my first real engraving project "llama" Especial .22

[Meshach]

Hello all,
I have been meaning to make this post for a while now, I consider myself to be in advanced beginner or intermediate stages as I have only been Engraving for about 3 years now though I have a good mentor/teacher and a strong drive and stubbornness to figure things out so I do feel I have made great progress in learning this art.

The following pictures are of my first real gun engraving project that I did from Feb 2022 through Feb of 2023, it wasn’t the ONLY thing I engraved but pretty much everything else was just short practice plate/gift projects.
It is a bit of a conglomeration of techniques as it was pretty much just a practice plate project for anything and everything that I wanted to try at the time.

The slide is finished in a nitrite bluing of full purple. the Frame was finished in a hot blue.
Grips are made from purple heart, trimmed in .999 fine silver wire, butterfly is made from brass wire with abalone and mother of pearl inlay.
side panels of the frame are inlaid .999 fine silver sheet made from a round.
The back of the grip on the frame has silver wire inlay
The Smiling sun emblem was done in silver, copper, and brass wire. The rest of the wire inlay on the trigger, safety, barrel bushing, hammer, slide rib, grip safety, hammer spring housing, front of grip, and trigger guard were all done in copper wire.
There was “checkering” cast into the grip safety and spring housing but it was pretty rough so I did my best to sharpen and clean it up in my engraving process but the checkering on the beaver-tail of the frame was added by me.

 

[Meshach]

and of all the hundreds of photos I took during the project these are the only "before" pics that I have.. haha!

 

[monk]

a very unique design. i kinda like it esp the sunshine & butterfly

 

[Meshach]

Thank you Monk, I appreciate your opinion

 

[alwayslearning2012]

I like the butterfly. May I ask what equipment you're using?

 

[Meshach]

I like the butterfly. May I ask what equipment you're using?

Thank you.

sure, for the slide and part of the frame I was using a homemade pneumatic tool, but about the point of starting the silver panels I had saved up enough to get a Lindsay classic with a collet nose
the shaping of the grips was done with basic woodworking tools, hand saws, files, chisels, sand-paper, "gun-line" brand checkering tools. for the work on the butterfly I used an X-acto knife for some of the fine cuts in the wood but the majority of the inlay cuts and all of the shaping of the individual pieces of abalone were cut with a ultra-high-speed (400,000 rpm) rotary tool that is made by.. *googles* SCM, the power carver 400xs.. those parts were held with clear packing tape while shaping them. I have what I believe to be one of the better chinese made engravers-block / ball-vice that was used to hold everything else with the aid of some thermoplastic beads to add support to oddly shapped parts.
I have a Bosh & Lomb stereoscopic microscope .7-3x zoom with 10x eye pieces (I have since added a .5 barlo lense for the added focal range), I started the project with a home made turntable but it just was not smooth enough for my taste and I got a Shimpo 8.75" "banding wheel" which has served well. mounted on top of a pedestal that I made from an old dish antenna tripod mount haha, here is a picture of the setup tucked into my corner, shortly after finishing this project.
I feel like I'm getting long winded with this response but if I missed a detail you're currious about just let me know