I grew up with guns. First BB guns, then 22's, then a shotgun and others. My father and uncle were hunters, pheasant, rabbits, ducks and such so I was taught proper firearm use and safety. I lived in a somewhat rural community and all of my friends enjoyed target shooting, plinking and hunting.
I have always thought that a lot of firearms had a great beauty to them, from hand engraving to ivory and gold inlays.
I am a modeler and miniature builder as everyone on this forum knows. Along with my engines and other pieces I have built a few arms, one I posted earlier, an Army .44 cap and ball pistol.
I have a friend who got into model cannon building. After building about 6 different types he stopped. I asked why and he said that he had built most of the interesting looking ones and didn't know what else to build.
I told him that I had seen pictures of the half sized Gatling gun so why didn't he build something like that, as a model not an operating type.
There were no plans available at that time so with the luxury of having a large city library (Cleveland, Ohio) with all of the U.S. patent files we spent a day going through the patent drawings and library books gathering information and making photocopies of the material.
With a stack of information I started making a set of drawings. This was long before I even knew about CAD so the originals were all hand drawn. With the drawings complete we started building two of them, one for me and one for him.
This is a non firing but operating miniature of the real thing. The metal work is brass and stainless and the wood is Black Walnut.
I present to you 4 pictures of my model.
gbritnell