Recovering, Preserving and Displaying History

I dug up this rusty civil war musket barrel band.

Restoring it with electrolysis.

After an hour, progress is checked. I discover that it is stamped with an "S".
This is either an inspectors mark, or the English factory S stamp meaning unserviceable arms sold out of the service. Since England officially didn't support either side during the civil war, this was used by arms traders as a way to export them from England to the states without "officially" supporting the war efforts.
It is amazing after 150+ years in the ground, this rusty relic still has a story to tell, through the magic of electrolysis.

Building the display

 Since many people cant picture this piece in it's context, I want to make a display that is a portion of the musket. First I need to reverse engineer the piece so it is dimensionally correct.  That process is started as a simple scan of the part, dimensions are taken and the scan is scaled. 3d printed gauges are made to check
fit. The third adjustment fits perfectly.

Now extrude the profile for the stock and barrel. Scaling dimensions from a musket.

Now it is ready to print.  To paint, or not?

I decided painting the display would distract from the actual recovered barrel band, Leaving the display grey would highlight the actual artifact. Lets print it...

printed and being painted grey

The finished product..... Notice the rifling in the barrel.

​Next I think I will resin print some translucent smoke to hold the bullet away from the barrel. Stay tuned....

UPDATE:  Printed the smoke. It was too translucent. It looked like water. So I over-cured it in UV light to yellow the resin up a bit. What do you think?