Show us your Guns!

[Trenchfriend]

Still can't complain about my Cometa 220 air rifle. Just fun.

 

[DeaconKC]

Still can't complain about my Cometa 220 air rifle. Just fun.

I would guess a good air rifle is just as much fun as a good .22!

 

[Trenchfriend]

I would guess a good air rifle is just as much fun as a good .22!

Windprotected, 10m, 15m target practice, >20m fun shooting (7.5 Joule).

 

[DeaconKC]

Well, this is on the cover of American Handgunner this month and my wife saw it. She said how pretty it was and that convinced me to order it. [I really didn't need a lot of convincing.] Anyway, it is a Pietta King Trio and comes with cylinders for .357 Magnum, 9x19 and .38 Super! Even the grips have a nice grain.

 

[Diamondback]

Something's coming... Something BIG!

Turns out the "short cut on long slide" has been done ten years before I can up with it... the custom 7" retro-ized LAR Grizzlies used to portray The Shadow's Silver Heat in the 1994 movie. Just mine is a bit more practical and doesn't have the extended dustcover... I think they did this trying to replicate how pulp covers almost invariably had the hero holding an oversized 1911, frequently drawn with exaggerated length to p the drama.

Next step, while waiting for Fusion in Florida to cut my slide I'm drawing up holster plans, assuming this thing's gonna need several between my gal and myself. (She's more '20s Flapper, I'm more '40s Noir maybe a dash of '50s Kitsch.) Also while waiting, I'm trying to polish all contact surfaces of frame and moving parts as smooth as I can get them.

Need to see what works best for her (and a pistol this long DOES NOT holster easily!) thinking a Dillinger-style open-front vertical shoulder and maybe a Jeff Cooper-style Yaqui. I can't hand-tool leather due to fine motor issues, so I'm thinking try to play up the "artistry" of the gun riding in it.

There's a certain irony that the first gun I ever started will be the last I finish...

 

[Diamondback]

Addendum, for comparison...

Custom retro-ized LAR Grizzly 7" Longslide "Silver Heat":

"Project Athena"* design study as 6" Longslide based on Army Ordnance blueprints:

*laughable part on the name... I have a friend who's of Greek heritage and when I mentioned my gal decreeing that I had to pivot from "plain-jane GI" to "something more artistic" her response was to tell me, "You should build the beast you hatched for your writer friend and call 'her' Athena - because like the Greek goddess she will be beautiful and wise beyond her years from the generations of 1911 pedigree, and also like the goddess when provoked to ire her wrath will be spoken of in awe and terror long afterward." Similarly, the Charger MWS was dubbed "Desmond" after the actor who portrayed Q, and the 10" bugout-bag AR15 pistol is "the Gremlin" because both are evil little green things that can really ruin your day.

Any thoughts on leather for this big girl, whether off the shelf or a DIY project? For shoulder a slide this long would seem to indicate an open-front Dillinger Rig so you just pivot it out. My gut is "go minimal on the leather to emphasize the hardware in it," if I were going '50s Kitsch my first thought would be place a silver-and-turquoise concho in the trigger area as a tactile "Place Finger Here" indicator. (Henry Dreyfuss school, "form follows function.")

 

[Diamondback]

Oh, and one last post from me with the Spirit of the Christmas Season... there'll be a bit of a tangent here but bear with me, it WILL loop in.

One of my buddies in a Lego collector group's two big things are designing Lego models of real trains and Bible study, and the group Secret Santa matched us this year. Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie has a chapel-car that's one of the last of the type*, so I arranged with them to send him some photos and drawings he could design a model from.
*Messenger of Peace and similar cars were basically rail-mobile churches, traveling from community to community back in the pre-radio days with backwoods towns, logging/mining camps etc. There was a small compartment and kitchen for the pastor and his wife, but most of the space was the chapel room itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_of_Peace_Chapel_Car

To loop back, his side of the exchange was this:

Comfortably holds Old Ugly and two Wilson 10-round mags. His comment: "This gives 'Protected By a Higher Power' a whole new meaning for you!"

 

[DeaconKC]

Merry Christmas to you all. And thanks for the info on the traveling chapels!