Kind of like a fountain of youth, or gold at the end of the rainbow. Or Bigfoot.
I've heard of them, but never seen one. You are indeed fortunate!
I would say, in addition, get a good hunting knife with a 6" blade, and a couple of good pocket knives with a 3 or 4 inch blade. Also teach all your children how to shoot when they are big enough.
I also like to keep one or two scout axes around. They seem to be rare these days so a good hatchet works also.
Keep one or two good flashlights around where you can find them in the dark.
My grandfather was a diminutive man, our gunsmith lengthened the stock and raised the comb on his old Browning "humpback" shotgun for my 6'6" husband. Did a splendid job matching the wood. (it still kicks like a mule though, he couldn't do anything about that. ;-) )
Kind of like a fountain of youth, or gold at the end of the rainbow. Or Bigfoot.
I've heard of them, but never seen one. You are indeed fortunate!
I've been very lucky too. Actually, I've found a number of excellent gunsmiths that I recommend highly... There's Bill Laughridge (sp?) up in Nebraska, who owns Cylinder and Slide. I have it on good authority that he's one of the very best (if not THE best) at working on Colt Pythons and Browning High Powers. While they're best known for those, believe me, they do excellent work on anything you can send them. He did some terrific work for me some years ago, with an action job on a competition .38 revolver, as well as an action job (and spring kit) in my Taurus PT-99. And then there's Leonard Beatty (I hope I got that right... It's been years). He was in North Carolina, and he did an amazing job on a 1911 "Race Gun" for me. I would estimate that I've put over 60,000 rounds through it, and it's NEVER malfunctioned, and the trigger pull, while extremely light (just a hair over 25 oz), is perfectly safe.
I've also got two friends who are both master tool and die makers, and they got into gunsmithing as a hobby, and have become excellent gunsmiths. One even built his own custom chambered revolver, sort of based on the .44 Automag, using full moon clips, and the cut down cases of a .308. I don't think that they'd want me mentioning their names.
And I was extremely luck to have been introduced to Ron Power, one of the finest gunsmiths around today. Not only is he a master craftsman, but he happens to be an extremely nice gentleman, and he's a lot of fun to be around. He had already retired to the Ozarks, but a friend introduced us, and my friends convinced Ron to do a bit of work on one of my revolvers.
Mark