Gun Thread: Pre-July Edition!

Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!

Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving Hell did it get to be the end-o of June-o? July is only a day away!

Q: Weasel, we realize you were screwing around yesterday and not writing the Gun Thread, so may we pleeeeze have lite content tonight?
A: Why yes, if you insist.

With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?

FUNdamentals
The messages regarding the benefits of focusing on fundamentals continue to roll in. How about you? What is your fundamentals story? Have you been focusing on fundamentals and seen positive results?

And here we have an actual Watch Professional with tips on your first time at a gun range.

WeaselKatana "before"

If you missed the WeaselKatana backstory so far, please click here to get with the program.

Progress continues! Let's check in with our pal and togishi Dave Hofhine and see what's up with the restoration!

koma-nugura stone - click to make more bigly

Here you can see the koma-nugura. This is the last of the "middle" grade stones. Following the komo-nagura I use a special nugui to remove any remaining super fine scratches and give a very uniform and smooth surface, something of a blank slate, to begin the finishing steps. Nugui is a hand ground polishing compound with various minerals and stone dust mixed with oils to achieve different effects. The next steps will bring up the hamon (temper line), hada (grain pattern), and other forging features.

For those wondering why I chose Dave to perform the work on my blade, the following fairly sums it up.

hadori stone - click to make more bigly

This picture shows the blade after kanahada nugui which brings out the hada (grain) pattern in the ji (body) and hadori stone work which whitens and shows the crystalline details of the hamon (temper line). Sorry this is taking so long to complete. I have to take a lot more breaks than when I was younger to prevent tendonitis and joint issues. In Japan, most polishers my age have long since stopped doing full time polishing. Once they get their official license to polish swords, they will bring on several apprentices and the apprentices will actually do most of the grunt work with the polisher acting more as a supervisor. The fact that I've been doing this full time by myself for 32 years straight, and part time for 5 years before that, means that I probably have more actual sword on stone time than just about anybody else on earth at this point.

Still not convinced?

Here is a page from Dave's website documenting a fun world record set by a blade he sharpened and polished.

Really? still not convinced?

This page has details of the Wake Island surrender sword he polished for the National Museum of the United States Navy in Washington D.C.

I am confident I found the right guy to do the work and I am sure you will agree. I'm looking forward to sharing more updates as the blade nears completion!

Ammo Link-O-Rama
I'm really very seriously not kidding around anymore. Buy Ammo
AmmoSeek - online ammo search tool
GunBot - online ammo search tool
SG Ammo
Palmetto State Armory
Georgia Arms
AmmoMan
Target Sports USA
Bud's Gun Shop
American Elite Ammo NEW!

Please note the new and improved protonmail account gunthread at protonmail dot com. An informal Gun Thread archive can be found HERE. Future expansion plans are in the works for the site Weasel Gun Thread. If you have a question you would like to ask Gun Thread Staff offline, just send us a note and we'll do our best to answer. If you care to share the story of your favorite firearm, send a picture with your nic and tell us what you sadly lost in the tragic canoe accident. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, just say so. Lurkers are always welcome!

That's it for this week - have you been to the range?

posted by Weasel at 07:00 PM

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