A wild day
Wow, what a day! This morning started off with a broken pipe on the 2nd floor, which of course leaked down into the gun room. All plans for the day were cancelled as Steven and I first took care of the leak and then spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon cleaning up the mess. The good news is that we had a good reason to clean and oil guns. One particular shelf was soaked, it took the brunt of the water. On it is a 1919a6 (semi) and a display DP-28 along with associated tool rolls etc. The whole shelf was soaked with the exception of an army-issue pocket bible from WW2. The guy carried it throughout the war, and it somehow protected him, then it somehow protected itself from the mini-flood! Here's a pic.
The water poured over the edge of the shelf onto a rack of bolt guns. The only thing that really needs careful attention at this point is a GI captured Nazi banner that was displayed on the shelf below it. It's pretty fragile and I have wet it with a diluted detergent and water mixture to clean it, then I will vacuum it dry through a piece of muslin. I learned that technique on a behind-the-scenes tour of the American Textile History Museum, who does a lot of conservation work for other museums. What I learned today was to give CAREFUL consideration to where things get displayed, that there is more to security than concrete and steel doors.
While Steven and I wiped down and oiled rifles, Wendy washed some WW2 German belt buckles. Fortunately, nothing was ruined and no inventory was wet, just my 20th century military rifles. They have been through wars, so a bit of yucky water won't harm them as long as we cleaned and oiled them.
A bit of a side note, one of the rifles is a Lebel, a French rifle that was used in WW1. This particular one was cut down in the "R35" modification that turned it into a carbine. I'll save the long story for when I feature it as a "gun of the week", but when it was given to me, I assumed it had a really bad bore because I couldn't see anything reflecting in the barrel in daylight. Well, when we cleaned it up to oil it, we discovered that the reason the bore was so dark is that it was plugged with an old spider's egg sack. After running a bore brush through it followed by an oiled patch, the bore shone as if it were unfired!
Just as we were finishing up in there, Wendy intercoms down that we'd better get outside quick because the rabbit shed had just blown away. Our meat rabbits were housed in one of those 10 x 20 portable garages that are made of plastic tarp fabric and steel tubing. It had lasted almost two years, then a 50 MPG gust picked it up and threw it across the yard, destroying the frame. Now the mission shifted to cobbling together a new shelter for the rabbits because it is supposed to drop to the single-digits tonight. We managed to salvage the fabric from the old shed and build a new one under the deck. It only has to work for a few days because tomorrow morning we start work on a permanent structure that will consist of a series of shed-type buildings connected with a pole-barn type roof. It's money and time that I'd hoped to not spend until the spring, but I guess there is no better time than the present!
The water poured over the edge of the shelf onto a rack of bolt guns. The only thing that really needs careful attention at this point is a GI captured Nazi banner that was displayed on the shelf below it. It's pretty fragile and I have wet it with a diluted detergent and water mixture to clean it, then I will vacuum it dry through a piece of muslin. I learned that technique on a behind-the-scenes tour of the American Textile History Museum, who does a lot of conservation work for other museums. What I learned today was to give CAREFUL consideration to where things get displayed, that there is more to security than concrete and steel doors.
While Steven and I wiped down and oiled rifles, Wendy washed some WW2 German belt buckles. Fortunately, nothing was ruined and no inventory was wet, just my 20th century military rifles. They have been through wars, so a bit of yucky water won't harm them as long as we cleaned and oiled them.
A bit of a side note, one of the rifles is a Lebel, a French rifle that was used in WW1. This particular one was cut down in the "R35" modification that turned it into a carbine. I'll save the long story for when I feature it as a "gun of the week", but when it was given to me, I assumed it had a really bad bore because I couldn't see anything reflecting in the barrel in daylight. Well, when we cleaned it up to oil it, we discovered that the reason the bore was so dark is that it was plugged with an old spider's egg sack. After running a bore brush through it followed by an oiled patch, the bore shone as if it were unfired!
Just as we were finishing up in there, Wendy intercoms down that we'd better get outside quick because the rabbit shed had just blown away. Our meat rabbits were housed in one of those 10 x 20 portable garages that are made of plastic tarp fabric and steel tubing. It had lasted almost two years, then a 50 MPG gust picked it up and threw it across the yard, destroying the frame. Now the mission shifted to cobbling together a new shelter for the rabbits because it is supposed to drop to the single-digits tonight. We managed to salvage the fabric from the old shed and build a new one under the deck. It only has to work for a few days because tomorrow morning we start work on a permanent structure that will consist of a series of shed-type buildings connected with a pole-barn type roof. It's money and time that I'd hoped to not spend until the spring, but I guess there is no better time than the present!
posted by MVTCoPete | 11:17 PM
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