As a huge fan of this movie franchise, I was over the moon to have the opportunity to design and engrave my artwork to be used in the fourth installment of the series. When I accepted this job, my schedule was already completely booked, perhaps overbooked, but after careful evaluation, I couldn’t say no, even though I knew it meant extremely demanding hours behind the pencil, drawing the designs, going back and forth on revisions with everyone involved, and also the shop hours in metal preparation, design transfers and ultimately, hand engraving.
In addition to the artwork and engraving normally in my wheelhouse, came the inevitable unexpected hiccups in a big custom project, finding parts, making parts, team collaborations between multiple wonderful artisans working with each other from different sides of the country and the shipping issues that come along with that. Project management! We all pulled a lot of weight and accomplished what, for high craftsmanship is a rare and remarkable feat to create a dueling set like this in the time frame required, without sacrificing integrity in the art and craftsmanship. This set is not built like a movie prop, but like a rare and exquisite work of art encompassing what I estimate to be over a thousand work hours between the members of the team.
Rock Galotti, the master armorer on the film came up with the idea for the base receiver of a Thompson Center Encore with a bull barrel and gold bead front sight. Many people referring to these as a Thompson Contender, but they are slightly different models and receivers. Steve Parker, of SAP Fine Furniture created the exquisite figured walnut presentation boxes, as well as the trays in which a single round could be served to the duelers. Troy at Bullberry Legacy Barrelworks crafted the bull barrels with the gold bead font sights, and also rough cut the grips and fore ends, from the same museum grade figured walnut the boxes were made of. Rick at Fickle Pelican Woodworks helped to provide the finishing of the grips and fore ends, sanding, polishing and oiling them to perfection. My role was to design and draw all of the artwork and execute the engraving by hand, in deep relief. This included the baroque scroll and skull on the receivers, the custom designed Fleur de Lis grip medallion inserts, barrel engraving, and finally the round casings… all of them! Phew! And being as this was for film, things had to be done in duplicate…. Hats off to the team for pulling this off and getting these exquisite works of craftsmanship off to the set, on schedule, for filming!
The artwork design was extensive and took well over 100 hours of drawing, brainstorming, changes of direction, and revisions before ultimately settling on a design to execute in steel. In the case of this set, using that art in the two variations to differentiate the pistols slightly but still present them as a matching set. A story old as time, good and evil, ying and yang, which is why one pistol features deep relief engraving inked in black, and the other, a polished background for the skull and scrolling and hammered texture surround.
One thing about the art of hand engraving is, when you see an engravers artwork, it isn’t just the engraving. An engraver is an artist who spends a lot of time drawing, honing their design craft to creating a style of their own, that is then applied to their canvas via engraving and subsequently honing the skills required to cut art into metal. The metal is simply the medium for the original creation in design and drawing. I believe, with any art or craftsmanship, it is important to consider the artists’ process and time in thought and design, as well as the execution and finishing. High craftsmanship, for those that work in these skilled fields is a very time consuming labor of love, but none of us would have it any other way.
To start the project, each receiver had to be surface prepped for the engraving, which in this case meant taking a bead blasted receiver and finishing it, by hand, to 800 grit on all surfaces. Once the preparation was up to quality standards, I sized my hand drawn artwork to the proper dimensions and printed transfers of the art to apply to the metal. I have several videos on my social media pages, Instagram and Facebook where you can view how the metal is cut. The transfers I use are typically, and were in this case, outlines of the design, as the details I prefer to do freehand and in the moment. Shading a leaf for dimension is, in my opinion, the best part of the engraving itself. It really brings the design to life from being just a simple outline.
My favorite engraving technique is bulino, or sometimes referred to as banknote engraving, but banknote is often confused and is actually a different style if you get into the technical details, but that is a different topic all together! The fine detail in the skull is done very slowly and painstakingly using a combination of cut lines and dots to bring it to a photorealistic appearance. Some of this work was done using a pneumatic hand piece and some of it is done by hand pushing a burin into the metal. Different geometries of your cutting tool, the depth of the lines or dots, the exact shape of the dot, and the size or pressure applied when cutting, all help create the range of grey scale in the image.
Once the engraving was completed to my satisfaction, it was onto inking the images to create more contrast and then to reassembly. At this point, I thought I was done and the project was coming to a finish, but then came Rock’s idea for engraving the round casings…. and lots of them, because again, when it’s for film, they have to be in duplicate. But hey, engraved bullet casings in a very cool presentation case, I’m in! Each of those has my single line work simple scrolling and a silhouette of the specific fleur de lis detail I designed for the grip medallions. The grip medallions were also my original artwork variations of a traditional fleur de lis, but with a baroque scroll detailing to match the scrollwork designed for the receivers.
The feeling of having everything reassembled, in the presentation boxes and ready to go on the big screen was incredible for the whole team. Giddy is the only word I can thing of to describe that first pull of the trigger guard to break the barrel open! Giddi-er (if thats a word?) came seeing the movie and Keanu Reeves, as John Wick, do the exact same thing when handed his pistol for the epic duel scene.
I’m honored and proud to be able to represent my craft in such a way. I hope you get out and enjoy the film and have enjoyed hearing about the process of creating these pieces of art and cinematic history. If you’re a fan of the artwork itself, you’ll find a series of limited edition hand printed Intaglios of this set, available for purchase in my website shop.
Best regards,
M.