Reviews of my book, Blood on My Hands

Writing a book can be a parlous activity:  alone on uncharted waters, trying to ignore self-doubt, discovering that what you thought you knew when you began to write has evaporated like the morning fog,  it's easy to begin thinking about giving it all up.  And when you actually have the book in hand, the silence is all but deafening.  You ask yourself, Was it really worth it?  That's when a positive review can lift your spirits.


Here is the link to one by Steve Bodio (who also wrote a blurb for the book) on his blog Querencia:  http://stephenbodio.blogspot.com, November 23, 2014.


And here is the link to the ones on Amazon, so far all five star reviews: 
http://www.amazon.com/Blood-My-Hands-Question-Relationship/dp/1457522322/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1416947408&sr=8-2&keywords=blood+on+my+hands#customerReviews

Remodeling a BRNO Mauser, Part 6

I've made some progress since my last post.  I've swapped out the military two stage trigger for a Timney, which necessitated some inletting for the larger trigger mechanism.  I have added a Talley barrel band for a sling swivel.  I happily paid $15 to get it professionally blued (it was sent as part of a batch from a local gunsmith and was back in a week), so it's a much better match with the bluing on the barrel than a cold blued band would be.

I've also substituted an "Extended Floorplate Release" for the military one.  It's available from Midway.  This is simple to do:  just drive out the pin visible below in the upper left corner.  There's a spring in there, so guard against its flying across the shop.  I had to file a bit to get the release to fit properly.  If you also cut a coil off the release spring, it makes it easier to release or replace the floorplate.

A new-in-the-box Lyman 18C front sight ramp came from E-bay ($10); it's a screw-on sight, but for a different size screw than the holes already tapped in the barrel, so I glued it to the barrel with Black Max (be advised, this sets up fast).  After doing some math, I ordered a front sight insert from Lyman.  A bit of filing with a triangular file on the insert (not on the ramp) resulted in a fine fit.  In a departure from tradition, I chose a fiber optic green bead.  Granted, the woods where I hunt whitetails are filled with hemlocks and white pine, but deer in late fall are a grayish brown, so the green should show up well.  More on that later.

Stockwork:  First came sanding and whiskering (wetting the wood with hot water to raise the grain, drying it, then sanding the whiskers off against the grain) through 320 grit.  I used sanding blocks whenever possible.  The difference between a first-class finishing job and a sloppy one lies in the sanding. Then came dyeing with a 2-2-1 mixture of dark walnut, red mahogany, and antique cherry dyes. (Let me emphasize the use of dyes, not stains which obscure the grain; they can be purchased at any decent woodworking supply house in powdered form, which you mix with water.  One source is Woodcraft.)  Try to be pleased when that first application of dye reveals blemishes you hadn't noticed.  After all, it's better to see them now rather than later.  Sand and whisker again, and then dye once more.  Repeat as necessary.

Given that the dye is water based, this may mean that you will have to do a final whiskering after dyeing the stock--I typically cut the whiskers off with the next finer grade of sandpaper, which in this case was 400 grit, going against the grain.  If you're going to checker the stock, make sure you've saved some of the dye to color the checkering.  I then applied two coats of  alkanet oil (if you want to make your own, see my post alkanet oil).  The alkanet oil should be applied sparingly, well rubbed in, and let dry for several days.  It's additive, so if you want it a bit darker, add another coat.  Make sure that no surplus remains on the surface of the stock.

Filling the Pores and Finishing:  When I can no longer smell the alkanet oil on the wood, the stock is ready for finishing.  I first applied two coats of marine spar varnish as a sealer (not that wood can ever be thoroughly sealed).  The first coat was thinned with mineral spirits.  Then I rubbed down lightly with 0000 steel wool.  Any hardware store will have some, but I prefer the extra fine oil-free steel wool sold by Lee Valley.  If the wood has really large pores, you may want to use a filler.  I've used Herter's French Red filler in the past, and it works.  Now, unless the pores are crater-like, I fill the pores by sanding in the finish. 

I have tried a variety of finishes and have settled on TruOil.  As with any finish, apply thin coats. I applied two coats of TruOil and then sanded in the third.  Typically, I use 320 or 400 grit. I wet a small portion of the stock with TruOil and then rubbed the sandpaper gently with the grain until the finish was almost dry.  Then, on to the next area.   A day later, I rubbed down the stock with 0000 steel wool.  I got rid of the steel wool particles by burning them off over my kitchen's gas stove (I have, fortunately, an understanding wife).  The pores were shallower but still visible, so I built up two more coats of TruOil and sanded in the following coat.  That filled the pores.  Another rubdown with 0000 steel wool and another coat of TruOil resulted in a finish you could see your face in.

I personally don't care for that high gloss, so I rubbed down the finish.  Tradition calls for using pumice or rottenstone, but I've found that auto rubbing compound works well and is cheap and readily available.  Just follow the directions, and as ever, use a light touch.  (If that finish isn't shiny enough for your taste, rub it down with--ready for this?--auto polishing compound.)  Wipe it down carefully and let it sit overnight.

At this point, either I apply two thin coats of furniture wax and buff it by hand, or a coat of alkanet oil, well rubbed in with the palm of your hand.  

The next post will deal with ways I've found to make checkering less error-prone.

Lee Valley

Post-Election Depression

From the Newsletter of Cornell Publications http://www.cornellpubs.com/old-guns/newsletters/ :



The Lure of the Falcon, by Gerald Summers

The Lure of the Falcon (Simon and Schuster, 1972) is a memoir in which Gerald Summers moves from his love for nature as a boy in pre-World War II England to an account of his experiences in battle in North Africa, his being wounded and captured by the Germans, flown to a POW camp in Sicily, his escape with four others and their recapture, and then his subsequent experiences in other Italian and then German POW camps until he is liberated by the Americans. 

Such a bald account does little to describe what can only be called an extraordinary book.  In the first place, it is imbued with a love for nature.  Although he never mentions the guidebooks he must have begun memorizing as a boy, he apparently could instantly identify any moth, bird, or butterfly that crossed his path.  And many of these he brought home with him.  He also acquires an wonderful bitch, Bracken, that goes with him everywhere and eventually finds the injured female kestrel he nurses back to health and names Cressida.

So far, this is the sort of book someone like Gerald Durrell could have written.  What makes The Lure of the Falcon unique is that Summers enlists in the British Army's Sherwood Foresters, the 4th Regiment of Foot, and calmly takes both Bracken and Cressida with him to basic training.  He then leaves Bracken with his mother, but he stuffs Cressida in his battle jacket and off they go to war.  Cressida becomes a kind of talisman, in fact, for the Foresters.

And there are indeed grounds for thinking that Cressida brings him luck. Wounded in a German assault first by a bullet and then by the explosion of a rifle grenade, he is captured and forced to remove his jacket so his multiple wounds can be attended to.  And there, "with her great lambent eyes scrutinizing the foe, sat Cressida."  Summers fully expects Nemesis to strike, but the German medical officer is staring at Cressida with an expression of rapture.  At last he breaks the complete silence, "Ah," says he, "ein Turmfalke," and all the Germans immediately relax.  It turns out that the German doctor had been a practicing falconer, and he even pulls out a photo of his goshawk to prove it.  And when Summers is shipped out, the MO brings him a tin with three mice in it so he can feed Cressida en route.

On another occasion, following his recapture in Sicily after an escape attempt, he is thrust at bayonet point into an interrogation with an officer of the Gestapo.  His interrogator stops barking questions at him when he spots a suspicious bulge in Summers' jacket.  He grabs Summers and thrusts his hand into his jacket, presumably thinking he will find a pocket radio.  The Gestapo officer yelps and quickly withdraws his hand, dripping with blood.  Summers then pulls Cressida out of his jacket:  she is mantling, her eyes glowing like red coals.  The Gestapo officer retreats.  Nobody says a word, but when Summers dares to look at the other Germans, all of them are trying to suppress their laughter.

Summers has to endure much as a POW, but he does endure.  After Cressida and he finally are liberated by the American troops, he can keep the promise he made to her when they embarked for North Africa:  he brings her safely home, back to a reunion with Bracken and his mother.  Such an ending could easily be sentimental, but Summers's understated prose instead makes us rejoice with him at their newfound freedom.

Wiliam Alexander's 52 Loaves

The subtitle of 52 Loaves (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2010) conveys in a suitably ironic way what Alexander's book is about:  One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and the Perfect Crust.  Obsessed by memories of a peasant loaf, Alexander decides to bake one loaf of bread a week for a year, fifty two loaves, obviously, so that he can replicate that perfect loaf of bread.

Critiquing his efforts are his wife and his two teenagers, and they provide a skeptical and sometimes comic commentary on his efforts.  He seeks out professional help, and he even builds a wood-fired oven in his backyard, or, rather, he builds two, for the first one collapses.  He takes a bread-baking course at The Ritz in Paris, one that emphasizes quantity over quality.  And then, by a process that I don't want to spoil by revealing, he finds himself a special guest of an ancient abbey in Normandy, l'Abbaye Saint-Wandrille de Fontenelle, engaged to teach two of the monks how to bake their daily bread.

This monastic experience not only gives him the organizing principle for 52 Loaves, a division by the canonical hours of Vigils, Lauds, Terce, etc., but makes him reconsider his entire concept of spirituality.  Even though he can't understand the Latin of the Gregorian chants, they begin to work on him in unexpected ways.  For a week, he too is in the world but not of it.

My only criticism of 52 Loaves is that Alexander is not forthcoming about what his experiences in the abbey really amount to.  He admits to a problem of re-entry when he returns to his home in the Hudson River valley, but he doesn't want to tell his family about it, and unfortunately we don't learn much about it either.  Like the subtitle's juxtaposition of the pursuit of truth and meaning with the perfect crust, we are forced to lower our expectations:  we are told in detail not what he took away with him from the abbey but how after his return he ruined their kitchen oven, and then ruined its replacement as well.  The reader must rest content with his recipes.


Postscript:  for other books on bread and bread making, see my earlier post, "Homemade Bread to Die For, Part 5 (2/28/2014).

Duly Noted: What and How Deer See

"Duly Noted" refers to material by others that I believe to be interesting.  In the current issue of Petersen's Hunting (Nov. 2014), Ben O'Brien discusses the result of a recent study of whitetail deer by Dr. Bradley Cohen and his colleagues at the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, Univ. of Georgia, and Dr. Cohen's responses to interview questions.

It turns out that deer not only see somewhat differently than humans, but don't see as well, either.  If you squint and keep on squinting, you're replicating to some degree how a deer sees:  everything is blurry and in the same focus.

Within this blurry focus, however, some colors are better perceived than others.  Blue, violet, and near ultraviolet light are seen more clearly by deer than other colors.  Near sunrise and sunset, blue and UV makes up much of the light available, and that's what deer see better than other colors.  So keep those jeans at home, boy.

And camo?  Apparently, depth in camo patterns isn't important, but the gray parts in camo reflect blue or UV light.  Just what a hunter wants, right?  A camo that, far from disguising human presence,  makes him or her more visible during the so-called "best" times to hunt, early and late!  Their study reinforces what has become quite well known: don't wash hunting clothes in detergents with brightening agents, which absorb light in the UV region of the color spectrum and re-emit light in the blue region.

Dr. Cohen's study appeared in the Wildlife Society Bulletin, May 2014; an abstract can be found at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wsb.438/abstract.

Remodeling a BRNO Mauser sporter, Part 5

Epoxy bedding is straightforward enough, but the devil lies in the details. There are a number of explanations about how to do this: three I especially like are "Simple Stock Bedding" by John Barsness in his Obsessions of a Rifle Loony (Deep Creek Press, 2010), a book every firearms enthusiast should own, Patrick Sweeney's "Glass Bedding" in  his excellent Gunsmithing Rifles (Krause Publications, 1999), and "The Experience of Glass Bedding a Rifle Stock" by Bryce Towsley in his  Gunsmithing Made Easy (Stoeger Publishing, 2006), which has detailed photographs.

The key point to remember is that if you don't apply release agent to every part that needs it, you can glue the stock to the barreled action. Some people like to use floor or furniture wax as a release agent.  I prefer some combination of three release agents: Brownell's Acra-Release Aerosol; modeling clay to fill screw holes and crevices where you don't want epoxy; and Pasco PVC 10 mil Pipe Wrap for masking off the barrel.

I use Brownell's Acraglas Gel rather than Acraglas, as it pretty much stays put where you apply it.

Some other suggestions:  Score or crosshatch the wood with a sharp knife or chisel so the epoxy adheres.

Don't forget to put release agent on the action screws, as well.  Forster stockmaker's handscrews are useful here.

Q-tips are good place holders for the receiver screws on a bolt action.  For Mausers, which have the front screw going into the recoil lug, you can put a Q-tip in the recoil lug, lower the receiver into the epoxy on the stock, and then pull the Q-tip out of the bottom metal.

To facilitate getting the barreled action out of the stock, you don't want epoxy in front of the recoil lug, so put release agent on the front of the lug.

I follow the practice recommended by John Barsness for bedding Mausers, which have a narrow recoil lug:  I bed the first inch of the barrel as well, so I keep the Pipe Wrap off the first inch of the barrel and spray receiver and that inch of barrel with release aerosol (twice).

If you need to fill gaps along the receiver or the barrel in the fore end, put masking tape along the top of the stock so you can peel it off after it cures.

Tighten the screws only moderately:  I tighten them and then back them off half a turn. 

Check the epoxy after five hours.  After five hours, the epoxy has set up enough to be semi-solid, but it's yielding enough to be pulled apart if you've made a mistake.  If some has gone where it shouldn't, you can still cut it easily with a knife or chisel and remove it.  Then screw it back together, back off the screws a half turn, and let it set.

To remove the barreled action from the stock, turn the rifle upside down and tap the heel of the butt on a surface that won't harm the stock.  You should then be able to remove the barreled action.  Repeat, more firmly, as necessary.  If it  still won't budge, back out the screws until they are just engaged and hit them with a mallet.  If that doesn't work, call Brownell's (641 623-5401).

You may discover some voids in the bedding.  Here, for example, is the BRNO after the first bedding:

 

Some gaps in the bedding are obvious.  Not to worry:  just mix up some more epoxy and fill in the gaps.  Wipe down the metal and reapply release agent, etc.

Here's how it looked after another application:





 

A tiny bit has to be added to smooth out the bedding for the barrel, but it's functionally complete.

 

The next in this series will cover finishing the stock.