For some reason, sculpted guns keep popping up in the edge of my vision as of late. And now here's a wonderful example from you Phil. Great concept with the gold C scroll frame. And once again I'm picking up the Single Actuon Army I'm cutting wondering how it would have looked with sculpted scrolls. I see a lot of metal moving in my near future. Thanks for an inspiring piece.
Phil, have you done any measurements as to just how deep the deepest cuts are? I took Alain's Grand Master class in '12 and he was taking background down 1 1/2 mm deep for gold fill. I made it to 1 mm and decided that was deep enough for me!
1mm to 1.5mm sounds about right Sam, but it depends on the tightness and space size between the leaves, of course it is possible to get good carving which looks deep with much less than 1mm, but with a gun this size, it needs to be really bold, the measurement from the back of the side plate to the forend is 8.1/4" and across the breech is over 2.3/4" much larger than even a .600!
1.5mm would be the very top end but usually for gold inlay, although there is no real need for .5mm for inlay between scroll leaves, by the time it's hammered in, it would, (in my case anyway) only be around .2mm thick.