Fun Show AAR:
Nappannee is always a great show, and since we were joined there by Mr B and friends, and the Oglet and Ogwife, the breakfast bar shuddered in fear.
If I could buy 300 lbs of that bacon, I would. And then I would eat bacon until I popped.
Anyway, the Nap show is the wrong place to look for AR parts, it’s a place to find nice old rifles and shotguns, and man, were there a bunch there. I especially like old .410 shotguns, and they had a powerful bunch of them. Not much I could afford, of course, but it’s nice to look; a gunshow like this is like a museum where you can pick up and touch the exhibits.
There was an Alexander Henry double rifle- back action, underlever, safety hammer- in 450 BPE. The guy was asking $3500, but I imagine it could be brought home for less than that. I saw not one but two Markham Chicago BB guns. A guy even had a good array of deer-legal longbows.
And over in the “entry” room was a guy with one Cardinal Forge carry handle, which was priced well below what it would cost to get a cheap cast carry handle (Like the one I broke putting my front handguard on)
When I got home i looked at RRA for the same carry handle (This one was new, apparently a takeoff from a new rifle) and RRA wants $162. I paid less than a third that, so I am most pleased. I also found a very nice wood takedown cleaning rod (Which I’ve discovered is too large for the double- damn!) and the Ogwife and Oglet brought a TON of books etc. from the Amish Shopping mall next door to the show. I also got a quart of locally raised honey, the real stuff not that hyper-filtered santized stuff.
We stopped on the way home to get Chick-Fil-A, and now I need a nap.
My next AR will be a carbine sans handle, set up for optics.
As for the present A2 FrankenAR, I just installed an M-16 bolt carrier to deal with a problem. The rifle as purchased had a Colt bolt group with substantial wear on the carrier where it contacts the safety notches on the hammer. Instead of going back with the AR15 carrier, I elected to go with the heavier M-16 bolt carrier. I hope to slow the action down just a tad with the spicier loads.
Good score on the handle. I love raw honey direct from the beekeeper. The best I ever had was made from wildflowers in the Tehachapis.
What does BPE stand for?
Black powder express
What a cool rifle. I’m gonna have to have a black powder cartridge rifle one of these days.
Funny you should mention Mr. Henry. When I was a teenager, I found an almost new .58 Zouave replica for cheap, and brought it home to shoot in the side pasture.
For reference, it was one of the early Korean made Navy Arms jobs, and 47 years later will still put 505 grain Minies into 2 inches all day at 50 yards, from kneeling.
Anyway, I was showing my Grandmother how to shoot the thing. She took it away from me, snapped several caps on an empty bore to “clear the flash hole”, licked her thumb then used it to dull the front sight, told me to never put my palm over the ramrod unless I wanted a permanent hole through it, then proceeded to take a chunk out of the bamboo hatrack I had set up 35 or 40 yards away.
It seems that in rural Ireland at the tag end of the 19th century, the Brits wanted potential Irish recruits to be good shots, but didn’t want them to have access to modern repeating weapons for some silly political reason.
So muzzleloading target rifles were used by my Great-Grandfather and my Grand-Uncles in the weekly target matches. Powder was strictly regulated, but percussion caps were handed out by the bushel.
As a little girl, Grandma would use her father’s rifle and caps indoors, to shoot the flames from candles with the puff of air forced out the muzzle.
The cousins over in Galway still tell the story of how my Great-Grandmother saw the devil one afternoon, while the men were in the parlor cleaning their rifles after a match.
The devil, replete with horns and a sulphury breath, came up the the kitchen window and looked at her from only a foot or two away. At her scream, the men came running.
They quickly reloaded their rifles, ran outside, and bagged a season’s supply of venison, as the poor red beasty abandoned the smell of Great-Grandma’s fresh baked pasties and ran for the hills.
I was amazingly impressed with Grandma’s prowess with a muzzleloader, until she ruined the moment for me by telling me her father’s rifle was a Henry. Even a dumb kid from Killingworth Connecticut knew a Henry was a brass framed lever action repeater.
Many years later I appologized to Grandma’s ghost when, while visiting the relatives, I handled the family heirloom and saw Mr. Henry’s name on the lockplate.
Great story, Ed!