33" rear-handle

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I always wanted to post that.....
.....especially since there's usually 50-60 unregistered users lurking around the forum at any given time.

So, a few months ago I posted about vacuum-laminating a short gun blank in a Foodsaver bag:
http://spearfishing.world/spea…nt-in-vacuum-bagging.html

I finally got around to doing some cutting and shaping on the gun recently, and decided to go with a rear handle since the last 3 guns I've built have all been mids. I've also been wanting to try something a little different with the handle attachment based on something Phil showed me a couple years ago. The blank finished out pretty thin at 1-7/16" tall by 1-1/2" wide, and that made it a little tricky when laying out for the Neptonic auto-reset Reef Mech since the line release is pinned below the front of the trigger.

I started out with a short doug-fir dummy blank to lay out the trigger in relation to the handle I was fabricating. I'm using a 34" Riffe shaft that I already had so I needed the mech as far back on the blank as possible, but still leaving room for the single through-bolt attachment for the handle. I used 1/4" rod, a threaded coupler nut, and a 1/4"-20 bolt (all stainless steel) for the handle skeleton, and bent them to the shape I needed. A buddy of mine gave me a nice hunk of maple burl so I slabbed that out for the two sides of the handle. A little free-hand router action to cut the slots for the stainless hardware, and then epoxied the two halves together. I traced the pattern, jig-sawed the shape, and made a bunch of dust with the Dremel.

I'm a little ahead of myself in the thread, because the last pic shows the actual blank I'm using

Back to the gun blank, once I knew where to stick the handle I cut the trigger pocket and the spear track using a jig I made for my plunge router.
http://www.shopnotes.com/issue…nge-router-mortising-jig/
I cut the mortise with a 1/2" straight bit and cleaned up the corners with a chisel, and did the open track for the 9/32" flopper shaft using one of the Neptonic "budget" 5/16" ball end bits that Josh sells. The over-sized track will leave room for the epoxy coating later on, and I also cut the trigger mortise slightly oversized to leave room for a layer of epoxy (note the paper shims in the second pic). I used the router jig to cut the slots for the line release on the side and the finger-pull on the bottom of the blank as well.

I pinned the mech using a home made drill jig (Neptonic finally sells these for the home builder), then dry-fit all the hardware and handle to make sure the shaft engages the mech correctly (perfect, of course ). It's starting to look like a speargun now.....

Quote from Wood Guy

Very nice handiwork, there, Rich. What kind of wood is the stock, and what size/ number of bands do you plan to use?

Thank you. The stock was laminated Tigerwood (Goncalo alves) and I'm planning to use 1 band, either 9/16" or 5/8", depending on how well it shoots.

I drilled the hole just below the deep open track, then used my tapering jig to shave off the bottom near the muzzle (somewhere around 3/16"), and also both sides just a hair (maybe 1/8").

Thanks Jeff, but you and Bill are at the top of my short list of creative genius when it comes to new ideas and clever application. I certainly didn't come up with that handle concept on my own, I merely made the idea work with the materials I had available to me at the time. I'd love to have a TIG welder to fabricate some of these things, but right now all I have is a JB welder

Now for the fun stuff.....

I live in Northern California, and as divers, we're very fortunate to have an abundant population of red abalone available for the taking. I've used the mother of pearl from the shells on other guns as cover-ups for lead ballast, but this gun's getting a little something purely for decoration. Yummmm, tasty snails

I've seen a few guys making very nice inlays from manufactured sheets of "abalam", and other types of man-made pearl veneers, but since I have a pile of empty ab shells laying around in the back yard, I wanted to put them to good use.

Safety disclaimer: abalone shell is toxic; wear eye protection, and a respirator rated for asbestos exposure when working with the shells, and if possible, wet-cut to minimize dust.

I slabbed them out with a diamond wheel and shaved them down to a uniform thickness on a belt sander. The shells are bowl shaped, so getting flat usable pieces is a bit of a headache. It took about 7 shells to get enough slabs for the small inlay I did. I found a picture of a lingcod that I liked and traced it onto clear mylar, then transfered the parts of the fish onto the shell blanks with carbon paper. I used a tiny diamond burr in a rotary tool to cut out the 7 individual puzzle pieces and 400 grit paper to fine tune the fit. All the pieces were assembled onto blue masking tape, then I scored the outline onto the wood with an X-Acto knife on the bottom of the gun just ahead of the trigger guard.

The plunge router attachment Dremel makes is a little sloppy, and my Craftsman knock-off doesn't fit into it anyway, so I made my own router base with some bolts and scrap wood. I set the depth of the bit to the thickness of the inlay and routered out the bulk of the wood waste, then cleaned up the recess with the X-Acto. I little epoxy and some sanding finished it off nicely.

Quote from Dan

Rich, is the ab body really as black as it appears in the pic?

Yeah, they actually look pretty disgusting when we grab them, but all the black parts get trimmed off and the meat inside is nice and white. I don't usually eat the black parts (or "lips" as we call them in Nor Cal ;)), but some people like to grind them up and stew them into a tasty chowder.

Here's a link to a good article on step-by-step trimming and preparation of the foot of the snail:
http://diver.net/seahunt/abalone/abalone.htm