quote:

Originally posted by JudgeG:
Form and function.... Why settle for just one, when you can have both? Personally, I'm willing to work a bit harder for what I consider some of the "finer" things in life.

Think about it.

As long as a woman has functioning parts, she can be an "effective" producer of children. You see it every day at the Walmart, but I kind of like those with a little class, beauty and brains.

A Bible could be a paperback, but I kind of like my leather bound one.

A house could be designed by Stalin, but I kind of like my Low Country style.

Shakespeare could have written just the chronological history of a Danish struggle for succession, but I kind of like Hamlet.

All of God's flowers could have been white or black, but I kind of like roses.

I was driving back from the Jacksonville, FL airport with a woman client one evening. We crossed over a bridge that gave a spectacular view of the sun setting over a tidal river and a salt marsh. Up in Atlanta, she had suffered a pretty bad day in court (won, but got battered badly in the fight). She started crying and I tried to comfort her, telling her that it would be all okay. She turned to me and said quite firmly, "I know it! Look at the sunset!"...

I did but still wondered what was going on... then she explained it all when she helped me figure it out by saying...

"God didn't have to let us enjoy beauty, but He did. He did!".

I'll take God up on that gift. Beauty gives us relief from the struggles of everyday life. And, during this Christmas season, I'll take that gift from the Prince of Peace.

I do have a Ruger Hawkeye Alaskan in .416 which to me is as plain-Jane as one can get. It works... but I do kind of like this, too:

quote:

I DON"T GET IT

quote:

Originally posted by Phatman:
That was with out doubt one of the finest responces I have ever read.

Thanks JudgeG

Cheers, John

quote:

DO YOU WANNA A RIFLE TO LOOK good OR A RIFLE TO PERFORM?

quote:

Think of it from the Gunmakers perspective; do you think I would want to turn out rifles all day, every day, that look like
the same old piece of shit?

quote:

The stock to me it can be a plane hardwood birch as long as it is strong.

It can be as rough as it comes from the pantograph. (in my own case I do all my own stocks with a small angle grinder and a 4" carving wheel)

I have no checkering as I use my own (not a pretty) ABSOLUTELY NON SLIP FINISH regardless of what conditions, sweat, wet, dry or an oil it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.

quote:

Wayne

As a toolmaker by trade I can make anything ( not just a rifle) that I need, with the exact finish I need.

If I wanna spend the hours I can make a complete bolt, single, double or a triple from A to Z from a bar of steel from a steel supplier.

Will I ever do it? NO. as I simply won't waist my time, effort or money on "just another tool".

The reason I like my rifle finish rough is that I can hunt and never need to care where the rifle is and what is going to happen to it.

Sand, water, mud, rocks wan't do any harm to it.

Just like the ex-military M 98, P-17 etc. Dents, scratches, holes who cares. The important (shooting function) is there and that's all I care.

Would I spend a $1 to make my rifle look better? NO.

When I get home I clean, scrub, silicon dry-spray every bit of metal there is, because this is the WORKS THAT MATTER.

In my past I too used to have the need to look after the wood and it was driving me nuts. Not for the last 25 Years or so.

Pyzda

quote:

Originally posted by Pyzda:
Wayne

As a toolmaker by trade I can make anything ( not just a rifle) that I need, with the exact finish I need.

If I wanna spend the hours I can make a complete bolt, single, double or a triple from A to Z from a bar of steel from a steel supplier.

Will I ever do it? NO. as I simply won't waist my time, effort or money on "just another tool".

The reason I like my rifle finish rough is that I can hunt and never need to care where the rifle is and what is going to happen to it.

Sand, water, mud, rocks wan't do any harm to it.

Just like the ex-military M 98, P-17 etc. Dents, scratches, holes who cares. The important (shooting function) is there and that's all I care.

Would I spend a $1 to make my rifle look better? NO.

When I get home I clean, scrub, silicon dry-spray every bit of metal there is, because this is the WORKS THAT MATTER.

In my past I too used to have the need to look after the wood and it was driving me nuts. Not for the last 25 Years or so.

Pyzda

quote:

Originally posted by heavenknows:
@ Pyzda

Your nick says it all.

quote:

Originally posted by RIP:

quote:

Originally posted by heavenknows:
@ Pyzda

Your nick says it all.

Someone please translate the word "pyzda" ... in what language?

Lithuanian?

Etymology

From Proto-Indo-European *pisd-eh₂-. Compare to common Slavic pizda/пизда.

Noun

pyzda f (plural pyzdos)
1.(vulgar, slang, anatomy) cunt, pussy (the female genitalia, especially external genitalia)

So we have here a Pyzda that likes only big, rough tools for use in the bush?

quote:

Originally posted by JudgeG:
My dear wife pointed out something to me that I left out in my above post concerning beauty, form and function.

There are beautiful things that I built for my children that pretty much failed, both as to form and function. For instance, I (with the help of a three and four year-old) once built a tree house that was almost unsafe and an certainly an eyesore... but when it came time to tear it down because my girls out grew it, they cried because they loved it, probably more because we built it together than any value placed on the questionable function or the unjourneyman-like form. It was beautiful to them because Daddy tried.

I've seen women who have borne maybe a half-dozen children, who have gotten a bit broad in the beam and are too busy carting kids to ball games or church events or cooking and cleaning to find the time to go to the gym. They may not have the bucks to shop anywhere but discount stores, but still are absolutely beautiful to their children and hopefully to the husband for whom she had labored to make a family that works...

Today's concept of beauty, all too often, is only skin deep. In this modern world, we seem to forget that the love that goes into making something to treasure... a worthwhile marriage or a somewhat shakey tree house or the love a craftsman has for his trade in making a fine custom rifle, can be as beautiful as the exterior.

I'm just lucky enough to have a few fine rifles, a house that's more than a box and a beautiful wife with a good heart worthy, both inside and out.... and heck, she loves me even though I'm fat as a tick in a puppy's navel... and I've never even been pregnant.



Yes, I love my Searcy double because my friend Butch loves his work. I talked to him yesterday and asked why the new "long bar" when his guns already function well. His reply was that always trying to get better is what makes him strive to be closer to perfection. A bit of his heart is in every gun, for sure.

I hold my Bijou Creek .404 Jeffery dear because I've visited with Mike Cuypers at his shop and home and I've seen seen him work not with just strokes of a file, but with a lover's caresses. He's a budding master and every time I pick up his work, I know that he put his very being into building it.

I love my Ernst Kerner full-stocked pre-war Mauser because I know that it took that master craftsman almost a year to make the 9.3x62 a thing of beauty that shoots 1" groups with whatever I put in it.... and I can feel Ernst's love for his trade (though he is long gone) seep through the hand polished stock into my soul... 'cause I treasure the rifle, too and the work that went into it... and I kind of think that ol' Ernst ( and Butch and Mike and Ralf and Biesen, etc.) would have wanted his labor and skill to be appreciated by folks like us who recognize a "finer" thing, as much for the "inside" as the "out".