That takes balls.

The kit comes with very little actual work needing to be done, other than final shaping and sanding of the stock/grip. It’s the sort of thing that anyone can do with some sandpaper and a little time, or it can be done more quickly using such things as files or a Dremel rotary tool. Here’s what the kit looks like:

Not shown: mounting screws.

Here’s a little better pic of the rough condition of the stock/grip:

After shaping and sanding, this is what it looked like:

No, that’s not your imagination: that’s a different stock/grip piece. I forgot to take a ‘before’ pic of my stock/grip.

Once I had the stock/grip shaped and fitted, it was time to run it through my Glowforge laser:

Note the positioning marks in pencil.

And after both sides were done, the next step was to apply a poly-stain finish:

Getting both side panels in the same position was just a matter of careful use of the laser. Here you can see the result:

The depth of those cuts is only a couple hundredths of an inch, but it’s sufficient to make it more secure in the hand.

Mounting the hardware was a matter of two small screws, and the gun was basically finished:

As you can see in the video above, this is actually a fairly small gun. And while black powder is much less powerful than modern smokeless powder, it would nonetheless be very lethal at close range, propelling a .45 caliber, ~130gr lead ball at probably 400-500 fps (I intend on chrono testing this next weekend), for a muzzle energy of about 70ft/lbs. That’s roughly what you could expect from a modern .22lr bullet from a similar barrel length (the Liegi has a barrel about 2.375″).

Here’s the Liegi next to a NAA Mini Revolver:

The NAA has five shots, but each has only about half the power of the Liegi.

Here it is next to a Bond Arms derringer with a 3″ barrel:

The Bond has a .357mag barrel, so two shots with 400+ ft-lbs of muzzle energy.

And here it is with a J-frame in .38sp +P:

The S&W has five shots, each with a little less than 400 ft-lbs of muzzle energy.

In terms of weight, the Liegi is only about 6 ounces. That puts it a little over the NAA Mini-revolver, at less than a third of the Bond derringer, and about half of the S&W Airweight (mine has the scandium frame and titanium cylinder). In other words, a very modest amount of weight to carry. You can easily see why these were such popular guns.

Here’s another video, on the “making of” a Liegi from the same kit as I got, and then shooting the gun:

Fun project.

Jim Downey

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