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Hershel House spent his life in Woodbury, Kentucky — building rifles, forging knives, and keeping the crafts of the American frontier alive. The Hershel House Woodbury School Foundation carries that forward, teaching the next generation of builders the same hand skills that defined his life.
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A richly decorated, silver-mounted, English fowling piece influenced by the work of John Harman. This piece is representative of first class London work from the 1760's. A custom made lock was created for this project as was the relief sculpted silver mounts. Significant amounts of silver wire inlay add to the beauty of the piece.
Kit initially arrived damaged (UPS most have thrown it around) but Kibler replaced the stock at no charge and the customer service was amazing! Kit was alot more work than I expected (Southern AZ on the border) and required quite a bit of inletting and filling due to the huge change in humidity from Ohio to Arizona. The stock must of shrunk ever so slightly due to humidity which meant every inlet required a hour or two of slow chiseling and removing of material. Metal components were great and high quality and the wood was also great quality. After staining and applying finishing oil the humidity tanked and it reached 100 degrees here so I had to inlet some more post finishing. If you live in the desert id recommend giving your rifle a week or two to adjust to the environment. Finished it in two weekends with maybe 20 hours of work into it excluding time for browning and applying layers of finishing oil. The including drill bit kit and chuck was my only major issue. The included bit guide is the same length as the drill bit so I had to cut the guide in half and the chuck wouldn't hold the bit but luckily my power drill could hold the bit on its own.
I used this for both browning the barrel and blackening the action of my SMR. I draw filed the barrel until all the scratches went the same way, then wiped it down with acetone. I applied the solution with a wool swab and hung it up overnight. The next day it looked very streaky, but I carded it with a wool felt pad , applied another coat and waited overnight. The barrel showed about 90% red rust coverage and I repeated the process for a total of five time using an oiled felt pad for the final carding. I wiped with acetone again, and then a baking soda water solution. I heated the barrel, applied a coat of plain 30WT motor oil and let hang. Next day I wiped with dry paper towels and finished with Ballistol
I got an even deep brown color.
I then used it to blacken the action by rusting the individual components and boiling for about 45 minutes and carding.
Don't use anything other than acetone for cleaning the raw metal surfaces before rusting.
This product produced excellent results, all by itself, on Extra Fancy Maple. I considered other blog recommendations, analine dye or tannic acid, but ultimately just went with this. I’m glad I did. It looks great.