Carving turns guns into art
Tom Kosmicki worked 23 years as a machinist at Kodak only to lose his job in 2002.
Sometimes, though, downsizing can be uplifting.
An avid hunter and fisherman, Kosmicki’s love of the outdoors guided him toward new career paths. Thus was born Cosmic Curb, his decorative landscape curbing business he operates and Cosmic Custom Carvings where he engraves gunstocks and grips with breathtaking three-dimensional wildlife scenes.
“It hasn’t been easy,” said Kosmicki, an outgoing 50-year-old bachelor who can talk turkey — and bear, deer and moose, too — with the best of them. “The concrete business is hustle, hustle, working all day and estimating all night. But it’s rewarding to pretty up someone’s yard.”
And rewarding to pretty up someone’s gun.
Just like landscaping can add thousands of dollars of value to a person’s home, an elegant carving can add thousands to the value of a firearm. Collectors will pay $5,000 or more on average over retail if a gun has been turned into a work of art.
But even a hunting gun personalized with a tiny squirrel or a loved one’s initials can make it priceless. A modest shotgun can become an heirloom. A beat-up rifle picked up at a garage sale can be rejuvenated into the envy of friends.
For Kosmicki, that makes the smile he sees on a customer’s face his real reward, not the extra income. “When I’m gone, I’ll have left something special behind,” he said.
His work isn’t just good. It’s exceptional.
An artistic “doodler” since childhood, Kosmicki dabbled in gun carving casually for years using an Exacto knife. Then one day he happened upon Gunstock Carving, the pre-eminent book on the subject by master carver and instructor Bill Janney of Ohio.
Janney’s motto, “Life is too short to hunt with an ugly gun,” became etched in Kosmicki’s brain. That led him to enroll in Janney’s course five years ago. There, he gained the skills and confidence to take his game to a new level.
“He told me, ‘Wow, you need to keep at this because this is some good stuff,’” Kosmicki said proudly.
The carving is done with high-speed air drills tipped with carbide and diamond tips. A full stock scene can require 10 to 20 hours of labor. Knowing there is sentimental as well as real value in each piece he works on for customers heightens Kosmicki’s senses.
“If you take a $1,000 rifle and start carving on it, that makes me want to be precise,” he said.
At one time, friends and family wondered if he had the patience for such work. Too short a fuse, they said.
“But I tell this to my son, too, ‘You have patience for the things you want in life,’” Kosmicki said. “I would go out in the woods at 16 and all I saw was tails running away. So you start reading up and learning that if you sit in a tree stand, you’ll have some success. Hunting taught me to be patient.”
He’s an accomplished big-game hunter and taxidermist. When it comes to carving details like the muscles in a bull elk’s neck or tendons in a whitetail’s hind leg, his knowledge of wildlife anatomy comes into play.
And if Kosmicki’s memory fades, all he has to do is head upstairs from his basement workshop in his Greece home and peer at the awesome display of preserved trophy deer and fish hanging on his walls.
The mounts include a New York Big Buck Club 10-pointer taken on opening day of the 1999 archery season and a 54-inch muskellunge.
Wildlife art and photographs add to the lodge/museum ambience. Arrows, tree stands, fishing rods and camouflage clothing are strewn about, along with a boat and canoe in the driveway, making this the ultimate man cave.
“I tell my neighbors I’m a redneck living in the wrong place.”
One recent morning, Kosmicki was busy working on a gunstock that will be a Christmas present for his son Zachary, 17, who lives in Florida with his mom.
Wearing magnifying lens goggles, he skillfully guided a drill bit spinning at 400,000 rpm with his left hand and steadied it with his right. The sound of the drill was the same one you hear after the dentist says “Open wide.”
“It’s the same thing the dentist uses on your teeth,” Kosmicki said.
The smell of burning wood didn’t faze Curby, his faithful Chocolate lab, curled up on a nearby rug.
“It’s relaxing doing it. You can get lost in your work,” Kosmicki said. “But it puts stress on you. You have to hold the drill so still and so steady. Between that and the eye strain, if you can sit and do it three hours, that’s a long time.”
Inspiration for his designs come from magazines, catalogs and art. Once an image is chosen, it is properly sized and transferred onto pressure sensitive Mylar film, which adheres to the wood surface to provide a starting guide.
Taking away a layer at a time using various sized bits, Kosmicki can make deer, moose, turkey, elk, pheasants and waterfowl come to life on what was bare wood.
Handgrips are done in attractive fish scale and basket weave designs. Intricate leafing and scrolling is accomplished freehand. Stain and a wood sealer finish the job.
The more detailed the carving, the more valuable the gun.
Kosmicki’s personal collection includes a Winchester Model 70 rifle done complete with elk, deer, sheep and moose scenes. He paid $1,000 for the gun but has been offered more than $6,000 for it. That came from a Manitoba Indian chief.
With 60 hours of work into the piece and memories of a nice buck he shot with the gun the first time he used it, “I can’t part with it. It has sentimental value to me.”
Just like the inexpensive .22 his good friend Steve Tahou bought for his 13-year-old son, Jack. Kosmicki customized it last fall by carving a tiny squirrel into the stock and the words: “Merry Christmas. To Jack. From Dad. Christmas 2008.”
Steve Tahou passed away two months later at age 53.
The value of that .22 to his son? Priceless.
