1849 pocket kit gun

[Ed Westerly]

I haven't posted for awhile, so I am jumping in with a long winded, multi-picture thread. It starts out sad, but ends well, I think. In July of 2011, my father's younger brother died. (that's the sad part) My uncle was a gun collector of sorts, collecting mostly handguns from gun shows and garage sales. His collection went to my cousin, who is the same age as I am. When we were going through my uncle's guns, we came across this..





A Coneticutt (sp???) Valley Arms kit gun of the Colt 1849 pocket. It had been assembled, but not timed, polished or finished in any way. I asked my cousin if he would ever finish it, and he said no. I asked if I could have it to finish. He said o.k. as long as I put his dad's name on it somewhere. I timed it, polished it, inlayed brass wire in the barrels, sent it to Doug Turnbull to be rust blued, and French greyed the scroll work. I also selectively nickel plated the scrolls on the brass areas. Hope you enjoy the results.

 

[airamp]

Really nice job on the gun.

BTW Connecticut

 

[Donny]

Ed,

Very nice pocket gun!!! When you say 'Selectively" nickel plated...can you kinda explain how you kept the rest of the brass from getting nickeled?

Donny

 

[Ed Westerly]

When selectively plating an object, whether with copper, nickel, gold, etc., you have to mask off the areas you do not want plated. There are several masking fluids available, but I use black (I don't know why!!! :thinking: ) fingernail polish. (I guess it works on toenails too! ) just paint it on the areas you don't want to plate, and plate the areas you do! :clapping: It can be messy , and sometimes is very time consuming , but it's what you've got to do.

 

[Ed Westerly]

Airamp, thanks for the spelling! I guess I'll leave it misspelled in the original post for posterity!

 

[monk]

kind of spiffy looking to me. i like the backstrap.

 

[Ed Westerly]

Monk, just the backstrap???

 

[thughes]

Very cool.

 

[Chas]

Great looking little pistol--really perked it up. But, I do have a question--in a couple of pictures, you show a loading lever, in others you don't? Did you manufacture the lever ...if so, really nice job.

 

[Ed Westerly]

Chas,

No, I didn't manufacture the lever, what I did was buy a front end from Taylor's & Co. But when it came, the lower portion of the barrel extension below the lever lacked 0.50-0.75" of mating up, so I welded a plate to the bottom of the extension, filed the original profile back on it, and then engraved it.

 

[James Roettger]

Very nice, I thought they were two different guns till I read the text. I thought, wow that second one is really cool, first one looks a little beat up and tired.

 

[Ed Westerly]

Always read the text! :clapping:

 

[Chas]

Really a nice job....I'm not sure I've seen a pocket model as sharp..Kudos!

 

[Ed Westerly]

Thanks, Chas. I will have to get pictures done of the presentation box I made for it. I made it out of a diversion book I had, and put in partitions for a small flask, bullet mold, caps, bullets, the gun and the spare front end. I think it came out quite cool! I'll try to get a photo done soon, but I'm not a great photog!

 

[Ed Westerly]

Here is my sub-par attempt at picture taking. Hope it doesn't strain your eyes too much!

 

[Arnaud Van Tilburgh]

Looks nice, but why so little shading?

arnaud

 

[Ed Westerly]

I didn't do a lot of shading because I wanted the gun to be more in line with the kind of engraving you would have gotten in the 1840-50's period. Heavily shaded scroll work is a later 1800's improvement, and I didn't want that. (It's also easier!!!) Looking back at the pictures, I see that most of the shading doesn't show up either. My photographer washed out the scrollwork to a certain extent, and transfering the pics to the net has washed it out even more! (apparently, as I know next to nothing about photography!)

 

[Arnaud Van Tilburgh]

Thanks Ed for explaining. I didn't know about the history later than 1800's, or before that. I will have to read some of my books again to find out about the history of engraving and its purpose.

arnaud

 

[Ed Westerly]

Ha, Ha, Ha!

 

[Arnaud Van Tilburgh]

Well Ed, can't be that funny.

arnaud