I have to say writing a blog is quite new for me. I’ve shared my adventures, gun projects, engravings, and ideas for many years in the more conventional methods of letters and phone calls – recently doing quite a bit through texting. I have resisted a website for a number of years, basically because I didn’t have time to maintain and respond to it appropriately. I’ve been asked quite often if I had a website and had to respond that no, I didn’t.

From 2010 until almost 2016, I engraved eleven hours a day, seven days a week. I’d take some time off in the spring to attend the annual SHOT Show in Las Vegas, and during the fall a few weeks off for hunting. The rest of the time you’d find me at my engraving bench. If I spent fifteen minutes off schedule, that was time I simply had to take from some other daily activity. Not really much time to maintain a website. Things finally slowed down a bit, and I find myself with at least a small amount of time to write about that which I do. So….here goes. I plan on sharing gun making and engraving projects I’ve done and am doing, share things of my engraving history, hunting stories, and generally topics I’m enthused about and enjoy. I plan on having fun.

For the first segment, I’m going to start with a project I did this year for my wife, Rebecca. Like the cobbler whose kids have no shoes, I’d never engraved a firearm for her. Early on, I refinished and put a scope on a Savage 99 in .308 which she carried on a few early hunts with me here in Alaska. Then I built a lightweight .358 Winchester on an old tang safety Ruger M77. I built that for easier carrying for her as bear protection, thinking that I could use it as a backup if my primary rifle failed on one of our hunts. Neither ended up engraved.

Something rather significant happened on one of our last expedition hunts that made it difficult for her to shoot a rifle, and after that she only shot handgun and shotgun (more on that later). I had a Ruger Red Label in 20 gauge that she began shooting clay targets with, which became her favorite shotgun. It’s difficult for me to keep anything a secret in our household, so I decided I’d be better off consulting her from the beginning. She has been my engraving critic and supporter for 28 years and has developed her own taste in favorite styles and finishes.

Over the years I have developed my own style of scroll, which has basis in Purdey, then Lynton McKenzie, then me. A student of engraving can recognize my style quickly. Rebecca likes it, my bulino (bulino is the Italian term for almost photographic quality engraving) animals and game scenes, English scroll, and bear tracks. Not sure where the bear tracks originated, but one of my own creations has the Vibram boot tracks of a hunter walking down the top of a gun barrel. Cutting in from the side and superimposing over them are the tracks of a ten-foot brown bear. Tells a story – the man is being followed by a big bear. I’ve done many of those for Wild West Guns in Anchorage and Las Vegas. I’m pretty sure that’s where she first saw them.

So….her Ruger Red Label shotgun was to get some Jim White scroll, English scroll, and bear tracks. Bear tracks on a shotgun? Owner calls the shots (or as I say – the customer is right as long as they’re paying!). After I establish a set of spacial drawings, I create the engraving pattern itself. I hoped I could get by with a nice big set of bear tracks on the triggerguard. That way in the future, if someone who owned the gun wanted to remove them, it would be easy to file, polish, and fill in with similar engraving. Best laid plans often don’t work out. I was instructed that more tracks were needed. I added a set on the lower receiver edges, this time a number of them walking towards the barrels. Again, I designed the pattern so they could be removed easily, then English scroll like I used elsewhere could be filled in. I placed a rose bouquet on the sides and bottom of the receiver, framing them with open areas. Method for me here is I can easily replace the bouquet with game birds and dog scenes when I do another Red Label for a customer…or myself.

I like to use the combination of my own, larger scroll, and the smaller English scroll. I find I can use the English scroll in areas that are too small for my own scroll to fit pleasingly.

Years ago I did a special engraving that incorporated a ‘hidden’ engraved portion. Several times since then I’ve hidden something, and Rebecca requested I do this on her shotgun. One suggestion was hiding a caduceus, which is appropriate, as she is a physician. When I did a search for pictures, I found an interesting surprise. While the caduceus is almost universally used in the United States to portray medicine, it is really from Roman iconography, where it was carried in the left hand of Mercury, protector of merchants, shepherds, gamblers, liars, and thieves! It has two snakes entwined around a staff and is used improperly almost universally here in the US. The correct symbol is a single snake entwined around a staff and is known as the Rod (or staff) of the Asclepius (Greek god), a deity associated with healing and medicine. Engraver, know thy subject!

I decided that an appropriate place for hiding it would be under the top lever, which, when pushed to the right, would reveal it. When closed, the symbol would be hidden. Off to the engraving bench.