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Posted on 08/07/2007 7:52:15 AM PDT by HairOfTheDog
Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!
Sing hey! for the bath at close of day
That washes the weary mud away!
A loon is he that will not sing:
O! Water Hot is anoble thing!
O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain.
and the brook that leaps from hill to plain;
but better than rain or rippling streams
is Water Hot that smokes and steams.
O! Water cold we may pour at need
down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed;
but better is Beer, if drink we lack,
and Water Hot poured down the back.
O! Water is fair that leaps on high
in a fountain white beneath the sky;
but never did fountain sound so sweet
as splashing Hot Water with my feet!
An honest precious even!
That looks like a lot of fun!!
‘lower deck’?!?! you’re going to have two?
Whoohooo-zip line..fun times. We can see many hours of fun with that.
The barn/garage looks great. The last photo allowed me to figure out where the ‘tree house’ actually is.
We're going to use Eon composite decking, that SirKit bought from eBay last year. This is the older, thicker stuff. When Home Despot made a deal with Eon to sell it in their stores, they talked Eon into making the newer stuff not so thick so they could sell it for a little less.
He's also engineering a different type of baluster system. Instead of the vertical balusters 3 or 4" apart, whatever the code says, he's going to use cable rail, and run it horizontally, 3" apart. He wants it to be almost invisible when you are looking through it to the back yard. We have a nice back yard with 200' of woods behind it, so it makes for a lovely view. He found the cable rail on eBay, too, and saved goo-gobs of money. The 'Cable Rail' system, if you buy it through the company, is about $75 a linear foot for the deck railing; WAY too spendy. So we can reproduce the look without all the cost involved.
This is one reason it's taking us so long to get the house remodeled. We're looking for ways to make it look like a pricey house without spending that much to get it that way! We're using quality materials, but obtaining them for much less than typical retail. It's an adventure, I tell ya!
Wow those are big decks. The Cable Rail looks like quite the system. I hadn’t seen one around here. 200 yards of woods, that sounds great. Hope you all are keeping a photo log, that is an incredible remodeling project.
heh.... I was worried that would actually happen if’n we installed wrong...
they gots 250 footers too...
itsuh good things that kids bounce...
thanks for sharing all yer remodelin’ updates.... fascinatin’ stuff... the Cable Rails are a great product...
yeah... and many trips tuh the ‘mergency room...
we wanted it to be “away” from the house so the kids didn’t feel they were inside the compound... but it ain’t too far away... knowhuttuhmean?...
funklemeister...
First is a bandoleer of 30-40 Krag ammo, packaged in 1918. The National Guard still used plenty of Krags, because there weren't enough Springfields and Enfields to go around.
The pockets are sewn shut with thread. A fabric tab is used to pull open the pocket. Three of the six pockets on this bandoleer are still sealed. There are sixty rounds in the bandoleer, which is more of a combat load than the leather cartridge box worn as part of the uniform.
The rounds, made by Remington, are dated 1917, making them 90 years old this year. They look good, but looks are deceptive.
Four out of five rounds have a microscopic split in the case neck. After all these years, the brass has fatigued and crystallized. Not only does this let air in to oxidize the smokeless powder and primer, but it also does not hold the bullet in the case long enough for sufficient chamber pressure to develop. The biggest risk in this kind of defect is not a dud, but a squib load that has enough power to push the bullet part way down the barrel, making for a dangerous obstruction.
On the right is a 8mm Mauser round from WW2. Like the 30-06, it's a higher-pressure, higher-velocity round than the 30-40. The 30-40 is a very useful round at any practical range encountered in combat. But the world's military was on a high-velocity kick, and wanted to get that last foot-per-second out of a bigger case pushing a bullet as quickly as possible. Except for use in machine guns, the world's troops were seriesly overgunned when most engagements took place at 200 yards or under.
The Rough Riders had a good round in the 30-40 when compared to the Spanish 7mm Mauser, the "hot round" of the day. But the Krag action was an evolutionary dead end compared to the Mauser, which was easier to make, faster to fire, and could handle higher pressure ammo.
I was going to talk about some other WW1 ammo I found, but then I realized why not wrap with the rifle itself? So here's my 1898 Krag rifle, made in 1902, and the bayonet.
While most bolt action rifles by 1898 used rimless cartridges that were stripped from a clip into a magazine, the Krag was loaded one-at-a-time from a magazine side gate. The rimmed cartridge never lent itself to any "elegant" clip-feed system, even for other countries that used rimmed rounds, like Russia and England. With the gate open, rounds were placed inside one at a time. The feed path was basically a "U" on its side, with rounds going in below the bolt, and coming out above the bolt on the left hand side.
You can also see the open receiver bridge, less strong than other actions, but fine for the moderate (and pleasant-shooting) pressures of the 30-40. The bolt had only one front lug, and the handle acts as the second. The complex nature of machining the receiver and feed mechanism made to Krag expensive. However, there was also a lot of craftsmanship lavished on it during manufacture. The action is slicker than snot on a glass doorknob. Once unlocked, just tipping the muzzle up is enough for the bolt to slide back on its own.
Here's the view from the left side, showing the magazine side plate. It's carefully machined on the inside to move the next round from the magazine up to a position above the bolt, where it will then be fed into the chamber.
The Krag design was constantly being tweaked, so there are different Models from the 1892 to 1899. It was only a first-line military rifle for ten years, and for many of those years the military was already looking for a replacement. The US government paid the Mauser corporation $100,000 for the key patents that went into the legendary Springfield. Those Springfields were then used to kill a lot of Germans.
But along the way, the Krag saw serious action in the Philippines, where it was discovered that a single high-velocity round might not stop a doped-up s#ithead in time. That also lead to the replacement of the "high-tech" .38 revolver with a .45 caliber pistol, and bringing a lot of Colt Single Action Armies and Winchester shotguns out of the cosmoline, and into the hands of the troops for close-in work.
Yep. I’m taking pictures of everything, before and after.
What is that leather pouch thing stamped “US”?
That's the standard leather cartridge box that goes on the belt. It's basically unchanged since it carried wrapped powder and ball from the days of the musket. This one just has loops inside for the cartridges.
OK, I couldn’t figure out the size of it. Now I understand.
*awesome* installment of gun pron - thank you!
Morning Winmag - great gun ‘pron’. The US Krag was a fascinating rifle - smooth working action, accurate and a quantum leap in performance from the single shot black powder 45/70 ‘Trapdoor’ Springfield that was the standard US arm until the Krag’s adoption.
The lever at the end of action was the magazine cut-off, a standard feature in many military arms of the day. Fire discipline rendered a repeating rifle a single shot until the order was given to commence rapid fire. The ‘03 Springfield had one as well.
I don’t believe the Krag had a follower that would prevent closure on an empty chamber, that could have serious consequences under stressful operating conditions ie when someone is shooting back!
You said it well when you said the Krag was an evolutionary dead-end, similarly the 6mm Lee bolt action rifle that the Navy had at about the same time. Still, that replaced the single shot Remington Rolling Block, so both services got repeaters and that was a good thing.
For those that are so inclined, the movie “The Wind and The Lion” with Sean Connery shows the US Krag in action. Period weaponry and uniforms are quite a sight, only a couple of minor quibbles but some serious time was spent in the research and archives room. Two thumbs up.
Morning!
~sip~
Cloudy here....so where’s the tropical storm?
I agree, the technical research that went into the movie was well done. It even showed Teddy Roosevelt as a series gun nut. The Winchester 97 trench gun was the co-star, right after Sean Connery.
It also showed the Marines going through the local s#itheads like crap through a goose, something they still do well today. And the Navy provided a fine marching band that followed right behind.
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