Pete's random thoughts

Beware of "experts" on the internet

2011-10-27T17:03:00.002-05:00

I've noticed a new phenomenon. It seems like every 20 year old with access to his Mom's video camera is now a pseudo-journalist.

There is one jackass in particular who has me annoyed today, a kid from Texas who has posted a couple of hundred videos on youtube in which he tries to portray himself as some kind of firearms expert. He is posting really unsafe things, like "tap loading" a Brown Bess, firing blanks indoors with cartridges made of 4F priming powder, using the wrong granulation of powder in guns behind a round ball, and using loads two and three times a standard charge.

Please, every gun that you buy from anyone should have come with an owner's manual. If it didn't contact the manufacturer or importer. It is imperative that proper loading instructions and load data be followed or sooner or later somebody is going to get hurt. We provide a detailed owner's manual and suggested load data with every gun we sell. When it comes to "experts" telling you ho to load your gun, believe nothing that you hear, half of what you read, and maybe 5% of what you see on youtube.

9 y/o Caleigh "got" Memorial Day for the first time today

2011-05-30T18:44:00.000-05:00

Today we went to town to march in two parades with 4H. She has been doing this for a few years, but this year was really special.

She had been writing pen-pal emails to a guy from RI we met last year at a WW2 event at a museum in MA. He was a friendly, gentle old man, a fighter pilot during WW2. She recently wrote him an email and it bounced, so I looked into his whereabouts only to find that he had died a couple of months ago. She was pretty sad because this wasn't just a hero she read about in a book, this was a real live person she had met and talked with. I told her to keep him in mind this weekend at Memorial Day exercises.

We marched in the first parade in the north part of town to the little cemetery on the hill. There was a police car, the VFW color guard, the 4H kids, and the school band, along with a fire truck and ambulance. At the cemetery, there were prayers for the dead, speeches by the ROTC kids, and a firing squad salute, followed by Taps.

At the end of the ceremony she came running up to me with tears in her eyes and told me "Daddy, that song with the bugles made me cry". On the way home we talked about the symbolism of Taps, and about her pilot friend.

We were expecting guests to arrive at any minute, and were not planning on going to the town's other little parade since her 4H group wasn't scheduled to be in it, but she insisted with tears in her eyes and I could tell that this was really important to her.

We got back to town in time for her to find a different 4H group she could fall in with to march to the monument in the center of town. The same school bands played the same songs, and the same color guard fired a salute, but through the whole thing she remained attentive and listened to every word in the speeches and prayers.

I don't think I have ever been prouder of her than I was today. She really got what Memorial Day is about. In the past it was fun for her to be in the parade because you get to march and carry a flag, but for the first time, she understood what the parades & ceremonies really meant.

It has been one of those days

2011-01-13T16:08:00.002-05:00

So far today:

I've managed to set off the smoke detectors...twice.

I dropped an orange-hot frizzen as I was taking it out of the forge and dropped it in the snow, where it immediately melted it's way down to the ground where I had to forage around in the steamy snow with a pair of tongs to find it.

I managed to chop a pressurized air hose in two with a Mapp gas torch, causing it to whip around the shop creating noise and havoc, like the runaway hose as a fireman's muster.

But this is a new one: as I was taking a drink from me ever-present glass of iced tea, I had to spit a small, hard, sharp object out. Of course it was a flake of flint that managed to land there from testing locks!

Once again, bit off more than I can chew

2010-07-09T12:48:00.002-05:00

It seemed like a good idea right? There has been a week or more of hotter than usual weather, no rain to speak of, and all the water everywhere is drying up.

The pond out back is partially spring fed, and it is choked off with leaves and debris along with the drought, so it pretty much dried up. Here's where my brilliant idea comes in: why not drive the tractor into the dry pond bed and dig it deeper. If it were deep enough, it could allow fish to survive in it over the winter, we could swim in it, and it would be an overall healthier pond. Digging it out would eliminate the leaves and debris from the spring fed part, so more water would flow into it. Right?

Yeah, in theory. The part of the plan I didn't calculate was that UNDER those leaves and debris, the clay bottom of the pond is still wet with gooey, slimy mud. The kind a 4wd tractor can't quite get out of. The kind of mud that you need to call a dude with an excavator to dig your tractor out of.

Hhhmmm...a dude with an excavator...maybe I should have called him in the first place instead of driving my tractor into the pond.

I suppose that to know my limitations, I need to push them now and again to find out where they are.

Gun deaths vs vehicle deaths

2010-06-29T08:59:00.002-05:00

Here is a neat little widget that I found online. It is a counter that compares how many gun-related deaths there have been since the beginning of the year to how many vehicle deaths, falls, swimming pool accidents and other ways of being killed. The data is based on CDC statistics. In comparison, guns are generally pretty safe.

The interesting thing is the large number at the bottom which shows how many guns were used in DEFENSE of life.

Fort at No. Four is rising from oblivion!

2010-06-22T22:17:00.002-05:00

I wouldn't allow myself to believe it until I saw it with my own eyes, but there is actually a rescue of the Fort at No. Four going on!

There is a new director who loves history, has a small business background, and understands the value of volunteers. The Fort was open last weekend for a work-party day on Saturday, and a general open house on Sunday. A nice crowd turned out.

This year the Fort will open up a few more times in preparation for reopening for real in 2011.

Read their schedule here.

If you know us, then I don't need to tell you how important #4 is to us. Wendy and I were married there in 1999. We held my Mom's funeral there in 2000. I first joined as a member of the Fort at No. Four in 1991, just shy of 20 years ago.

Another Bike Week is history

2010-06-22T20:24:00.003-05:00

This past weekend wound up the 2010 Laconia Bike Week. Every year a couple of hundred thousand biker show up in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire for a day, a weekend or the whole week.

This year, I managed to spend three days in motorcycle-related activities. First, I rode up for the day last Tuesday with my friend Bob. He started riding last year and had never gone to bike week before. We went to see the manufacturer's demos at Funspot to check out the new Royal Enfields, went wandering around looking at bikes, vendors and people at the Laconia Roadhouse located at the Weirs Beach Drive-in (the epicenter of activities), had some food at the Broken Spoke Saloon, and stopped by the Rt 104 Diner on the way back out of town to see the mobile Indian Motorcycle Museum that a guy sets up there every year and as luck would have it, there was also a classic car cruise night going on at the same time. Got myself a pretty good sunburn that day.

On Friday, Wendy, Caleigh and I went bike shopping at a couple of the bigger dealers in the Concord/Manchester area and found a bike for Wendy. She has short little legs and can't reach the ground from a tall old Jap bike like mine. What we found for her was a scaled down cruiser style bike called a Hyosung Aqulia. It is a 250 V-twin that sits really low and only weighs 366 pounds (by comparison, my vintage Suzuki GS weighs in at over 600 pounds and is at least 10" to 12" higher in the seat. After leaving a deposit on it, we headed up Rt 93 to Laconia to get dinner and see what we could see on Friday night.

Saturday came, and we were back out on the road to go pick up her bike. We went in her Jeep, and on the way home she followed Caleigh and I home. She hasn't ridden since before Caleigh was born, so it probably wouldn't have been a good idea for her to get on it in Manchester and ride it the 100 miles home through bike week weekend traffic.

I think I got more riding time in during the last week than I did in all of last year. Now that Wendy has a bike, maybe we'll be more inclined to take the bikes to go places as opposed to going in the Jeep.

Chicks are getting bigger, time to order more

2010-06-07T18:19:00.002-05:00

On the last day of April, roughly 5 weeks ago, our first batch of meat chicks arrived in the mail.

Now most of them are just about the size of "Cornish game hens". People don't generally know this, but what is called a 'game hen" in the supermarket is neither a game bird nor a hen. They are usually Cornish Cross roosters that are a month old. If left to grow longer, they become the standard chickens that you'd buy at the meat counter, and left even longer they become those giant Purdue Oven Stuffer roasters.

I'll probably let these grow out another 5 weeks or so and put them in the freezer for winter. In the mean time, it is time to order the next batch of chicks. I get 50 at a time. A certain amount of them are lost to piling or whatever, but around 75-80% of them live to be Sunday dinners.

The plan is to order some every month, as soon as the previous batch vacates the brooder or the growing-out pen. That way, we make the best use of the weather when we don't need to worry about water fonts freezing.

Babies everywhere!

2010-05-28T21:42:00.002-05:00

Rick wrote to remind me to post here. I'm glad he does that, because I forget about the fun stuff all too often.

Now it is late spring and about to be summer. Everyone is having babies. There are baby ducklings, baby rabbits and a brooder full of baby chickens.

I'm trying to keep it all organized this year so as to make it efficient and grow as much as we can during the good weather because hauling buckets of water to replace frozen ones in January is somewhat of a drag.

The plan is to raise a batch of meat chickens every month (I'm getting ready to order the 2nd batch of chicks for the year), and to organize the breeding of the rabbits so that there is a cage full of babies at all times. My first cage of babies is ready to wean, and it's time to breed their Momma again.

The ducks, well, they are on their own and breed whenever they feel like it. I do have some males that I'm going to cull though. They will go in the freezer to save for special occasions like holiday dinners.

Drip...drip...drip...

2010-03-09T20:25:00.002-05:00

March means two things of importance in New England.

One is the beginning of mud season.

The other is the beginning of maple sugaring time.

This year I decided would be the year that we start sugaring. So far, we have a total of 18 taps out on various maple trees within a short walk from the shop. We are going to use a 33 gallon rubbermaid trash can to collect the sap into, and a galvanized sheet steel box that some muskets were delivered in for a evaporator pan.

As you walk near the taps with their buckets hanging below them, you hear a steady "drip...drip...drip..." coming from each one. Every bucket has it's own tone and rhythm, so it is kind of musical.

I'll post more details here as the project progresses.

Finally got some "real" snow

2010-02-25T10:32:00.002-05:00

It snowed pretty good here for the past couple of days. Last night I went out to do my chores and found the snow on the trail to the chicken hutch and goat pen to be just above my knees.

I gotta admit, it is pretty funny watching the ducks wallowing around in the trail they are trying to blaze to their food trough.

Everyone else in the country has been getting big snow, and we finally got our turn!

More details on April musket shoot

2010-02-21T20:21:00.002-05:00

We had a little meeting at the Diner over in Springfield VT today. Bob, Charlie N, Wendy, Caleigh and myself. We talked over various ideas about the spring shoot, and decided to have camping available to whoever wants to stay the weekend, but to hold the actual event on Saturday, April 24th, 2010.

We also talked over some ideas to make it fun and educational for everyone.

Stay tuned for more info!

www.HistoricalShootingInc.com

Musket shoot scheduled

2010-02-15T14:42:00.002-05:00

OK folks, mark your calendars!

Our next event that we will be hosting here will be a circa 1775 musket shoot. It will be on the weekend of April 24th and 25th on our property here in Charlestown, NH.

Now that we have picked a date, we will get to work ironing out the details.

At the very least, we will have tomahawk throwing and smoothbore musket shooting. Shooting will be using military-style paper cartridges and loading will be from the cartridge box. We may also have a buck-n-ball shoot and some other games as we think them up.

Watch here for updates! Official event information will also be posted at www.HistoricalShootingInc.com

Sad, sad animals

2010-01-28T22:15:00.002-05:00

Over the past week we had a freak of weather. It went from being in the 20's to fifty degrees for a couple of days. It rained instead of snowing. A whole lot of snow melted away. Under the snow was green grass!

Then, today, reality came back. It got cold. It snowed.

As a human, I appreciated the little break from winter's grasp. All of the animals, however, seemed to think it was the "real" spring. Tonight while making my rounds, I noticed that all of them were acting generally bummed out.

To me, a warm snap is a welcome break...but to the critters it is just a cruel joke.

Oh well, they will adapt. After all, it is only a two more months until mud season.

...and so begins the bucket shuffle

2009-12-07T20:53:00.002-05:00

Yup, winter is here.

We had our first real snow fall that stuck a few days ago. Yeah, it is pretty, but it means that life changes for the next four to five months.

The biggest problem is the transfer of water. In the warmer weather, we use hoses, watering troughs and various other critter watering conveyances and sort of take them for granted. Once the temperature gets below freezing and stays there, however, I do a little dance routine I call the bucket shuffle.

Since there is only one classification of chickens that we keep over the winter (the egg birds and "pet" chickens...since the meat birds live in the freezer now), I have two water fonts to rotate. One thaws in the shop while the other goes out to the birds.

For the ducks, I do something similar with small plastic water troughs.

For the rabbits, I've got two sets of water bottles using the same system.

The goats, however, I haul 5-gallon buckets of water and fill up their trough until it gets totally frozen up. Then I'll hook up a 5-gallon heated electric bucket that keeps the water from freezing.

The good news for this winter is that I saw this coming and disconnected the hoses, then coiled them up for the winter, so hopefully I won't lose any to the snowblower.

Got a hundred pounds of chicken in the shop fridge

2009-11-05T18:05:00.002-05:00

It is getting to be fall, if not winter, so it is time to start preparing for the long months of snow, ice and frozen hoses. One of the things to do in preparation for that is to kill off all of the chickens that were raised for meat (as opposed to the egg layers and a couple of "pet" birds).

We had 11 big white meat birds left. We had raised a couple of batches of them and these were the last of the chicks that we got towards the end of summer. The better ones were upwards of 12 pounds liveweight. These silly chickens are as big as small turkeys! Only two at a time comfortably fit in the drum-plucker, which is designed to hold 5 "normal" sized birds.

Plucked and dressed, the biggest bird weighed just over 10 pounds. Imagine 11 of those things, plus a bag of dog treats (heads, necks and feet) crammed into the shop fridge along with 16 dozen eggs that are stored there right now. A few of them have been cut up into quarters, but most of them are whole roaster chickens. One of these things feeds my small family for half a week!

Next step is to dismantle the pen they had been living in and scrape off the chicken poop that has accumulated there. The pen panels will then be used to contain the dozen and a half ducks that are roaming around out there. They will be kept in the garden area over the winter so I won't have to haul water too far.

Mmmmmmmmm....chicken....

Took a day off to go to the auction

2009-11-03T19:40:00.002-05:00

Looking at this damned computer screen all day gets old. After enough hours, it really causes some eye fatigue. Today I did the smart thing and just walked away from it for the day.

Instead of working, I went to the livestock auction in Whately, MA. It is the weekly auction where the local farmers sell off stuff they have raised or stuff they are looking to cull. Other farmers buy them, as well as representatives from a couple of meat packing places and custom butchers.

I came home with 5 weened rabbits that cost me $1.75 each, 43 bales of hay at $2.30 each, and a 98 pound lamb that sold for $85 per hundredweight (AKA $.85 per pound). The lamb should yield about 60% of it's liveweight in usable food, so it should work out to roughly 58 pounds of lamb meat that cost me about $1.40 per pound. That price doesn't include my time in fetching it or butchering it, but going to the auction and cutting meat I count as entertainment.

The bunnies are probably 3-4 weeks old. it will take less than half a $10 bag of rabbit chow to grow them out to full sized meals. I'll check them out tomorrow in the daylight and figure out who are males and who are females. For a small family like ours, the simplest breeding setup is to have one buck rabbit and two or three does. Managed well, each doe can produce a litter of four to eight babies every two months. Baby rabbits are called "kits"...the act of giving birth is called "kindling", hence the rabbit logo for those silly electronic book reading devices that are all the rage right now.

By comparison, full grown meat rabbits were selling for $8-$12 each at the auction. For a homesteader, rabbits are an efficient meat animal. You can even grow them in urban areas, either in your backyard or in your basement.

Making progress on the roadway

2009-10-06T19:15:00.002-05:00

I got an "early" start on the roadbuilding project today...5:30PM. It stays light until about 6:30-6:45 before I need to use the headlights, so I got a good hour in before I had to really narrow down my operations.

Tonight I managed to get the tractor up off of the existing logging road and onto the flat spot in front of the dining fly. Once I was up there, I concentrated on ripping out sharp rocks and tree stumps that could potentially puncture a tractor tire or be something to trip over.

What I am learning in this project is that a small tree stump is a relatively easy thing to tear out of the ground...unless that tree grew it's roots into and around a bunch of large chunks of rock. And guess what, in NH, ALL tree roots grow around chunks of rock! Big rocks, little rocks, even bigger rocks. At one point, I even struck ledge.

It is a learning curve, but I am making progress.

New roadway going in

2009-10-05T18:15:00.002-05:00

My after-work project for the past couple of days involves ripping out stumps and big chunks of granite from the hillside.

If you have ever been here for one of our shoots, you'll remember where the "headquarters" tent is placed, up on the hill near the pond. It is somewaht of a pain to get to because of the undergrowth and glacial rocks that line the hillside.

There is a logging road that goes towards the pond and off to the north. What this phase of the project is entails creating a roadway that leads from that logging road, across the front of the "headquarters" tent, across the crest of that little hill, and right up to the wooden bridge that leads to the house.

This will make it easier for visitors to use the grill and have a clear pathway to the picnic table that is under the tent fly. On a more practical level, it will make it easier to bring 4'x4' boxes of firewood (made out of pallets wired together) right up to the end of the bridge so as to make the job of carrying wood into the house easier.

At the very least, it is an excuse to play with the tractor.

The downside is that I'm doing it "after work", so that means I run out of light fast and end up working via headlights.

The pond is low on water right now, so a big part of it is accessible to the tractor, perhaps I'll be able to dig it out a little deeper with just the bucket, since I don't have an excavator for it yet. I'm thinking that the excess dirt that comes out of the pond can be piled up along the end of the range to build up a berm at the 50 yard mark.

So much tractor work to do before the snow flies!

Hopefully, by the next shoot there will be an improved facility here!

More thoughts on the decline of phone manners

2009-10-03T17:29:00.002-05:00

The other day I posted here about some dude who was calling and calling and calling even though it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that we weren't open that day. I checked caller ID, and he had called 21 times. That's right...TWENTY ONE times. All day long. He called, he actually left voice mail messages, then he called some more. Amazing.

Today's cranky old guy rant is about cell phones. I rarely talk on the phone because of hearing problems. Between artillery, random gunfire noise, and working in a very OSHA-unsafe mechanic environment when I was a fleet mechanic, my hearing is pretty much shot. I have lost about 1/2 of my hearing range and have pretty bad tinnitus. (ringing of the ears). It varies from day to day, today the ringing is around a 7 of the scale of 1-10. It sounds like the noise from an old-time "test pattern" that you'd see when the TV stations went off the air at midnight in the old days of television. I'm not whining, I'm just trying to make the point that if I talk on the phone, it is for a really good reason and not just for fun.

I got a call today from a satelite family member. He was calling from his cell phone as he drove somewhere. I guess that is a good use of your time, multitasking if you will. The problem with it, besides the obvious "not giving your driving 100% of your attention" part is that it puts a definite time limit on the conversation. In short, it goes something like this:

"Hey, how's it going?"

"Good, how about you?"

"I'm good too, whatcha been up to?"

...followed by a couple of minutes of story telling on both sides of the conversation. Then, the caller gets to where he was going, and cuts off the conversation because he "is there".

I think it is pretty rude. If you are going to call someone and talk with them, do it. Don't just squeeze them in while you are driving somewhere. People aren't emails, and they aren't TV shows. You can't just TiVo a real live person.

Seriously, if a relationship is worth having with someone, have it. Don't just call someone and make beleive you are interested in what is going on in their lives if you are really only bored while driving to the store, restaraunt, or whatever.

This kind of weird attitude come, I think, from the overboard way that we live. We are constantly being hammered with data. Try to watch the news, and there will be a talking head newscaster in the middle of the TV screen, the stock ticker scrolling across the top of the screen, and an unrelated news ticker scrolling across the bottom. Then, on top of that, the TV station is running some kind of commercial for one of it's shows in the corner of the screen!

People have to text with their phones while surfing the net and chatting with an IM program at the same time. This can't be good for our brains. (me, I don't know how to send a text message, and I'm getting on just fine)

In the pre-election months of 2008, we went down to Keene State College to meet Ron Paul and hear him speak. I am not a big fan of colleges, but I've bene on many campuses. This was different. The students were walking from building to building in little groups, but they weren't talking to each other. They were talking on their phones or texting to someone somewhere else instead of talking to theri real live classmates walking right next to them. What have we done to our society?

Hang up the phone and drive. Go visit a real live person and sit don to chat with them for a few hours. Treat it like a reenactment if you have to...reenact the "old days" of the late 20th century when people still had the power to communicate without electronic gadgets!

Magazine issues

2009-10-01T17:09:00.006-05:00

No, not the kind of magazines that you read or the kind you keep gunpowder in, I'm talking about the kind that feeds ammunition into your repeating rifle.

I've got a stack of assorted 15 round WW2 vintage USGI magazines for the M1/M2 Carbine, and a few aftermarket 30-round M2 mags. Some work well, others don't. The weak point in any semi auto is the feed lips of the magazine. If they are bent, the gun just won't feed right.

The way to see which ones work and which ones don't is to try and shoot with them. Oftentimes "bad" mags can be fixed by tweaking the feed lips. In this video, the 15-round mag works perfectly. The one before that allowed a couple of short bursts, but most of the time it failed to feed the next round into the chamber. The 30-rounder before that just wouldn't feed and I had to manually push the nose of each round down towards the chamber. Not a fun way to empty a 30 round mag!

The target during all of this testing was an empty Mapp gas cannister. For reactive targets, I use the Mapp gas cans, bowling pins, and clay pigeons. The bowling pins and pigeons I gotta buy, the Mapp gas cans are free with purchase of Mapp gas.

Here is the can when I was done with it. It probably won't hold gas at this point.

Why can't people deal with voicemail?

2009-10-01T11:11:00.002-05:00

Today is opening day for pheasant hunting in NH. Since I am the boss here, I get to decide what the paid holidays are for the MVTCo employees. Sure, there is Christmas, New Years, the 4th of July, etc, but that doesn't use up the 10 paid holidays that we offer, so we make our own up...like "opening day for pheasants" and "opening day for ducks".

Me, I am at work. Everyone else is out tramping around out in cornfields with dogs and shotguns.

When you call the shop phone number, and nobody picks up (for instance, let's imagine it is a holiday and nobody but me is here...and I don't talk on the phone anymore because of hearing problems) you get a voicemail message telling you what our hours are and it asks you to please leave a message so Kathy can get back to you.

So I'm sitting here at my desk, and the damn phone is ringing away. According to caller ID, the same person is calling, waiting a few minutes and calling, etc etc. He's called about 8-10 times so far. For some reason, he's not bright enough to FOLLOW THE SIMPLE DIRECTIONS to please leave a message. (as I'm typing this, he is calling AGAIN)

If a person can't follow instructions to be able to handle voicemail, is he really ready for the responsibility of owning a gun?

Please folks, use common sense. Calling every few minutes instead of using your head and leaving a message is as dumb as pushing the elevator button repeatedly in the hopes that it will get to your floor faster. If you get voicemail, leave a message, that's how voicemail works.

Let's imagine that Kathy is on the phone talking someone through how to adjust their flint, and it turns into a 20 minute conversation. In the meantime, Bubba calls and the line is busy, so he gets voicemail. Instead of leaving a message like an intelligent person, he hangs up and immediately calls back. Every time he calls, Kathy and the customer she is currently helping has to listen to "click-click, click-click". Because of the clicking, their conversation has to pause. What happens then is that the conversation takes LONGER, so Bubba has to wait even longer for the line to open up...so he keeps calling!

Then there are people that seem to think that since I USED to answer the phone at all hours of the day, seven days a week, that we still do. No. The business has matured enough to have ***normal hours of operation*** and these hours are Monday thru Thursday, 9am-4pm. That is when people come to work. There are people that call all weekend, assuming that they'll catch me at home. I AM home, but I am not going to answer the phone at 8am on Sunday morning. One jackass even called on 11pm on Christmas eve.

If the call is important enough to tie up the phone line with 10 calls, just to hang up and try again, it is important enough to leave a message and be patient enough until people are back at work and able to call you back.

Wow, I am amazed at how much a tractor improved my life

2009-09-19T17:57:00.003-05:00

In less than an hour, I hauled a bucket load of firewood to the house and piled it up on the hill near where we stack it. The bucket load would have been at least four wheelbarrows full and to push a wheelbarrow over the terrain I just drove the tractor would have been strenuous to say the least.

Then, I switched the bucket for the forks (I.E. like the business end of a fork truck) and used them to pick up and haul a big fiberglass hot tub (one of those "some day" projects) from the space behind the house to a flat area over near the pond. The tub probably weighs 1000 pounds, it took four of us to lift it off of the back of my truck when it found it's way here. The tractor lifted it and hauled it effortlessly. The trail to the pond is up a steep, rocky grade that has a bunch of saplings piled on it at one point. No sweat, over the saplings, up the hill, over the rocks and to the pond.

After moving the tub, I scooped up a musket crate full of leftover lumber scraps (I.E. kindling) and used the forks to lift it up onto the hill.

All of this in less than an hour without breaking a sweat.

Yeah, the simple old fashioned life where you do stuff by hand sounds great on paper, but if they had diesel engines in the 18th century, they certainly would have used them!

A quiet K9

2009-09-17T19:31:00.002-05:00

Between "real" work, we get to do some funky stuff here. Sometimes it is for a valid reason, other times because we feel like it. This project is somewhere between the two.

We undertook to build a semi-auto carbine out of junk we had laying around the shop. Mostly to see if it could be done, but at the same time we had planned on entering a homebuilt gun contest. The "valid" reason was that it would give Earl a chance to practice his skills on the ancient South Bend lathe that is one of the main workhorse tools in the shop. (I need to mention that we started this project when Earl was new here, it has been sitting around for a while)

We used leftover AK47 parts (hammer, safety, trigger, grip), an Uzi carbine barrel, a Sten magazine and magwell, and the rest of the parts that went into it were home made. To make a long story short, it worked.

We named it the K9, K for Kathan, Earl's last name and 9 for 9mm.

Earl is pretty quick with his trigger finger, here is a video of him trying it out:

But, the story gets even more interesting.

We decided to silence it. Why? Because we wanted to see if we could.

I had to send off a Form 1 to the BATF to get permission to build the silencer. It took months to approve, but if you have no felony record you can get approved. The BATF is actually quite accommodating when it comes to stuff like this.

With the approved Form 1 in hand, it was time to build the suppressor. A series of holes were drilled in the barrel to bleed off gas, thus slowing the bullet down. A stack of fender washers was fitted over the barrel to act as baffles that will contain the hot gasses and give them a chance to cool. A piece of tubing from the McPherson strut of a Jeep Cherokee was fitted over the whole mess. Done.

It quiets the gun down considerably, but the 115gr 9mm ammo that I have on hand still breaks the sound barrier. The sound doesn't seem to come from the gun though, it seems to come from downrange. I've ordered some heavier, 147gr ammo that should be subsonic and it will be interesting to see (hear?) if it quiets down to the level that I think it will. When we get the 147gr ammo in, I'll film it and post the results here.

I'll have to get a picture or two of how the contraption looks with it's silencer on it too. It is ugly in a cool sort of way.

Stump pullin'

2009-09-16T18:43:00.002-05:00

We've been shuffling what time we do things based on Caleigh's swimming lessons and swim team practices. When they were earlier in the day, she and Wendy would come home from the pool at 6ish and rush-rush-rush to get dinner ready to get Caleigh to bed at a reasonable hour. Now, the lessons are later and we have redefined what a "reasonable hour" is to conform to them. This means that dinner is no longer at 6, but several hours later which means I have time to work on stuff after the shop closes for the day.

Today what I worked on is tearing stumps out of the ground and using the dirt that was generated to start building an earth berm to create a better 50 yard shooting position at the range.

This spring we bought a 4wd tractor with a bucket and I have been slowly learning to use it to do stuff I would never attempt without one. An excavator would make the job easier, but the bucket works, you just have to be patient. Dig around the side of the stump and work the bucket underneath it to loosen it, then angle the bucket just right. Put the tractor in low-low and crawl forward, rolling the stump out of the ground.

The tractor has 3 forward speeds and one reverse, but it also has a 3 speed rear end so it had 12 speeds in all. It is rated at 41hp. I also got a set of forks that mounts in place of the bucket to unload trucks and move pallets of stuff around. It definately earns it's keep.

Once the stumps are gone from the range, I'll be able to drive the tractor with a small dump-cart behind it in a circle there, thus it will make it easier to haul stuff there and back. It makes a nice route for mini-hayrides as well. It will just look nicer too. Without the tracotr, there is just no way I'd be digging up stumps just to make an area look nicer!

Opening day

2009-09-15T14:14:00.002-05:00

Here in NH, it is the opening day af archery season.

Therefore, I am all alone here as Kathy and Earl are out prowling the woods with bows and arrows is search of the first deer of the 2009 season!

Yeah, I've gots bows, but I'm just not proficient enough to say that I'm an archer, so I'm here working instead.

Kathy and Earl, however, LIVE for archery. Not just run-of-the-mill archery with a compound bow, but hardcore primitive archery with bows that Earl makes himself.

Good luck today guys!

First gooey pocket of 2009

2009-04-11T19:28:00.002-05:00

So this evening I go out to do my farm-chores. Momma goose is sitting on her nest with 11 eggs underneath. The Pekin ducks aren't that into nesting, so they just leave eggs randomly placed lying around their pen. The red hen lays eggs in an old musket crate, the white hen does too sometimes, but usually she stashes them under the chicken house. The Arucana hen leaves eggs in mysterious places, trying to decide which is best.

The little bantam hen, however, has a plan. She is a little smaller than a pigeon, but pushes out a long, skinny egg for her size. The odd part is that she lays it in the goat's feed dish inside their lean-to.

Tonight when I gathered the eggs from here and there, I stuck the bantam egg in my coat pocket to carry it out to the bucket where I had already put the duck eggs. Bad idea, and I never seem to learn that lesson. Why? Because whenever you put an egg in your pocket, it is almost guaranteed that a goat will push up against you and break it there. So tonight I got my first gooey pocket of the 2009 egg laying season. It probably won't be the last because I never learn.

Tax time means time to clean my desk

2009-04-11T19:17:00.003-05:00

April 15th looms ahead. This means I had better buckle down and finish my taxes. To do that, I need to locate all of the 2008 bank statements. To locate the ones from the fall of 2008, I had to do a quick archaelogical dig on my desk.

Yeah, my desk is that bad.

How bad? You can tell how old a document is by how many inches down the pile it is, like the strata in any other "dig".

Cleaning my desk means finding neat stuff.

I found:

-two partial rolls of paper towels

-an unopened bag of yogurt covered blueberries (a trail mix goodie)

-a partial bag of trail mix

-a pocket knife that had been missing for some time

-a BATF approved Form 1, which gives us the go-ahead to build an NFA item, in this case a suppressed carbine

-a few books that I had been wondering where I left them

-my 2nd, 3rd, and 5th grade class photos (don't remember why they were on my desk)

-a feather from a guinea hen and a feather from a wild turkey

-two basically new inch-thick notebooks

Most of the excavated treasures were put into my chair so they will need to be dealt with before I sat down to a "normal" desk occupancy, the papers needed for tax preparation I brought up to Wendy's office to work on. Up there I can't get as distracted and will stick with the job until it is done.

Next week at this time it will all be done, and hopefully I'll have my chair at least half emptied.

A goal reached

2009-04-03T17:13:00.002-05:00

This summer will be the five year mark since we moved up here to the country from urban Massachusetts.

Somewhere along the line, I came up with a goal of growing all of our own food. While the uncleared land and unimproved clay and rock soil of this property have not yet yielded a decent vegetable garden, the thick underbrush that we have been slowly clearing for the past five years has gone a long way towards feeding livestock.

Today our chest freezer is full to the top with meat. That by itself is a good thing, but the really exciting part about it being full is that every single piece of meat in it was either grown here or hunted here. Beef, pork, goat, raccoon, smoked hams and bacon. Sure there are a few "storebought" packages of meat like a package of Italian sausages and some corned beefs that were on sale, but those got moved to the little freezer that is part of the shop fridge and I'll use them up ASAP to get them gone.

When we built the animal pens, they were temporary in nature so that the panels the pens were made up of could be unclamped and moved elsewhere. The plan is that the ruminant animals clear the brush and strip the bark off of the saplings, then we move in pigs who dig up the roots and dig up the rocks. They all manure the dense clay soil. After a couple of seasons, the pen is ready to be dismantled and moved to a new location on the property leaving behind a cleared, tilled, leveled, de-rocked, fertilized patch of land ready to be a productive garden next year.

This afternoon I took everything out of the chest freezer to take out the dividers in order to fit more into it since I probably have another 100 pounds of beef to cut up and package over the weekend. In returning everything to it, I made an inventory of it's contents to keep better track of what we have on hand. At the bottom I found a goat hide that I forgot we still had, a bag of coonskins, a bag of rabbitskins, and a sheep head. I let Caleigh use a scalpel and skin out the sheep head so we can hang it out for the bugs to strip the flesh off of and add it to our skull collection. It's hanging next to Rocky the steer's skull. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes for the bugs to strip them.

To some people our full-to-capacity freezer just represents a lot of meals waiting to be enjoyed, but to me it represents a major milestone along our road to self-sufficiency.

What is it with whiny kit-builders?

2009-02-23T17:19:00.002-05:00

I've been on a 19th century gun kick lately, so I've been reading stuff online about what is available for caplock guns. Back when I started in black powder, you could get a single shot pistol kit for about $39 and a revolver kit for $79. Nowadays, prices have increased dramatically.

It's not the increased prices that baffle me, it's the whiny people who are building the kits and then writing about it on the internet.

I've probably ready half a dozen "reviews" of Spanish and Italian sourced pistol kits and every one of them is full of complaints about how the builder had to file things to make them fit, polish rough surfaces etc.

I thought the whole point of building a kit gun was to tinker with the thing and learn how to do stuff like that? Instead, it seems like these folks are expecting to buy a kit gun and just assemble a perfectly fitted, tuned pistol. That wouldn't be called "gun building" it would be called "gun assembling".

When I was 18 and built my first pistol, I had to figure some things out. That was the whole point of building vs buying one. One thing is for sure, I certainly wouldn't have posted on the internet (had there been an internet then) about rough-cast parts not fitting together perfectly. (duh--they are rough cast)

Nor would I whine about having to inlet an escution plate for a barrel key into the stock. Nor would i write publicly about how the thread on a nipple was messed up, so I used a different nipple (as opposed to just using a file to fix the unfinished thread on the supplied nipple).

What these whiners do is showcase their own lack of skill and aptitude. Instead of adopting a "can-do" spirit and learning how to actually build a gun from parts, they complain that the company that sells the kits (CVA, Traditions, Dixie etc) sells a "low quality" kit and Squawk that the would expect higher quality control from the kit manufacturers.

Sorry folks, but it is the person who builds the kit that is the manufacturer. The companies that sell the kits are selling you a conviniently gathered set of parts that when properly assembled will be a gun.

If people can't handle building a kit gun without whining, then who are going to be the gunsmiths in 20 or 30 years? It seems like people today just want everything handed to them.

We get calls from "gunsmiths" who need to get a spring for some kind of flintlock. A real gunsmith could just make a spring. There was one guy who had taken in a lock to repair for a friend of his who was having problems with the lock not sparking right. (I.E. worn frizzen) The wannabe gunsmith felt the fix for this was to make the mainspring stronger by rehardening it. He had heated up the spring to a white heat and now wanted to know what temperature to heat it in the oven at to temper it. We declined to get involved in that one.

Then there are the "gunsmiths" who are fixing a friend's musket and seem to think that they need a new frizzen because the case hardening is worn through, and can we send them a new one? Believe it or not, there are many of them that decline our offer to reharden the frizzen under our warranty because they insist that it can't be rehardened because they have tried it.

Some of it is just stubborn male ego. No, pretty much all of it is just stubborn male ego.

For some reason, we are all in a hurry these days and don't want to take the time to stop and actually learn how to do something. And coming back to the kit guns and their "reviewers", we aren't talking about something as indepth as blacksmithing, carving grips from wooden blanks, or making a spring, we are talking about people that think using a file to smooth out machine marks, and a piece of sandpaper to contour 99% finished pistol grips is a major accomplishment. Who are they to write reviews of a parts set?

Maybe I'm getting to be a crotchety old fart, but sometimes certain people just amaze me with the lack of skill that is in direct proportion to their arrogance.

For years now, there has been a standing offer for people (so-called "unit armorers" in particular) to come here and spend a day or two to take a crash course in lock repair and tuning. Since we moved here to NH, not a single person has taken us up on it.

Historical Shooting Inc

2009-02-16T13:37:00.003-05:00

I wasn't going, but I'm still furious about the Quebec thing in the last post.

On a lighter note, we've been working on some educational shooting-related projects around here that I thought I'd mention.

We've started a new venture called Historical Shooting Inc. HSI for short. HSI's function in life is to hold educational shooting events that will be a step up from "blank firing" reenacting in that participants get to live fire the guns etc. The plan at this time is to hold quarterly events that will highlight specific time periods. We plan to work in as many details, like period correct food, etc.

For instance, the event in January was "The Battle of the Bulge". Participants formed a squad of riflemen and set off on a trek through some deep snow to fire at targets along the way. There was a light machine gun stage, a pistol stage, a rifle stage and a carbine stage. At the end, we all ate our nearly frozen K-rations while we discussed first person accounts of the Bulge from 1944-45.

The next HSI event will be on Sunday, May 17th. This one will showcase the types of weapons used at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.

What we have lined up so far are primitive bows, tomahawks, single action revolvers, double barreled shotguns, a 1866 lever action rifle, and a Trapdoor Springfield Carbine.

To keep up to date on what HSI is doing, bookmark this site:

www.historicalshootinginc.com

And as a little teaser, here are a few of the weapons that will be used at the Little Bighorn Shoot

This just in...the French won?

2009-02-16T13:18:00.005-05:00

I'm reading this news in shock and amazement.

It seems that the Seven Years War is finally over and the FRENCH won. It's the oddest thing.

This summer marks the 250th anniversary of the battle on the Plains of Abraham that ended in the fall of Quebec to the English. Some 3000 reenactors from the US and Canada were going to go and reenact the famous battle that resulted in the deaths of the English General Wolfe and his French nemesis General Montcalm.

In the end, the walled French stronghold fell to the English. Its fact, its history, its indesputable.

Now, two and a half centuries later, some limp-wristed, cheese eating, Paris worshipping "Quebec nationalists" have decided that it was an embarassment to lose. Yeah, losing sucks, but in every conflict there is a winner and a loser. In that one, the French lost. The people who should be embarrassed are the rest of Canada for allowing these blowhard clowns to dictate what anniversaries get celebrated.

Word is out: the reenactment on the Plains of Abraham is cancelled. Why? because of threats of protests and "civil disobediance" by this small group of morons who don't seem to understand that the French actually LOST the French and Indian War.

Here are some quotes from the lead whinebag of the group calling itself "Le Reseau de Resistance du Quebecois" (translates to "The Network of Resistance of Quebecois")

He said that re-enactment ``showed disrespect for Quebecers and our
ancestors.''

``It's the federal government that's behind this and they should
not touch the anniversary of this battle in any way,'' he said.

``The celebrations that have been announced were not something that showed
respect for our ancestors. ''

``If it had been the Quebec state that had decided to organize this event
with respect and seriousness, we would not have had any problem with that. But
because it's the federal government that's involved, it's
disrespectful.''

He said that until Quebec becomes a sovereign state, any re-enactment of the
battle would be disrespectful to francophones.

I guess what this means is that, 250 years later, the French won at Quebec...without firing a shot.

General Wolf must be spinning in his grave right now.

Veteran's Day 2008

2008-11-11T18:57:00.006-05:00

I haven't posted here in a while. Too many distractions, not enough hours in the day. Rick and Bill reminded me to get busy and write. Much to talk about and no idea where to begin. I guess what I should do is just pick up where I left off.

Today is November 11th, Veteran's Day. Where did the summer go? Being too busy to keep up with blogs is a spoiled American problem, not a real one. In 1918, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the conflict known as the First World War ended. Those folks knew what real problems were!

Unfortunately, I don't have the time or space here to write a whole lot about it. You are just going to have to visit the library and read up on the particulars. What I will do, however, is show off a few of the WW1 items in our collection. Click on the photo above to see a larger version.

The picture shows some of the WW1 vintage items I was able to round up on short notice. There are more, but they are packed away at the moment.

Starting from the lower left and moving clockwise, we have...

-French Model 1886 Lebel rifle, 8mm. This was the first smokeless powder military rifle. This particular one was modified into a carbine in 1935. Originally it would have been much longer. I found an original sling for it.

-German Model 1888 Mauser rifle, 7.92mm. This rather battered specimen is in sad shape, but I will probably be in worse shape when I am 120 years old.

-US Model 1917 rifle, .30-06. The US entered the war without sufficient arms in store, so to hurry up the process we borrowed this design from the British P14 rifle. The British rifle is basically the same gun, only in .303 caliber. This is the type of rifle Sgt. York used to help capture 100+ Germans while capturing 30+ German machine guns. (google Alvin York)

-US Model 1903 rifle, .30-06. The US also copied the German Mauser design. The 03 Springfield is an accurate shooting rifle that saw use up into the WW2 era. This one has an original 1918 dated leather sling.

-The group photo is of the 16th infantry, taken in Framingham, MA in 1918. This was rescued from the leaky attic of a barn and we'll attempt to clean it up someday.

-The magazine is British from 1917. The cover photo is of a French military cyclist with a carrier pigeon basket on his back. Walkie-talkies were still a few decades off, and homing pigeons were still in common use. More on carrier pigeons in another post.

-The smaller artillery shell is a 37mm. It is dated 1917 and is probably US Navy in origin.

-The larger artillery shell is German, dated 1915. Haven't gotten around to finding out what type of gun it was fired from.

-The camouflage painted helmet is US issue. The liner is missing, but the leather strap remains.

-The small pointy item in front of the doughboy helmet is a caltrop. These were scattered on the ground to wound the feet of infantrymen and horses. Remember that most cargo was still hauled by draft horses! This one came out of a barn in France.

-The helmet at the three o'clock position is French. It is in relic condition. There would have been a metal badge mounted on the front of it. There is a bullet hole in it that entered in the right rear and exited through the left front. Helmets were meant to stop shrapnel and had little effect against a direct hit from a modern high-powered rifle bullet like the Mauser fired.

-The last item shown is the relic remains of a French canteen.

Eventually, we will be cataloging the items in our collection for better display and plan to upload them to the web to share with everyone. Of course, all of this takes time.

In the meantime, I'd like to invite you all to go see our new website for a new organization, Historical Shooting Inc. http://www.historicalshootinginc.com/

Historical Shooting Inc will be holding a trailwalk type shooting competition in January of 2009. It is to commemorate the Battle of the Bulge, and entrants will get to try various original and reproduction weapons that would have been in use at the battle. Check the HSI website for details!

OK, time to go feed the farm animals.

Never forget the sacrifices made by those who went before us, and remember to give a "thank you" to the men and women who are fighting for us today.

Italy to Germany to New Hampshire

2008-05-09T15:32:00.004-05:00

Every family has something cool stashed away in the attic, the cellar, or in a box buried in the closet. Some neat little piece of history. Last week, Earl brought in a piece of rock to show us that his father had given him. Without the story behind it and the piece of masking tape identifying it, it would be just another chunk of marble. It is more than just a rock, however, it is a piece of history.

Here is a picture of the rock. (use you browser's BACK button to return here) Without the story, it's just a cool looking piece of marble, right? But...where has this marble been?

In on April 20th, 1939, a magnificent mountain house was given as a 50th birthday gift to Adolf Hitler. We know it today as the "Eagle's Nest". There is much info about it on the internet, so I won't go into too much detail about it here.

Benito Mussolini's gift on Hitler's birthday was an Italian marble fireplace. Apparently there was enough marble left over from the project to also build a doorway out of the same material. A gift from one dictator to another.

Of course, the Allied powers crushed the 3rd Reich, and eventually it was American GIs that were partying in Hitler's beautiful mountain retreat. Eventually the Eagle's Nest became a museum, and a function hall. You can still tour it today.

In 1952, Earl's Dad was a GI stationed in Germany. At some point, he managed to tour the Eagle's Nest. The tour guide showed him Eve Braun's bedroom, the great hall, the sun porch overlooking the valley below, and the fancy marble fireplace. When the guide wasn't looking, he scooped up a large piece of rubble from the fireplace and stashed it down his pants. GIs love souvenirs. Now, the chunk of Hitler's fireplace that was originally a gift from Mussolini himself resides here in NH, one of those little oddball pieces of history that will be passed down in a family.

Here is the back of the rock, with the story of what it is written on a piece of tape.

and here is a webpage that shows some very clear pieces of the fireplace. There is one photo showing GIs sitting in front of it in 1945, and another, current photo. As you can see, there are a few large chunks of marble missing. We know where one of them is!

Page about the Eagle's Nest fireplace: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/EaglesNest/fireplace.html

Media games and the economy

2008-04-15T10:36:00.004-05:00

Whenever I watch or read the news, I get pissed off.

The media has a way of twisting things around to make all news stories "sensational". Unfortunately, the average person watching the news doesn't really think about things a whole lot, they just accept what is told to them. This means the press has the power to control our country by controlling public opinion and thought. Right now, they are controlling the economy.

Which brings me to one of the topics that I rant about fairly often.

The so called "mortgage crisis" or "housing crisis". I just read an article on MSN that had the headline: "Foreclosures continue to soar, worst is not over
Filings up 57 percent in March over ’07; ARM resets to crest in May and June". The article went on to describe what a massive crisis this was, how the sky is falling, etc and backed up their claims with hard numbers.

Here are some numbers from the article: "The number of U.S. homes receiving at least one foreclosure filing jumped 57 percent in March to 234,685, compared with 149,150 properties a year earlier. Filings include default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions." I'm not even going to get into how the number is skewed by including auction sale notices AND repossessions, thus double-dipping the number because first a property is repossessed, then it is auctioned. Nor will I rant on the fact that a "default notice" is not a repossession, just a notice that you are in default and if you don't pay, they'll start repossession proceedings (I guess that is triple-dipping the numbers).

What I want to concentrate on is the numbers and how they can be twisted right in front of our eyes to mean something that they don't.

The article goes on to spew forth facts: "That meant one in every 538 households received a filing during the month. Forty-four percent were households that slipped into default for the first time and more than a fifth were homes banks took back.

The number of default related "filings" is quoted at being 234,685. Sounds like a terribly high number, right? Not really, because the article later says that "one in every 538" households received a filing of some sort. If you do a little analytical math with these numbers, that means only .0018 of households received some kind of "filing" in March.

.0018 of mortgages doesn't seem all that bad now does it? Yet the press constantly bombards us with "news" about how the middle class is being squeezed and how there is a mortgage crisis destroying our economy. It is, but only because we are letting it by swallowing all of the nonsense the press feeds us. The MSNBC article is just one example of how the media can lie right to our faces, even while giving us facts.

Is .18% of mortgages with filings a big increase? (note, that is not 18 percent, that is POINT eighteen percent, less than one-fifth of one percent) Yes. The same time period last year saw a "filings" rate of .11%. It is an increase of about 60%. If you take a really tiny number and increase it by 60%, it is still an increase, but it is still a very tiny number.

Yet we as a country panic and act like the sky is falling. And strangely, so does the rest of the world. Why? Because if buyer confidence is down and people are afraid to go and buy their new TV or whatever because they are afraid that they'll get foreclosed on because the press said so, the manufacturers aren't able to sell that TV to the distributors, the distributors can't sell it to the wholesaler, the wholesaler can't sell it to the retailer, and the truckers between all points in this example lose. In the end, the only people who profit are the media people who will just create a new "crisis" news story when this one proves to be false...like Y2K did, or the "carbon credits" fiasco, or so many other hyped-up media non-news events over the years.

And, of course, the federal reserve folks, who manage to profit in any "bailout". The media is screaming for government intervention because .18% of people are not paying the mortgage they agreed to pay when they bought the house, and what the end result of screaming is will invariably be a bailout of some sort. The government will dump tax dollars into the banks who are hurt by this whopping .18% of loans that aren't being paid, and to fund it they will sell bonds to the Federal Reserve Bank. The Fed will use the bonds as collateral to print new money and make new loans in a ratio of $10 printed to each $1 of bond. (no kidding, that is how it works, look it up) The influx of "new money" will cause inflation, and we all lose again.

Yet, strangely, the media never seems to report on that...how the Fed actually works and how every bailout is really just controlled inflation, lining the pockets of the Fed by giving them permission to create money out of nothing. I wonder how many people out there know that the Federal Reserve Bank is NOT a government entity, that it is just a cabal of banks that are authorized by Congress to control currency?

It would make quite a news story!

Skinning the mink

2008-03-21T21:45:00.003-05:00

To follow up on the mink story, I thought I'd share the process of salvaging the hide from it. Click on the links to see pictures and use your browser's back button to return here.

I had kept it in the refrigerator down here in the shop, so it was good and fresh. The first step was to prepare a mink-sized hide stretcher. Jeff only had muskrat sized stretchers, but gave me a copy of a page in an old book that showed the dimensions of what the proper sized stretcher for a mink is. Earl cut one out of the plywood from a musket crate while I ran to town on an errand.

Here it the hide stretcher, ready for action.

To remove the hide, first I used a scalpel to cut around the mink's genitals and anus, so as not to let anything yucky leak out. Then two cuts were made along the inside of either rear leg. The hide then peels off inside out as if you were removing a sweater. The tail is slit the long way and the skin peeled off of it. I cut off the rear feet at the ankle, and removed them later when I could get a better grip on the hide to pull the feet inside out.

I had clipped the little guy's tail to a metal chair that I put on the table to hang the mink at a handy working height. Here you can see it with it's hide halfway off. It isn't as messy as you'd imagine.

It takes some careful knife work, but you can remove the skin from the front legs and leave the paws and claws intact. In this picture, the hide is nearly off.

A bit of careful scalpel work, and the head is skinned out, leaving as much of the face intact as possible. I managed to save one ear and the nose. The other ear was removed by the shotgun blast.

Finally, here is the mink and the inside-out hide, neatly separated.

Notice the fat layer around the rear legs? I trimmed it off to render it down for "mink oil", the stuff that you put on your boots. It is used as a base for skin care products as well.

Interestingly, I only found 2 shotgun pellets in the thing, and a small piece of shot cup. As it turned out, he turned his head to get a better look at me just as I pulled the trigger and was killed by the blast at the muzzle more so than being hit with shot. The blast opened up the side of his head, and I found the pellets under the skin behind his front shoulder. Think of the power that is unleashed at the muzzle the next time you fire a blank at someone!

In the next post, I'll show how the hide gets stretched, scraped, and tanned.

Period-correct, documented stupidity

2008-03-20T10:48:00.003-05:00

Hello, my name is Pete, I'm a book addict.

Lots of books here. Gotta be a thousand, no exaggeration. I'm usually in the process of reading a dozen at once, and have a good sized stack of books with bookmarks hanging out of them all over the shop, my desk, and the house. One of the books I am currently reading is "A British Soldier's Story - Roger Lamb's Narrative of the American Revolution" as edited by Don N. Hagist. It can be ordered here.

Lamb was a Redcoat from Dublin who served in North America for 8 years, was captured twice, escaped captivity twice, and was witness to events such as the capture of Ticonderoga, Crown Point, the battles of Hubbardton and Saratoga, and even the southern campaign. We can look at artifacts today and make our guesses about what they are and how they were used but there is no way for us to recapture the original thoughts and feelings. Period journals are required reading for anyone calling themselves reenactors. I'll talk about journals another time though, today I want to talk about one particular paragraph in Lamb's journal.

Here it is:

“In fighting in the woods the battalion manoeuvring and excellency of exercise were found of little value. To prime, load, fire and charge with the bayonet expeditiously were the chief points worthy of attention.

It was our custom after loading and priming, instead of ramming down cartridge, to strike the breech of the firelock to the ground, and bring it to the present and fire.

In this usage much care was necessary, lest the cartridge might remain undischarged, as sometimes happened, when, from the confusion of the moment of action, the end of the cartridge being unbitten it might not catch fire from the burnt priming.

In this way several cartridges have been discovered together in the piece unexploded, which, in the bursting of his firelock from an overcharge, could not fail to be very perilous and sometimes destructive to the soldier himself, and even some of those around him.”

I find this fascinating, as this loading style nearly mimics the way we are required to load our muskets when in the field at any reenactment. Prime, load, fire. Many, I dare say most, reenactors have never fired a ball out of their musket. Ever. That means they have no idea about how the gun really works, how it behaves under "normal" circumstances, and how to be safe with it. Some of us shoot on a regular basis, but most do not.

I have seen the exact same situation Lamb described repeated at many events in the modern day. Because people don't shoot, they don't really grasp the physics of what is going on when the pull the trigger. I've seen many people close their eyes or even turn their head away when pulling the trigger. The people who do this have no idea whether or not their gun has gone off. Sometimes, on a muggy day or in a dirty gun, you just get a flash in the pan and the main propellant charge doesn't go off. Since the "shooter" doesn't know it didn't go off, he just primes and loads again...and again...and again.

Next thing you know, there are 300, 400, 500 grains in the gun...then all of a sudden the next shot sets off the charge and the shooter finds himself sitting on his butt because the massive charge knocked him over. I saw a dude do this at Ft. William Henry last fall. The guy literally knocked himself down with the recoil. It happened a couple of years ago at a Canadian event too, the guy had 4 or 5 charges in the gun; in that case the guy managed to break the stock.

In the old days, gun barrels were made with a seam up the bottom, sometimes they would fail along the seam. Henry Knox, the bookseller turned General of RevWar fame lost a few fingers when his old worn out fowling piece blew out at the breech. Modern day muzzleloader barrels are made of seamless tubing or drilled out billet steel and have no seams to be weak points. With the exception on certain CVA inline rifles with pressed in breeches, research has not turned up a single instance of a black powder gun failing that could not be traced back to user error.

I have often made excuses for the dumb people who make mistakes with muzzleloaders because they are on the fringe of the gun world. People just don't grow up around them. I didn't. My early years of muzzleloading were very much a solo experience. If there is no one to teach the right and wrong way to load a muzzleloader, you gotta learn somehow. Anyone who is a reenacting group doesn't have any excuse because they are surrounded with folks who have been doing it a while.

The guys Lamb talks about seeing with multiple loads stuck in their muskets had even less of an excuse. The flintlock smoothbore was the current technology, all of their gun experience was with them, they were not the obscure novelties that they are today.

Simply put, they were stupid people with guns, loading them in an unsafe manner. It is interesting to note that the people who overload their muskets, attempt to use smokeless powder, short-ram the ball, shut their eyes when pulling the trigger, and take the field as a reenactor without ever actually having fired a round out of the gun are just continuing the habits of those guys who were blowing up their muskets and hurting bystanders back in 1777.

Lamb's paragraph describing the habits of not seating the ball or opening the cartridge properly actually documents stupidity. Unfortunately, we allow documented practices to be recreated at events, and stupidity is one of them.

There are ways to keep accidents from happening. The first thing that can and should be done is to require reenactors to qualify with their muskets with ball. There are a lot of guys out there who have absolutely no respect for the fact that it is a real, honest-to-God firearm in their hands. If they could see what it is capable of, perhaps they be a little more muzzle-conscious.

The drills that are used to try and look so sharp out there don't take into account the fact that sometimes flintlocks misfire. For a while there, at the Battle Road event, the powers-that-be were teaching a drill that included the tipping downward of the muzzle to spill out any unfired powder that may be in the bore. Sure it is less than authentic, but if the alternative is allowing stupid people to overload their guns and endanger themselves, the people in ranks around them, bystanders, and indeed the entire hobby of living history because they don't have the sense enough to keep track of whether or not their guns have gone off, is an authentic drill really all that important?

Guns and powder are not dangerous all by themselves, they are inanimate objects. When these things become a problem is when stupid people are allowed to handle them. At least in Lamb's day, he recognised that the danger came from the half-assed loading practices that were adopted in the field to keep up with American tactics.

In today's world, stupid people perform an unsafe act, damage themselves, the gun, and the people around them and the first response is that it is someone else's fault. It must have been the gunmaker's fault that Private Dumbass put six or seven charges in his musket and pulled the trigger, right? Maybe it was the powder manufacturer's fault, or the event organizer. It certainly couldn't have been the fault of the guy who overloaded his gun in complete disregard for accepted load standards, the manufacturer's instructions, the safety rules they were taught when they joined the unit (assuming they were taught, if not, the unit certainly shares responsibility) and just plain common sense.

I've been reenacting for nearly two decades. People would mock me if they knew the historical details I have spent time obsessing about. The authenticity I can achieve pales in comparison to the level of the guys who are willing to injure themselves and their friends by correctly reenacting period correct stupidity.

A mangled mink

2008-03-18T10:19:00.003-05:00

Over the past few weeks, we have been having trouble with a predator killing birds. Not carrying them off to eat mind you, just killing them, drinking the blood and eating the head and neck. This is the M.O. of a weasel. A weasel can be a devastating thing to a flock of birds. It will kill one after the other until all are gone, then move on to the next farm.

So far, the death toll had been 2 chickens and 3 ducks. Needless to say I was pissed off about it. We tried a leghold trap set in a box. He ignored it. We tried a leghold trap set in such a way as to boobytrap one of the duck carcasses, all I caught in it was a very embarrassed chicken. We tried a hav-a-hart live trap. He set it off and reached in to get the bait through the mesh sides. The little bugger was outsmarting me.

Until last night.

I stayed up late to work on my book (a topic for another post, I'm very short on sleep and will try to stay on topic here) and about 11:30 last night a big ruckus made enough noise that I could hear it over the music in my headphones. I grabbed a flashlight and ran out to see what was going on. The chickens that are lined up on a roost outside my office window were angrily discussing something, and at first I thought it was just about who got to sleep where on the roost. But I had a gut feeling.

Investigating further, I looked in the tool shed that is located under the deck, and saw a dead bird. As I reached down to turn it over, it moved. I flipped it over to reveal a gash in it's neck and new the culprit was close. Since it was a fresh kill, actually in process, I knew he would be back, so I went inside to get my jacket, the 1,000,000 candlepower flashlight, and a shotgun.

As I walked out of the shed, the little monster ran in front of me, stopped, looked at me, and ran off over to the dog kennel. This was the first time I had seen it. Until then, I had only seen the aftermath and some tracks in the snow.

As I walked away from the shed, the wounded bird spazzed out as it began to lose it's muscle control, and it flopped out into the path in front of the shed. I knew that all I'd have to do to locate the predator was to locate the chicken on my return.

When I came back, he had stashed the bird under a folding table that is leaning against the rabbit shed. He lived under the shed, and was doing his best to cache his food near his house. When he saw me coming, he zipped under the pallet that serves as a self-draining work area when we butcher. I could see him between the slats of the pallet.

As I stood there pondering just blasting him right through the pallet, wondering if #4 shot retains the energy to pass through oak and still be lethal, the little monster stuck his head out to look at me!

Big mistake on his part, because I let him have it with the 12-gauge at a distance of about a foot.

Turns out it wasn't a weasel at all, but a mink. With a pretty nice pelt, except for the gaping hole in the side of the head.

It is a cool little animal, would be neat to watch doing it's thing in it's element. The problem is that "it's thing" involves voraciously killing my livestock. He would have kept going until all of the birds were gone, then taken the rabbits, and when they were gone he would have moved on to Jeff's house and his chickens.

Unfortunately, the hen, his last victim, didn't make it. I cleaned her, plucked her and she'll make a pot of chicken noodle soup later on this week. It was one of Caleigh's very tame pet hens.

Chickens come and go, so do predators. It is a small victory to blast one with a shotgun, but I'll take my victories where ever I can. It amazes me to think that such a little creature can cause so much damage to a flock. It is not even as big as a cat, and an actual weasel is even smaller than a mink!

Snapped a few pics of it. Click on the link to see them, and use your browser's "back" button to come back here.

Here is one of the whole mink, from the side. Not too graphic.

Here is one of the business end, he's got sharp teeth meant for biting his prey on the head and neck to kill them.

OK, this one is graphic. It shows the damage done at close range by a 12-gauge. I think I'll try to salvage the skull, depending on how much is damaged.

Now THAT is an egg...

2008-03-06T19:07:00.002-05:00

It is staring to show signs of being spring. Seemed like a really long winter and I've had enough winter for one year.

One more sign of spring showed up this week. I found an egg. Two day later, I found another. Both were in the old rabbit hutch where the chickens always brood their eggs.

These are no ordinary eggs. Take a look at the whopper that Caleigh is holding here.

No, there isn't a really tired chicken out there, the big white eggs are being laid by the Sevastopol goose. I'll see how many she lays in a week, week and a half, and perhaps put them in the incubator. Sevastopols are funny looking, kinda like a sheep crossed with a goose because they are white and have curly feathers. Truth be told, they are kind of silly looking.

I don't have convenient photos of our Sevastopols, but you can learn about them here. They are kind of a rare breed.

9mm Kaboom!

2008-03-06T18:40:00.002-05:00

We've all been sick with the flu here. Nonetheless, we are still going full-tilt at our workload. It gets crazy sometimes. Since they are still sick, Earl and Kathy have been going home a little early. This afternoon Wendy and Caleigh went off to the gym to swim. Perfect, thought I, I'll take 1/2 hour and tinker with the PPSH semi that was mentioned a few posts ago. I have a new trigger/hammer assembly for it that mimics the experimental one that we made up here in the shop.

I grabbed my earmuffs, the rifle, and a drum that still had some rounds in it from last time and headed up to the back door where I could stand out on the back stairs and touch off a few rounds without trudging through the snow. I clicked in the drum, racked the charging handle to chamber a round, took aim and fired.

I was using Winchester White Box 9mm ammo from Wal-Mart, which is the best deal on commercial 9mm around, because the earlier version of the fire control group didn't have the "oomph" needed to set off the hard primers on most military surplus stuff. The new FCG has a better designed spring, so it shouldn't be a problem.

What was a problem was that the shell wasn't loaded quite up to par. Instead of having the power to push the projectile out of the barrel and cycle the action, it just pushed the round to a little over 3/4 of the way down the barrel. The rest of the gas pressure blew the unlocked bolt rearwards and attempted to eject the empty shell. The problem is that the shell was still under pressure and blew apart into my face. I got peppered with hot gasses, burning power, and shards of brass. The receiver was damaged in the process. Pretty exciting.

Here is a picture of the shredded 9mm brass cartridge and the slug that I drove out of the barrel. These are all of the brass parts I could find. Running my fingers along my forehead, I think I found a few more. The PPSH ejects straight up, so the gasses came straight back at me.

This is why it is always a good idea to wear safety glasses and my day-to-day glasses are polycarbonate, just like safety glasses.

The good news is that the barrel is fine. The receiver will need a bit of attention, but the gun isn't a total loss. It is still in better shape than when I got it. Interestingly, as I sit and ponder this, I think if it had been a more advanced design with a locked breech, there would have been a lot more damage to the gun, probably ruining the barrel. Since the breech block/bolt is a blowback design, it just blew back under pressure. If it had a locked breech, the pressure would have had to escape somewhere and would probably bulged the barrel just behind the slug. Once the slug stopped moving, it became an obstruction.

Gotta hand it to the WW2 era Soviets, they built a robust gun!

Now if Winchester could just remember to put ALL of the powder in their shells...

Fence problems

2008-02-10T08:37:00.000-05:00

This morning I woke up before everyone else, as is typical. We have moved into our new bedroom now even though it isn't quite 100% done yet. (Still need to paint the doors and hang curtains, Earl and Kathy have my grandparent's bedroom set almost completely refinished-that is a topic for another post though)

Anyway, in the bedroom are two sets of sliding glass doors. One leads to a balcony kind of thing, the other to a little deck (that we plan on replacing with a more substantial thing later). I looked out through the glas to see that we had really gotten dumped on with snow overnight and was admiring how it looked with the morning fog and the hemlock trees weighted down with snow, when my eyes wandered to the animal pen. The goats were out wandering around, sniffing in the snow and doing goat stuff. The pigs were sleeping in the chicken house. (the chickens don't seem to mind as long as the pigs bring body heat with them) But...where was Rocky, the steer?

He thinks he's a goat, so he's usually wherever they are. If he spends the night in the chicken house, I'd normally be able to see his big black and white rear quarter hanging out of the doorway. Nope, no Rocky there either. I was considering changing my vantage point to try and see the other corner of the pen, when I saw a big black nose bobbing up and down on the other side of the cow shed, down near the ground. Yup, Rocky is laying down against the shed on the outside of the fence, chewing his cud.

He got out overnight and couldn't figure out how to get back in, so he just laid himself down against the next best thing: the outside of his shed.

This is the 4th time in two weeks that he has gotten out. The first two times, he managed to break the fence where the steel sections are joined together with screw clamps. The third time (yesterday) we assume he just stepped over the fence where it is bent down a bit from leaning over it to get hay. All of the goats were out with him last night. We figured out that there had been an escape when he came up to my office window and mooed at me, then came around to the door, apparantly wanting to come in. After I chopped away the ice and managed to get the pen door open, I led him back in (with the added motivation of some grain) then passed the goats one by one back over the fence.

I then wired a pallet in place to close up the low spot in the fence. Yeah, that worked for a few minutes anyway. At least until I got back into the house. It was only a matter of time before he just stepped over the fence somewhere else and was back out in the woods exploring, only this time he had wised up and didn't come to the window to tell me about it. Of course, in his little boving brain, he didn't think this through all of the way and couldn't figure out how to get back in, so he slept outside.

The problem with the fence is that he has grown, and the fence has "shrunk" due to snow and ice piling up around it. The fence panels are actually 52" high, but if the "solid ground" has risen around it (at least on the inside where the critters have packed it down solid) it has the effect of making the top of the fence lower in relation to the surface. Thus it is no huge stretch of the imagination that a 1200lb steer whose belly hangs only about 6"-8" below the top of the fence is going to try and scrape his way over it. Especially when he discovers that there are evergreens right over there!

What we will probably do tomorrow or the next day is wire up some pallets to the steel fence in suce a way as to raise the percieved height of the fence and maybe run a single electric fence wire along the top to discourage his trying to "lean" over it to get stuff.

The PPSH, Garand and other gun projects...

2008-01-27T21:14:00.000-05:00

With the influx of skilled help we have had here over the past month or so, we've been able to catch up on the day-to-day work on muskets and work on a few "other" projects.

Hanging on the wall in the workshop is a Long Land that had been broken through the wrist (UPS strikes again). As an experiment, I wanted to see what materials and man-hours went into restocking one in walnut. So in-between regular work, Jeff took a stock blank from a place in Ohio and reworked it to fit an Indian made Bess. It is almost done, with final scraping and sanding to be done, then a finish applied.

Click on the pictures to see a larger version.

I won't mention the project hanging above it on the wall yet (not shown). It is a surprise for later on, when it is closer to reality.

Below it is the fusil de chasse that was begun by Chris as a training piece a few years ago. Several people worked on it, and Jim finally finished it up last month. It has a curly maple stock finished with aqua fortis and blued steel.

We are also working on rebarreling a Baker smoothbore with a .62 cal Colerain rifled barrel to see what the conversion will cost in labor and materials. The goal is to be able to offer a correctly rifled Baker Rifle. So far, Jeff has had to turn a new breechplug to match the threads on the Colerain barrel. The Baker has a hooked breech, so we'll be able to retain the original tang. We'll also attempt to reuse the sights, bayonet bar and possibly the tenons from the smoothbore barrel. No info as to what the upgrade will cost at this point, so don't bother asking yet!

On the breechloader end of things, Earl and I have got the PPSH working. The PPSH-41 is a Soviet design that was put into service in WW2 in an effort to arm untrained people with an easy to produce, rapid fire submachine gun. This is truly the gun that saved Stalingrad from the Nazis. Later on, it was replaced by an even cheaper to manufacture gun called the PPS-43, which was made of all stamped steel construction and didn't even have the wooden stock of the PPSH-41. Both types were made in many Soviet bloc countries.

A few years ago, I got my hands on a Hungarian made demilled PPSH, circa 1950. The parts were in great shape, albeit demilled by having the rear of the receiver cut away. The first problem with the project is that we couldn't use the original barrel because it is too short to legally be a "long gun" and either needed to be made with a 16" long barrel or registered as a "short barreled rifle". Not knowing if it would even work, I didn't want to spend the time and $200 on registering it, so we used a 16" long barrel for now. The barrel was a brand new replacement Uzi carbine barrel in 9mm. The original gun was chambered in 7.62x25mm, a higher powered Soviet round that is dimensionally similar to the 9mm, but necked down to 7.62. The neat thing is that the original drum magazines will feed 9mm no problem.

A custom adapter needed to be turned and welded to the Uzi barrel to make the breech fit the PPSH trunnion (the block where a barrel mounts). A receiver repair section with a blocking bar integral to it was procured and welded up to the front half of the destroyed receiver. The blocking bar is needed to keep someone from just installing the original full-auto part into it. An original PPSH bolt has a fixed firing pin, and fires from an "open bolt", but to be US legal, a semi auto has to fire from a "closed bolt". To achieve this, the bolt needs some modifications such as drilling it out to accept a floating firing pin that would be stuck with a hammer or a sliding striker.

The last consideration was to gut the lower receiver, where the fire control parts are located. Again, we wanted to remove any possibility of full auto parts ever fitting again, so the mounting locations were cut away. In place of the original parts, we installed a hammer, trigger and sear that were inspired by the AK-47. In fact, they began life as AK-47 parts before I went at them with a Dremel tool, grinder and welder to jury-rig the parts into new ones.

I reinstalled the original selector switch inside the trigger guard, but it is welded there and serves a new function. There is a pin that passes through it to hold a spring inside that is now the trigger return spring. So in addition to making the gun look historically correct, the switch functions as a washer!

Ultimately it will need a stronger main spring, because it won't set off hard military surplus primers, but it does feed and fire Winchester White Box ammo just fine out of the 71-round drum (yes, I said 71 rounds). In fact, I was able to consistently hit my 3" swinging targets at about 20 yards with it on Friday afternoon.

We'll end up milling a new, from scratch trigger for it because the spot welds that held the chopped-up AK triggers (2 were used, end to end to reach the hammer from the original trigger slot) cracked after about 60 rounds. It's OK, because there are a few minor improvements we can make at the same time.

Once we get it running flawlessly, I plan to register it as an SBR and then we'll be able to install the correct length barrel (in the correct caliber) and reinstall the compensator at the muzzle. As a part of the demilling process, the compensator is cut off with a torch and in order to reinstall it using the temporary 9mm barrel, we'd have to cut the hole in it larger to let the barrel stick out through it. This would negate the compensator effect on it, so for now we just left the front of the receiver where the compensator mounts open, complete with the slag from the cutting torch. After the comp is reinstalled, we will refinish the metal parts to match.

Another historic firearm saved from oblivion!

On Friday afternoon, after going out to play with the PPSH, I came back to the shop and began another restoration project. This one is a Christmas present that I got from Wendy this year. it is a Springfield Armory M-1 Garand built in May of 1942. Yup, this one probably fought in the Pacific in WW2. After the war it traveled around a bit and found it's way to Guatemala and sometime in the past year or so made it's way back to the US, and ultimately to me. It needed some TLC, as would be expected of a 66 year old battle rifle. The gas cylinder was loose, the action wobbled in the stock, the trigger group wouldn't lock up to the receiver.

After learning how to tear it down from Bob, and reading Scott Duff's book, I undertook the project of bringing it back to it's former glory. Phase one was to get it functioning properly. For starters, I replaced the worn wood so the action would fit snugly. The stock was a replacement anyway, with no government inspection marks, so I was not messing with it's historic integrity. I had to improvise a tool to remove the handguard mounting clip.

While the action was out on the bench, I replaced the operating rod spring (which was bent) and a few other out of spec springs. Before reinstalling the action, I peened the three slots in the barrel that locate the gas cylinder to eliminate play in the front sight. I also replaced the worn trigger guard, which on a Garand is used to lock the trigger group and receiver together. The worn one was a post WW2 replacement, and I used the correct milled type that would have been used originally in the spring on '42.

When putting it back together, I used a new Govt' issue gas cylinder. The muzzle wear is within acceptable limits. This is checked by putting a round in, bullet first, from the muzzle and measuring how far it goes in before stopping on the rifling.

The last thing I did at this phase is to tear down and rebuild the rear sight, replacing the cracked cover with a new one.

When spring comes around and we set up our Parkerizing tank, I'll refinish the metal back to it's military issue appearance. I'll also shop for the correct WW2 type sight knob. In the meantime, here is how the old war horse looks with it's unfinished stock:

I should take this opportunity to point out that MVTCo Inc does not sell any cartridge firearms, just muzzleloaders. The cartridge guns that are mentioned in this blog are part of our collection and are not for sale, so please don't ask.

There is a separate corporation in the works whose mission will be to develop and offer for sale civilian legal replicas of various historic military issued cartridge guns, but it is still being formed. Forming a corporation and getting licenced to manufacture firearms is a time consuming project. When things are operational, you'll read it here first!

Goat rescue

2008-01-13T20:33:00.000-05:00

So last week I dumped too much grain out of the bag when feeding the critters. To feed them, I lift the 50 lb bag of grain up to the top edge of a 4' high fence and pour it over the side until it feels right, then pull the bag back, stopping the flow of feed. Sometimes Rocky the steer gets involved and I fumble with the bag, and in this case ended up dumping most of it over the fence. Rather than go into the pen, push 1100 pounds of Holstein out of the way, and try to scoop some of the excess feed back into the bag, I decided to just let them have a feast.

Bad idea. Goats will eat themselves sick. The excess grain will cause them to bloat up as it ferments faster than they are used to. Bloating can and does kill goats because the stomach swells up to the point that they sufficate.

Later on I noticed that Vanilla, the doe, was standing around, trying to hide out. Upon closer inspection I saw that her left side was bulged out, a sign of bloat. It was a good sign that she was still standing, generally once they lay down death follows soon. To dislodge the gas, I pulled, shoved and pushed her around until it started to break up and she was obviously feeling better. That was round 1 of this fight.

Round 2 came when I found Chocolate the wethered buck lying down in the hen house. He was not willing to stand up, even when I lifted him. When I put my arms around his belly, he groaned that groan that only comes from a belly that is more full than it is designed to be. He'd die soon unless something drastic happened.

There are a few things you can do. You could attempt to shove a tube down their throat to let the gas escape, but that could go terribly wrong if I shoved it down the wrong pipe. You could take a pocket knife and puncture through his side into his belly to let the gas out, but then you have a potentially septic situation. I could have called an emergency vet, but this is a food animal, not a pet, and spending $200 on a critter that contains maybe 60 pounds of meat really adds to the cost per pound.

It was time to improvise. I went to the first aid box and dug around, looking for inspiration. Then the light bulb came on over my head! I opened up a packet containing a yearly feline booster shot for distemper and parvo, and swiped the sterile syringe from it. I went back out to the henhouse, removing the cap from the needle and the plunger from the barrel of the syringe. Chocolate looked at me with a blank expression, no caring what I did to him at this point. It was now or never.

My knee was shoved into his right side so the problem stomach bulged out on the left where I could reach it. I then stuck the needle into his side, through the hide and into the stomach. With one hand, I held the syringe shoved as far into the goat's side as I could get it (remember, it was a cat syringe so the needle was pretty short) and held my other hand over the open end to see if anything was coming out. Sure enough, a steady stream of wind was coming out of the barrel of the syringe!

In the midst of all of this, in comes Rocky to see what is going on. He poked his head down to the goat to give a sniff, and in the process knocked me over backwards with his horns, giving my a little knot on my forehead just about the size of the tip of his horn. Dumbass steer!

After I gave him a whack in the nose and pushed him backwards out of the hen house, I went back to my goat-saving mission. Rocky has been taught to "gee" "haw" "come up" "stand" and "back", but he understands them only when it benefits him. Sometimes you just have to push his nose down to make him back up.

By now, Chocolate is looking a little freaked out, which I took to be a good sign. Fear is better than apathy, as is means you have a will to live. I moved the syringe to a couple more spots to let out more gas, and he made a burping sort of grunt, then carefully stood up. A few minutes later, he was wandering around doing goat stuff as if nothing had happened. I guess goats don't look for deeper meanings in a near death experience, they just burp and move on.

A week has gone by, and all parties involved are completely back to normal with the exception of a little sore spot on my forehead.

My new stupid project

2007-12-08T19:52:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know. Most of my projects are stupid. If not stupid, at least pointless. If not pointless, at least entertaining.

OK, I have a cannon. A 3-pounder RevWar period iron gun on a field carriage. Up on the top shelf in the gun room is also a golf ball mortar. it is not authentic to any time period, nor does it pretend to be. it is made of metal parts scavenged from the scrap bin at IPE, a place I used to work about a hundred years ago (my hair was jet black then, not a single grey).

For my next recreational artillery trick: a 60mm mortar. I've been wanting one for a while, originally wanting a US issue M2 mortar. I was shopping for a demilled one that had all of the parts except the tube intact with the intention of filing a BATF Form 1 and adding a functional tube for it. That way, we could make some mortar rounds for it that would be launched with shotgun shell blanks. (without getting too technical here)

Then I stumbled onto a Spanish one, circa 1960's, that was about 1/4 of what the price would be to gather the parts for the M2. When it came in, I was surprised to see that the tube was not demilled in the usual way which is to cut a bore-sized hole in the tube and weld rods across the bore so a projectile couldn't be inserted. Nope, this one came with the firing pin turned off and the end cap screwed onto the tube, then welded in place. It's a nice weld job.

My first thought was that I'd be able to turn off the welds in the lathe. Then it occurred to me that we could turn it into a black powder mortar! All it would take is to drill a vent hole in it to stick a squib. A better way would be to turn an insert for the breech that has a chamber in it, and drill the vent into that. The chamber allows for a smaller charge as it centers the force directly onto the projectile.

Now for projectiles...the actual bore ID is 2.24". That is NOT 60mm, more like 57mm (a European standard size). Wandering around the shop and house, I have test-fit several random objects into the bore...soda can, too big...Israeli rifle grenade, a hair too small...golf ball, too small, the plastic bottle that anti-skunk dog shampoo comes in, too small (but getting close)...the plastic bottle that camping toilet chemicals comes in...perfect!

I can't see myself ever using the camping toilet enough to accumulate enough bottles to be a good ammo supply, so on my next foray to the supermarket, I'll have to bring along my calipers. I'm thinking soup cans might work. We can fill them with cement and put an eyelet in the end to attach some surveyor's tape. The tape improves our chances of actually finding them to reuse.

Since I began to write this, I found myself upstairs in the kitchen, preparing to dismember the last of my Naragansett turkeys to put in the crock pot. All of a sudden, I spied a row of neat, orderly, alphabetized plastic containers that had just the right look to them. Spice jars! No, not the little glass ones that cost $5 for a quarter ounce at the supermarket, I'm talking about the larger plastic 2 3/4 ounce ones that cost $.88 at Ocean State Job Lots. I dropped what I was doing, grabbed an unopened jar of picling spices, and hurried downstairs to unlock the gun room. I slid the jar into the tube and found it to be a perfect fit!

What luck, an inexhaustable supply of projectile bodies! Since I use a lot of herbs and spices in my cooking and usually buy several jars at once so I'll never run out, what I can do is pour the contents of several plasitc jars into one glass canning jar, thus freeing up the plastic ones.

Going black powder instead of filing a Form 1 means I can take it interstate without filing more paperwork and also saves the $200 dollar filing fee for making a "destructive device". Saving that $200 frees up money that can be spent on other stupid, pointless yet amusing projects.

Sometimes it is a big pain in the ass to be me, other times it's pretty fun.

Calling for obama...

2007-12-02T16:35:00.000-05:00

I don't know if someone signed me up as a joke or if the Democrats (a Latin word that means "anti-gunner") are just sending all of their election propaganda to me and Wendy. Since we are not done unpacking all of our stuff from our Lowell house, we don't have a dartboard set up yet, so we don't have much use for them.

They come in, sometimes as many as three a day, and are printed on glossy paper, so they aren't even eco-friendly to toss into the wood stove. (typical left wing hypocrisy)

Now the phone calls have started.

I generally am not the person to answer the phone. I hate phones. I hate phones almost as much as I hate left-wing anti-gunners or the stupid weenie college kids that do their campaigning for them.

A few minutes ago, the phone rang. Caller ID said "Obama for America". I HAD to answer.

Here's how it went:

Pete: Hello?

Kelly: Hello this is Kelly calling for Obama...

Pete: Sorry, there is no Obama here, you must have the wrong number.

Kelly: Umm, uhhh...

Pete: Hello, are you there?

Kelly: Uhh, yes we are just calling to see what you are looking for in a politician.

Pete: Well, what I'm looking for is someone who isn't going to screw me over, someone who isn't going to work to introduce ridiculous new gun laws, someone who isn't going to wipe his butt with the Constitution, someone who isn't going to raise my taxes and give my money to welfare trash. I don't suppose you know anyone like that? (I resisted the temptation to suggest Ron Paul to her)

Kelly: Umm, ok, umm, thanks for your time.

She didn't even try to suggest that her anti-gun socialist candidate might have something to offer. She just gave up.

In the past half hour, they have called three times! The last one sounded like a little kid, so I asked how old he was. He said 17. I told him that he wasn't old enough to vote, why should I care who he wants me to vote for. He said "forget it" and hung up on me.

I think I'll call back and ask to talk to his Mommy and ask if she knows he's making crank calls.

P.S. Spellcheck doesn't recognize the word "Obama", for some reason I find that amusing

Vote Ron Paul, the ONLY pro-gun candidate!

The Guy From Boston

2007-12-02T13:02:00.000-05:00

Got off of the phone with Rick Howe a few minutes ago, and among other things he told me to visit "The Guy From Boston" on the web. After hanging up from Rick, I had to google it. Maybe this in't for everyone, but I nearly fell of my chair laughing at this guy!

He's a fat, obnoxious, cigar smoking Italian guy from Boston and thanks to the internet he has a voice. (not Rick, he's only obnoxious, but Rick makes me laugh nearly as hard) OK, every third word out of his mouth is profanity, but I've met so many people like him that I am just used to it.

I can't describe it, you gotta see it. (send the kids out of the room first unless they are used to hearing "the F word")

www.TheGuyFromBoston.com

Found a Turismo...but do I still need one?

2007-12-01T18:10:00.000-05:00

The other night I was working late, trying to sort out the paper wreakage that covers my desk. I was listening to Napster through my headphones, it was the '80s rock I like. Something made me do a google search for my midlife crisis car: a replacement for my Turismo that I had when I was 20.

I've mentioned it here before, you can read about it here.

This one is on ebay, it's an 83 instead of an 81, but the body is th same. it isn't the TC3 version of it, but it's probably as close as I'll get. The problem is that it is in Kansas, some 1400 miles away. Bidding is only a few hundred bucks at the moment, but the last few minutes of an auction usually are the busiest.

I didn't bid on it. I'm not sure what that means. It may mean that I've somehow made my peace with my old Plymouth. It may mean that I've just admitted defeat to age. It may just be that I'm too busy and tired to entertain any flights of fancy.

Too much to ponder, for now I'm going to divide up nealry 300 pounds of pork that is sitting on my deck, waiting to be cut up and put in the freezer (we butchered two pigs this week). Sometimes work take precedence over dreams, even dreams about your favorite car.

Maybe tonight I'll upload a picture of my old Plymouth if I can find one. Pictures don't do it justice, you'd have had to have driven it (or at least clung to the passenger seat for dear life as I drove it LOL)

US Army issue Jukebox, .30 cal

2007-11-30T19:28:00.000-05:00

There are always an assortment of offbeat projects going on here. Some belong to customers, most are mine. This morning we managed to finish up one of them and get the pile of parts off of the bench once and for all.

I've been accumulating parts for the project for a while, and had actually got the last part for it months ago.

It's a Rock-Ola! No, not the jukebox. Yes, it is by the jukebox manufacturer, but it isn't actually a jukebox. It's an M-1 Carbine.

During WW2, the regular firearms manufacturers couldn't keep up with the needs of the military, so contracts to manufacture stuff were given to other types of companies. For instance, General Motors produced .30 cal machine guns, .45 cal "grease guns", as well as other rifles. In fact, General Motor's "Inland" manufacturing division was the biggest producer of M1 Carbines. The funky thing is that other types of manufacturers got in on this too. National Postal Meter, IBM, Underwood (the typewriter people) and of course, Rock-Ola.

The project began when I stumbled onto a box-o-parts on ebay a few years ago. There was a stock of unknown vintage, a 1972 dated barrel and the rest of the stuff all appears to be WW2 vintage, but all of them were brand new, unissued parts. What was lacking was a rear sight and the receiver. Between then and now, I tracked down a rear sight for it, and eventually hunted down a source of receivers.

The place that had the receivers had an assortment of them with varying prices, depending on manufacturer. The difference between the low end (Inland) and the higher priced names was $100. I have always felt that the concept of a jukebox company making guns for the war effort is a great story, so I decided to spend the extra $100 and get the much rarer Rock-Ola made receiver. I had already owned an Inland for a long time, and it used to be my "house gun" when I lived in a crappy neighborhood in Lowell, but that is another story...

So anyway, the parts sat around for a long time, and eventually I accumulated all of the specialized tools that it takes to assemble an M1 Carbine. There's a special tool to disassemble/reassemble the bolt group, another to remove/install the gas piston, and most importantly, a funky shaped wrench for screwing the receiver onto the barrel.

I went to install the barrel, and it stopped short of installing all of the way. No matter how hard I cranked on the special wrench, it stopped about 45 degrees away from where it needed to be. In frustration, I walked away from the project for a while, leaving assorted M1 parts and tools strewn about. It began to nag at me, but I couldn't take the time to figure it out.

Last night I went and read the 1953 dated Army issue shop manual for the M1/M2/M3 carbines, typical read-yourself-to-sleep stuff right? One sentence on page 121 solved the mystery. It reads: "Select proper barrel and receiver combination so that about 1/16 inch draw is obtained when assembled". Select proper combination? I had assumed that they would be 100% interchangeable, being mil-spec and all. Nope, and that was the problem!

So this morning Jim comes in, and we set about stoning down the mating face of the barrel by a couple of thousandths (by fitting until it worked, no real science to it) and cranked it down so that the barrel was square to the receiver. After that it was just a case of touching up the finish on a couple of spots and assembling the rifle. Jim polished some rust spots off of a 15-round mag that had gotten wet while sitting on the workbench (again, that's a story for another time), then reblued it. We removed the firing pin to see if the bolt would close all the way with a live round (poor man's headspace gauge) and it locked up nice and tight, so we stripped it down and put the pin back in.

I've got a bunch of .30 cal ammo; reloads that I inherited from a friend, surplus stuff and Wolf brand. Hopefully we'll have a chance to test fire it and sight it in sometime soon. With the exception of the refinished WW2 era receiver, it is a completely new gun, so I don't expect many issues, if any. Let's see what kind of music comes out of this 1940's jukebox!

I snapped a picture of some of my M1 Carbine stuff. Here it is as a thumbnail, click on it to see a larger version:

The Rock-Ola is on the top, the Inland is on the bottom. The Inland would have been set up exactly like the Rock-Ola when it was built during the war, but it is tricked out in "house gun" trim, complete with M2 metal handguard, post war folding stock, and 30-round M2 mag. In the middle is a reproduction fleece lined case. On the right is a post war bayonet for the M1 and it's scabbard. Clockwise from there is a magazine pouch for two 15-round mags (as seen on the top rifle), a .30 cal carbine round, the gas pistol nut tool, the bolt disassembly tool, and on the lower left is the special 7 lb. wrench for installing the receiver.

The "credit crunch" & stupid people

2007-11-21T11:58:00.000-05:00

Know what bugs me? Stupid people.

We really don't get time to watch the news as we work late into the night, and I'm about a year behind in reading my periodicals like Muzzleloader Magazine, so having an hour each night to read the newspaper is out too. When I read news, it is online, read in the morning as I wake up and filter out my junk email.

What dominates the online news these days seems to be the so-called "credit crunch" and the "sub prime loan" fiasco.

It seems like everyone is whining about not being able to make ends meet and that "middle class" families are being targeted by "predatory lenders". I claim BS!

When I was a kid, "middle class" families in my neighborhood didn't buy overpriced houses or all have high-end SUVs. They rented houses, maybe had one new car and if there was a second car, it was a used one. Me, I came from a very poor family that not only didn't have a car, we didn't even have a phone.

Nowadays, EVERYBODY seems to have a new car, and not a stripped down model at that. EVERYBODY has a cell phone, a computer, flat screen TVs etc etc. The expectations of "middle class" have changed, and thus the costs.

It used to be that you'd save up money for years to make a downpayment on a house. 20% was the norm. You'd have to do some financial planning to be able to make a purchase like a house, and even then, you'd get a house you could afford, not some overpriced McMansion in a pretentious subdivision. Maybe I'm just a cranky old fart, but when did we stop using common sense? It seems like people expect to be able to not plan ahead, not save up for a downpayment, buy a house way beyond their means just because they qualified for a loan to do it, and when push comes to shove and they cant' really afford it, blame the banks, the government, China, Walmart, the education system, anyone but where the real responsibility lies: THEMSELVES!

A couple of weeks ago there was a series of articles on MSN describing how the middle class is being squeezed. One of the articles described a young family that was whining because they had a no money left over after making car payments on their $40k SUV and mortgage payments on their $400k house in an upscale neighborhood. It really irked me. Of course, they justifed all of their stupid financial moves. Since one of thme had a 10 mile commute to work, they "needed" the SUV because they needed a reliable car. I guess a less glamorous car that gets better gas mileage and costs about 1/3 of the SUV wouldn't be reliable? They "needed" to live in the upscale neighborhood because one of thme had grown up in the vicinity and had family nearby. I guess it is unreasonable to drive a few minute more to visit your older, established family members and live in a house you can actually afford.

Whose fault was the families dillemma? Everyone's! They said it was the bank's fault for giving them the loan with and adjustable rate that went up after two years (can't expect a consumer to actually READ the terms of the loan before signing it, right?). They said it was the housing market's fault for prices being so high on houses (actually it is market driven, if people weren't willing to pay $400k for a shoddily built McMansion, they would cost about 1/3 what they do). They said it was Walmart's fault for outsourcing jobs to China (of course, they still shop there for all of their "must-have" electronic crap that they don't really need).

Not once did they they concede that perhaps a family of four that "only" makes about $70k per year should perhaps be a little smarter with their money. Buy a cheaper car, live in a less prestigeous house, THINK a little before siging a loan document etc. ...it all just seems like good old fashioned common sense to me.

What happened to "starter houses" where you'd buy a fixer-upper at auction, put some sweat equity into it, and move up to a nicer house when your income reached the appropriate level? What happened to economy cars or stripped down models? It seems like people feel the need to live beyond their means for image reasons, but aren't willing to make the sacrifices need to attain their goals.

How does this affect our society as a whole? When the dumb people who overpaid for overpriced houses and signed dumb mortgage agreements default on their loans, the banks fail. When the banks fail, the Federal Reserve steps in and bails out the banks by simply printing more money! More money means inflation because the dollar is worth less. A dollar that is worth less costs every single one of us in a big way because it is like a cut in pay...and it all started with stupid people living beyond their means.

Original guns vs Repros

2007-11-17T10:58:00.000-05:00

Last week somebody asked how the Enfield muskets compare to the original patterns. Since the Enfield isn't one of my exclusive projects I didn't really have a good answer there, so after "regular" hours yesterday, Jeff and I tore apart some original Enfield muskets that I have here to compare with a sample reproduction one.

First, I should clarify that there are "regular" hours during which employees work here (10-6), then "normal" hours where Wendy and I work (10-midnight and beyond). Johnna and Jim had left, Wendy had taken Caleigh to visit friends in the next town, so at 6 PM, that meant Jeff and I were unsupervised by mature people and the potential was there for us to get into all sorts of trouble. In the big picture, tearing down three muskets and spreading out reference books is pretty minor trouble, at least until Johnna sees the mess we made of the packing table.

So anyway, we get into the rack of antiques with screwdrivers.

What we ended up doing was tearing down the repro Enfield, an original 3-bander and an original Enfield marked yeomanry carbine. I've got a bunch of other originals from this time period, but these are the Tower marked examples that should theoretically match the repro 3-bander in construction and pattern details.

Here is what we found:

Trigger guards: nearly identical with the exception of fitting variances (in other words, brass parts are sand-cast and need to be polished down, polishing takes away metal and thus changes the dimensions)

Buttplates: nearly identical, with one of the originals having the tang screw hole drilled off center and the other (the carbine) not having a tang screw

Sideplate washers: (not sure of the actual name for these, I'm talking about the washers that go under the lock bolts on the left side) Identical on the 3-bander, the carbine has a sling bar so is different

Locks: nearly identical (will detail this below)

Nosecaps: original 3-bander had a slightly worn down nosecap, hard to tell how close the repro is to it, but similar enough to say they are the same.

Barrel bands: bottom band identical, middle band was replaced on the original with a later one, the top band was identical with the exception of the sling swivel, which had been replaced with a brass one on the original

Original barrel #1:
The barrels were interesting on the originals. One of them had been replaced with a country-made spiral wound barrel with an integral breechplug that is NOT removeable. In other words, the breech was forged first, and then the barrel itself was formed by wrapping around a mandrel in a spiral fashion that gives a visual effect (under the wood line where there is less rust/browning) of a Damascus barrel, but it is not Damascus, just strap iron roughly 5/8" wide. I'm not sure if this can be clearly shown in a photograph. It is sketchy forge welding, kind of scary, but it's how they were really made and this thing survived at least one war (or at least a lot of abuse) as it was heavily used.

The seemingly poor welds may also just be spots where the century and a half of corrosion attacked the slightly different metallurgy of the welds at a different rate than the steel itself. On this example, the barrel tang is welded to the barrel, much like the old Belgian fowlers of the bicentennial era. I suppose this isn't a big deal, since the barrel is held with bands and the snail's fit to the lockplate keeps the barrel from rotating in the stock.

Original barrel #2:
The other original one used the typical British barrel with screw-in breechplug. I took a wire brush to the underside of it and revealed some period inspection and assembly marks on the barrel and breechplug. Jeff speculated that the barrels on this type of gun may have been formed by a rolling method the same way the US barrels were done at the time, resulting in a seamless tube. (of course the repro barrel is a seamless tube with a separate, threaded breechplug) If time allows, I'll research who the inspectors were.

Lock details:
The locks were quite interesting. They were so close that I suspect that parts may even be interchangeable (didn't try). There were only a few differences noted:

1. The Crown/VR stamp is behind the hammer on the originals, and in front of it on the repro.

2. There is no date stamp on the repro, one original was marked 1858, the other 1859

3. There are slight variances in the shape of the hammer head. Nothing really obvious, but minor dimensional issues in the size of the head, not even sure how I'd describe it. Of the three locks, none were quite the same in that respect, perhaps it has to do with who did the finish filing on each particular lock, how sharp the file was etc.

4. The original locks had internal marking as to the maker, inspectors etc. that are not there on the repro.

5. The TOWER stamping is larger on the originals, probably to fit it under the Crown/VR. As I said, it isn't my design and have no idea where the specs came from, so it is possible that the repros were made copying an original that had non-spec lock markings.

Upon close examination, the originals proved to have had the same decorative engraving and checkering of the tip of the hammer spur that the repros have.

What I found especially interesting is the apparent lack of care that went into the finish of the original guns. If you look close (and sometimes not so close) you can still see file marks on the metal parts and rasp marks on the wood. This is how they were really made folks! Not finely polished, high-end sporting guns, these were mass-produced work guns for the infantry. For a more modern example of this, take a look at any of the stamped steel machine gun receivers of the WW2 era. Big blobs of weld here and there, tack welds with a little stub of rod still sticking out, the whole thing covered in black paint etc.

It would be really neat to reproduce them exactly as the originals were finished, but can you imagine the whining I would hear if there were file marks left in the brass or rasp marks still on the wood?

What I wasn't able to compare was the rear sights because the original 3-bander has had it's rear sight replaced with a simple notched non-adjustable rear sight (to idiot-proof it? simplify training of native troops?). The repros sight, however, does look correct when looking at other originals in photographs.

All in all, this was an interesting investigation. Over the years I have learned to expect ANYTHING when tearing down an original gun. What I have to do now is track down the regimental markings on the butts to figure out who carried them and form theories on how and why certain changes were made. For instance, on the 3-bander, the muzzle has been cut back a little, likely to "freshen" it if it were worn out or dented. The carbine's muzzle is still dented!. Both of them have had their stocks painted black, was this to protect them or to identify them? Under the woodline, the original barrels appeared to have been left in the white. Neither of them are loaded (surprising), but the 3-bander is kind of chocked up with crud and rust, indicating that it went into storage dirty.

I took pictures of the original parts alongside of the repro parts and when time allows I'll crop them and throw together a webpage about the comparison.

Right now, however, I gotta go set up the folding tables, Coleman stove, trash barrel, cooler and a bucket to start transforming a bunch of obnoxious free-range chickens, ducks and geese to a freezer full of food...but that's a whole 'nother story.

Firearms refresher course

2007-11-12T10:10:00.000-05:00

Got this from Ted in this morning's email:

Firearms Refresher Course

1. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.

2. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.

3. Colt: The original point and click interface.

4. Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.

5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?

6. If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.

7. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.

8. If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.

9. Those who trade liberty for security have neither.

10. The United States Constitution (c)1791. All Rights Reserved.

11. What part of 'shall not be infringed' do you not understand?

12. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others.

13. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.

14. Guns only have two enemies; rust and politicians.

15. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.

16. You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.

17. 911: Government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer.

18. Assault is a behavior, not a device.

19. Criminals love gun control; it makes their jobs safer.

20. If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson.

21. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.

22. You have only the rights you are willing to fight for.

23. Enforce the gun control laws we ALREADY have; don't make more.

24. When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.

25. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.

Right now there is an anti-muzzleloader uprising in New York. It seems some nutjob shot a police officer with an inline deer rifle. It didn't kill her, she was wearing a vest, but it knocked her down long enough that he got off a second shot (!?!?) with the rifle. The left-wing news media and politicians got wind of this and now they are clamoring to restrict muzzleloader ownership in NY.

This is pretty messed up, and typical reactionary nonsense politicking. Black powder shooters tend to be less politically active than cartridge gun shooters because they think they are safe from stupid legislation, but we are all under attack these days. A Brown Bess is an "assault weapon" in NJ because of the bayonet stud. In Massachusetts, there is a legal opinion that a blunderbuss is a pistol that requires a permit (based on case law, regardless of the fact that the statute law clearly exempts pre-1898 style muzzleloaders).

No gun owner, even if you own just one flintlock that hangs over your fireplace, is safe from gun control. I urge everyone reading this to become politically active and vote for your rights.

Remember that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance! The battles at Lexington and Concord on April 19th, 1775 began when the British troops set out to confiscate the arms of the militia. The resulting war led to the freedoms that we all enjoy today in every aspect of our lives. We owe it to the people who fought and died for us two centuries ago (and ever since) to not squander the rights that they won by being too lazy to speak out or even to vote.

Gun owners in the US are many, but we are quiet about it. Generally, the only press we get is bad. It is up to all of us to set a good example to non-gun owners and show them that we are nothing scary and shouldn't be unfairly legislated out of existence.

My challenge to all of you is to convert just one liberal anti-gunner to our side. Take one shooting. Teach them the history of guns in America (not the Michael Moore version). Don't show up dressing in camo and looking like Rambo. Don't use a human silhouette target, use a big bull's eye. Don't make them shoot a .458 magnum that will knock them over, just for laughs. Bring a .22 rifle, be sure to bring extra earmuffs and safety glasses. Show them what a real "sport" shooting is.

I've converted more than one anti-gunner by handing them a semi-auto Marlin .22 and teaching them to shoot. Most antis just don't know any better. For instance, they think semi autos are machine guns and that 9mm pistols are evil super-powerful cop-killer, armor piercing bullets. All they know is what the press told them, and it is up to use to teach them reality.

There is more responsibility to being a gun owner than just practicing range safety, every single one of us is officially part of the "gun lobby" and has the responsibility to protect the 2nd Amendment for ourselves, our children and all other generations to come.

More on accuracy

2007-10-25T13:45:00.000-05:00

OK, so now it has been two weeks in a row that I've had a chance to let a new flintlock shooter fire at a target using a cartridge with the same size ball as was issued in the 18th century. That is, for the Britsih army anyway. We are taught in school about how muskets are not accurate because they use a ball that is undersized to compensate for fouling.

The Brits isued a .690 ball, wrapped in a paper cartridge, along with a powder charge of roughly 120 grains. Powder quality was a problem then, and today we use a much lower charge (120 grains with modern black powder is nearly a proof load). When we made up cartridges, rolled up the .69 ball in newsprint paper and filled the tube with 90 grains of FFg. Using modern black powder, a service load for a .75 cal Brown Bess is 75 grains of powder. The 90 grains in the cartridge takes into consideration the fact that there will be some used for priming and probably some spilled here or there in the loading process.

The first new shooter had a dozen or more rounds as we started earlier in the day, and all but 2 of his shots went into what you could call the "kill zone" of a human siluette target at 25 yards. that is, the shots would have been in the heart/lung area if you were actually shooting at a redcoat. I neglected to get a picture of his target. The other 2 shots would have hit the redcoat in the wrist, but I'd still call them "hits".

The next week, the new shooter got here a little later in the day, and we talked for a while before getting down to rolling cartridges. We only had the chance to roll 5 as it was getting dark and we wanted to get out there while there was still some reasonable light. By the time we got the target posted, it was grey out at best, and shadows come in quickly here because of the hemlock trees. In addition to that, he wore bifocals and had to keep moving his glasses around and looking over them to get a sight picture.

Even with the rapidly coming darkness and awkward eyewear, the guy managed to get all five shots on target. The first was a bull's eye, and three of the other four were in a "kill zone". The Fifth one was in the groin, and I'm on the fence as to count that one as a hit or not,although technically it did break edge of the black scoring zone.

Here is his target, click on it to see it enlarged:

Keep in mind that we are talking about a new shooter in fading light loading from a cartridge with the infamous "undersized ball" we have heard so much about. Five shots, five dead or wounded redcoats.

Now compare the 25 yard target to a 50 yard target that I shot at a match over by the seacoast. It is at the bottom of this post. I fired it with a 1777 Charleville, using 65 grains of FFg and a patched .678 round ball. The Charleville is much more of a "shooter" design, with different ergonomics, an actual front sight and a smaller bore. Yeah, there is one "flyer" in the white 6-ring, but there are 3-10s and one 9. This goes to show that a smoothbore musket can be fired quite accurately in a civillian style loading, but even when loaded military style (I.E. with undersized ball and paper cartridge) it can still be much more effective than we are led to believe by what we learned in 5th grade.

The biggest part of a musket being an inaccurate weapon is the loose nut behind the stock. Most folks today, especially reenactors, don't know how to shoot. Most militia and conscripts from urban areas in the 18th century would not neccesarily know how to shoot either. Certainly not in the heat of battle.

Is a smoothobre an accurate weapon? Sure, within it's limitations. Does that mean that evey guy in the ranks is a marksman? No, not at all. They could have been trained to be, but the emphasis was on drill and manuvers, not marksmanship.

Imagine if all of those folks who were committed enough to the cause of the colonies to come out and publicly take up arms against the King's troops actually knew how to shoot? I'm thinking the war would have been over years earlier.

Blitz breakfast

2007-10-21T18:16:00.000-05:00

This morning we were getting ready for breakfast and Caleigh said "can we pretend..." as she always does. Usually she says "Can we pretend we are eating in a castle? I can be the princess, you be the king and Mommy is the queen". Princesses get old to a Daddy after a fashion, but not if you are a little girl.

Nope, not today. This morning she asked "Can we pretend that we are in England during the war and the German badguys are trying to get us?"

Very cool idea, way better than playing castle. Over breakfast we talked about rationing, air raid sirens and Spam.

American kids have no concept at all about what "hardship" really means, and I'm glad she brought it up so that maybe she can learn to appreciate just how lucky we are to have been born here, where freedom is a God-given right, along with freedom of speech and we, as a nation, are blessed with an incredible supply of food, clean water and top-notch public health. Most of us are fortunate enough to not know what it is like to have your home destroyed by bombing, to lose family members to political death camps, to watch children starve or freeze to death.

I think it is important for all of today's children to study the war. By the war, I mean the Second World War. Many of the people who lived through it are still alive, although dying off at an alarming rate due to the average age, and these folks have things to teach us that we just can't learn from books. About right and wrong, and the idea that sometimes the two can get a little blurry. About personal sacrifice. About working together as one people to get something done.

Right now I'm terribly overworked but when the smoke clears over the winter, I really feel the need to put together an informational website on The War. Some of the items in my collection are just "things", but others tell a very human story and I need to find a way to let the artifacts tell the story. I've got an idea for something interesting festering in my head, and will post here when I think it through a few more times.

Ouch!

2007-10-15T14:09:00.000-05:00

Today one of my projects is to blue a pistol barrel and lock. In doing so, I had to strip the lock down to component parts to strip off the oil and protective grease so the bluing agent can contact the metal evenly.

In stripping the lock, I managed to slip with the screwdriver and sink it deep into the webbing between my hand and thumb. So now I'm wearing plastic gloves so as not to drip blood onto the metal because I don't know how it would affect bluing.

GGGgggggrrrrrrrr.....happy monday!

Brown Bess accuracy experiment, phase 1

2007-10-09T18:03:00.000-05:00

If you go back a few posts, you'll read about my annoyance that people still quote the BS story that you can't shoot accurately with a smoothbore musket. This has led to some interesting discussions.

First it was pointed out that there is a big difference in accuracy between using a patched, well fitting round ball and the so-called "undersized" ball that was used in the regular army in the 18th c. Yeah, I allowed for this one.

I should have only done so provisionally. Last Friday a new shooter from a Minuteman company in Massachusetts came by. He had fired a rifle in the army nearly a quarter century ago, but never was not a regular shooter and had never fired his musket live.

We rolled up some cartridges that mimicked the British issue cartridge as close as we could ascertain them to be. If you were to measure original round balls as issued or as found archaeologically, you would see that the much fabled "undersized ball" is .690 in diameter. Today, casual shooters use a .715 and some folks who like to load tight (I.E. drive the ball down with a mallet) use a .735 ball. I have a few bags of .690 balls, so that's what we used.

For paper, we used newsprint. It is a stack of them I found in the gun room from years ago and it has gotten old, yellow and brittle. The thickness and texture are fairly close to some original newsprint that I have here, which is thinner that the paper used in surviving 17th and 18th century books.

We rolled the paper around a former with the ball at the end and tied it off with a string. The empty tubes (with ball inside) were stood up in a cartridge block to keep them organized and upright, then they were individually filled with a powder measure, and rolled shut on top to close them.

The powder charge we used was 90 grains of FFg. Yeah yeah yeah, I know Sketchbook '76 says that cartridges used 120 grains, but you need to consider the quality of the powder then vs today. Read some of the data from the Springfield Armory where they had to use massive proof loads because the powder was so weak. 150 grains is a proof load today, so why would the service load be nearly at that level?

There were a dozen cartridges prepared. I set out a human silhuette target at 25 yards. The shooter loaded from the cartridge box, and was given a rag to wipe the flint when it got dirty. First he primed, which used up a few of the 90 grains, and the rest was poured down the barrel. Then the ball, cartridge and all, was stuffed down the bore. The first shot was dead center on the target.

The rest of the shots were fired without putting the gun down to rest. All were on target, with the majority of them in a group in the middle that could be covered with a dinner plate. (these would have hit vital organs and stopped the man in his tracks)

The shooting session wasn't planned to prove anything, it was meant to be instructional. When we undertake the experiment for real, it will be under much more controlled circumstances with more than one shooter. What this proved, however, was that the oft-repeated story about how "the undersized ball would ricochet around the barrel on the way out and you would have no idea where it was going after it left the barrel" is a crock. It's just one of those reenactor factoids that is made true by the retelling. Often it is followed by the statement that "you'd fire at a guy in the line opposite you, and someone 5 or 6 men down in the line would be hit". Nope, sorry. OK, I'll admit, you couldn't take the nuts off of a fly at 100 yards, but you certainly would hit the man you aimed at in the line.

Maybe if there is a few minutes that Wendy doesn't keep her hopping, I'll have Becky roll up the rest of the .69 balls into cartridges and load them with powder. It is supposed to rain all this week, so we probably won't get into the experiment in the next few days, but I'll write up all of the factors and goals for it and maybe recruit a few more inexperienced shooters for whatever day we pick to do it.

Scaled AQT targets

2007-10-09T16:29:00.000-05:00

If you read Shotgun News, the gun classified ad newspaper, you have no doubt seen Fred's (paid ad) column where he extols the virtues of teaching every citizen to be a "rifleman" and to know how to shoot. As he puts it, you are either a rifleman, or a cook. I see the value in knowing how to shoot, and thought I'd give his AQT (Army Qualification Test) targets a try.

What he has done is to scale down the standard sized AQT targets to use at 25 yards. So in effect, the 100 yard portion of the target is 6 1/4" across, the 200 yard portion is 3 1/4" across, 300 yard is 2", and the 400 yard target is just is 1 3/4" across.

The targets are scaled in that way so that you can use a shorter range and still practice aiming at the targets as they would appear at those distances.

What you do is post the target at 25 yards and fire 5 shots at each portion. There is a place for scoring at the bottom, and a little chart that classifies your score as "unqualified" (below 125), "marksman" (125-169), "sharpshooter" (170-210)or "expert rifleman" (210 or higher).

I am feeling pretty crappy today, as it in my turn to have the flu (Wendy and Caleigh are still trying to shake it). I have a headache and just don't feel up to talking on the phone, so I have been doing little things around here. After I fed the critters, I took a few minutes for myself and set up one of Fred's targets on my target-holding stump and went at it with my .22 rifle. Actually, I set up two: one was the AQT target, the other was was a similar one that dispenses with scoring rings and is meant to simulate a "redcoat" at the varying distances.

You'll be happy to know that Meany Road is safe from the Redcoats, because I managed to hit them all. As far as the AQT goes, I qualified as an "Expert Rifleman" with a score of 236. My goal now is to practice up, and bring that up to the perfect score of 250. Not today though, I may be able to take out a Redcoat at 400 yards, but I'm no match for the flu.

If you want to give Fred's cool targets a try, you can order them at http://www.fredsm14stocks.com/catalog/acc.asp

Give it a try, be safe and have fun!

Field(mouse) artillery

2007-10-03T23:23:00.000-05:00

Tonight I am working late, trying to get the mess in the shipping area and my office straightened out. I am cursed with being literate, so that means there are a LOT of books here, there and everywhere. (and of course, the obligatory boxes and boxes of National Geographics)

My #1 mission was to clear my stuff off of the long packing table. Poor Johanna has to deal with my stuff in her way because the packing table is the ideal place for me to sort stuff I unpack from boxes stored in the garage. It is long and flat, an gives me lots of space to create small piles of "stuff" as I sort out a box. The problem with this is that I always get called away or otherwise interrupted from my task and the piles get left there. I managed to clear away most of it tonight, which means creating new boxes of sorted stuff. Since I am kind of in a hurry (trying to get as much done as I can before everybody gets in tomorrow and has to go back to work) I just created a new box labeled "mixed books" that can be sorted out later when the bookshelves in the living room get built. Now...where to put the newly packed boxes of "mixed books" until then...

I spied a spot in the corner of my office that would be just the right place to stack a couple of boxes of books. Of course, it's not like the corner is unoccupied, it is the place where an assortment of WW1 and WW2 empty and trainer artillery shells happen to live. No problem: I'll just move them to the top of a cabinet where they can be seen better anyway. Since nothing in my life is simple, first I need to clear the stuff off of the cabinet top.

On top of the cabinet is: a colored pencil portrait of my Mom as a little girl done on parachute silk by a GI penpal during WW2, a CD helmet, a medium sized cardboard box that turned out to contain some cans of powder (some Goex, some British stuff), a few assorted pewter mugs, and a bag of patch knives I forgot I had, a left-handed percussion lock, and a piece of French soldier bread from Louisbourg 1995 (if I soaked it in broth, it would still be edible).

So I cleared away the stuff on top of the cabinet, stowing the powder where it belongs. I'll have to remember to show the bread to Wendy in the morning, she will be horrified. Jeff will get a kick out if it though.

As I moved the shells from the corner to their new home on top of the cabinet, I dusted them off and as I moved a 1915 dated German shell, I heard a rattle sound. This came as a surprise, since there shouldn't be anything rattling around inside an empty shell. I tipped it so light went inside and saw the source of the noise. It was a little mummified mouse. Well, I guess it is just a regular sized mouse, but he looked tiny compared to the monsterous big rat I got in my trap out under the rabbit shed, but that is a topic for another post. The poor little dude must have hopped or fell in, possibly pursued by a cat or two, and wasn't able to get back out.

Either that, or it has been there for the past 90 years as a part of some secret German terror weapon during the Great War. I can see it now: the Huns must have tried to lob small, petrified rodents in at the Doughboys to surprise them, and when the Yanks and Brits reacted with bafflement and confusion to the mummified mice pinging off of their helmets, it would create enough of a distraction for the German snipers to pick them off. A clever ruse. It must not have worked, as history shows that we won the war. Maybe we had bigger rodents to launch at them?

I guess I need some sleep, as the previous paragraph is just cracking me up.

The packing table is clear, the rest of this project will have to wait until morning.

"You can't hit a man past 50 yards"

2007-09-20T18:42:00.000-05:00

We've been travelling a bit over the past week. First we went to the 250th anniversary reenactment of the taking of Ft. William Henry over the weekend, then we had to return to Lake George village for a business meeting (you'll like this, but I'm not saying what I'm working on).

On the 2nd trip, we had some time to do some touristy things like eat in the overpriced restaurants there (I'm feeling pretty sick from all of the "modern" food and can't wait to get back on track with my 18th century diet). We also took Caleigh to the rebuilt Ft William Henry (known in reenacting circles as "Fort Disney". I figured that it would be memorable to Caleigh, as the "museum" is geared toward kids. The place was built in the 1950's right on the foundation of the real fort. It is built of decaying, dry-rotting logs and inside are full-scale dioramas depicting "fort life" complete with genuine 1950's fiberglass people. There is even a dungeon!

The place costs $14 for adults and $8 for our 5 year old. Staggering. The tour starts with a movie that mixes together still images of various artwork spanning the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries to illustrate the story of the fort and it's reduction. Mixed in are what appears to be outtakes from the cutting room floor of the 1990's movie Last of the Mohicans.

After the movie, you are led by a costumed tour guide (he actually used the word "karma" in his talk) who led us up onto the ramparts where we watch a "grenadier" light and throw a grenade at us.(we know he was a grenadier because he said so and he had a pointy hat, no regimental coat, but a pointy hat, I suppose that's better than a coonskin cap) The grenade contains firecrackers and it makes the tourist jump. Caleigh, ever the logical one, did a great "duck and cover" dive behind the railing as he through it. After the "grenadier", we are lead down to a corner bastion where we are shown a 6-pdr field piece. Here's where the factoids and incompetence get annoying.

We are told about how inaccurate artillery is in the day, and about how cannon are used against fortifications, not troops. (Ummm...OK, I guess that is why a 3-pdr is considered an infantry weapon, and the grapeshot and canister rounds were developed) The two guides then loaded the piece and prepared to fire. One of them donned a pair of green earmuffs! They talked about the loading and firing sequence, and how the bore was searched and swabbed. The dude with the earmuffs worked the front end of the gun and we noticed that in swabbing he only pushed the swab a few inches into the bore, not all the way to the breech, where lingering sparks would actually be. They fired the round and searched and swabbed again, this time talking about how you need to thumb the vent to extinguish lingering sparks. The only thing is, as the guy was saying this and going through the motions of thumbing the vent, his thumb wasn't even on the vent and as earmuff-guy shoved the swab down the bore, a big jet of smoke cam out of the touchhole right next to the other guy's thumb.

Yeah, it's cool that the public gets to see a cannon loaded and fired, but the guys running the show are an accident waiting to happen.

After the cannon demo, the original guide loads and fires a musket. Everybody loves to see muskets fired, but here's where I get annoyed. He goes into the uneducated BS line I have heard so often about how inaccurate muskets are and tells us that you couldn't hit a man past 50 yards away. Now I'm kind of annoyed because I have paid $37 for my family to be taught a crock of factoids.

I mentioned this glaring error to Wendy, and she that she wouldn't let me off the hook until I talked to the guy about it (remember, this is the guy who told us about "karma" at orientation). So after he demonstrated casting a musketball in a cinder block stove with an electric heater in it, I went over to talk to him. I asked what data his 50 yard claim was based on, and asked if he had ever done any actual field testing of the muskets. His reply was that no, he was new to shooting, but the other guide was an "expert" (he is referring to earmuff man).

He went to get earmuff man, and I asked the same questions. His response started with "blah blah blah I've been doing this since 1973". Then he went on to tell me about how they used to have competitions years ago and shoot 180 grains of powder under a patched ball (with modern powder, 180 grains is a proof load, not a service load). I guess all it takes to be an "expert" is to say that you are one, at least at a hokey, 1950's era tourist attraction.

The thought that these guys are spreading such misinformation bugs me, but not as much as it bugged Wendy. We decided to perform an experiment using man-sized silhouette targets and pre-rolled paper cartridges that approximate the standard British service load. My plan is to post the target, and with an untrained volunteer, see how far away from the target they get before they truly "can't hit a man sized target".

The plan is to use a .690 round ball and 90 grains of FFg. The standard load for the Brits was 120 grains, but you need to consider that their powder sucked compared to today's Goex. Wendy's arms are a bit short to handle a Long Land, but Becky (who helps out in the shop) looks to be a good candidate for the test, so does Johanna (who probably packed your order if you got a gun from us lately). Perhaps I'll roll up a bunch of cartridges and we can have all three do the shooting with three different guns to get an average "new shooter" score.

For Jeff and I to participate would skew the results, as we both can shoot much better than your average 18th century recruit. (he is a hunter safety instructor, I am an NRA black powder instructor)For instance, the Massachusetts Provincials who were in the attack on Fort Ticonderoga in 1758 had a day and a half of training before the attack-that is barely enough time to learn the drill, much less how to shoot well.

Too busy to do this test this week, but we'll document it with photographs and post the results here. This should be fun.

That's not a rat I smell...

2007-09-20T18:39:00.000-05:00

We are fighting a war on two fronts: Rats to the south, Skunks to the north.

It seems like every time Buster the dog goes out by himself, he gets skunked, and we (by "we" I mean "I") am sick of washing him only to have him get skunked again the next night. Today I set a live-catch trap out on the game trail that leads from our house to Jeff's house, and baited it with a cheap can of cat food.

I'm thinking that tomorrow morning I'll go check it and either find a really angry skunk or a really embarrassed cat.

I smell a rat...

2007-09-16T23:25:00.000-05:00

Well, I don't actually smell him, but I've seen him. He (they) seem to be living under the rabbit shed and living large by digging into the bags of rabbit feed. Not cool.

I served them with an eviction notice and told them to stop tresspassing under my shed. They did not comply, so this means war. I got myself a big, old fashioned rat trap from Agway.

First, I set the trap baited with peanut butter. They managed to lick it clean without setting it off. I tried it again, this time they set the trap off, but no signs of an injured rat. Then I tried a pice of cheese (swiss, Jarlsburg in fact) because I could better secure it to the trigger since it is a solid. First night with cheese: most of it was stolen, except for the part directly in contact with the trigger. I rest it and left the same cheese remnants so as not to introduce new smells to it. That night, I got one! Good sized one, bigger than a red squirrel. Fed him to the pigs.

I reset the trap, and found it tripped a few times without any sign of rat, then a few days later found it set off and a 3" piece of rat-tail on the ground next to it. (tossed it to the chickens) Some lucky rodent has a great story to tell about how he lost half his tail in the battle with the humans "back in the fall of '07".

After that, they seemed to smarten up and set it off more carefully to get the cheese because every morning I check it and find it set off. I set it with a new piece of cheese before leaving for Lake George on friday, and came home last night to a gut pile where my trap had been.

Yes, a gut pile. I'm guessing that a rat got caught in the trap, then something gutted it for some reason, then made off with field-dressed rat, trap and all! I have searched everywhere that I can see with my flashlight, but can't find the trap! This morning I went out to survey the scene again, thinking that perhaps my tired mind was playing tricks on me, but nope, the trap is gone. So is the gut pile!

I can understand the gut pile being cleaned up by other rats, but where is my rat trap!?!?! Are they setting a trap for ME in the same way that the insurgents in Iraq scavenge unexploded ordinance to build IEDs? Maybe the next time I reach into the rabbit feed bag, I'll hear a loud SNAP and feel the neck-breaking bar of the trap slam down on my hand, then the rats will run out and give me the finger with their leader, the rat with half a tail, leading their attack.

I'll show them. I'll win this war the way we won WW2: with an endless weapon supply! They may have gotten this one, but there are more traps at Agway! Maybe I'll put out a hunk of cheese and sit out there with my .22, like an old fashioned farm boy. I wonder how many rat pelts it takes to make a shot bag?

All of a sudden, it's fall

2007-09-16T22:45:00.000-05:00

We got in late last night from Lake George and the 250th anniversary of the French attack on Fort William Henry.

That meant today was spent running around doing errands and catching up on stuff.

One of the things we had to do was to get a new microwave, and we got it in Claremont, the city to the north of us. It's about a 25 mile round trip to get there, so we planned out our shopping and made a loop of all the stores we wanted to go to (groceries, Home Depot, Wal-Mart etc). Around 9PM, we got home and unloaded the truck, and noticed that Wendy's pocketbook wasn't here. I called Wal-Mart, the last stop we had made, and yes, they did indeed have it.

Instead of taking the 10mpg truck or the 25 mpg car, I decided to take the 45mpg motorcycle. Any excuse to take the bike is a good one. All of a sudden, it's cold out at night! In the old days, before I was married with a kid and a full-time business to run, I'd ride year-round as long as the roads weren't icy, so I've got cold weather gear. Fortunately, I had recently come across the earflaps to my half-helmet in the garage while unpacking and knew right where they were so I put them on.

I zipped up to Claremont to get the pocketbook, and on the way back the road had a little less traffic so I had a few chances to open it up. There is one spot along a large meadow where a hang-gliding school has an "ultralight' runway that is straight and kind of fun to really hit the throttle on. Tonight, due to the rapid cooling of the air and the moisture on the grass, there was a thick, gooey fog rolling across the road from the meadow. As I came around the bend in the road that leads to the straightaway, I put my feet back on the passenger pegs and laid forward on the tank, behind the fairing and nailed the throttle. I don't know how fast I was going when I shot into the fog, but it was a pretty cool feeling, much like flying.

I got home and parked the bike, and went upstairs to check the thermometer. 42 degrees outside. Good thing I found my ear flaps!

Biker Caleigh

2007-08-18T22:46:00.000-05:00

Today we went to Claremont to do some errands and go to a birthday party for one of Caleigh's little homeschool friends. It was a 7th birthday party, being held at a local park that has lots of picnic areas and trails.

This morning we got a call from the girl's Mom who told us that the kids were all bringing bikes and going to ride on the trail, so I had to drop what I was doing and fix Caleigh's offroad tricycle. It had been run over by the musket delivery truck last week, squishing one of the rear wheels beyond recognition and slightly bending the axle. I don't know how he managed to run over it as it was parked pretty much behind my Suzuki. I swiped one of the wheels from the trailer that goes with the trike and put her trike back in service, then figured out how to get it into the back seat of the Buick.

Myself, I rode the Suzuki to the party. But I brought a surprise with me in the saddlebag! A while back, Caleigh and I had perused the Dennis Kirk catalog and found her a kids sized helmet in a color she approved of. I wear a half-helmet, but she is only 5 and I decided she would have a good quality full-faced helmet to protect her little noggin. She picked it out, it is "ice blue" and has a clear face shield. Helmets have come a long way since the 1970's!

As the party was winding down, I told he that I had her helmet with me and asked if she wanted to go for a ride on the motorcycle. Silly question! She put it on, and rode her tricycle over to where the Moms were sitting to tell Wendy that we were going.

Where do you put a 5 year old on a motorcycle? Good question! Ron, our UPS guy had told me ho he used to carry his kids when they were little and his method made sense, so I tried it. She sat in front of me, on the junction of where the tank and seat come together. That way, if she started to panic or slip, I could use my left hand to grab her. The problem was that her feet came down so that the natural thing was to put them on the valve covers (too hot to touch). What we came up with was to put the bottoms of her feet flat on the lower part of the fairing, which kept them up and out of the way and also gave her something to brace against in turns.

On the road in the park there was a series of speed bumps at way-too-regular intervals. These were a pain because the bike frame bottomed out on them and the little helmet clad head in front of me would bounce up and whack me in the chin.

After the party, we stopped for dinner and then went food shopping. I followed the Buick, and when we got to the food store, Wendy went inside and I took Caleigh for another ride, this time in the parking lot of the supermarket (actually kind of a plaza, there is a cinema, Kmart, etc etc.). The lot was much more bike-friendly, as there were less speed bumps to deal with and lots of room to ride in circles and figure eights with her.

Now she's hooked. She likes my helmet because it is covered in stickers. I have a sticker for her to put on her helmet, it is her first sticker! I think it is appropriate and descriptive. It simply says: Wild Child!

Buster does it again...

2007-08-06T00:32:00.000-05:00

Ok, last night Buster starts barking up a storm at around 1:30AM. He usually doesn't bark in the house, so whatever upset him was near-by and really important to him.

Standard procedure when he barks is for me to grab a gun and a light of some sort and go see what he is into tonight. Since he was inside, trying desperately to get out of the shop door to get at something, I opened up the door and followed him out thinking that I'd encounter what he was after as soon as he did. Nope. He took off like a shot to the woods across the driveway and was gone. I sprinted across to join him, but saw nothing in the thick underbrush. He barked at something and got it moving off to my left, I heard the brush breaking in a place where Buster wasn't. Next thing you know he's on the move, heading up onto the mountain. I wasn't about to go up there after him, so I hung around on the logging road for a while to see if he would be back soon. Eventually, he came back, panting and thirsty. He checked in with me and went back out on patrol.

Today, coming up the road, I noticed the cane (I think it is called American Bamboo) that grows in the ditch across the street all smashed over into the road, like something had crashed through it. I'm thinking that what we ran off last night was probably a bear, since it made such a mess of the cane. I don't know, but whatever it was, Buster was pretty serious about it.

Tonight, he came in from a patrol and disappeared onto the couch, seemingly trying to keep a low profile. I thought nothing of it as I was really into a plumbing project. Wendy happened to walk by him, and noticed something odd about his nose...it was decorated with 10 porcupine quills! What a dufus. I can see him now, walking up to a porky and giving it a big sniff.

So far we have yanked 8 of them out, but that was pretty much his limit of what he would tolerate. We'll let him rest for a while and hopefully forget what we are up to when I put him in a headlock and Wendy approaches with a pair of pliers. As I type this, he's curled up under my desk, so he isn't taking it personally.

I shudder to think about what he will get into next: in the past two weeks, he's gotten into a scrap with a fisher, got sprayed by a skunk, and now has gotten a nose full of quills. Never a dull moment...

Here he is, looking embarrassed by his new nose decorations:

Catching up - a bunch of random stuff

2007-08-03T19:46:00.000-05:00

OK, so I haven't been diligent about posting lately. I didn't manage to find the time to post anything in July at all!

That doesn't mean nothing has been going on here.

In July, we have:

~Got two new goats, a female named Vanilla and a wethered male named Chocolate. They have assimilated into the existing goat family, and we now have a flock of 5 roaming around here, clearing brush and causing trouble.

~Received and started going over the revisions of several new gun models. The first one going into production is the double barrel flintlock pistol. The prototype came out nice, and we only had to make one change to it (add a thimble). The first production run of them is being built as I write this! The others that arrived are the prototype Ketland Officer's Fusil and the Early Fusil DeChasse. Both need minor tweaks, and I'll get to them ASAP. The English gun came in at 6.5 pounds, and the French one at 6.7 pounds. Nice!

~We've been working on the house. The new bedroom is framed, the beadboard walls are up, the door is in, and the next step is to wire it and get the trip up, then the varnishing can be done.

~We've come up with a new scheme for storage of inventory, as we have dramatically outgrown the old "gun room". Some stuff needs to be moved around, a wall needs to be built, but it should be a quick project and in the end, it will be much more organized. To be honest, a lot of things will be much more orderly once the house is finished as there is a lot of "house stuff" underfoot here in the shop. Why did George Elberfeld, the guy who built this place, decide not to have any closets? Who knows! We'll have closets soon though!

~We got a whole truckload of birds from George in Walpole, the town to the South of us. He is converting his chicken-pasture and his waterfowl-pasture to one big pasture to house a mini-horse, and had to get rid of 40 chickens, 7 geese, 8 adult ducks and about 2 dozen ducklings. When I found out about them, it was one of those deals where Wendy tells me to drop what I am doing and go get them. We kept them penned up in Buster-dog's chain-link kennel for a few days to trick them into thinking that this is "home" and let them out to free-range today. Lots of drama. If coming to visit, watch out pulling into the driveway as they seem to have no fear of cars!

~Buster has kept me busy as well. A week ago he tangled with a fisher in the woods and had a big chunk of his tail bitten off. We discovered it by following the blood trial across the house to the corner of the unfinished pantry where he was hunkered down to hide. A week of painkillers, two weeks of antibiotics. It is healing well, considering that it was a big enough hole that there wasn't enough skin to sew it up, and we had to leave it open to grow new skin. I don't think he'll try to sniff a fisher again. Buster being Buster, on Wednesday night of this week, he went out to roam and around 1AM he started to bark angrily. I grabbed my super-duper flashlight and my .45 and ran out to see what was up. He was really mad at something! Out the game trail I went, down towards the road. There he was...sniffing at something with his hackles up...it was cat-sized...it was black with a white stripe...I yelled "BUSTER-NO NO!"...it was too late, the skunk sprayed him a direct hit right in the face, then disappeared over the embankment across the road. He slept outside that night, and the next morning I had to push more work aside to give him a bath. What will he get into next?

~Ti was fun, as always. Great weather, but rainy when we tried to go to Pow-wow. It's a trade-off, you want to have a busy store, but if it is a busy store, you don't get to go shopping yourself. I got to sneak away for about 5 minutes to go talk to Roger Longtoe, then was called back to the store. On the plus side, lots of folks came to visit in the store.

~We didn't go to Ti last year as we had something going on here, so it was our first time meeting Karl Crego, the new sutler coordinator at Ti. Nice guy. It pissed me off to see people giving him a hard time. He is a volunteer, and volunteers should be respected. At the sutler meeting, there were people squawking at him about the location of their spots next year...even though he had just stated that the location of the British camp and sutler row has not yet been determined for next year!

~Jeff and I have worked out a location and basic design for our new barn. Because of the terrain, it will have a walk-out foundation, which is actually handy because we can design it around a manure gutter to make it easier to clean. It will be a post and beam structure. Now I need to draw it up and plan out a bill of materials. Beams are fifty cents a board-foot at the local sawmill.

~We got in a Bess with a big knot in a bad place, so we have decided to make it a test case for restocking one in walnut. I want to see what the total cost is in man-hours and materials to stock an Indian gun in walnut. Then we'd have the best of both worlds: the correct wood for the stock, and a hand forged lock!

~Today I went to buy a truck to take the place of my rapidly decomposing old Chevy. Kind of sad, but I'm replacing it with another old GMC, only a nice one. My $800 '88 Chevy 1/2 ton served me well for nearly 5 years. I never got an inspection sticker for it in all of that time, but promised Wendy that I'd get one this year. To do the needed bodywork and other assorted little crap to it would add up fast, especially now that it's burning oil pretty bad. I decided to shop for a club cab so we could all ride together comfortably, including the dog. It had to have an 8' bed though. Just for kicks, I looked at new trucks and the ones I liked were in the $40k-$45k range...yeah, right. On our trip to Brattleboro to pick up the goats, I saw a giant green truck with a for sale sign and stopped to check it out. Paid for it today. It is an '88 GMC 1-ton, with dually wheels, a double cab (I.E. a 4-door) that seats 6. It has a 9' rack body on the back instead of a regular bed. The motor is two years old, the transmission is a recent rebuilt heavy-duty unit, it has new brakes, new tires, recent tune-up and wires and I paid well under book value for it. I'll have to replace the cracked windshield though. I'll have to post pics of it when I pick it up next week. It was owned by a roofing company who is replacing it with a similar truck (same year) with a dump body. I managed to find a 19 year old truck in Vermont with no rust!

~We are going to Fort at No. 4's F&I weekend tomorrow, but not bringing the store. We are just going to day-trip it with the militia group we belong to. #4 isn't really reenactor-friendly anymore, but we are going because this is our anniversary week and it is where we were married in 1999. It is also where my Mom's funeral was held in 2000. It is sad to see the place be such a fiasco these days, but this too shall pass. Management comes, and management goes, but the living history community flows around it and keeps on doing it's thing. We are going to hang out with friends, eat at the Hinsdale's potluck (I'm bringing potted beef and a watermelon), shop, and go to the Native gathering. If we aren't treated too badly, we'll go back on Sunday.

OK, that's enough catching up for one night, I've got work to catch up on too!

New sign for sutler tent

2007-06-28T00:03:00.000-05:00

We are leaving for Ticonderoga tomorrow, and I thought I'd replace our old sign with a newer, better shaped one.

I had glued it up a few years back, and it sat in the cellar in the old place, then the garage here. Last week, Jeff cut it out and painted it white. Yesterday, I sketched it out on paper (full scale) then scrounged some carbon paper from Louise. Tonight, I screwed up my courage and painted the logo and lettering on to it.

I gotta say, as a sign painter I make a pretty good truck mechanic...

I can't wait...

2007-06-27T12:16:00.000-05:00

This morning I checked with the British Airways cargo tracking system and found that the incoming shipment is not only on the ground in Boston, but cleared customs!

Now it is just a matter of trucking them up here and busting the crates open. Right now we are running around like busy ants, getting read to go to Ticonderoga. The importance of this shipment in particular is that it contains samples of three new models, the most exciting of which is the double barreled flintlock pistol. I can hardly contain myself waiting to get my hands on it!

If all goes well, we'll have the muskets around tomorrow at lunchtime.

Getting ready for Ti

2007-06-24T20:05:00.000-05:00

The Fort Ticonderoga French and Indian War weekend is coming up in just a few days, and life here is all about getting ready for it. Life has been so busy with renovations and the business of selling muskets that we haven't been able to get to any events lately, but had set a goal of going to Ti since it is one of our favorite events. Sort of Woodstock for F&I reenactors.

Back when we were on the road at least twice a month, we simply kept the trailer packed and ready to go. Before I got the trailer, I used to keep the van packed and ready to go (the van has left us, now, a victem of New England road salt, LONG LIVE THE COOL BUS!). Since there has been so much other stuff going on in our lives, I've been using the trailer to haul grain, store hay etc. and now I need to repack it for it's original intended use.

In the past week, Jeff has built a pair of folding wooden pistol display racks, modified a pair of musket racks to knock-down for transport, dug out the tent ropes and stakes to count and inspect, and readied them all for loading in the trailer. Tomorrow the plan is to fish the tent poles out of the loft over the rabbit shed and be sure none have cracked during storage. I have to measure, but I just might have the space to set the tent up in front of the building to give it a looking at before packing it.

In this family, I am the only one who has plenty of 18th c clothes. That means that before we leave for Ti, I have some sewing to do. What is planned for tonight is to finish up an elkskin dress for Wendy that was begun last summer, and whip out another one out of lighter weight deerskin while watching old car movies on VHS. I watched Easy Rider last night, the VCR is all cued up to watch Vanishing Point tonight, but since I'm getting readyt for Ti, perhaps I should watch one of the classic historical dramas like Allegheny Uprising or Northwest Passage. (the traditional last-minute sewing night used to involve Last of the Mohicans, but Wendy hates seeing a movie twice and she's never seen Alleghany Uprising)

Sometime tomorrow, I need to finish fitting Caleigh's new moccasins. They are center-seams and the front part is all done, I just need to fit the rear seam to her little foot, then soak thme and pound the seams flat.

Setting up the sutler tent should be a lot easier now that we have eliminated pretty much all of the non-gun related stuff from our inventory. Gone are the lanterns, leather goods, period toys and other miscellany. This freed up about half of the trailer space, and half of the tent space!

The only thing we are sweating out at the moment is when the shipment of muskets will arrive. We had placed a large order for guns to take to Ti, and in it are the prototypes of three new models. There are 16 crates of muskets in the hands of British Airways, and we had hoped to have them last week. That means we will be scrambling to unpack, log in, inspect, and tweak them late into the night right before we leave. I suppose it makes for good stories later, after all is said and done.

I'm working from a "to-do" list, and one of the things I need to do is go and get a load of hay so the house-sitters will have something to feed the critters. Since the trailer is going back into service as the cargo trailer it was purchased for, I guess that means the hay is going in my truck, then being unloaded onto pallets to be kept under tarps to stay dry.

Lots of stuff to do to get ready, but the Ti event is worth it. I've you've never been to it, you owe yourself the trip. Saturday night makes it all worthwhile.

Buster learns a lesson

2007-06-21T19:34:00.000-05:00

Today I was out back, feeding critters their daily corn allotment. Buster the dog has learned that you can actually eat corn, even if it isn't really meat. All of the other animals eat it, so it must be food, right?

He never used to eat things that weren't either dog food or meat, then he saw all the other critters really getting into this crunchy yellow stuff that the humans call "corn". So he tried it, and seemed to like it. I think a small part of it is just wanting to eat it so that the other critters don't get it though.

When it's time to feed the animals, you gotta do it in a certain order. For instance, if you feed the main pen before the pigs, they will get excited about the food on the other side of the fence and hop over it. Then you spend the next hour or so rounding pigs up and getting them back into their own pen. There is a single strand of an electric fence a few inches off the ground inside the hog pen, to discourage them from digging, but if they try hard enough they can rear up and put their front legs on top of the 3' high fence that partitions them off from the rest of the pen and wiggle over. (if you've never seen a bunch of 200+ pound pigs wiggling over a 3' fence, it's a pretty impressive sight, then you remember that you have to get them BACK over the fence...)

So anyway, the main pen gets a bale of hay first, mostly to keep the goats out from underfoot while you are feeding the pigs. Second, the pigs get their corn, to give them something to do while you fill up their water tub (or else they jump in front of the hose to drink out of it, try to grab the hose and run with it etc.). Before I dump the pig-corn over the fence to them, I toss a few handfuls of it to the swarm of ducks that follow me around everywhere, or else they get between my feet while I'm trying to pour a 50-lb bag of corn over a 5' fence.

This seems like I'm rambling, but I'm setting up the real story.

So here's the scene: A dozen big white ducks are gathered around eating corn, Buster keeps sneaking into their midst and grabbing some corn from them. Half a dozen porkers are inside their pen eating a pile of corn that is dumped into a tangle of tree roots that I want them to dig up for me. I am standing at the front corner of the pen with the hose, filling up their 30 gallon water trough.

I called Buster over to me, so he wouldn't eat all of the duck corn, and he comes over and sits next to me, but you could tell by the look on his face that he was plotting something. He kept looking over at the pigs in their pen with the mound of corn.

Next thing you know, he's wandering around the yard, doing his best to look nonchalant, but he keeps looking over to see if I am watching. I ignored him to see what he would do next. He casually walked around the hog pen, to the other side of their little shed where I couldn't see him. Then I heard SNAP!!! immediately followed by "YIPE-YIPE-YIPE!!!" and a panic stricken pit bull came galloping around the pen, crashing through the brush. He came over and sat by my side, with every muscle trembling. He looked very embarrassed.

It seems that his scheme was to somehow reach through the fence into the hog pen and get some of that crunchy yellow stuff. What he didn't take into consideration was the 10,000 volts of electricity circulating through the innocent looking wire about at nose level.

Today's lesson for Buster: DO NOT, under ANY circumstances, try to steal corn from pigs.

Bike Week pics

2007-06-17T20:50:00.000-05:00

As promised in the last post, here are some pictures from Bike Week.

I've uploaded them, but left them full sized so you can see better details. (actually, it's because I'm feeling lazy tonight and don't feel like messing with them)

These are all from Weirs Beach. It's called Weirs Beach because the Pennacook Indians had a fish weir set up there in the old days. Today it is a popular tourist spot on Lake Winnipesaukee.

Like I said, the pics are pretty big files, so be patient while they download. Use your browser's back button to get back to this page.

Here's Caleigh, looking very grown up, relaxing on a picnic table at The Lobster Pound, enjoying a corn dog. The Lobster Pound is a local eatery and landmark. She has discovered corn dogs and thinks they are one of the best foods ever invented.

This crowd is at the entrance to the Drive In. for the rest of the summer, it is an old fashioned drive-in theater. For bike week, it is a motorcycle parking lot, stage, bazaar, and display area. Need a tattoo? Get it at the Drive In. Need chrome engine parts? Get them at the Drive In. Need to get totally wasted while listening to high-decibel blues music? You guessed it, go to the Drive In. It's also a good place to hang out and watch the bikes roll into the Weirs, as most of them go in to the parking area or pass by the entrance to turn down Lakeside Ave. The line of traffic that you see in the road is miles long.

Caleigh wanted to try out this wicked cool scooter-trike that was for sale along with a few other oddball mini-choppers and funky pit bikes outside the "Wall of Death" stunt show in the Drive In. It was for sale for $795. The cooler was full of beer, I didn't ask if the beer went with the bike or not.

Here is a view of the famous Weirs Beach sign at the corner. Down the street to the right, they don't allow four wheeled vehicles for the weekend. It is four rows of bike parking, two lanes of bike traffic, and zillions of pedestrians. The road is lined with vendors, the regular stores along the main drag even pack up their stuff and rent out their space to vendors for the week. This is one of the better places to hang out at the Weirs to watch stuff happen. Although, to be honest, not much stuff happens these days.

Here is another. You can see Lakeside Ave PACKED with people.

As you walk along the waterfront, away from the Weirs sign, there is the train station on your right, and behin it is the dock for the MV Mt. Washington. The Mt Washington is a cruise ship that operates on the lake and ties up to provide one of the regular party venues at the Weirs. Since we had Caleigh with us, we couldn't go aboard, but we got to hear the band from the dock. Here she is.

By the time we were over by the train station, we were pretty hot and tired. We had spent the previous day at Story Land, and Caleigh was tired, so we ended up taking turns carrying her. She's pushing 40 pounds at this point, so that gets tiring after a while. We decided to catch the next train back to Merideth and head home. When we were sitting in the train, waiting to go, I snapped a few more pics out the window of some of the bikes on Lakeside. Here is one shot, here is another. The second one caught a V-8 powered trike roaring up Lakeside.

For some reason this shot cracks me up. It shouldn't, because in the old days at bike week you'd see all kinds of crazy stuff on 2 or 3 wheels. Nobody gave anybody else any crap about it, so long as they rode it there. You could have a total rat bike, a high-end custom, or anything in between and you'd go and have a good time. These days it seems like everyone has a V-twin, and there were only a few rat bikes, at least that we saw. (I'm a big fan of rat bikes) The coolest rat bike was an antique Harley with an equally antique sidecar. It had Maine plates, and the sidecar was bungee corded down to a platform that was clearly designed to use to haul stuff like lumber etc. It was dented, rusty, patched and pretty obvious that the guy rode it there from Maine as opposed to trailering it like so many of the custom jobs these days. I don't know why I didn't get a picture of it. But I digress...take a look at the picture linked to at the start of this paragraph and you'll see a Honda scooter with Florida plates and a milk crate screwed to the back squeezed in with the V-twins! That's the spirit!

Our Vacation, part two: Bike Week

2007-06-17T08:45:00.000-05:00

...Saturday morning we got up, packed up our stuff from the motel and checked out. Caleigh's favorite part of staying at a motel is getting to watch TV. At home, when she gets to watch TV at all, it is generally educational stuff (OK, and American Idol) but at a motel she gets to watch TV-Land etc and on this trip got to learn all about Andy Griffith and Mayberry.

We headed south from North Conway with our destination being the train station in Merideth. Along the way we stopped at a restaurant that we chose because is had a huge number of bikes in the parking lot. Lots of bikes usually means good food. It was! The place had home made hash and eggs and eggs Benedict. Then it was on to Merideth.

In Merideth, which is right on Lake Winnipesaukee, we stopped at a mini-mart to get Wendy a coffee and a pack of band-aids for Caleigh. She had fallen and scuffed her knee several times the day before and sitting in her car seat for an hour and a half gave her a lot of time to think about it and blow it a little out of proportion. A band-aid seems to make any kind of hurt better, even if it does not have Shrek or Little Einsteins on it. It's a small price to pay for happy kid who is trapped in a car seat. Now we are really getting into the bike week crowd, the traffic is starting to look more like a parade.

Bike week, now in it's 84th year, attracts motorcyclists from all walks of life. Generally some 300,000+ bikes cram into the lakes region for the week immediately proceeding Father's Day. The demographics change over the years, but people are all the same. As we sat in traffic, headed for the train station, we speculated on who-was-who. One group of early twentysomethings on sport bikes were goofing around and attempting to show off, Wendy pointed out that they are new to it and I agreed. These were people who had only recently learned to ride, but were young, stupid and cocky. The kind of people we used to call "future statistics".

Tucked in behind them was a guy on a cruiser bike, with a half helmet and a short, grayish beard. You could tell he wasn't with them and was sort of embarrassed to be seen with them. He was a confident, experienced rider, probably rides to work every day. At the red light, he passed us to get away from the "future statistics".

A few hundred yards later, we paused to let a group of sport bikes pull out of a driveway. Similar in appearance, this group was much more confident and weren't acting like dumbasses.

At the gas station was a group from NY on assorted cruiser bikes who were around our age, and another group of older guys with custom choppers. Not the $50,000 yuppie bike kind of choppers that you buy from a famous custom shop, real home built choppers built as a labor of love and creativity by real guys in their own garages who dreamed them up, cut their own fingers with sharp metal when bobbing the fenders, burned their arms with cutting torches when raking the front end, and got overspray on their own boots when painting the tanks. They sat there drinking coffee, watching the sportbikers and no doubt wondering what the hell happened to their lifestyle.

We hadn't told Caleigh that we were going to ride the train to the Weirs. She had been on a train once before on a day-trip to Boston, but was too little to remember it. After we parked the car, we told her that we could go look at the old-fashioned train and made a big deal about seeing a real train this close up. We let her buy the tickets, but had given her the impression that they were for a train museum, not telling her that she would actually get to ride in it.

We got in line with what seemed like a few hundred other people and she got real bored, real fast, so we tried to keep her distracted so she would realize what we were in line for. As we got on the train, she got a little nervous that we had gone somewhere that we weren't supposed to. As it started moving, she figured it out and a huge grin came over her. The people around us congratulated her on her first train ride and her first time at Laconia.

If I did the math right, my first time going to Bike Week was 18 years ago. It was different then. A different crowd. It was rowdy and the police kept the peace, but pretty much left bikers alone. Unless you were being truly obnoxious and either being dangerous or really, really stupid, people were just free to do whatever came to mind. These days, since Harley-Davidson changed their marketing strategy, everybody and his accountant is a "biker". A lot of the nouveau bikers want to look the part and act the part, without really living it. Sort of like being biker reenactors in that it is a persona they put on for the weekend.

They have really changed the face of things. Stuff that will get you arrested nowadays: burnouts, loud pipes, open containers, "indecent" exposure. I'm not condoning these things for daily life, but there is a time and place for everything, and bike week was the time and place for anything. You will even get a ticket for "coasting" your bike down the hill after sitting in traffic for hours and shutting off your engine to give it a break as you coast down towards the Weirs. What used to be a wild, everything goes weekend has "evolved" into a glorified flea market, complete with an assortment of stands selling cell phone accessories.

Given all of those changes, it is little wonder that the activities are shifting to places elsewhere in NH. On Thursday, the Mt. Washington Auto Road is closed to cars and only allows bikes to go up. There are organized events in places further and further away from Laconia, which is the traditional center of things, since the weekend rally began as motorcycle races at the track there. (the track is now New Hampshire International Speedway, a stop on the NASCAR circuit)

The weather was warm, sunny and dry. Perfect for attracting a big crowd. A big crowd it was! By the time we got to the grilled alligator stand, they were all sold out of gator meat and I had to settle for chicken (it was AWESOME chicken though). Caleigh had earned some money by being good, keeping her pull-ups dry etc and she chose to get a bodypainting done on her arm of three pink flowers, she also carefully picked out a red, white and blue pinwheel. We stopped at a few less-then-crowded spots to enjoy out drinks, ice cream etc and to people watch.

It's always interesting to look at the world through Caleigh. She is just full of self-confidence, and takes away what she wants from an experience. For instance, a small group of folks wearing "Witch City Cycles" patches walked buy us. The guys were dressed in biker chic of jeans, black t-shirts with trendy logos on them, and leather vests with patches. With them was a rather well-endowed woman who was dressed sort of like a cat. Sort of. She wore jeans, black leather chaps, suspenders, cat ears, and on her upper body she wore large pink pasties in the shape of paw prints. (probably one of the most photographed people there) When she walked by, Wendy and I exchanged glances, wondering what Caleigh's spin on this would be. Caleigh pointed...we braced ourselves...she exclaimed "Look! She has CHAPS!!!".

There were some funky custom bikes, but not nearly what you would have seen just five years ago. There was mostly just a sea of V-twin Harleys. The crown was pretty interesting though. Not "interesting" like in the old days, but interesting to speculate on demographics. It was a mix of squeaky clean people bedecked in black leather vests that have never gotten wet because they have never ridden in the rain, people who hope to have bike someday but for now content themselves with the t-shirts and jewelry that allow them to pretend that they do (the type that idolize Orange County Choppers and wear stuff with the West coast Choppers logo like it is a religion), folks who actually ride, but don't care if they appear in public in a not-bike-related t-shirt and shorts, and a lessening proportion of outlaw biker types who really are outlaw bikers (as opposed to just making a fashion statement).

Up in the Rally Headquarters area, we watched a guy make a painting in a matter of minutes with cans of spray paint. He did it while sort of dancing to annoying Euro-techno dance music. It was pretty cool, techno music notwithstanding. His web address as shown on the banner behind him isn't valid, but I did come across a video of one of his performances here.

The high point of the day for Caleigh was the train ride, with a close second being when I allowed her to use the video camera.

We were getting tired of walking around, so we climbed about the train again and went back to the car. We let Caleigh play with the camcorder on the train, and I'm sure it will be interesting to watch with her later.

On the way home, we stopped at Bobby's Girl Diner after getting off course a little. In the parking lot of the diner was a tractor-trailer done up as a museum about Indian motorcycles. At first, I thought it was a project of the Indian Motorcycle Museum in Springfield, MA, but it was actually just one guy's collection! He had a bunch of memorabilia and probably 10-12 bikes in it, displayed very well. He even had an Indian Papoose, which was sort of a one lunger minibike that was designed to be dropped with airborne troops so they would have vehicles to get away from the drop zone on. I talked with the guy who owned them and learned a lot about old Indians.

Dinner was at the diner, which stayed open late. Awesome waitress, great old fashioned diner food, great atmosphere. Definitely worth a stop if you are in the area! Kids who finish all of their food get to pick a toy out of the "treasure chest".

Caleigh fell asleep on the way home and I carried her to bed dressed in the clothes she wore for the day.

I had apprehensions about traveling with a 5 year old, but we had a great time. Last night, I scrolled through the pictures in my digital camera, and found that out of 63 photos, 52 of them involved Caleigh!

This was a short one as far as vacations go, but we really needed it. This business takes a lot out of a person, and a lot out of a family. Now and again you have to step back and recharge.

We are taking today off as well. We are going out for Chinese food, then going grocery shopping, then tomorrow it's back to the grindstone! I've started to big "to-do" list in order to get ready for the Fort Ticonderoga event, which is coming up in just two weeks. See you there!

P.S. later tonight I'll be cropping pictures from the trip and will be adding links to them to these two posts, so check back tomorrow to see a few pics of Bike Week!

Our Mini-Vacation, part one: Story Land!

2007-06-17T07:40:00.001-05:00

I'm awake before anyone else this morning, so I thought I'd come down to my desk and write about our vacation that we just returned from. It's been a few years since we took a weekend off. I'm not saying we haven't gone away, it's just that we usually make a "vacation" by adding an extra day or two to some kind of business trip.

Our vacation began with Flag Day on Thursday, when we retired our fading old flag that hangs by our porch next to the farm bell, hung up a new one, recited the Pledge of Allegiance and hit the road! We had packed up the Buick in record time, and left right on schedule (around lunch time). For those of you who are not in the Northeast, this happened to be Laconia Bike Week, so right away we noticed lots of motorcycles as we drove.

Our first stop was for lunch in New London, at the Flying Goose, a restaurant we had visited once before and had a good time at. It was full of bikers who had travelled from elsewhere to get here. After that stop, it was time to put some miles on, and we passed through the Sunapee area, headed towards Winnipesaukee. The closer we got, the more "Welcome Bikers" signs we saw on various places. bike week brings in a LOT of tourist dollars, as something like half a million people come to NH for it.

Our goal was to get to North Conway and check in at our motel, which was part of a larger resort. Since I was a kid, North Conway has grown and changed from the 1950's style tourist area to a more polished, upscale destination, but thankfully it is still affordable. The place we stayed at was called The Oxen Yoke and along with your room at the motel, you were also allowed the use of the facilities at it's parent resort a block away. The main resort hotel itself is located in a restored Grand Hotel from the heyday of rail travel. Guests have access to a game room, indoor pool, two outdoor pools and 1100' of river frontage for swimming. They even have a stocked fishing pond. Mostly we were just interested in a place to sleep. The room was only $49 per night, as we registered one day before their summer tourist season officially starts and rates jump.

The real goal of this trip was to go to Story Land, located just north of North Conway. Story Land is an amusement park geared towards little ones that has been in operation since the 1950's. I remember going with our neighbors, the Beaubiens, when I was a kid decades ago. In the 30+ years since I was there last, they have improved the place steadily and it is now a great attraction for families with small children. It is very clean and detail oriented. There are over 20 rides, all of which both parents and kids can go on together. In addition to the rides, there are little playhouses (like a giant pumpkin, for Peter Peter Pumpkineaters' wife to live in) and you get to meet live storybook characters like the Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe (and you get to go in her shoe) and Mother Goose herself.

The crown jewel, however, is Cinderella's Castle. To get there, you ride in a pumpkin-coach up to the castle. As you get out of the coach, the princess herself meets you and takes all of the little girls on a tour of her castle. I gotta say, I have never seen such awe-struck little faces as a group of little girls realizes that Cinderella is a real live person, talking to them personally. Sometime in the tour, she asks the girls if they have seen Prince Charming yet, and tells them if they do, will they please give him the message that she says "Hello". So now, the little girls are on a mission to find the prince!

Food is affordable at Storyland, and there are plenty of shady places to sit and eat. There are some live animals (Three Little Pigs, Three Billy Goats Gruff, Peter Rabbit and Goosey-Goosey Gander), and up on a little hill is Heidi's Grandfather, his cabin, and his goats. That was pretty good timing because just weeks ago Caleigh got to watch Shirley Temple in Heidi for the first time. (gotta love NetFlix to find old classic movies on DVD)

There were only two downers to Story Land. One was that it is only open from 9-5, and when things shut down at 5 in June, there are still nearly 4 hours of daylight left and it seems like it is over too early. It is very sad when it is time to leave. The other problem was that we did find Prince Charming, and he wasn't a real person. When you take the Swan Boat ride (big one, 29' long, there were probably 2 dozen people on it) it takes you past Butterfly Island and on the island was a fiberglass statue of the Prince on his horse. The little girls are supposed to yell out to him that Cinderella says "Hello" as we pass by in the boat. Some of the other girls were cool with this, but to Caleigh it was a rather crushing moment, as she had taken her task very seriously. It was, after all, given by the real live Princess.

It was a moment much like the one in one of my favorite movies, "A Christmas Story", when Ralphie uses his Little Orphan Annie secret decoder ring to translate the urgent message from the radio show, and it is "Drink your Ovaltine". I think she was very embarrassed that she had bought into the whole Cinderella searching for the Prince thing, and I felt really bad for her. I felt like I let her down, letting her think that it was all real. The management at the park probably has no idea how crushing it is to a little one when she finds out that there are no real Prince Charmings in this world. I think I will write to them and tell them that I really loved their park except for this one important thing. (at least it is important to a little girl who eats, sleeps and breathes Princesses)

After Story Land, we went out to dinner at The Muddy Moose where we had a good meal. Remembering that it is Bike Week, the parking lot was full of motorcycles from all over the US and Canada. I had pasta with venison sausage. One of the things I miss about living is the city is being able to go out to a good restaurant now and again, and decent food is an important part of a vacation to me!

Later, we went out to a make-your-own sundae place that was decorated with assorted antiques, including a plastic-and-vinyl 1970's hair dryer like the one my Mom had gotten with S&H Green Stamps! One of the last things I would have thought of as an antique. I guess I'm just getting old. What Caleigh was impressed with was a bunch of manual typewriters hanging on the wall. She calls them "18th century computers". Over in the corner there was a large photograph of a group of late-19th century hunters showing off a pile of rabbits they had shot. They were armed with an assortment of classic old double guns including a mix of breechloaders, caplocks and even one big old flint double! In 20/20 hindsight, I should have snapped a pic of it with my digital camera.

After that, it was off to the motel for some sleep before heading out on Saturday to the epicenter of Bike Week: Weirs Beach! To be continued in the next post...

Caleigh finds a bat

2007-06-12T22:09:00.000-05:00

Today Caleigh was out back playing with chickens or something, and she called out to us that there was a bat swimming in the hot tub. We had gotten a hottub from someone on freecycle, with the intent of installing it up on the hill overlooking the yard, but like many projects it still sits where we unloaded it. Over the winter it fills up with snow and thaws in the spring, so there is a foot or so of water in it at the moment.

We thought it was a bit of a stretch, seeing as where bats aren't generally thought of as being aquatic. I went out to look, and sure enough, it was a little bat, struggling for it's life in the water.

I fished it out of there with a shovel, and set the shovel on a strut under our little bridge where he would be out of reach of the psycho-killer cats, yet near enough that we could watch him.

I named him Andy, inspired by the Keith Secola song "ND Waza Bat" (don't ask, but if you really want to know, google it). The poor little critter was not happy about being wet, so he spent much of the afternoon bathing, licking his fur to clean and dry it. There didn't appear to be any damage to him physically (broken wings etc). By the end of the afternoon, he was mostly dry and had shifted around to sleep, in typical bat fashion, by hanging over the edge of the shovel by his rear feet.

I'm pretty proud of the fact that Caleigh isn't creeped out by the idea of a bat, and she thought it was pretty cool that she got to see it up close. She said he was cute. Well, he was, in the smae way that an ugly little bulldog puppy is cute.

As dusk fell, he was still sleeping, exhausted after his rough day. I couldn't let this one pass without snapping a few pictures, so here they are:

Here he is, with Caleigh in the background, after just being plucked from certain death in the hottub. (I can't belive how old she looks in this shot!)

And here he is trying to dry himself off by licking, it took most of the day.

A shot of him hanging upside down from the shovel blade, sleeping.

And another.

I may go out and check on him later, to see if he is still there resting up or if he has flown off in search of skeeters and the rest of his flock. Nah, too many skeeters...I guess I need more bats!

A big prickly thing

2007-06-09T16:28:00.000-05:00

Buster the dog goes out at night to roam around and do dog stuff in the woods. He has a good time and we feel it keeps the predators away somewhat.

A few days ago, he "discovered" a deer and cornered it at a spot on the game trail behind the house, probably asking it to play with him. The deer wasn't interested. Don't get me wrong here, he doesn't "run" deer, he just wasn't about to let a critter walk right up to his house without investigating it. The deer was maybe 30 yards from the door to our bedroom, as the game trail emerges from the woods right under the window at the head of our bed.

You could tell he wanted to play because his hackles weren't up. We heard the barking, so I threw my clothes on, grabbed the big 2,000,000 candlepower flashlight and my .45 and went out to see what was going on. I could hear him, but not see him in the brush. I called him and he came running, all excited. As he ran around me attempting to tell me all about it, I could hear something large crashing through the brush, running away. In the morning, Jeff and I went out for a look-see to maybe spot some tracks and figure out what I had heard crashing through the brush. Jeff spotted a patch of ground where the deer had made a stand.

Buster likes to wrestle and play rough, and not all other critters get into it. Molly, Jeff's dog, a much more ladylike dog than Buster's pit bull/husky self, gets offended when he asks her to play. His requests involve crouching down with his front legs, giving a "woof", and sprinting off in short bursts as if to say "Hey, come chase me!". Molly won't do it, the goats won't do it, Rocky the steer will, but he plays even rougher than Buster. Apparently deer don't like to play either.

Last night, just after midnight, I had just finished my dinner (early night for me) and Wendy and I were settling in to watch a stupid movie on TV. Then we heard the barking! I threw on my long pants, so as not to be cut up in the underbrush, and a pair of moccasins, grabbed the big flashlight and the .45, and headed out the game trail to see what was up tonight. Buster's barking was different this time. They came in short bursts, followed by uneasy silence.

I followed the trail for maybe 100 yards, no sign of Buster. I was a little worried, as there are coyotes and bears around here, and it was a little unsettling not to hear big, dufus Buster cannonballing through the underbrush. To my left was a little cliff that drops down to the road, so I climbed down to listen and look from a different perspective.

As I wandered down the roadway, scanning the underbrush with the big light, I heard a faint snapping of twigs, two short woofs from Buster, and a bleat-yelp-squeak noise I didn't recognise. off to the right, up the cliff, I spotted some motion, and it was buster, cautiously walking forward in a curious but nervous way. By his demeanor, I could tell that whatever he was into was right in front of him. For all I knew, he could have treed a bear.

With the light in my right hand and the cocked-and-locked .45 in my right, I climbed the cliff to get to where he was. As I approached him, he never broke his gaze from what he had cornered. Then I saw it...on the other side of the tree was a grey, black and whitish thing, fluffed up into a big ball. At first I thought it was a huge raccoon, but wanted to be sure before I considered shooting it. Then it moved slightly, and I got to see it from the front (it then had it's back towards the dog). A jet-black face looked at my light, framed by a coating of long, white quills...it wasn't a huge coon, it was a huge porcupine!

It was the first time I had seen a live porky in the wild. I've seen them in the zoo and squished by the side of the road, but never ran into a live one. It was a pretty cool looking critter. He didn't seem too scared by either me or the dog, just a little inconvenienced. As I watched him patiently stand guard against the curious dog, I wished I had brought a camera.

Maybe I need to put together a sort of a "bugout bag" to grab with me when I go out into the night to investigate stuff like this. It would be a little day-pack, with a camera, a coil of rope, an extra flashlight, first aid kit, signal whistle, knife etc. It would have made a cool picture, with the porky all fluffed up like a strutting turkey and the very curious but cautious dog sniffing at him from a short distance in the background.

Not wanting to keep the porcupine from his appointed rounds for longer than needed, I called for Buster and told him to go home for a treat. He was so happy that he could barely contain himself. Fortunately, he just wanted to sniff at the critter and didn't try to attack it like many dogs would have. He's got pretty good manners and gets along with all sorts of animals.

I climbed down to the road and he ran happy circles around me all the way back to the house, acting very excited that I had come out to play with him and very proud of finding the porcupine for me. Back in the house, I gave him a treat, then went upstairs to report our findings to Wendy. Wendy is always scared for me when I go out into the night like that, afraid that we'll tangle with a bear or a pack of coyotes or something. Buster came up and told Wendy his story about how he had found a big prickly thing and kept us safe from it, then settled down on my feet while we watched the movie. He's a cool dog.

Just because

2007-06-04T23:30:00.000-05:00

As I woke up this morning, I was thinking about why we do things. As reenactors, we often justify buying or making some neat new thing, going to a particularly distant event, or even being in the hobby at all because it is "educational", because it "serves the public by teaching them about our nation's heritage" etc etc.

Why don't we just admit to ourselves that we do it because it is fun? Of better yet, "just because". For some reason we feel the need to make an excuse to do something just for the fun of it these days.

Remember George Mallory's famous reason for climbing Mt. Everest? He said he did it "Because it is there". Good enough reason for him, it should be good enough for us too.

I think this need to justify things is fairly new to Americans. It came along in my lifetime. Maybe the hippies of the 60's and 70's poisoned our minds with some kind of guilt trip about having the prosperity to spend thousands of dollars and thousands of hours on stuff like reenacting when there are folks in other parts of the world that are starving. Remember the cliche' line: "Eat your vegetables, people are starving in India and they'd love to have your vegetables, so don't waste them"?

OK, so reenacting dollars feed many people in India who make muskets, bayonets, swords, buttons, buckles, embroidered miter caps, leather gear etc etc, but you get the picture. I'm talking about the cliches' about starving 3rd world folks here, and when most of us were kids it was starvation in India that made the news.

Remember the classic car movie "Vanishing Point"? In the 1971 version of the movie, the hero (Barry Newman) is delivering a supercharged Dodge Challenger from the custom shop in Colorado to San Francisco to deliver it. He makes a bet with some dude that he can make the trip in 15 hours. If you haven't seen the movie, shame on you, it's classic Americana. So as not to give away the ending, all I'll say here is that there are some cool car chases and an interesting look at the counter-culture of the era. The hero is on a quest to make the run in 15 hours to see if he can. No bigger reason, no real justification. He was a mysterious person and we are left to speculate his motives with the exception of some flashback scenes. I could go on for hours about the symbolism in this movie, but it would get away from the point I'm trying to make.

Jump ahead to 1997. 20th Century Fox did a remake of it. In a single generation, the classic car flick had been emasculated. The hero had been tamed and now had to have a reason to drive the Challenger so fast. Now he has to get home to his wife who has lupus and is going into labor. This time the hero is an ex-Army Ranger and retired race car driver. Apparantly, the studio felt we wouldn't accept a hero who did the driving to prove something to himself, or "just because it is there".

I wonder if any of the classic car movies would make it today? Or better yet, the must-see Easy Rider? "Gone in 60 Seconds" was remade a few years ago, in a similarly emasculated way as Vanishing Point. In the remake, the gang of car thieves who starred in the original movie (not to glamorize car thieves here, I'm talking about MOVIES) are forced into coming out of retirement to steal a list of cars in order to ransom the ringleader's little brother from a "real" bad guy. Even car thieves need to justify their actions in today's Hollywood! In the name of political correctness, they also added a woman and "good guy" car theives of various ethnic backgrounds.

In Easy Rider, the heros are a pair of bikers who saddle up and go to New Orleans for Madi Gras. Again, without leaking too much of the plot, they have run-ins with the law, rednecks, hippies, and various representatives of Americana along the way. Again, i could go on for hours about the symoblism. I bet if it were to be remade today, the biker duo would have to have some bigger purpose in the trip than just to go to Madi Gras. They'd have to have a female companion and be multicultural as well.

Sometimes I get worried that the need to only act when it is justified has gotten it's claws into me. Once upon a time, I would drive to Maine for breakfast because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Once upon a time I had tried to set up an illegal 500-mile road race from Massachusetts to Washington DC (everyone else backed out, so I guess I won by default). These days my "just because" habits involve collecting stuff, which can actually be justified as "investing" as pretty much all of the stuff I collect appreciates in value in time.

It's quarter past one in the morning, I just finished up setting up a few muskets for Michael W. in Australia, and I suppose I'll settle down for dinner soon. Maybe tonight I'll think up some whacked-out new idea that I'll set out to do "just because". Maybe it won't be driving a supercharged hemi Challenger from Colorado to Frisco, but the spirit will be there!

Or maybe I'll just go watch Vanishing Point on VHS while I eat dinner...

Got a bike!

2007-05-24T23:19:00.000-05:00

A few posts ago I talked about wanting to get another motorcycle. I looked at a few online: at dealer's websites, on ebay, on Craig's List etc. There was a 1979 Suzuki GS850 I was planning on checking out in Bellows Falls that I found on Craigslist, and a 1980-something GS1100 a little drive into Vermont that the seller was supposed to email pictures of to me. Then I picked up the local weekly want-ads newspaper called "The Weekly Flea".

There it was! A 1980 Suzuki GS850. Only 11k miles. Black, with a fairing and hard saddle bags. Located right here in town, just 10 minutes away. I went to check it out, and then came home to sleep on it for a couple of days.

My old bike was a black 1980 GS850. It was the GL model, which had buckhorn handlebars, a smaller tank and a king-and-queen seat. Kind of the "sport model" if you will. Here's a picture of it, all packed at an event at #4, with carbine and sword strapped to the handlebars and bedroll lashed down to the seat (neither of the people in the picture is me):

This one was sort of like it's older, more mature sister. It has a 5 gallon gas tank, and a 1970's style wide, straight seat. Here's a pic of it in the guy's garage:

It couldn't replace my old bike, but it is sort of thought provoking to me that it is basically the same model only a little more "mature", with it's windshield, hard bags, wide seat and AM/FM cassette player. Creature comforts and motorcycles are an odd mix. The fairing still makes me feel a little middle-aged, but it would be a good place to put smart-assed helmet-sized bumper stickers.

On Monday, it followed me home and I registered it within an hour. I worked a package deal for it, and along with the GS850 came a Suzuki LT185 Quadrunner. Yeah, it's 20 years old, but it doesn't have to win any races, it just has to haul stuff around the woods for me.

The next day, I took the GS to town to gas it up since it came to me on fumes. Of course it took me 5 minutes to get to town, but 45 to get home. On the way, I saw the Charlestown backroads from a different perspective. On East Street, I smelled someone cooking their dinner, a little while later heard some leaves rustling as they blew across the road, and as I turned onto the Ackworth Road, felt the change in wind direction blow against my neck. If felt good to be out in the real world again, not hermetically sealed in a car or truck.

It was the right thing to do. The difference between getting this GS850 and getting my old GS850 is that when I got the old one I was single, and now there are three of us. This afternoon, Jeff and I stood for a few minutes looking at the frame of the bike, pondering how to rig up a sidecar to it...

Father Goose?

2007-05-24T22:55:00.000-05:00

Earlier today, Caleigh had complained to Wendy that her Mother Goose book was confusing and didn't make any sense. She thought that perhaps we should call the publishers and ask them to explain it. That's Caleigh, no messing around, she is quite proactive and always seems to have a plan to get where she wants to go.

Her first complaint about the book was that the title is "Mother Goose", but it shows "a boy on the cover". Wendy and I heard this, and assumed it would be a picture of Little Jack Horner, Little Boy Blue, etc.

She reported to us that not only wasn't there an email address in the book to contact the publisher, there wasn't even a phone number to call them at!

Later on tonight, she came out with the book in hand to show me the problem.

It was a Wonder Book, copyright 1946. Inside the front cover was a bookplate stating that it was my brother's property (circa 1960) and that it was a gift to him from my grandmother while she was in the hospital. As we unpack boxes of stuff, we come across a lot of old books that survived him, me, and years of my Mom's home day care business. When we read them, I always make a point to show Caleigh the title page with the date to try and help her understand that some of these stories took place in America, but when they were written, they didn't have cell phones, email, computers or even TV.

She pointed to the cover and said "See, it says Mother Goose, and the goose has a girl's hat, but it is a boy". Here is a scan of the book's cover:

We were a little baffled about what she was upset about. I asked "What do you mean that it's a boy?" She pointed to the little curled feather on Mother Goose's tail and said "See? It's a boy."

In ducks, the curled tail feather indicates a male. It isn't true, but it's not too far of a stretch for a 5 year old to assume that the same rule applies to geese as well.

We learned two things:

1. Caleigh is really sharp, and notices little details that escape others unnoticed.

2. Cross-dressing waterfowl are just not OK with her.

Sometimes she just amazes me.

Keene Swap Meet

2007-05-06T21:46:00.000-05:00

We went to the Keene Swap Meet today. Held at the Cheshire Fairgrounds, it is a swap meet for motorcycles, parts, leathers and all of the other "stuff" that goes along with motorcycles. Something like 250 vendors. It is held twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring. The event has been going on for 33 years, and is one of the big kickoffs for the motorcycling season here in the Northeast.

Yeah, I am looking for another bike. One that doesn't need any restoration, one I can just put the key in and start up. Maybe I'll even get an inspection sticker for it.

This business keeps us going for long days, nearly every day, and the time just isn't there to fix up a project bike. I've had to make my peace with that.

My first bike was a 1971 Honda 350. Red, faded to pink on top. Later came Sue Zuki, my black 1981 Suzuki GS850. It was a fast bike, but she was old and getting tired. There was also a 1979 Honda CB750 in the mix, and Wendy had a 1982 Honda Nitehawk 650.

Now I want a big bike, one that can handle two adults and our "stuff" without working too hard at it. At least a 1000. There are a couple on ebay that I've got my eye on.

Riding is like sailing. It's something you have to experience to understand why people do it. It's just your machine and you against the elements. Driving in a modern car is like being sealed in a container, you really have no contact with the world you are flying through at highway speeds. On a bike, there are sounds, vibrations, smells, and all sorts of other sensations you are out of touch with in your air-conditioned, stereo equipped car.

As we got closer to Keene in the Buick, we started to see bikes in small groups of three or four, then bigger groups of six or ten, then dozens at a time. Just hearing the engines and smelling the exhaust made me feel better and brought back memories.

Yeah, it's time to get another bike.

Dinner and a barn dance

2007-05-05T18:25:00.000-05:00

So yesterday we spent the afternoon in Ascutney, VT at donated church space for the weekly homeschoolers co-op. It's a loosely organized thing where an assortment of homeschool families (some right wing, some left wing, some "damn hippies") go and take turns attending and teaching little classes in such topics as clog dancing, introduction to Spanish, African drumming (did I mention hippies?...don't get me started about African drums and hippies...), introduction to reading music, and New Hampshire history. Guess which one I got volunteered for? I'll give you a hint: it isn't "African drumming".

It's not exactly my idea of a good time, but Wendy and Caleigh enjoy it, so I behave myself when I am there. I don't even pick on the hippies. Actually, I think the whole premise is kind of dumb. Once you organize a group of children into classes and set them up in a building chosen just for that purpose, it isn't quite homeschooling any more. My feelings about it are kind of irrelevant, because there is a block of time on the schedule marked "History with Pete", so once a week, it's off to Ascutney I go with maps, artifacts, notes and whatever else I can use to try and quickly explain 10,000 years of human habitation.

After class this week, we were planning on going grocery shopping, but instead elected to go for a drive over to the Newport area to see if there was a decent looking restaurant over there. There didn't seem to be, so we kept driving to Sunapee. Sunapee has been a summer vacation destination for 100+ years, ever since the railroads first started to bring summer tourists to the wilds of NH. You can read about Lake Sunapee and Mount Sunapee here and here.

We had dinner at a cool "country dining" restaurant called the Appleseed Tavern. It was a refreshing change from the Chinese food/Pizza that are pretty much your only choices close to home. They actually had seafood! The dining room is in an old barn and is decorated with typically eclectic "country" stuff, and a cool feature was a big collection of old NH vanity license plates.

I got to teach Caleigh about vanity plates and how to decipher them. The Rosetta stone for her was the one that read L8R BUD. Once she figured that one out, she went on to 0U812 and suddenly she had a new car game to play.

Appleseeds has a website. http://www.appleseedrestaurant.com/ From May to October, they also run dinner cruises on the lake on a replica Victorian era cruise boat.

After dinner we went to a "barn dance" in Bradford, NH. We had seen the sign at the side of the road and decided to check it out. It was being held not in a barn, but in the elementary school gym. The dance was a fundraiser for a local community center that was in financial trouble. Instead of doing the Massachusetts thing of just appropriating more public money (they are just tax dollars, we can print more...), they did the New Hampshire thing and started holding fundraisers. This month, they are having two barn dances.

The dancing was contra style, and there were all ages at it. There was live music (a keyboard, two fiddles and an accordion). Caleigh has done this before, so she jumped right in. She even won a door prize of four little toy farm animals. They were also having a bake sale and had some really funky looking desert treats, but I was stuffed from Appleseeds and didn't partake of any.

Dinner and dancing? Sounds almost like a date! Yeah, we live in the country, in a place where people go on vacation to, and yeah, we are self employed and theoretically have the flexibility of time that goes along with it, but on the flip side we work long days every day and don't get to play much. About the only "free time" I get is the 1/2 hour a day that it takes to take care of the critters. Going out to dinner and a barn dance may seem like a lame excuse for fun to many people, but to us it is like a four-day weekend!

The road is flat, it must really be spring this time

2007-05-05T18:01:00.000-05:00

We are 1 1/2 miles away from a paved road. Here in NH, living on a dirt road means that springtime can be a challenge. As the frost in the road thaws, first it gets squishy in places, then big "mud bog" type stretches appear, then when the water generated by melting snow flows down from the surrounding hillside, washouts occur.

The town can only do so much, such as dumping more gravel on the gooey parts. Eventually, the road starts to firm up. As it firms up, however, the school bus that goes up the road a few times a day causes deep ruts and where water flows across the road, washboard surfaces form.

It's pretty rough on a vehicle. My old pickup respond to it by letting random parts fall off (not to worry, most of the parts that fall off are not important). Wendy's little Buick, however, we gotta be careful with. It might need an alignment, now, but I think it took the spring without too much pain and suffering.

Yesterday, as we were getting ready for the homeschooling co-op (I got "volunteered" to teach about NH history at it), we heard a rumbling sound coming up the road. To some folks, the sounds of spring are all about the tiny frogs not-too-creatively called "spring peepers" or the return of songbirds, but to us, the most glorious sound of spring is the rumble of a road grader!

The town's dump truck follows it, dumping fresh gravel behind the swath that the grader cuts in the packed dirt, then the grader makes a second pass to smooth it out. Today the road is flat, but covered in little sharp tire-piercing bits of gravel, but in a week's time it will all be packed down flat and smooth.

Happy spring!

No longer a "strapping young man"

2007-05-01T10:49:00.000-05:00

Last week we got a last-minute phone call from Sue A. down in Massachusetts asking us if we were going to the Lowell Sportsman's Club's "Spring Fling Field Day and Spaghetti Supper" as we always do. We got about 12 hours notice, so we set aobut scrambling to come up with a plan to make it happen. I checked around to find a last-minute dog sitter, but had no luck, so I chased the ducks out of the old duck pen and set up a couple of cattle panels to create a 20' x 20' dog pen, so Buster Dog would be safe for the day while we went to Lowell.

To keep a long story short, we made the two hour trip, had fun seeing old friends, won some door prizes (including a Big Mouth Billy Bass LOL), beat Doc Duggan in the .22 rifle shoot for the second year in a row, and ate my allotment of pasta. The traumatizing part of the event came when we were all done with dinner and it was time to put the folding chairs and tables away.

A guy whom I didn't know came up to me as I was flipping the table over to fold and said "Sir, you don't have to do that, we have a group of strapping young men to put things away".

I was shocked.

Not so much that the guy didn't know me. I hadn't been around the club all winter. It was the implication that I wasn't one of the "strapping young men" who tore down the tables and chairs.

I looked in the mirror and saw a grey haired guy. Sure, it was long grey hair that I heppened to think looks pretty cool, but I guess he is right, I am no longer one of the "strapping young men".

Maybe it's not as bad as it seems, but I felt pretty silly as a kid took the table out from in front of me to put it away.

We got home around 1AM. Buster met us in the driveway. Apparantly, a 4' cattle panel can keep a bull in, but not a pit bull. Back to the old drawing board... Maybe this old guy just needs some "strapping young men" to build a better fence.

Freddie is home!

2007-04-09T23:06:00.000-05:00

Freddie the cat came home from the hospital today after spending 5 days there with a bad urinary tract infection. Poor little guy. We are really happy with the service from our vet. They really care there, and treat both the animals and owners with respect.

Freddie and I worked out a deal. I was willing to front the money for his vet bill in exchange for his mouse hunting services. He now owes me a LOT of mouse pelts.

In addition to mouse patrol, his other main job is to sit on my lap and help me answer email. He's pretty good at it.

The ironic thing is that the humans in this family don't go to the doctor much. The last time I was treated by a doctor (as opposed to my own folk remedy stuff) was in 2002 when I nearly lost my leg to an infection after an axe accident. By contrast, Buster the dog gets at least a check-up every year when he gets his rabies shot that is required to have a dog license.

Had a little mishap today

2007-04-04T21:10:00.000-05:00

It was one of those afternoons. All day was a mixture of sleet, hail, snow and ice, Caleigh was up vomiting last night from a stomach bug, Louise got a huge metal splinter in her thumb, and Freddie the cat got sick enough to bring to the vet.

Of course, the trip to the vet came after I had already made one trip down to civilization and decided that it was just too icy to be out and about. We had ordered more bubble wrap from Staples and it was supposed to be delivered today. I got a call from the delivery guy, who was lost. I got him on track and a few minutes later he called back saying that he couldn't deliver because it was too icy to make it up Breakneck Hill: could I come down to the pavement and meet him?

I took my truck down, and to make it even stupider, the guy only had one box of bubble wrap for me because his van got too full when loading. My truck is 2wd and I have a fairly slick spare tire on the right rear. Nonetheless, I made it up the hill and back here safely. It just took a while, as the wheels spun the whole way.

When we determined it was time for Freddie to go in to the vets for help, I decided to take Wendy's front wheel drive Buick, thinking it would have better traction because of the weight of the engine being right over the drive wheels.

Big mistake.

It has been years since I had a front wheel drive car. Even then, it was a 4-speed. Wendy's Buick is an automatic. I had remembered how good my Plymouth was in the snow, but snow and ice are two different things! Front wheel drive cars "push" on ice, that is, they go straight even after you've turned the wheel. Automatics suck on ice, as you don't have direct control over the wheel speed like in a standard.

Whatever excuse I choose to give, I slid off of the road at a turn near the hill. I was only going 20mph, and the Buick "pushed". Fortunately, traffic is a rarity and there was a nice flat place to slide onto. No damage except to my pride.

On the way back from the vet, I had to get back up that hill. For a moment, I considered going miles out of my way to approach the our road from a flatter direction, then reasoned that if my truck could get up there, so could the Buick. It did, but not until it "pushed" off the road on a turn, stopping right at the edge of a ditch. I backed onto the road and slowly made my way home.

Come on spring!

The antique muskets are SOLD!!!

2007-04-04T21:02:00.000-05:00

It took longer than expected, but the 5 dozen antique caplock musket that we imported from Rajasthan are SOLD. It was a mix of 3-band Enfields, 2-band Enfields, Yeomanry carbines, 1842 patterns and an assortment of funky half-stocks. All of them had rack marks and showed signs of either militia or constabulary use.

Most were in fair shape, none were shooters. One or two of them were still loaded after being in storage for a century.

It was a neat project to be involved in, but I wouldn't do it again. We'll probably never get to see so many original guns in one place again, so we took photos of all of them and compiled a data sheet on each one, recording it's rack number, any regimental markings, and any interesting features.

It was fun to have made it happen, but I'm glad it is over with. The antiques being gone frees up that much more space in the gun room for more stuff...

Transcript of 18th century court cases

2007-04-04T18:19:00.000-05:00

I got this link from the Smithsonian Museum of History newsletter. It's a listing of court records from "the Old Bailey", the famous British "hanging court".

The home page of the database is here: www.oldbaileyonline.org

For a detailed trial of a case of piracy in 1737, click here.

Pretty cool stuff to read!

My annual rant about the gymnastics show

2007-04-02T19:30:00.000-05:00

Caliegh, our 5-year old, takes gymnastics lessons in the next town. Wendy felt it would be good for her to develop good posture. OK, I'll buy that. I've got terrible posture from the hands-in-your-pockets leather jacket clad slouch from when I was a kid. Wendy's is just as bad. Caleigh seems to have a good time at lessons, she gets to hang out with other kids etc.

What bugs me about the whole thing is that it is not as simple and straightforward as you would think. You have to pay for lessons, but first there is a "registration fee". What is the fee for? No idea. As near as I can tell, it is just an opportunity for additional profit.

You gotta buy leotards and gymnastics shoes. OK, this I can deal with. Specialized athletics require specialized clothing.

What bugs me is the "shows". Midway through the year they have a show in the school's regular practice room. That show is intended to give the parents a little update on what the kids can do and it also seems to serve as a promotional event for the school. It is free for the parents to attend, but it there is a $5 fee for each of the kids who participate. You read that right: it costs the kids $5 each to promote the for-profit school.

That one is silly enough, but the one that really stick in my craw is the big recital at the end of the year. Much of the year is spent getting ready for the kids performances. Then you gotta buy the costume (from the school, of course) at an additional fee which, if i recall, is $50. But Caleigh happens to be in two of the acts of the recital, so she gets to buy two different costumes from the school, so that is $100. Of course, you need to get white gymnastics shoes to go with the outfit (also from the school, but I forget how much they cost).

Yeah, I know that fun stuff costs money. My buckle shoes cost me $100, but that was in 1997. That means they cost me $10 per year of use so far, and they show no signs of quitting yet - good investment. Caleigh is five. These shoes will fit her this summer, then never again - bad investment. Her costumes will only be used for this one show, but at least she gets to wear them to practice in, but should a leotard for a 5-year old cost $50?

OK, the complaints I have listed up to now are mostly me being a cheap Yankee and wanting to get the best deal I can on clothes for my daughter that will only be worn for a year at best. The one that I see as the ultimate grab for parent's wallets is the recital itself.

Tickets cost $14 each. In addition to Wendy and I, Caleigh's grandparents are coming too. That means four tickets. So in addition to paying for weekly lessons all year to the school, we also need to pay for the school to show off to us.

When you go to a PTA meeting or a parent-teacher conference, is there a cover charge? When a school has an open house, do you need to buy tickets? No. In my not-so-humble opinion, the recital at the end of a very expensive year should be a thank you from the school to the parents who pay the owners salaries all year.

$14 a ticket in an insult. On top of that, they "sell" you a program, and since they don't allow you to film the recital, offer you a chance to buy a so-called professionally produced DVD of the show for "only" an additional $40. No photos or videotaping allowed by the parents. Perhaps the school is doing their best to combat pirated copies of bootleg video of FIVE YEAR OLDS DOING SOMERSAULTS!!!! Or perhaps they just see one more opportunity to pull at parent's emotions and get them to buy a DVD for $40 that cost maybe $1 to produce. (very, very amateur production)

I have worked hard to build my business, and done so honestly. I do my best to keep prices as low as possible and throw in as many freebies as I can because I strive to be an asset to my community. When a new shooter lives in the area, I always offer them the chance to come here and learn whatever they can from casting shot, shooting the musket, to properly cleaning it afterwards. It is just the "right thing" to do. It really bugs me when I see another business do just the opposite. This school claims to exist for the promotion of gymnastics and dance, but from where I sit it is all about the promotion of the owner's pocketbook.

When I expressed shock at the tickets to see preschoolers do tumbles costing $14 on top of what we've already paid into this, the lady at the school told me that it has to be that expensive because they need to rent the opera house, pay for the cleaning crew, the guy to run the lights and the duty police officer. It would cost them in excess of $5000 for the weekend. Big deal. Does $5k sound like a lot? Perhaps it does. But let's do a little math here:

4 shows with 800 tickets to each (each kid's family goes to this, there are seldom any empty seats) is 3200 tickets. At $14 per seat, that is $44,800. Knowing that each kid gets a free seat, and assuming that each kid brings Mom and Dad, siblings, grandparents etc, let's reduce that by 20% to cover the free tickets to the little dancers and gymnasts themselves. That comes to $35,840. Given the $5k expenses number I was quoted at the school, that leaves upwards of $30,000 net profit for the owners of the school. In addition, it perpetuates the "need" for younger siblings to attend the school and take part in the recital in the future, just like their older siblings did.

Yes, I know it is capitalism at it's finest, bit there is just no honor in charging us $14 each to watch our 5 year old do flips. It really baffles me that this is somehow OK with all of the parents. When I dare to mention it out loud, other parents agree with me that it is wrong of the school to charge us for the recital. But the younger parents who went to the school themselves chime in with the party line of "the recital is an expensive production, it just barely breaks even". Sorry, do the math. $30k profit in three days is hardly what I'd call "breaking even".

Nobody dares to speak up. It's like a kind of a cult. Nobody wants to make waves. Stupid, sheep-like soccer moms! As consumers, we hold the power here by being able to not buy into this, to simply not buy tickets to the stupid show. But we will, because it is expected of us. It makes me sick. I've tried my best to stay out of the brand-driven consumerism of the 21st century, but once you have a little girl, all bets are off. Everyone is after you: there is the gymnastics school, there is anything ever done by Disney corp, anything with "princesses" on it. Caleigh rarely gets to watch TV, but can quote you a dozen or more corporate jingles. At least I can claim the small honor of publicly stating that it is stupid of us to be led around like this.

The owner of the school has a muzzleloader that needs work. I think I should offer to do the job, charge him $100 per hour shop rates (instead of our usual $25) and tell him he is now on our "muzzleloader team". I will then sell him a new spring for his Hawken at 200% markup over retail and require him to buy his round balls from us, then charge him a fee for trying it out once it is fixed. Maybe there can be a drop-off fee, and a pick-up fee. Need an owner's manual? Sure, just $5. Maybe to save the pick-up fee, he'd prefer to have us ship it. That would work just as well, we could bill him for shipping, charge another $20 for the box, a $10 bubble wrap fee, and a surcharge for taping it shut. Man, I am in the wrong business, I should be teaching preschoolers to do somersaults!

In the middle of writing this rant, I took a phone call from a guy who has a musket purchased from a competitor. He needs help with the lock. I told him to send it to me and I'd take care of it. Why? Because it is the right thing to do.

Mobile Chicken Coop

2007-03-30T11:23:00.000-05:00

I just got bit by a chicken.

There is maybe a dozen chickens that hatched out last summer in an old rabbit hutch that we were raising up as broilers. The other chickens would come around and harrass them, sort of taunting them about being in a pen when the rest of the flock free-ranged. We ended up letting them out to run with the others, which was the end of them being broilers. They hang around the front of the place most of the day and roost up in the hemlocks at night. Since they are mixed breeds, some of thme are pretty funky looking.

Now it's spring, and we are starting to find a few eggs a day in the hen house.

I just went out to my truck, which I had planned on taking to town to do some errands this afternoon, and asorted chickens hopped out of the back. Since one of the things I wanted to do in town was to go to the dump, there are several bags of trash in the back of my truck. I decided to check to see if the girls had deposited any eggs there, so I moved a feed bag out of the way. Out of nowhere, a little white head with angry red eyes sprung up and bit me on the webbing of my thumb.

It seems that this particular little white hen had decided it was a good place to build a nest and was busying herself with arranging hay in the corner, right behind the cab. She's pretty mad at me for disturbing her nest, so I think I'll let her calm down a bit, then try to move the whole nest, eggs and all, to a safer location that doesn't move every week or so.

The lesson learned here is that when it gets warm this summer, I better not leave my windows open or else I'll start to find eggs under the driver's seat!

I'm NEVER going in the attic again!!!

2007-03-27T19:44:00.000-05:00

OK, I'm DONE in the attic!!!

I spent much of yesterday and today rolling around in fiberglass removing weird wiring and adding proper wiring to relocate some ceiling fixtures in the house.

Fiberglass is a drag enough all by itself, but it's even worse when there is pretty much no headroom so you are literally rolling around in it. The only way it would have been worse is if it were hot up there because when you sweat, your pores open up and let in more fibers than when you are cold. (I used to work with fiberglass covered high-temperature wiring at BTU Engineering in a previous lifetime and am all too familiar with it's properties - Wendy's Dad worked there at the same time, but we never met)

The attic is really more of a crawlspace than an attic. If you get up on your hands and knees, you get skewered by the roofing nails sticking down through the sheathing.

The wiring done by the previous owner of the property is fascinating. At some point, they had even rigged up a 3-wire, 8 gauge cable that ran from the main breaker in the house up through the wall into the attic crawlspace, then through the outside wall and attached it to the electrical service upstream of the meter to steal electricity. They did this by standing on the roof and connecting the wires to the live ones coming from the pole with radiator hose clamps. Not smart or honest, but pretty daring!

There were all sorts of live wires laying around in the attic from various aborted wiring projects they had done, but I only got zapped once. Ironically, I got zapped by a white wire, which is connected to ground in the real world, but they had used the white as the "hot" conductor here. There was one jury-rigged setup that involved two ratty old extension cords that were tied and wirenutted together up inside the ceiling.

In one of the junction boxes was a connection made with a white porcelien wire nut. In case you don't know what a wire nut is, it's one of those things that electricians use inside junction boxes that looks like a cap from a magic marker. There is a little spring inside, you twist it over your wire ends and it makes the connection for you. (I remember my shop teacher stressing that the connection must be "electrically and mechanically secure without solder" per the 1978 National Electrical Code Book, my formal training is as an electrician) These are made of plastic today, the porcelin on I found is probably from before WW2.

Tomorrow the insulation guys are coming to blow in 14" of cellulose into the crawlspace to improve upon the 6" of pink fiberglass that is up there, which should radically increase the efficienacy of the house. To do this, they need to install a 14" high dam around the trapdoor that leads to the attic. The good news is that all of my wiring is done and I will never need to go up there again!

Thankfully, it is all torn out now

Muck boots and a bathrobe

2007-03-26T21:51:00.000-05:00

So there I was, 11PM and I'm outside in a pair of muck boots with ice creepers on the bottom and a bathrobe...

The day began early for us as the Millers were coming to work at 7AM, and a construction crew was coming to make a few repairs in preparation for blowing in more insulation into the attic crawl space. I took care of business here in the shop until lunch time, without really having my breakfast until noon. I had spent the afternoon and evening crawling around in the attic crawlspace running new wires and removing bizzare old ones (a topic for a whole 'nother post) and couldn't wait to get in the shower.

After the shower (10PM), I couldn't wait to cook my dinner and relax. I seldom actually get to relax, as there is always something pressing to do. In this case, I had orders from Wendy to come back down here to my desk and place an order with one of our vendors for more matchlocks. OK, so my dinner and relaxation gets put off.

I had shined the big flashlight out into the back yard to check on all the quacking, and saw that half a dozen big, stupid white Pekin ducks were out of the pen, and reminded myself to be sure to chase thme back into the pen before I went up to start my dinner. After placing the order, I put on my muck boots to go chase ducks.

So there I was, in my muck boots with ice creepers on them and a bathrobe. Chasing ducks. Here, there, everywhere. Quack-quack-quack!

I herded them toward the door of the pen. They ran the other way. I opened the door in anticipation of chasing thme back that way again, and who should decide to go out for a stroll? Rocky the ox. (he's in training, and technically a steer at the moment, but he's approaching 1/2 a ton and I call him an ox) Does he walk out, turn around and walk back in? Nope. He runs for it. Nearly 1000 pounds of beef running for the woods at top speed. So much for my dinner.

I wasn't about to go chasing a steer around the woods in the middle of the night as I was sore from my crawlspace ordeal, and just wanted my dinner. So I decided to think like a yearling steer...what is the most important thing in the world? FOOD! So I went inside and came out with a scoop of goat feed. Goat feed is covered in molasses and is sort of like crack to bovines, they would do ANYTHING to get it.

By now, Rocky is scaling the pile of boulders that leads up to the hill on the north side of the house. I shook the scoop to make the "food sound" and got his attention. He came back down off of the rocks towards me at full gallop, and crammed his nose into the scoop. I backed away and led him into the pen.

Then I began chasing ducks again. In the process, I wiped out on the ice and fell on my side. So much for my being nice-and-clean-shower-fresh. Still no dinner.

Now it's after midnight, and in the midst of all of this, I had to delay my dinner further as Wendy needed me to replace the ink tanks in her printer. I finally got to bed around 2AM, a 19 hour day.

This is a typical day. Between the weatherization guys and the water filtration contractor, the next three days should be pretty much the same too.

The sweet smell of spring...

2007-03-25T21:48:00.000-05:00

You can tell it is getting to be spring for real. All of the cow, goat, poultry and pig poop that froze all winter long thaws all at once, creating a quagmire of poopy mud. Not a bad smell, but unmistakeable.

Another sign of spring...

New models planned for 2007

2007-03-20T18:45:00.000-05:00

We just got back from our annual meeting with our biggest supplier. I'm exhausted. Not so much from the meeting that ran until after 3AM, but from the weeks of preparation for the meeting. It's like studying for an important test in school, you spend weeks of late nights getting ready for it.

At this meeting, which is held every March at a hotel in Connecticut, we go over chages and revisions to the existing models that we'd like to see and present the designs for new models. It seems to be an awkward time to have a meeting of this sort as it is several months into the calendar year, but it actually works out pretty good as it allows us to have at least a prototype of any new models by the start of reenacting season here in the Northeast.

I presented two typewritten pages of revisions to 18 different models, some minor reminders about little details, others some major new revisons based on hours of painstaking research. After that, we discussed the new ones. I'll keep you in suspense as to the details for now, but here's what is coming down the pike for this season:

English Fusil - based on an original in my collection, the original being a light gun made by Ketland

French Fusil de Chasse - based on a series of identified individual guns, we picked what we felt were the most common traits of a fusil de chasse (as opposed tot he mix of de chasse and fusil fin features seen on most repros)

Double barrel flintlock pistol - since the double caplock worked out so well, we refined the design a little and backdated it to the 18th century. The reproduction will be French styled since the barrels are side-by-side (British double pistols of the era tended to by over-and-under)

Spanish Espcopeta musket - Why? Because I always wanted one, and there have been a number of requests for one in the recent months. I got my hands on a proper miqulet lock, an original Spanish gun to copy the furntiure from, and found some great photos of an original stock in one of my books.

I'll tease you with these descriptions for now, photos will come as prototypes show up.

Wait until tomorrow night when I post pics of the new cannon lighter pistol...

Firewood got the best of me

2007-03-16T20:19:00.000-05:00

Tonight we are getting snow again, supposed to be 15" before it is over.

That's OK, the critters are all fed, and I'm working inside. Today's project is to wire the phones in to the new office. In between that, I was ordered by Wendy to get a few days worth of firewood. I like free firewood, it usually comes in the form of pallets. I could digress and talk all about the stuff we have built using free pallets around here, but I won't.

So my mission was to go outside next to the pile of empty musket crates and drag in some pallets to cut up using my table saw. First I drag them into the garage bay where my saw is. In doing so, I managed to trip and catch my kneecap on the edge of a pallet, the spot that would be your funnybone if it were your elbow...no really funny at all.

The first step in making firewood out of pallets is to cut the stringers up into three sections using a sawzall. The sawzall was sitting on a crate, and when I bent over to pick up the end of the extention cord to plug it in, I managed to nail myself in the forehead, right at the scalp line with the tip of the saw blade. Pallets 2, Pete 0

After the pallets are cut into sections, I lift them up onto my table saw to slice the stringer sections away from the planking. To do this, you need to remove the chip-shield and anti-kick device...see where I'm going with this? Witihn minutes, I had chips in both eyes and got whacked in the groin with a piece of the planking that got kicked back at me. Pallets 5, Pete 0

In the end, the wood is all stacked up in the garage, ready to be stuffed into paper feed bags for transport upstairs to the house and dumped into the woodbin. Even though I'm down 5-0 at the moment, I'll win tonight as the dry oak wood from the dismembered pallets heat me house.

So far this winter, our heating bill here is something like a third of what it would have been at our drafty old Victorian house in Massachusetts. Modern insulation, double-pane windows, a southern exposure with lots of glass and auxilliary wood heat go a long way towards saving on the energy bill.

We are always looking for little ways to cut back on the utilities. Last month, our light bill was down by $40, mostly from switching to the energy efficient flourescent light bulbs that screw into a regular incandesent socket (the kind that are corkscrew shaped). Little stuff like turning off the computer monitor and printer when not in use helps out too. With the land we are clearing, we expect to have a lot of firewood stacked up by next winter, which will basically be free heat.

Sure, you get whacked in the groin by the table saw now and again, but it beats getting kicked in the groin by the gas company in Massachusetts every winter when the bill is sometimes upwards of a grand a month!

There's a new kid in town!

2007-03-10T17:13:00.000-05:00

Literally.

Last night Bumper the lady goat went into labor. After a long night of contractions, maaaaa-ing and pushing, she managed to push out a healthy little buckling, who is marked pretty much like his father, Chris-Billy.

It was pretty cool, we were nervous about it because goat breeding last year was a complete failure, with Bumper going into labor prematurely and losing both kids, then Chocolate (the other doe) suddenly dying from bloat the next day.

She stood up and pushed, she laid down to push, she walked around. Eventually her water broke, then a little hoof stuck out (pointing the right way, so we knew it was in the right position and we wouldn't have to get involved), followed by a second one a few minutes later, then a nose! She laid down to rest, then pushed some more and out came a little brown head and shoulders. At that point the big pushing was over, and she laid down with the baby half hanging out of her and began to lick him. It was 3AM, at least I think it was because the roosters started crowing not long after, and they usually kick in around 3.

We got to bed around 5AM.

I've got some pretty cool pictures of the event, but haven't cropped them or uploaded them yet. For now, here's a pic of the happy goat family, click on it to see a larger sized one:

UPS is at it again!

2007-03-02T14:37:00.000-05:00

More UPS stupidity.

We haven't quite settled the four damage claims from last month, and now we need to add two more to the list.

Today's reports include a German Dragoon smashed on the way to Florida and a Long Land smashed through the wrist and left outside in the pouring rain so that the packaging soaked through.

As much as I hate the idea of using them because of problems we've had in the past, I'm going to look into using FedEx to ship instead of UPS. Six damage claims in two months is just unacceptable.

Why can't people read the FAQ page?

2007-02-25T16:47:00.000-05:00

It baffles me every time I have to answer the same question over and over again.

I spend a disproportionate amount of time answering email, and so much of it is the same old stuff: How do you ship? Can these be fired with shot? Is the touch-hole drilled?

All of these questions are answered on the website. Most of them are answered on the FAQ page. It is standard Internet stuff. FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions.

On the "contact" page, where you have to go in order to click on the link to send us an email there is a note, in big letters, at the top of the page that says:

"Many of your questions are answered on our FAQ page.
Please click here to read our FAQ page!!!"

The second past of those instructions are in FLASHING YELLOW LETTERS. There is no way that you can miss them. Amazing.

People that can't follow simple written directions like "Please read the FAQ page" probably lack the discipline to read and understand other things, like owner's manuals and gun safety rules. In addition to that concern, much of my time is wasted answering the same questions over and over again when the answers are right there on the FAQ page.

Why haven't I updated the website in a while? Because half of my day is spent answering questions like "how do you ship?"

Hot Cross Buns

2007-02-25T12:07:00.000-05:00

This morning I had a pair of 'hot cross buns" for breakfast.

I don't really like them because I don't really like sticky, gooey, sweet stuff. That sort of thing sticks in my teeth and gets on my beard.

Nonetheless, I get excited every spring when I see them for sale for the first time in the store, and can't pass them up. This year, I first saw them at Market Basket, a chain grocery store in the next town. I couldn't help myself, I grabbed a box of them and I wasn't the only one to do so because the checkout girl said that she had seen a lot of people buying them that day, but was not familiar with them and had never seen them before.

It's a holiday thing. One of those little things that brings back memories and really makes me miss my family. I remember my Mom getting excited about seeing them in the stores for the first time in the spring. She used to sing the little song about them:

Hot cross buns,
Hot cross buns,
one a penny,
two a penny,
hot cross buns.

If you have no daughters,
give them to your sons,
one a penny,
two a penny,
Hot Cross Buns

It's an old street-hawker's song from centuries ago. These sticky little breakfast rolls have a very old history. They can trace their lineage back to the 1300's in a different form, and the current form that incorporates a cross on top made out of frosting goes back at least to the early 18th century in England.

For the past year, I have done a really good job of sticking to my 18th century diet. I've lost roughly 35 pounds. This is one of those times where I make an exception and buy something store-made. Not that I'm looking for a loophole, but buying a specialty pastry that is documented historically is certainly keeping within the guidelines of my dietary experiment.

Experimental diet aside, I'll eat them because they remind me of my Mom. The way we ate them in my family is to cut them in half, butter them and heat them in a frying pan until the frosting "cross" just starts to melt on the edges. As I put them onto my plate to carry them to the table, I can hear her voice singing "Hot cross buns, hot cross buns, one-a-penny, two-a-penny..."

I'm the only one in my household that eats them, which is sad to me because it is a tradition. I'll do it every year, carbohydrates, sugar and white flour be damned! Without our family traditions and cultural eccentricities like only eating certain foods at certain times, life would be pretty boring, wouldn't it?

Makin' bacon

2007-02-23T23:06:00.000-05:00

We've been pretty busy this week. Last week a snowstorm dumped a couple of feet of white stuff on top of us. We were snowed in for a few days as three separate plow guys failed to show up. Ultimately I shoveled out enough of the driveway to get my truck out, went to Home Depot and came home with a 9hp snowblower.

Over the course of the weekend, we had a pig mishap. Two of them who were on the runty side and on the lower end of the pecking order managed to get a little squished one night as they wiggled their way to the bottom of the pig pile. They survived, but had prolapsed rectums.

A prolapse can be pushed back in and hopefully would heal, but nothing is ever that simple with pigs. Their penmates, who never miss a chance to eat anything that move slow enough to get eaten, apparently did some nibbling on the exposed organs and the way I discovered the problem was by noticing one morning that everyone was sorta blood-streaked.

At first I considered killing them myself, but as I thought it through I realized that after killing them in the pen I wouldn't be able to lift them over the fence by myself to get them to where they would be butchered. It had to wait a couple of days until the Millers came home from Maine.

First, Jeff rigged up a pole that is attached to the 2nd floor of my shed. It is lagged to the pole frame and can hold a considerable weight. From the end of the pole, we rigged up a small block and tackle and a gambrel hook. Under it is a pair of pallets to stand on. Pretty good set-up!

The next day, Wednesday, we put all other tasks aside and set about butchering. We went into the pen and separated the first injured pig from the herd. Jeff tried to keep the others grouped together in the corner while I herded the victim over towards the pig shed so I could get a clear shot with nothing living behind it. A shot from my Walther PP roughly between the eyes, sort of in the middle of an imaginary X drawn between the eyes and ears dropped it, it's brains scrambled.

The critter flopped onto it's back, body convulsing. I switched the safety on, stuck the gun in my pocket, and dove forward to grab the pig by it's front legs and steady it on it's back. Jeff jumped in with a razor-sharp skinning knife and stuck it just above the breastbone, angling the knife down under it, then pulling it forward, using the sternum as a fulcrum to slash all of the arteries to the heart in one pass. Blood poured out. Even though the brain ceased to function as the shot was fired, the body keeps on running on it's own briefly. Cutting the arteries allows the blood to get pumped out by the heart that is still beating, all by itself.

We jumped back to keep from getting any blood on our clothes and the rest of the pigs surged forward to gobble up the blood that was pouring out. Pigs have no respect for each other when alive and even less when dead. Without digressing, I have seen many instances that prove that humans aren't a whole lot better.

While the herd was thus engaged, we cut the other injured one out from the herd and repeated the process.

Then we lifted them by the feet, one at a time, and tossed them over the fence. After dragging them over to the hangin' pole, cuts were made in the hind legs for the gambrel hook, the critter was hauled up to a comfortable working height, and we got to work skinning. With two people working with sharp knives, it went quick. There was a bucket full of skin, followed by a bucket of guts. The head was skinned out and cut off, put aside for later cooking down to make head cheese. We cut the carcass in half down the middle of the spine with a sawzall, then carried each half to a folding table set up right there. The feet are cut off (these are for Buster the Dog), then the bacon cut away, the ham and shoulder cut off, Boston butt cut away, ribs cut off with the sawzall, then the chops sliced to the spine before being separated with the sawzall.

With Jeff and I working and Louise helping out, we had both pigs killed, skinned, cut up and packed in bags by early afternoon. (then a truckload of guns showed up and the REAL work began)

We split up the meat. The Millers will make hams, shoulders and a bunch of sausage. I'll do hams, shoulders, ribs and chops. The meat sat out in the shed, which is colder than the fridge, for a few days until I had a chance to "put down" the meat that would be cured. Meat that will be smoked first sits in a box covered in salt and molasses (following directions found in The Foxfire Book). The curing phase takes 12-14 days, then it is smoked.

Tonight I trimmed away any dirty parts of the fat that covers the meat, washed it down, and packed it in a mortar mixing pan (clean, brand new and sterilized with bleach). In doing so, I retrieved one of the slugs from the Walther, a bit flattened by it's being slammed through a thick pig skull. Now, except for the smoking process, the meat is all cut up, bagged and frozen and the meat to be cured is all nestled down in it's box of salt and molasses.

All that is left to do is cook the foreshanks that I cut off of the shoulders before putting them down in the salt. It is quarter of midnight, I figure that they'll be ready to eat by one. This will be the first of my pigs that I get to taste!

Rough snow day

2007-02-15T18:58:00.000-05:00

As cool as it looks and as fun as it can be, snow can be a big pain sometimes. It all comes own to equipment, pretty much like anything else humans get involved in. We just seem to need gadgets to get by in this world. The ducks don't seems to be having too great a time of it either, but at least they have down jackets on when waddling through waist-high snowdrifts.

Problem #1 with snow today: The plow guy never showed up. Yeah, I've got a plow and a Jeep, but it needs an engine. I'm shopping for a rebuilt one, but it just didn't happen in time for this winter. Oh well, we'll have someone come in tomorrow and hack their way through the 4' high berm that blocks the driveway entrances. (I have to do it, I need to go out for feed tomorrow)

Problem #2 with snow today: I went out to take care of the critters with my snowshoes on. Half way to the pen, the strap on my left foot broke. Oh well, I guess I've got some leatherwork to do.

Problem #3 with snow today: my pile of downed trees that is at the end of the yard is now under a couple of feet of snow, and probably will be until April. To get wood, my plan B was to go and cut down some more standing deadwood with my chain saw, slice it up into stove lengths, and haul it back to the house in our handy-dandy sledge.

The sledge is built out of a musket crate and sits atop a pair of skis that I salvaged from the dump. It will haul a week's worth of firewood in one trip. Here is a picture of it the first time I used it. In the picture, it is loaded with a bale of hay and a bag of dried corn for the critters in the main pen and a bushel of fresh corn for the pigs. A couple of days later, I managed to break off the tip of one of the wooden skis when it bumped into a piece of wood that was frozen to the ground. Time for it's first revision...Jeff swapped another pair of wooden skis that I had for an aluminum and fiberglass pair that he had, and mounted them to the sledge.

Today was it's debut with the new aluminum skis. Snow depth ranged from 2-3 feet. The sledge sunk right in, and the cleats that the skis are attached to acted like anchors, making moving the thing a Herculean task. I was pretty mad at it by then, so I moved it anyway (only half full of wood, plus the chain saw). I dragged it, wood and all, right through the door into the shop where it is sitting to let the snow melt off of it. Revision #2 will involve adding 3 more skis to the underside of it to give it more flotation. My plan is to mount them along the arc of the cleats that the two main skis are attached to, so that the new ones will only contact the snow when it sinks into the deep soft stuff. I'm hoping that doing it this way will keep resistance down when it is sliding over lesser amounts of snow or ice.

I'm not going to let a musket box outsmart me!!!

Wish me luck!

A Valentine's Day bluster

2007-02-14T14:41:00.000-05:00

It's February 14th: Valentine's Day.

For gun-history people, the name conjures up the infamous "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" where a roaring 20's mob hit went down in history. A group of mobsters, dressed as police officers, lined up a group of rivals against the wall as if they were to be searched. Instead of searching them, they gunned them down with a pair of Thompson submachine guns and a shotgun. Must have been a real mess. See the current issue of "Small Arms Review" for a detailed history of the event and info on the guns that were used.

The Tommyguns used were the 1928a1 model, which could be loaded with a 50 or 100 round drum magazine. Click here to see a photo of a 1928a1 Thompson (on top) and the military version called the M1 (this particular M1 is the civilian version with 16" barrel instead of the original 10.5" barrel).

A historically significant aspect of this particular crime is that it was the first major case that what we would call "modern forensics" were used to analyze the evidence (shell casings from the scene and the slug removed from the bodies).

Interesting stuff, especially if you are snowbound due to a blizzard.

Which brings us to the real topic of this post.

As we checked the weather reports yesterday, we made sure to keep Caleigh informed. She was pretty excited to have a real snowstorm, the first one this winter. When we told her that we might get as much as 3 feet of snow today, she really lit up because we "are going to have a real bluster!". OK, technically it is a blizzard, but bluster sounds cute and brings up images of "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day", so "bluster" it is.

I went out to feed the critters. All of the chickens that are too stubborn to go into the chicken house are lined up in the back of the goat shed, along with the goats, guineas and steer. The ducks are sledding around on their fat bellies to get from place to place, and when they aren't moving,t hey curl up to sleep in the snow, only to wake up under a few inches, shake it off, then start all over again.

Caleigh and Buster the Dog went out to play for a while, but came in covered in snow. I snapped a picture of her at the door, coming in from her first real "bluster". Click here to see her, rosy cheeks and all!

Cleaning my office

2007-02-11T18:14:00.000-05:00

We are waiting for a big shipment of guns to arrive in a few days, so in the meantime efforts around here get focused on straightening up and getting ready for the next week. I am a very disorganized person when it comes to my desk and my "things to do" file. If it weren't Louise and Wendy, I'd be buried in paper and completely unable to function.

Last Friday, Louise gave me a lecture about all of the wreckage on my desk and told me that she was going to whip me into shape. That's kind of funny to me, because I know what her desk looks like at her office and it isn't any better. "Physician, heal thyself!" I thought. Nonetheless, I decided to make an effort to rake things up in here and surprise her when she comes in on Tuesday.

The first step was to clear away the stack of books on the "hangout" chair next to my desk. The hangout chair is where folks like Paulie sit when they come here to hang out. Since it is the closest flat spot to my overflowing desk, it is where books from the shelves end up when I need to look something up to answer a customer's email. Of course, when Paulie shows up, he just scoops up everything on "his" chair and plops it onto something else, regardless of the number, age or frailty of the objects on "his" chair. His behavior (moving stuff to random places) mixed with mine (being lazy about putting referance materials away) leads to total chaos of paper items and makes it hard to find certain books when I need them.

Weekends are slow here, most of our customers seem to call from work during the week so their wives don't catch them. Therefore, the phone hardly rings at all on Sundays and I can work uninterrupted on a task like this. The only time I had to stop so far was to go feed the critters.

I'm making some big headway at the moment. My current task is to clear a set of shelves on which my collection of 17th, 18th and 19th century clay pipes was diplayed on. (I've got well over 100 clay pipes, the oldest being circa 1580) It's not that I'm tired of looking at my pipes, it's that I need the shelves that they are displayed on to house books.

As we unpack more "stuff" that had been stored in the garage, I'm finding more and more militaria stuff, books etc.. I've also been accumulating more as time goes by. From my chair I can see no less than 28 historic hats and helmets ranging from WW1 to the Gulf War from 11 countries. Most of them are displayed on styrofoam heads. The oldest are a French Adrian helmet from WW1 and a Camo-painted Doughboy helmet said to have been worn in the Ardenne forest, the newest is an Iraqi National Guard hat. There are flags ranging from a bloodstained "meatball" flag with a prayer wishing for the success of the Japanese soldier who owned it, to the 48-star flag that graced my uncle's casket, to a Kuwaiti flag from Desert Storm. There are representative shels and ammunition ranging from an 1884 dated .45-70 cartridge to a 25mm shell casing from the bushmaster canon of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Iraq.

It's pretty cool to think that all that is left to do to get the museum built is to build the structure as we've already got the artifacts to fill it. I guess cleaning your office can be fun if every pile of "stuff" to sort contains another treasure.

All I know is that Louise will be pretty surprised when she comes in on Tuesday and can actually find my desk! OK, back to work...

Chocolate cookies!

2007-01-27T23:44:00.000-05:00

Ok, I'll admit it, I'm a chocoholic.

In everyday 21st century life, this is not a problem. You can get chocolate in pretty much any form you can imagine, whenever you want. It is problematic, however, when you are doing your best to approximate a mid 18th century diet.

In a few weeks it will have been a year since I started my experimental diet of "period food" only. (only applies at home, eating out while traveling doesn't count) For the first year, I ignored the seasons and allowed myself the raw materials year-round. Historically, there wouldn't be all things available at all times. Now it is January, there wouldn't be any fresh vegetables available, nor eggs. I'd be living on dried stuff, root veggies and stuff that keeps well, like cabbage, fresh or salted meat, dried grains etc.

For the first year, I cheated and allowed myself such luxuries year-round as frozen berries and fresh veggies from the supermarket. The long and short of it is that I've left out white flour, white sugar all additives and preservatives. This means no chocolate treats with their trans-fats, corn syrup and chemical preservatives. I've gone nearly a year without a Ring-Ding.

I've lost around 35 pounds. My clothes don't fit right anymore. I need a belt to hold my pants up, and even then gotta keep hitchin' them up.

In the old days, chocolate was an expensive luxury. Not for everyday eating. Most of the time it was reserved to either flavor things like cakes or for drinking in the form of hot chocolate. The French and Indian raiding party that came to attack Township #4 in 1747 was issued chocolate: if I recall, the leader of the expedition got a pound.

If he could have chocolate, then I should be able to as well! Some French packs were captured after an ambush in the swamp off of Lower Landing Road here in town in 1746, near the site of where Captain Stevens built his blockhouse. They were sold at public auction. I'll stretch my imagination and pretend that I, as a lawful citizen of Township #4, bought a pack at auction and it happened to contain a precious pound of chocolate!

Fanciful or not, it is the justification that I used to go and buy a pound of unsweetened baking chocolate in the store. Then the experiments began... I tried to just nibble on a chunk. That's when I learned just how nasty unsweetened chocolate is; it is no Hershey Bar. So I melted some and tried to sweeten it with maple sugar: no dice. Then I tried to add muscovado sugar in some quantity. Eventually it became palatable, but it never "set up" right, so I spread it on a cookie sheet and put it in the freezer. Eventually it firmed up enough to eat. There had to be a better way!

I started looking through reprints of period cookbooks, someone had to give me a hint of how to get my chocolate fix... Then I came up with an idea: COOKIES! They weren't called cookies then, they were cakes. The vernacular of junk food gets a little fuzzy. All of the recipes called for massive quantities of ingredients meant to maximize the heat from firing the oven and entertaining large crowds. I needed them just for me.

What I ended up doing is going to an antique cookbook (not colonial era, 1920's) and using their ratios, but substituting my all-natural ingredients. For instance, in stead of a cup of white sugar (well, it is presumed white, they didn't specify) I used muscovado. I was able to use the egg it called for because one of the girls actually left one in a nest box for us last week. Ten minutes in the oven, and I miraculously produced two dozen all natural chocolate cookies made with ingredients that fit within my 1750's diet! I say miraculously because I was on the phone with a customer at the time...at 11:30PM on a saturady night.

What a rare treat. If I can muster up the self control, I'll allow myself one a day to make them last longer. As I sit down here at my desk and type this, it is hard to fight the urge to go attack them, cookie-monster style. I can't though, I have to make my precious chocolate last until the next hapless Frenchman flees the scene without his pack...

In all seriousness, a big part of the success of this diet has been earning my food. For instance, I get to eat apples today because we picked, peeled, cored, sliced and dried a couple of bushels of them in the fall for the winter supply. It took a week with them hanging on strings from hooks in the ceiling to get them dry enough to store long-term. Since I only have a finite amount, and so much effort went into them, I am far less likely to just gobble them up. Instead I savor each dried, leathery apple ring. What I think I will do to "earn" the next package of chocolate is to try and shoot a coyote. Then I will have a hide to theoretically trade off down at Phineas Stevens' truck house for a block of the precious stuff from South America. No coyote = no chocolate. Fair enough.

Once my cookies are gone, it's back to the old daily diet of meat, dried stuff and cornmeal hoecakes. Not that I'm complaining, I am really enjoying that stuff, it's just that sometimes you just gotta have something chocolate.