Photo Provided Gun engraver Larry A. Parker has made a name for himself with his exact and elegant firearm art.

BELMONT — Larry A. Parker of Belmont has made a name for himself by practicing the fading art of engraving firearms.

His expertise has earned him acclaim and the National Rifle Association, among others, has featured his work.

Parker started practicing his craft in the 1950s. More recenlty, he has engraved at the past 14 NRA?National?Conventions. He expects to make his 15th appearance in April at the NRA’s convention in Dallas, Texas.

“I was interested in black powder muzzle loading rifles, and back then there weren’t any kits. You got a blank of wood, a stock, a barrel, locks and triggers, and you inletted the barrel, the lock, the trigger and all the hardware,” Parker said. “I used to do a lot of competition target shooting, so I built my own rifles.”

He said he built his first rifle in 1958.

“A friend says, ‘Can you build me one?’ and so on, and it went on from there. I built a lot of black powder rifles,” he said. “I built, I think, 16 muzzle-loading rifles, all from stocks that were not pre-carved. These were planks of wood like you got at the saw mill.

“I learned how to make fancier rifles. Every one I made, I made a little bit better and a little bit better,” he said. “I said, ‘I can do better woodwork than these factory ones.’ So I start building high-powered rifles — bolt-action rifles like you hunt elk, deer, antelope, stuff like that with. I liked to work fancy woods, and I learned checkering and carving of stocks.”

After building several high-powered rifles of various calibers, he expanded his attention from woodworking to engraving. In this, he found an exacting and demanding craft, unforgiving of mistakes. The nature of the craft is also highly personal.

“Engraving is something you cannot learn from videotapes and a book. You have to have a master engraver show you the techniques and the principles of how to sharpen your tools, the angles and so forth,” he said.

More than 30 years ago, he attended the Rochester Institute of Technology College of Fine Arts for three years, where he studied under Neil Hartliep , Ray Vira Montez and Lynton McKenzie, all of whom are now deceased.

“The National Rifle Association had gunsmithing schools up there, and one of the courses was engraving. It was pretty expensive back then,” he said. “I studied basic engraving. Cutting steel. Then I went back the next year and took sculptured relief of metal. This is all using a hammer and a chisel. You draw the design on the metal and then you cut it, free-hand. No templates. No computer technology. Then I went back the third year and took gold and silver inlay in the steel. Since then, I have worked on a lot of high-grade firearms.”

He also engraves knives and tomahawks.

“There’s only about 330 hand-engravers in the United States. There’s 320 million people,”?Parker noted. “What I do is a dying art. Everything today is done with machines, computers, lasers. But high-grade firearms that are hand-engraved command a premium in price.”

He said engraving jobs can take months to complete.

“I have taken $5,000-$9,000 shotguns and four, five months later, those guns might be worth $40,000-$60,000 collector value,” he said, noting such firearms often feature 24-karat gold inlays.

“You don’t do it overnight, and one thing about engraving: I can’t make a mistake. I can’t glue a piece back in. When you cut it, it’s there.”

The styles he uses include different types of scrollwork, natural creatures or scenes, as well as symbols.

“Since the beginning of time, man has decorated his weapons, from the Stone Age man picking up a feather and tying it on his spear,” Parker said.

Parker can be found at all of the NRA’s national conventions. Last year in Atlanta, Ga., his table caught the attention of Donald Trump Jr.

“When he saw my table there, a quarter-million-dollars worth of iron on a 6-foot table, he stopped in his tracks along with the Secret Service,” Parker said, noting Trump Jr. spent about 10 minutes visiting his table and talking with him.

Parker is one of two living engravers to have two pieces in the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyo.

“One was my son’s BB gun. It was gold-inlaid,” Parker said, adding that his son, Arik, died in 1990. He said Arik’s gun is the only gold-inlaid Daisy BB?gun in the world. “So I took his BB gun, took it apart. I engraved that gun and it is now in the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in the Cody Firearms Museum.”

Parker’s second piece on display there is a Model 72 Stevens rifle.

Parker’s engraved guns have appeared on the covers of national magazines, and he said there are popular YouTube videos of him performing his work.

For more than 31 years, he also has operated Parker Safe Sales, a safe and vault headquarters stocking more than 100 safes, all made in the United States. Call 740-310-8030 for more information about Parker, his safe headquarters or his engraving work.