Bread and butter work on a Purdey round bar SxS

This is the 4th one I did in a roll and another one sitting on my bench. I don't mind doing small scroll but it's starting to get repetitive!! Hope you like it. I may do a step by step on the next one to give anyone who's interested in small scroll an idea how it is set up. I hope you like it.

Paul. That is really beautiful. I really enjoyed seeing it. Thank you for showing it. Bob

Hi paul

Absolutley beautiful work!!

Yes please!!!..........a step by step would be fantastic thank you and very much appreciated. It would be very interesting to see how you go about this kind of work.

Cheers
Andrew

Paul, that is really beautiful. I would sure like to see a step by step. Thanks for sharing with us.

Stewart

Excellent work. A step by step of the cuts would be great.
--Art

I would love to see a step by step also Paul...Wonderful work!!

Paul, Thanks for posting your wonderful work. I would be delighted if you would show a step-by-step follow-up. Bryan Clary

Paul,

When I look at your rose & scroll or that of Marcus Hunt, Phil Coggen and the other top contemporary engravers I can't help but compare it with British engraving of the "golden age." Then I ask myself what was so golden about the supposed golden age? Certainly not the engraving. In comparison to the work by Jack Sumner and others of his generation, your work is so well designed and exquisitly executed. Work of near perfection, if there is such a thing.

Now, I'm not saying this to knock Sumner's work but to draw a contrast with what was the expectation of gunmakers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and now. I have examined lots of engraving on older British guns, and with some distinct exceptions, I suspect that level of detail would never be acceptable to the big London houses today.

Of course engravers of Sumner's era worked under different conditions. For one thing their turn around times were ridiculous by today's standards. In Austyn's book there are copies of notes between Sumner and various gunmakers. Often, the gunmaker sends him the gun parts on Monday and says they need it back by Thursday or some such. Then on top of this they want to quibble about the price or ammount of coverage.

So while the expectations of quality seem to be higher today, I hope the working relationship with the gunmakers in the UK are at least somewhat better.

I look forward to any responses from the British engravers on my observations while at the same time understanding that no one wants to say anything that might be unpopular with the clients.

Thanks for posting the pictures and your participation here.

CRB

Paul

Beautiful scroll work.

Thanks for posting Pictures.

Count me in for the step by step.

Ken

Roger, what you have to remember with places like the Sumner and Kell workshops is that is exactly what they were, workshops. There were several engravers working simultaneously so when a gun was turned around in 4 or 5 days one engraver would cut the scrollwork, another the flowers, someone else would cut the top lever, trigger guard, etc,. and the apprentice would cut the screws and forend tip, etc. With old guns you can often see these marked differences in engraving on different parts but the uninitiated probably wouldn't notice. That is how they managed to turn things around so quickly.

Nowadays, it's one engraver working on the whole project.

Thank you for taking your time to look and the kind comments from everybody. Like I said in the title, this really is the bread and butter work of the english gun trade.
Many engravers here epecially Purdey trained ones started doing small scroll first and foremost above anything else and I had it literally 'drilled' into me from day one.
As Marcus had mentioned, as an apprentice I started doing screws and all the little bits and pieces my gaffer didn't like doing when I first started and progressed from there.

Roger, you were right about the engravers having to turn around an engraving job in ridiculous times and I believe Purdey's still have a 'gospel' time of 78 hours to engrave a whole gun in small scroll.
I assure you I cannot do it in that time,at a push maybe 100 hrs but the quality will suffer as a result.

Anyway, I only have some furniture to finish on this gun and then maybe I have an urgent barrell breech end to engrave before I start the next one, so i'll take pictures as I go along doing the next job. I'll keep you posted on this.

Many thanks, Paul.

Beautiful work Paul. Thanks so much for sharing. I try to study the small English scroll every time I get the chance. I would love to learn how to do it correctly. Thanks again for sharing the photos of your magnificent work!

Dwayne