How do you ship a lance? And where are my guns?
Just finished dinner. Leftover chicken and gravy over rice, with a nice fresh salad. I love food!
Tonight's mission is to figure out how to ship a bundle of 9'6" WW1 Cavalry lances. They are too long to ship via UPS or FedEx, but it would be expensive to ship via truck freight. I'm going to experiment with one of them by removing the lance head to see if it will buy me 6" of length. The person I am shipping them to needs them before next Wednesday.
These are dated 1916. I assume the bamboo shaft is repro, but the point and butt cap are the real thing. They came out of an arsenal in Rajasthan along with some other funky stuff. Really neat thing come out of 3rd world palaces, you just have to be lucky enough to find them.
Here's a great example: Sitting in Boston right now are two big crates awaiting US Customs clearance. They contain 59 original 19th century muskets siezed "from the peasants" and just released from government storage over there. They have been in storage for over a century!
In the past, I have also been lucky enough to get my hands on several original swords including a British Victorian Officer's sword and even a Napoleanic era French smallsword with a rapier blade. Somewhere on the Atlantic in a different crate, there are four 19th century pistols headed my way as well. One of them is a double-barrel, and one of the others appears to be a converted flintlock. Whenever a new crate of stuff arrives, it's just like Christmas morning for me.
The two crates of muskets in Boston weight 1400lb, which is more than I want to cram into my 1/2 ton pickup so I am having them trucked up here. The trucking cost will add about $6.50 per musket in cost, but I think it will just about even up the costs of my having to take a whole day to drive into Boston, about $60 in gas, two meals on the road, and possibly overloading my truck's suspension. The trucking company says they will drop the crates right at my door with a liftgate, and all we will have to do is bust open the crates outside and pass the muskets inside one at a time in bucket brigade fashion. Many hands make light work, and it's easy to get volunteers to come see what is in the crates.
Being original muskets, these fall under a different classification than my reproduction stuff. More paperwork, more inspections. I hope they clear soon because today was the last day of free storage at the bonded warehouse and starting tomorrow I'll have to pay a daily storage charge. That's not the only reason I'm dying for the crates to get here, mostly I just can't wait to see them. This deal has been a year in the making!
OK, back to work, the lance experiment is about to begin...
Tonight's mission is to figure out how to ship a bundle of 9'6" WW1 Cavalry lances. They are too long to ship via UPS or FedEx, but it would be expensive to ship via truck freight. I'm going to experiment with one of them by removing the lance head to see if it will buy me 6" of length. The person I am shipping them to needs them before next Wednesday.
These are dated 1916. I assume the bamboo shaft is repro, but the point and butt cap are the real thing. They came out of an arsenal in Rajasthan along with some other funky stuff. Really neat thing come out of 3rd world palaces, you just have to be lucky enough to find them.
Here's a great example: Sitting in Boston right now are two big crates awaiting US Customs clearance. They contain 59 original 19th century muskets siezed "from the peasants" and just released from government storage over there. They have been in storage for over a century!
In the past, I have also been lucky enough to get my hands on several original swords including a British Victorian Officer's sword and even a Napoleanic era French smallsword with a rapier blade. Somewhere on the Atlantic in a different crate, there are four 19th century pistols headed my way as well. One of them is a double-barrel, and one of the others appears to be a converted flintlock. Whenever a new crate of stuff arrives, it's just like Christmas morning for me.
The two crates of muskets in Boston weight 1400lb, which is more than I want to cram into my 1/2 ton pickup so I am having them trucked up here. The trucking cost will add about $6.50 per musket in cost, but I think it will just about even up the costs of my having to take a whole day to drive into Boston, about $60 in gas, two meals on the road, and possibly overloading my truck's suspension. The trucking company says they will drop the crates right at my door with a liftgate, and all we will have to do is bust open the crates outside and pass the muskets inside one at a time in bucket brigade fashion. Many hands make light work, and it's easy to get volunteers to come see what is in the crates.
Being original muskets, these fall under a different classification than my reproduction stuff. More paperwork, more inspections. I hope they clear soon because today was the last day of free storage at the bonded warehouse and starting tomorrow I'll have to pay a daily storage charge. That's not the only reason I'm dying for the crates to get here, mostly I just can't wait to see them. This deal has been a year in the making!
OK, back to work, the lance experiment is about to begin...
posted by MVTCoPete | 10:19 PM
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