Weekend Blog Bleg; Direct Barter

There must be other pack rats around here -- people who periodically look at a pile of their gun stuff and wonder, "What the Hell am I doing with this?" It a symptom of the acquisitive disease that manifests itself in too many gun shows, too many auctions and garage sales, too many moments when we lose control in gun shops.

Does the gunny corner of the internet offer hope? Maybe, and I want to try an experiment.  Every weekend or thereabouts I will post a  picture and short spiel on a sporty something that  someone else might want because I sure as Hell don't. The object is direct barter for anything that  might be less superfluous  to me.

Rules: Nothing that shoots. No money changes hands. Entertainment trumps the profit motive.  No sniveling.

This week, fanfare:

The  Carlson  Extended Turkey Choke in 12 gauge for Beretta and Benelli shotguns.  NIB(ubble),  it comes with a free choke wrench and my personal guarantee that it will make your shotgun longer. It's supposed to be a $30 item, but who cares? Offer to swap knives, M1 Carbine dies,  deer skins, rawhide,  USN relics valued at 50 cents to fifty bucks.  Whatever.


This could develop into good  fun if other writers would follow suit. In a short time it could become like everyone pawing around in everyone else's goodie box.

EDIT: I am ashamed of neglecting to add that the Clinton/Bush/Obama regimes have made it very worthwhile to polish our direct barter skills.

Paging Noah

I spoke a bit prematurely when I wrote "just some rain."  . I'm guessing about an inch in 10 minutes.  You are looking at flowing water,  and the  revised forecast calls for  for floating cows

(The odd lighting is explained by a habit of never discarding anything. It's pitch black here in back yard, and the illumination is from an old movie light I keep around to scare goblins.)

This is why they invented the word "ominous."

That was the  front of the bar about 8:15 p.m. CDT.  I'm near the back edge now, just some  rain and a bit of wind.

Surviving the Clinton/Bush/Obama economy

I am reminded this  morning that eternal vigilance is the price of avoiding poverty.

One of my knives needed a touch up, so I wet  down a hard Arkansas stone  with Buck Honing Oil  and did the job. (The high-grade oil showed up in a box of auction-sale junk. Trust me on this one, Sidney; I did not order it from Cabela's.)

The red oil from Buck works fine, At two bucks an ounce it should. Never mind that it looks like, smells like, and feels like plain automatic transmission fluid,  about two bucks a quart.

Now, saving a little on honing oil isn't going to make or break you, but there's a principle involved here. Illegitimati non screw u with salesmanship based on pure image. 

(Slaves to their own self-image can, of course, acquire an empty Buck Honing Oil bottle and fill it from their stock of transmission fluid. No one will be the wiser, even if knife sharpening is a social activity for you and your circle of friends.)

A disclaimer is necessary since everything I know about chemistry  comes from  The Anarchists Cook Book or Old Mr. Boston's Bartenders Guide. Maybe upscale honing oil in a cool bottle differs from ATF on a molecular level.

But then again, come to think of it, maybe neither is all that much better than spit.