doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Project Guns thrill of victory- agony of defeat

Project guns are neither good nor bad things, unless you are in it to earn money.

It depends entirely on what each of us enjoys. Some like the challenge, enjoy the idiosyncrasies of shooting older guns and some don’t. I know I enjoy the restoration process and am quite happy to find and shoot “boutique” ammo from my vintage guns. Others don’t. No big deal.

This thread and another about project guns sent me down one of those rabbit hole. It was a former member named Rabbit I came across and one of his last post was on this thread this photo is in. We have been blessed by a lot of top notch posters over the years. Too many are now gone, a few got pissed off and left and a few newer ones have come along. I miss Bill and was gland to get to know him as much as I did. The Rabbit triggered a purchase of two NID Ithaca 12's I bought from him for the princely total of $700.00 for the pair. Nice shooters, at what I thought was a bargain price. NIDs do not command a lot of attention.

I always wondered what happened to Jack.

Any clue?

Best,
Ted

I started playing with project guns when I was in HS. As I got busy with work and life I had no time for it but thought someday I may have time again to pursue this hobby. Since I retired I have bought a number of field grade guns with broken stocks and put them back in service. I have about 15 projects in the works at the moment. Because I can tig weld it gives me a big advantage in picking up guns that others may not be interested in. I've repaired broken tangs, welded up and retaped screw holes and picked up dings and scratches so I can get a good flat polish. A recent buy was a Winchester 94 rifle in 32 win spl made in 1912. It looked like it was drug behind a wagon for a bit. Some of the octagon edges where rounded, a dovetail buggered and some side mount screw holes and gouges that I welded up. Since the barrel interior is not that bad, it will be a nice upgraded rifle when I'm done. I've upgraded 2 Winchester 1890's with figured, checkered wood and relined barrels. My buddy just had to have one. I picked up a between the wars August Schuler Hercules OxU without a stock for $200. I'm impressed with its quality. It's got double triggers and ejectors, gold plated parts, vent rib and some fine engraving. It will need a rust reblue and a dark piece of Bastone walnut to make it usable again. These projects would not be worth doing if I had to pay someone but it is mostly labor and I get great satisfaction from the finished product. I call it a labor of love. My wife calls it a useless waist of time. Mabey if I kick the bucket and she sees the money they bring she'll change her tune!

Friends wife said his working on muscle cars was a waste of time when he retired. To that he said, “well it keeps me out of the house and bedroom”. She replied do you need anything at NAPA while I’m in town? They had an easy agreement after that. Her house, his shop.

As a followup to my earlier post, I took my son shooting after school today. We experienced the "thrill of victory."
I am one very happy dad.

Got any pics? Sounds like fun. If your weather is anything like ours, it was a beautiful day for it.

Hi Brent
Actually, I took a so-so video with my cell phone, it showed my son attempting to fire it and not getting as much as a spark, the phone being
put down while I told my son to recock it and try again, then a nice sequence of the flint igniting the charge in the pan and the slight delay
before the main charge went off. I don't know how to post a video here, but if you pm me with your phone number, I will send it in a text.

We had some wonderful weather here, unseasonably pleasant, I imaging that is the weather you are getting now. Today it is great for August, but
not as nice as yesterday and the day before. The weekend is supposed to be hot and humid. That being said, I have a friend in Portland, it was like 108 there the other day.

Fred

Fred, when I first started shooting flintlocks, I was under the impression that the little delay in firing was normal. Everyone said so. Then I read an excellent article in Rifle Magazine by the noted flintlock gunsmith John Bivens titled "Care and Feeding of the Flintlock Rifle". He went into great detail about every llittle aspect such as touch hole size and location, pan powder, correctly priming the pan, choosing the best and most reliable flints, setting the flint in the jaws of the cock, frizzen hardness, etc. He said the difference in lock time between a flintlock and a percussion rifle should be mere milliseconds.

I applied what he said and I was amazed that the ignition of my flintlock was nearly as fast as my center fire rifles. What I learned from that single article shortened my learning curve immensely. And there is a learning curve. It's a real sense of accomplishment to hunt all day in the rain, and have perfect ignition when you finally get a shot at a deer. Now, if I notice a bit of a delay, I know I'm doing something wrong. Don't believe anyone who tells you that a half second delay is normal. It's a lot of fun to work it out and get better performance, and fast consistent ignition makes for much smaller groups too.

Hi Keith


Thanks for your post, I hate to ask anybody for anything until after I've tried to look for things by myself, but if you have a copy of that
article by Blivens, would you please get a copy to me or point to a place where I can find it.

My iphone uses a MOV format for videos, this means I can send videos to other iphones but have to play games to send it to others. Today
I was trying to figure things out and discovered that I could go through the video, that I took of my son shooting the flintlock, frame by frame with
a resolution of about 0.01 seconds, so at 29.86 seconds into the video, the hammer has fallen, at 29.92 seconds the flame from the pan is at it's max,
at 30.02 seconds flame can be seen exiting the barrel and recoil is observed. I thought "wow, I wonder if Blivens was able to quantify his results
and if not, if it would be interesting to redo his work and use the cell phone camera to record results" .

That being said, I feel like being a dad is one of those jobs that you could always be better at. But watching my son shoot and hit the target really
made me feel good, he said afterwards that he thought it was a little scary, but he sure didn't show any hesitation about shooting it again and again.

It really was a thrill of victory on more than one level.

Fred