike!! As usual! Your work has always impressed me. You can do a Colt in a "traditional" manner but you include some very unique touches that make it stand out. Looks awesome!
 
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