You have to go, you don’t have to come back.

To the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines that don’t get to have a nice picnic and a beer today.

I remember, and thanks.

Well now what?

The trapper pistol will be graded tomorrow.  

Pics were sent out and as soon as I get a good place to host them I’ll link em here.

Expect to see some start to finish pictures this summer.  

My next project is to finish a 1911 safety installation for a friend of mine, and then work on my 1911.  

I have a final in bench metal tomorrow and then I’m 1/4 of the way to being a real life smith.

Now, what do I do with myself in the mean time?

It survived.

Gun worked fine.  Shot pretty well.  Pics will have to wait however, I forgot my camera.

Headed East for a day or so, I’ll be back Monday.

Done.

Finished my last project for this semester today.  I shoot it tomorrow. I’ll post pictures if it survives.  

Looking forward to having next weekend off.  However, the smithing doesn’t stop, I have to fit a ambi-safety for a friend of mine, and clean up the grips so they will fit.  

Then I start summer classes.

Being Heeled.

I’ve carried a pistol off and on for quite some time.  I went through a forest of options for both pistols and holsters.  I’ve recently settled on a pretty good solution.  I managed to score one of the new production Smith and Wesson 642s, without the lock.  (The lock is here to stay folks, even though it is indeed stupid.)  Now were I have to go during the day and the environment that I’m in I have to keep deep concealment.  So I went with a ankle rig.  It works rather well.  Now it’s not quick, but situational awareness has to be my friend.

Now when I get home I either immediatly switch to a Glock 19 in Raven Ghost holster.  (Sadly discontinued.  And by discontinuing Raven has assured I will never by another holster from them.) My other option is a Smith 36-1 in a Galco slide.

I do a bit of managerial money handling so being heeled at home has become rather necessary.  My choices are by all accounts pedestrian.  However should I need to use any of them I’m not out much for a replacement.

Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do this.

Well it’s a good thing I’m a gunsmith (in training) rather than a doctor.  My finger isn’t broken…..it was just severely dislocated.  Which I found out when I attempted to set it the second time.  Not to cast aspersions on my classmate’s, he’s a former paramedic, abilities and it sure as hell felt like he set it when he taped the two popsicle sticks to it.  When I attempted to set it, after getting a finger splint at the local drugstore, it popped back into place.

Only twice have I ever thought I was gonna pass out.  The first time is when they removed the pin from the top of my foot after surgery.  The second was last night when I thought the end of my finger had popped off and rolled under the stove.  

It was swollen and tender as hell this morning.  The finger-splint seems to be helping, but I have managed to bump it into just about everything. 

Plus side, it’s not broken.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s too late to join the circus.

We’re in the last week of the semester.  So far I’ve had quite a bit of fun and learned quit a bit by totally destroying a bunch of stuff and making about every mistake possible.   I will have a working trapper pistol when this is all over with, but I ran into a slight snag.  The general diagnosis is that I broke my left hand’s ring finger when I dropped the 4-jaw chuck on the lathe rails, which my finger happened to be resting on.  That has made filing sort of a pain and pretty well wasted my whole day.  Oh well, the semester is over on the 10th.  I can manage that long.  

But I’d have made a great human cannonball.

May Day.

Bin Laden Killed by US Forces.

That’s all.

I personally know a squad worth of guys that have been killed or injured severely in this ongoing war.  

I hope it stops someday.