John King used to sell as cast forearm caps for these rifles, but he's retired now. Maybe he still has some though?

As for pewter tips it melts at such a low temperature it doesn't char any wood. I've cast pewter tips by putting pewter in a soup can and heat it in a pan of boiling water. That's not hot enough to char wood.

I have done a few with some good results and some blemishes. If you decide to pour your own nosecap, do a practice pour on a piece of scrap wood first. Make sure you have some holes drilled at various angles to help secure the casting to the wood. I also recommend going around the perimeter of the wood with a small round burr on a Dremel tool to slightly undercut the wood to provide more grip. Here are some two that I did, one had some areas that did not fill out entirely, unfortunately. Dont know how to prevent that. Got lucky on the last one. You might find a youtube video on the subject. 
Good Luck whatever you decide!
Joe S

this one came out better.

Thanks guys I think that this will be an interesting and rewarding task. Fortunately I have extensive experience in repairing and replacing inlays on antique furniture so I'm familiar with different techniques. As with most things preparation and practice are the keys to a good outcome and I'm looking forward to getting started.

I just want to add a couple of notes. When looking at the information online I read a lot about how guys build dams to hold  the pour and about the disasters when using common modeling clay. Only once did I read about a product mentioned by name that worked well. Sculpy is a modeling compound that when baked at 350 degrees for 30 minutes turns hard as a rock with minimum shrinkage and can actually be machined. I've used this with great success to make one time moulds to cast butt plates and pistol grip caps out of plastic casting compounds. There are dozens of amazing materials out there that most folks are unaware of.  I suggest that everyone pick up a good art supply catalog [Blick] and a good Taxidermy supply catalog [McKenzie] which will open your eyes to a lot of materials that can save a lot of time and frustrtion.

marlinguy wrote on Sep 29^th, 2026 at 1:25pm:


Pewter which is primarily Tin (90+% depending on the exact alloy) melts at around 500F. 
How do you get it to melt using boiling water?

There are some metals that will melt at those low temps around 200F.
'Woods Metal' is one. The chamber cast metal Cerosafe is another. The first melts at under 200F. Cerrosafe melts at around 200F. 
Neither will char wood when poured.

Maybe heating the wood a bit before pouring will help. 
A heat gun or simply very carefully warming it over a stove will  do it.
At around 200F pouring temp, the wood itself wouldn't need any more heating-up than that to help filling out the casting.

There are a lot of different low temp alloys used for casting.
The link below has a lot of info.

FWIW, if you use an alloy that has Bismuth in it, the alloy will expand when cooled completely. 
That helps when you are needing the casting to anchor itself in position as with these FE tip castings.

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A 'new pewter' spoon might fall apart in the boiling water poured into my teacup! 


I'll have to try some 'newer new' stuff. Everything I have that is new pewter scrap (no lead content) melts around #450.
just like 95/5 tin/silver solder.

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