Cleaning the gun room

I've spent the better part of two days cleaning the gun room. Wow, over the years I have accumulated a lot of crap. There are leftover parts from guns that were built a long time ago, unidentified cases of ammo, spare barrels, spare parts kits. I'm taking the excess stuff and listing it on gunbroker to find new homes for it. So far I have only come across one receiver that I can't quite identify. Seems to be for some sort of AK variant. I'll figure it out and if the gun it was purchased was is already built on a different receiver, it will go on gunbroker too. The gun room looks a lot nicer now. It will be easier to find stuff. As an added bonus, Caleigh is now 11 years old and I can put her to work sorting the boxes and boxes of used brass. Kids are handy like that.

What is it with gun sellers?

I go to gun shows, I peruse online gun auctions, I check out the inventory of gun shops that I may be driving by in case there is something either interesting to be had or that "deal of a lifetime" gun that is misidentified. Like the Trapdoor Springfield that I got for $100 because it had been sporterized, but had a perfect bore and ultimately ended up a carbine replica. Another "deal of a lifetime" was an original Ketland fowler for $100. That story is told elsewhere. What I have noticed is that every time a gun seller comes across a musket they can't identify, they immediately call it a "COS" musket. What they mean is Committee of Safety. Sorry guys, the committee of safety may have had military muskets locally produced during the Revolutionary War, but they followed known patterns, generally copying Brown Bess type muskets. Just because you don't know what it is doesn't automatically default to it being a revolutionary war piece clandestinely built for the committee of safety. I'm pretty sure the committees of safety never had 1830's dated militia muskets built for them but that doesn't stop the sellers from claiming it. One clown on gunbroker writes these elaborate backstories about all of the piece of crap parts guns that he sells. Like the 1870's shotgun that supposedly was originally built as a flintlock in the 17th century, then was converted to percussion circa 1830, then ultimately converted to a breechloader. Once I caught him selling one of my replica blunderbusses as an original, so I told him to change his listing to reflect it or I would file a complaint with gunbroker. The other thing that drive me nuts is that every unknown original flintlock pistol is a "pirate" pistol. Of course! If it doesn't say Tower on it (and is thus a "Tower" pistol), then it MUST have been carried by a pirate, right? Gun collecting is quite a pastime. You get to meet some fascinating people with incredible skill and knowledge, you also get to meet real American heroes who brought home some of the historic guns as war trophies from WW2, Korea and Vietnam. (sadly, today's heroes aren't allowed to bring home weapons as war trophies) On the other hand, you also run into a lot of morons that think every flintlock was either a COS gun or used by a pirate, and every percussion gun was used in the Civil War. The limitless amount of stupidity out there never ceases to amaze me.