Muskets are in, but so is a computer virus
The antique muskets arrived here in Thursday. Of course, the truck couldn't come up the road to drop them off here since the road was posted with a 6-ton weight limit just days before. The road is dirt for about a mile and a half before you get to our place, and it seems that the towns posts it for a few months each spring so the road won't be destroyed during "mud season".
I had to take my pickup into town to meet the truck next to Jiffy Mart, the local convenience store/gas station. Since I hadn't planned on using my truck, it was piled high with bags of trash pending a "dump run". First step: take all of the trash out of the truck, and as much of the snow as I could kick out. Once in town, we moved the crates onto the liftgate of the truck, then lowered it to the height of my pickup's tailgate. We then dragged and shoved the 700lb boxes into my truck.
The muskets were packed in plastic bags and padded with layers of shredded paper. There was no way to get the crates out of my truck, so I emptied them out, carrying the muskets into the "gun room" two and three at a time. I came up with the brilliant idea of burning the hundreds of pounds of paper shreds in our "burn barrel" several armloads at a time to get rid of it. This was going pretty well until a flaming strip of paper escaped from the barrel and fell into the crate of paper. Then it got exciting. I dragged the crate full of flaming paper away from my truck and dumped it out into a pile in the driveway. You would be surprised at how long a pile of shredded paper will burn. The other crate, once emptied of guns, was dragged over with a pile of other crates, paper and all, to be burned at a later date when doing so would entertain more people than just myself.
All in all, it is an interesting mix of 19th century guns. Some are Enfields, others are clones. There are 3-bands, 2-bands, musketoons, 1842 pattern muskets, and a type of halfstock with a pistol grip that I have never seen before. The halfstocks look like civilian fowlers, but have sling swivels and rack markings.
The 1842 patterns are interesting, they are the last of the muskets you could classify as a "Brown Bess" since the next generation of British muskets after them had barrel bands. I'll get to keep a few pieces from this cache for myself, and I think I should probably keep an 1842 just because it was the last of the Besses.
I've managed to restrain myself from opening up the bags and examining them in detail, but I promised myself that I would wait until Harry O. came up so we could do it together. He is coming tomorrow, and a few other folks just might drop by as well. This is really experience for people who love guns because these things haven't seen the light of day in a century or more.
On the darker side of life, I got a nasty computer virus Friday morning. It really caused some havoc on my machine. I had to reload Windows and several other fairly important programs like drivers, my online service program, etc. I still can't get my CD burner to work.
My antivirus program (AVG from www.grisoft.com) warned me that it had downloaded, but the virus attached it self to certain Windows files that caused big problems once AVG moved the infected file to it's "virus vault" where it could be repaired. It is a new virus that many of the larger A/V programs don't even have in their databases yet, but AVG does. I have about 14-16 hours into getting this virus out of my computer and repairing the damage it did.
Most viruses require that you do something to activate them, for instance, open an email attachment. Not this one. It loaded itself from a website I had been trying to access while doing a google search for a particular gun trade show in Germany. It is their version of the SHOT show, only bigger. I don't remember what link it was that I clicked on from the google results page, but the java script on it must contain the virus. Nasty trick.
Let this be a warning to all: keep your antivirus software up to date.
I had to take my pickup into town to meet the truck next to Jiffy Mart, the local convenience store/gas station. Since I hadn't planned on using my truck, it was piled high with bags of trash pending a "dump run". First step: take all of the trash out of the truck, and as much of the snow as I could kick out. Once in town, we moved the crates onto the liftgate of the truck, then lowered it to the height of my pickup's tailgate. We then dragged and shoved the 700lb boxes into my truck.
The muskets were packed in plastic bags and padded with layers of shredded paper. There was no way to get the crates out of my truck, so I emptied them out, carrying the muskets into the "gun room" two and three at a time. I came up with the brilliant idea of burning the hundreds of pounds of paper shreds in our "burn barrel" several armloads at a time to get rid of it. This was going pretty well until a flaming strip of paper escaped from the barrel and fell into the crate of paper. Then it got exciting. I dragged the crate full of flaming paper away from my truck and dumped it out into a pile in the driveway. You would be surprised at how long a pile of shredded paper will burn. The other crate, once emptied of guns, was dragged over with a pile of other crates, paper and all, to be burned at a later date when doing so would entertain more people than just myself.
All in all, it is an interesting mix of 19th century guns. Some are Enfields, others are clones. There are 3-bands, 2-bands, musketoons, 1842 pattern muskets, and a type of halfstock with a pistol grip that I have never seen before. The halfstocks look like civilian fowlers, but have sling swivels and rack markings.
The 1842 patterns are interesting, they are the last of the muskets you could classify as a "Brown Bess" since the next generation of British muskets after them had barrel bands. I'll get to keep a few pieces from this cache for myself, and I think I should probably keep an 1842 just because it was the last of the Besses.
I've managed to restrain myself from opening up the bags and examining them in detail, but I promised myself that I would wait until Harry O. came up so we could do it together. He is coming tomorrow, and a few other folks just might drop by as well. This is really experience for people who love guns because these things haven't seen the light of day in a century or more.
On the darker side of life, I got a nasty computer virus Friday morning. It really caused some havoc on my machine. I had to reload Windows and several other fairly important programs like drivers, my online service program, etc. I still can't get my CD burner to work.
My antivirus program (AVG from www.grisoft.com) warned me that it had downloaded, but the virus attached it self to certain Windows files that caused big problems once AVG moved the infected file to it's "virus vault" where it could be repaired. It is a new virus that many of the larger A/V programs don't even have in their databases yet, but AVG does. I have about 14-16 hours into getting this virus out of my computer and repairing the damage it did.
Most viruses require that you do something to activate them, for instance, open an email attachment. Not this one. It loaded itself from a website I had been trying to access while doing a google search for a particular gun trade show in Germany. It is their version of the SHOT show, only bigger. I don't remember what link it was that I clicked on from the google results page, but the java script on it must contain the virus. Nasty trick.
Let this be a warning to all: keep your antivirus software up to date.
posted by MVTCoPete | 1:30 AM
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