Transitioning back to normal life... More Shtuff.

Just want you to know everything is going fine at home. Mom is fine, and I'm doing OK. We're all healing, very slowly. My sister has had a very bad time of things, and made things worse for me and my mother with some of the things she's said in the midst of her grief, but all of that is another story for another day. Denise has taken up the slack from my sister and both my mother and I have depended on her far too much. She's become like another beloved daughter to my mother, and her love for me has been a source of endless comfort.

Some time this week I'll tell you haw the funeral went, and the events of Easter Sunday, but now it's time to begin to shake it off and start getting back to some sort of normal life. Classes begin at 8am Monday morning, and I can't wait! Bob is back in Pennsylvania and Denise and I are here getting ready to hit the sack, watching Penguins on PBS. Cute little fuckers. Now they have REAL problems.

So, in the interest of getting back to something like normal life, here's the skinny on all that brass I showed you last week, and some more cool shtuff for your perusal.



OK, so you wanna know the details? From left to right, starting at the top left:

One of those two little rounds is a .22, but the smaller one on the left is a smaller blank. It seems even smaller than the .22 round next to it, so I don't really know if it's a .22 or not. That big piece of brass is a souvenir from one of the ships I taught on. It's spent brass from a 20mm CIWS anti-missile system (I think it's from the Arleigh Burke). Next to that is a .30-30 hollow point I picked up hunting on Ft. Hood years ago, then a Russian made .30 round for my new M-1 Carbine. Next are two British .303 rounds for my Canadian made Enfield. Then you have two 5.45x39 rounds. The one with the white tip is an East German blank. The other is a Russian round.

That stripper clip in the middle of the group is loaded with that same Russian 5.45x39, for an AK-74 type rifle. When fully loaded it carries 15 rounds. The clip is designed for speed loading a magazine for an AK-74. Behind those is a 7.5x54 round for my French MAS-49/56 rifle. Then you've got two 7x57 hollow point rounds for my hunting rifle (a converted WW1 Mauser), a Russian 7.62x39 hollow point, a Chinese 7.62x54, an East German 7.62x39 blank, and a .223 blank. Behind them are spent brass from a 7mm Remington Magnum and a conventional 7mm and brass from three .50 shells, all found on one hunting trip or another on Ft. Hood. Then you've got a clip of .30-06 for my Garand and a single .30-06 round.

Now, below those, going right to left are four different kinds of Civil War loads: Two American cartridges with ball and powder in a paper wadding, one British Enfield load with a greased bullet, and a "Buck and Ball" round. Then you have two .54 Mini balls, and a .68 mini ball for a confederate musket. Then you have what happens to a .68 ball when it hits a steel plate. To the left of that is a .54 musket ball, and two others that hit the same steel plate. Finally, there's another "Buck and Ball' to the left of them, and a clip full of 7.62x54 for a Russian Mosin-Nagant or a Tokarev rifle above that.

To my knowledge, that's everything. You think I misidentified anything, feel free to chime in.

Now, for more shtuff... Back in about 1995 I went hunting for real for the first time and got a deer (I'll post about that some time soon). When I took that deer, after dreamin' about it for years, I was determined to not only save and eat the meat, but also to save the hide and tan it.

First I rolled it up and froze it till I had a nice sunny day to work on it in the back yard. Then I soaked it in water and let it thaw, soaking in the water and becoming elastic. I made a large frame from some branches we'd recently pruned from the tree in the back yard and stretched the hide on the frame with parachute chord, leaning the whole thing up against the fence.

At some point along the way I realized I was gonna need a scraper to scrape the membrane off the hide and dry it out. I set to work in the garage to build one off the cuff. I took a thicker piece of tree limb and a piece of barrel hoop (I'd saved some hoops from one of mom's old garden barrels to make arrow heads - perfect material for that).



The result is here as you see, a scraper with a short handle and a sharp, curved blade.



I cut a notch in the top of the handle, bent the blade so it would fit in the notch and then sank a few nails in there to secure the blade to the handle. It worked perfectly. I used it to scrape all the crap off that hide and dried it out in the back yard. I still have the hide, rolled up somewhere, and the scraper too. I'll use it again, one of these days.



I took up the hobby of knife making several years ago, and this is one I'm very fond of. I got the blade out of a catalog, and some of the handle materials at a gun show. Friggin' thing was razor sharp right out of the box. I cut the shit out of my finger when I was pulling the blade out of the cardboard and it slipped.

The handle is a mix of rams horn and wood, cut into an interesting shape. It's glued to the tang and then pinned with three sets of brass pins. It all came together very nice. I use it now as a utility knife out on the work bench. One of these days, when I get back into hunting, I'll use this as my skinner. I still need to make a sheath, but that's the easy part.



I found this little toy at a gun show in Austin several years ago. Looks innocent, doesn't it?



It's harmless until you unscrew the blade, turn it around and then re screw it into the handle. And yes, that blade is Damascus steel, with a beautiful design cut into the spine of the blade.



Here's another little toy. I picked this up at a store in France in about 1990. I was in Toulon on my second cruise with the Navy, teaching on an underway replenishment ship called the USS Concord. I seem to remember someone saying not to buy anything like this and try to get it back into the country, but this was way before 9/11, and things were more civilized back then. Anyway, I always figured advise like that was for the sailors, not civilians like me.



Here's the thing opened, with my pen there for some sort of size comparison. Opened like this it almost measures 11 inches. It's really a piece of crap, but I love it. Can't imagine trying to fight anyone with a thing so wobbly. Too many working parts. It's fun to open, with that flash of steel, and it'll make a deep hole in somthin', so there ya go. Nice letter opener, eh?

So, I'm off. You guys take care and have a great week. Cheers.