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cupboard-door-hinges-screwfix-meaning Still have to cut wood off the top of the barrel position. The other was in the detailed description of making a mainspring — they had a nifty jig for putting the bend in them — I would copy it if Screwfiz did enough mainsprings, The account said that when filed up, the spring would be opened on a bunsen burner to allow the inside faces to be polished. An alternative would be to make a spring from scratch — I mfaning done it, but its easier with slightl bigger springs as cupboard door hinges screwfix meaning involves welding the bit for the fixing screw…. Anyway he can always claim that he is going to assist his frail old father! We are mexning hoping that our yacht charter in Scotland can go ahead in mid July — probably touch and go, in the lap of the gods, or Nicola Sturgeon at any rate.

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Hvor over mennesker blev drbt, le aus den orno ategorien wie blasen. Once profiled I put it back on the miller and thinned the tail down to about 1. So we now have a fitting lock plate with stepped tail and bolster in the correct place to receive the pan.

At this stage its worth marking a centre punch for the side nail, as that will fix the plate relative to the gun — an easy way to do this accurately is to grind the blank end of a drill that just fits the hole in the stock and use it as a centre punch — it will not make a particularly good mark as its probably too soft, but you can see it clearly.

The net step will be to cut the lock plate to receive the pan casting — I may need to juggle the bolster and casting in the region of the frizzen pivot to make sure the pin is secure and works properly — the casting has been cut a bit close to the hole.. It may be possible to open up the small one. There are so many variables to be sorted, and with a limited range of parts at my disposal, and only having made a couple of flint locks before it is a challenge — still that is why one does these things!

Possible parts — when the pan is in it should be easier to choose to best fit. I got out my drawers of bits and pieces and had a rummage — I have 4 or 5 pan castings that Blackleys make for reconverting percussion back to flint from full lock sets, and several frizzens and cocks.

I also have a pan section taken from the same lock and a somewhat larger flintcock with a spur that might do with the Mc Knight pan, and a frizzen that can be made to fit. Since I want the gun to be interchangeable between the new flintlock and the percussion lock, I dont want to modify the lock pocket or any of the woodwork, certainly not the opening.

This means that the main defining dimension of a pan section is the overall thickness, as the pan needs to touch the breech accurately to avoid sparks getting iside the lock, while the outside of the pan casting lock face needs to be flush with the level of the existing lock face.

I guess that as I want the flintlock to shoot and am not trying to fake it back to flint, function is more important than looks! Strightforward drum and nipple conversion so not too difficult to make it into a flintlock that I can shoot. These are the parts I picked out that might work for the Nock.

Pretty pleased, so now I can relax for a couple of days. Or I might just have fun and start my disinformation campaign on social media — the revelation that the latest mutation of the covid 19 virus can be spread by email, Twitter, Facebook or WhatsApp……………………………… some people will believe anything! Well, after a major move back that involved a complete turnout of the larder including replacing the lights that I had cut off when I removed the old kitchen wiring.

Anyway I just about made my deadline of 21st and we are now using the new kitchen — we had our first meal there at dinner tonight.

Anyway here are a couple of photos of the finished kitchen before we moved in and cluttered it all up! December 9th. At last the grouting of the floor tiles is complete and we can get the units in to work on the tops and fix the main unit.

Anyway the pressure is on! December 6th. Had what is probably my last shoot of the season near Beccles on Saturday — luckily a fine day after the rain and snow of Friday. We were doubled up on pegs so Pete and I shared a peg. We had a pretty barren first three drives as we were well out of the action, but the fourth drive was fine and I had a few good shots — overall I got 4 hits for 8 shots, which was pretty good going for me.

Anyway it made a nice break from the kitchen! Things in the kitchen department are moving to a close, but slowly…. We got the extractor fan installed, and a lot of cleaning up done, and today I sealed about an eigth of the floor and grouted it, and painted all the woodwork in a nice dirty white colour.

I designed a grouting funnel — a 12 inch long by 6 mm wide funnel for putting the grout into the gaps between the tiles as it really needs to be quite runny to get to the bottom of the gaps — about 25 mm deep, and it seems to work pretty well. I need to get Matthew to make a variation with one vertical side for grouting the gaps round the edges of the floor.

I think that fades slightly as the floor dries out, but most are still quite yellow. While waiting for the floor we have fixed the rest of the wiring, cleaned and very lightly polished the wooden doors and put in some of the plumbing.

I had fun bending a pipe to carry the propane to the gas hob — obviously as its a gas pipe I was keen to avoid joints as far as possible but a few are necessary as the pipe run is too long for one length of tube — any way I managed to put 8 bends into the pipe and still had it coming out where I wanted it!

I am tempted to fire up the underfloor heating to try and dry out the floor — the makers of the heater say 6 to 8 weeks for the screeds to cure and dry out and the top screed only went on a month ago, so I guess I had better wait a while! I am often asked how much a gun is worth, usually on the basis of a simple description and no photo — obviously its more or less impossible to give a meaningful estimate.

Even with a couple of not so good photos why is it so difficult to take a decent phot given how good modern phone cameras are? The name on the gun can make a big difference to the starting minimum price. So you can see the difficulty in estimating effectively blind. The best advice is to look through current antique firearms auctions and see if you can find anything similar as a starting point. November 29th — more laying of pamments on Friday — tried to tweak the mortar mix and pre-wet everything, and added a bit of lime putty to increase the plasticity — it did work a bit better, and we got another half of the floor done — that leaves about a quarter to do, but it will involve a lot of cut tiles so it will take the best part of a day.

It will be sorted in time! I put in the lighting fixtures today — I had to modify them as they were intended to be fixed to a plate screwed onto the ceiling but the fixing needed to go into the side of the light base and the beams get in the way. Even the cheapest unsmart bulbs cost more than the fittings, which incidentally are very well made — smart bulbs cost up to 5 times the fitting cost!.

November 26th — Got the limewash on the walls eventually, so now into floor laying. This turns out not to be as straighforward as I hoped. So I was advised to use a lime mortar to bed the tiles. I made up a fine mortar with NHL 5 lime and kiln dried block sand as being fine and so not stopping the tiles bedding down fully if necessary.

In the end we managed to lay the tiles by flooding the floor where we wanted to lay mortar and spraying the pamments till they were wet and using the mortar almost in the consistency of soup. Its still necessary to get the tile in almost the correct position and its not really possible to do any fine levelling — if the tile goes down unlevel it has to be prized off they stick within a minute and the whole process of laying started over again.

Still we did get almost 40 laid in the afternoon after messing about a fair bit working out a method. The lime putty is mixed with water to the consistency of milk, preferably a few weeks before its needed to let some of the lime disolve in the water.

Limewash is a lovely finish although it needs a lot of coats to cover well — we have 5 coats of white on the ceiling to cover the plaster. One technique I used before is to finish off the limewash with a straight coat of clear limewater which then basically turns to limestone on the wall. The units are all built on carcasses of 16 mm ply that a friend has as scrap from his business which he kindly biscuit joins for us — the unit below weighs in at around 35 to 40 Kg without the 38 mm black walnust top, so moving them around is quite a sweat!

November 15th — a bt of a pause while we worked away on the kitchen… Its getting round to all the small details while we wait for the floor to dry out sufficiently to lay the pamments — probably another week. Each evening I lay a newspaper somewhere on the floor with flat plastic hawk on top of it, and in the morning the degree of dampness in the paper is easy to judge — its gradually getting dryer day by day, but still there is obviously water rising through the floor — not sure if it will decline to zero any time soon!

There was an oak frome round a set of shelves next to the tiling, I stuck masking tape over the oak to keep plaster splashes off it, which made us realise how much better everything looked if it was a paler colour — so it will be painted in due course. Anyway things progress — Matthew dug a French drain on the outside of the North wall, which had been very damp — we thought we should do it before we finally leave the EU on 1st Jan as presumably French drains will be banned thereafter……… I suspect we shall be in for a period of chaos then — Felixstowe docks is already delaying unloading container ships by up to 10 days so who knows where it will all end — probably in tears!

We have 2 in constant use. One way and another there will be enough wood around without the frame! November 8th The top screed went in just fine on Tuesday — added about another 2 tons of sand to the floor, but it came out pretty flat and was quicker than the first screed — it was not so thick so less waiting for the mixing in the small mixer we hired — 25 mixes exactly for this screed.

We have so far used 6 tons in total. By Thursday it was OK to walk on and Matthew returned to his cabinet making and I tidied up the edges of the floor. First and second fix of wiring for the services has now started, and there is a lot of it! Add in a generous 9 or 10 double sockets spread around and that is quite a lot of wire and boxes to be let in and wires burried or preferably put in trunking! Not everything about the lockdown is clear — there seems to confusion about what is or is not allowed.

Organised game shoots are off, but rough shooting is allowed, Angling is off, but fishing is allowed work that one out if you can! Our salvation is that Screwfix is still functioning for pre-orders online. Anyway its all going well, and the floor is drying out nicely so we are on schedule to lay the pamments in around 2 weeks, which gives us time to finish off most of the other jobs that can be done before the floor is laid.

There is a handy space for the services in the recess where an old outside door was. I was pleased that the length worked out almost exactly right for the layout I had planned — we laid the meters and I only had to shorten one loop by about mm to get it all to fit perfectly. Anyway tomorrow is THE screeding day — about 2 inches to be laid, and it must be level enough to lay the pamments on with between 6 and 9 mm of mortar and get a completely flat surface — quite demanding! The first of the appliances arrived today — the oven.

We finished off the first screed last week, but everything was setting and drying out so slowly that I put on the Aga and a 1 kW fan heater and the dehumidifier 24 hours a day — it has been drying out much better, the first coat lime plaster has now gone hard and the floor is giving up its excess moisture — the dehumidifier is pulling around 10 to 12 litres per day from the air and just about managing to keep the RH around 70 percent or a little lower and the temperature at 24 Celsius — in a day or so we will lay the 2 inch top screed on top of the in-screed electric heating wires.

I marked out the heating cable layout — its a loose cable not a mat — and stuck plastic guide strips to the floor with Fix-All. The floor has a very loose top surface so the bond is not good, but probably enough to hold the wires in place while the screed is laid. We will finish the screed on Tuesday, which is the only 2 man job apart from lifting the worktops at the end.

He says last lockdown he got stopped by the police and asked where he was going! Anyway he can always claim that he is going to assist his frail old father! The Kitchen progresses — on Friday we got most of the first layer of the floor screed down but at with about a square meter more to do, we ran out of sand. We have to wait til Wednesday for more sand so we are getting on with sorting out bits and pieces — replastering bits of the walls, tidying the wiring and sorting out the main window cill and surround.

I realised we have been seven weeks on the job and only have another 6 to go before we are supposed to finish for Christmas, although what sort of Christmas we will have in the present Pandemic remains to be seen.

Today I hired a wacker plate to consolidate the floor material but it was not a straighforward job — the wacker works fine going in a straight line, but turing corners it skids round and throws up a ridge on the outsside. Yesterday we put in all the electrical conduits that go under the fill — we had to lay them with the wires threaded as they are long runs with lots of bends.

As the ground at the bottom of our excavation was as hard as iron I decided that I could just underpin it to that level, which I did with 4 courses of brick — I did wonder if I should dig out for a proper, deep, wide footing, but the chimney is about 3 bricks thick and I only really needed to underpin the outer skin to stop the earth crumbing away. Anyway it all went well and not a single brick of the chimney came loose apart from one bit of mortar facing. I am not easily frightened by building problems!

Matthew put in my wine bottle insulation in part of the floor — it will be covered by about mm of the glass foam chips. The whole floor is designed to be breathable on the principle that if the floor is a vapour barrier the ground moisture is diverted to the walls. That will be followed by the unglazed pamments which will have a permeable coating — I have yet to decide what that will be. I am putting electric heating under the 80 mm limecrete so it will function as a storage heater and can be run off off-peak electricity — it will have to heat about 4 tonnes of limecrete so its not going to respond very quickly!

My patent additional insulation — should amuse anyone who digs up the floor in years to come! Starting to dig out under the chimney wall — will it bring the whole massive chimney down? Managed another shoot on Monday near Bures — very good day, and the weather held. We managed to dig out the kitchen floor to a depth of about a foot in 3 days — got rid of 4 trailer loads of soil etc. The local farmer kindly takes it for his landscaping so we keep it well sorted from rubbish.

I now have to put in the conduits for electrical wiring, and trim round the edges and get a few bits sorted before putting in the insulating wine bottles and the glass foam insulation to a depth of around 6 inches.

The material is scheduled to arrive on Monday along with 27 bags of natural hydraulic lime for the screed, and 3 tons of sharp sand, so altogether it will be a rather busy day. I hope we will get most of the floor laid by next weekend, then it will be a case of letting it harden for a couple of weeks — I hope no longer! Fun weekend threading conduit under the living room floor is in store!

Matthew has put together the carcass of the cabinet, and is now working on the front frame, so it will be mostly completed shortly.

We have now run out of excuses for putting off the digging up of the floor, so next week should see that started. It is a major job as we have to excavate mm deep over 20 sq meters of very compacted earth — given that when you break solid ground you end up with 2 or 3 times the volume it could yield at least 12 cubic meters — probably 6 — 8 tons!

All to be sifted by wheelbarrow. I have no clear idea how long it will take the two of us! Matthew has been making the drawers and doors for the next cabinet — he was pretty amazed at how quick it is to make dovetail joints with the Trend jig and router. I was given a nice little gun related gadget by a friend — a brass and boxwood shot gauge by Robinson.

I checked it with modern shot and it reads very accurately. Reminds me of old school rulers. I re-stocked on 1. Also my hone packed up and had to be stripped and modified to cut out the variable transformer speed control as it had expired — so now its on full speed, which is more or less how I always use it anyway.

I had an interesting gun job — make a pair of nipples for a John Manton shotgun. I took the old nipples which were a bit oversize for No 11 nipples and made new ones to the same dimensions, as I thought. When I came to fit them in the barrel I discovered that the flanges above the thread need to fit inside a recess — so the flange diameter is critical — mine were slightly too big.

Anyway I was able to turn down the flanges, but I decided anyway to make another pair of nipples that fitted the hexagonal driver that came with the gun. Matthew started work on another kitchen cabinet — to match the other one the doors needed a central panel of elm, while the rest was oak.

It is not easy to buy elm as Dutch Elm Disease got rid of most of the timber years ago and timber merchants laugh if you ask them, but I managed to get a very nice plank from ebay that has enough timber for three cupboard door panels — it turned out to have a very good grain, and should give two matching outer doors and a fine central door — a win and not unduly expensive.

I also had a couple of pairs of nipples that were a bit too big for modern caps to try to slim down to get them to take caps — they were superficially hard so I ran them against the linisher belt in the chuck of a battery drill — unfortunately I took a bit much off a couple and they were a little loose, so I made a new pair of titanium nipples.

The bit that always makes me nervous about the operation is putting the 1. If you are unlucky the tip of the drill breaks off in the metal so its best to drill the hole before any other operations so that you can just face off the rod 10 mm dia. I might rescue some of his stock of castings for flintlocks.

Several pistols caught my eye — and mostly at almost affordable prices if you forget about the premium! I have this idea, probably completely wrong, that cased pistols are better vale than uncased — The little cased Egg is neat and so on………. Better go and have another look at the on-line catalogue — I have already registered for on-line bidding so that is a danger sign!

My trusty little 16 bore Nock single rose to the challenge of the fast targets so I was well pleased. I quite like using a single for game — takes away the tension of whether to reload a double after the first shot or wait til the gun is empty. Problem with reloading a single fired barrel of a double is that you have to remember to remove the cap from the loaded barrrel or you risk loosing a hand if it fires.

A lot of experienced shooters can recall an occasion when they reloaded without removing the cap, including occasions when the gun was still at full cock. Makes the blood run cold!

I made my little decapping tool to make it simple to remove the cap, but it is still possible to forget. We were pressing on with the kitchen and had about a quarter of the ceiling lathed up ready for plastering when the stapler we use for fixing the lathes stopped working upwards — it was still happily firing staples downwards but elevated above the horizontal it stopped firing.

I stripped it several times and did briefly get it going with a squirt of WD 40, but it soon failed again. One has a nghtmare that in the morning the whole lot will have detached and be lying on the floor!

Old laths cleaned and fixed between joists — boss for spotlight. Busy on the kitchen — and for the next two months at least, I guess. Matthew finished the tricky job of fixing up battens along the beams and joists to carry the laths for the plaster. We did have one short beam to replace as it was itself a replacement and not very sound — we made a beam by laminating a couple of bits of seasoned oak and put the date and our initials on it as a memento.

There are just a couple of really dirty jobs to do — chasing in another light switch and a water pipe, plus a bit of mortaring around the top of the walls where it was previously above the ceiling but now is below the new ceiling level.

Two pallets of floor tiles have arrived, so its all looking very exciting — I should be able to start plastering on Monday and maybe finish the ceiling next week? There is a certain amount of discussion about how to finish the exposed joists and beams — painting them in with the ceiling would expose all the imperfections in them, and the broken off lath fixings would soon rust through. Options are then to leave them as they are, wax them, oil them or stain them — all except the first are non reversible!

I guess that decisiion can be left til we see how the ceiling looks…….. Managed to get over 30 dustbin bags of rubbish out! I have put in the wiring for the now 9 ceiling spotlights. Matthew and I are getting qite excited aboutthe job! My shoot on Saturday is set to go ahead- some people are a bit unhappy that people can gather for shooting but not in the park — but it has to be said that we re mostly spaced about 40 yards apart!

Its interesting that the law specifically exempts any activity that requires a firearms or shotgun certificate from the rule of 6 — I guess that means that the arm of the law will have no excuse to bother us!. Not often you can make a car part in 30 minutes! There was one patch we took down that I had carefully repaired some years ago — the plaster brought the laths down with it, the laths were tied with galvanised wire to a cross lath so the whole thing was a rigid sheet — and quite difficult to get down.

Decided to take down all the laths and leave the joists exposed below the ceiling, which we did today. Next job is to put battens around the edges of all beams and joists to take short laths for plastering. Before we can put the laths up I have to run in wires for all the lighting.

At least having got all the ceiling down the dirtiest job is finished so we can clean up a bit! In this case there is a trimmer between two joists with a central joist in two parts supported by the trimmer. The puzzle is that all those beams look original and have chamfers that run out at the crossings, and all had the same finish so look as if they were made like that.

Possible, some of the other joists are more or less branches with the bottom surface flattened off, but still originally shown below the plaster level. The spine beam on the left is cantilevered out and supports the other beam — both probably reused timbers from an earlier house. The thin joist is a much later addition when new floor boards were put in and firring pieces put on the beams and joists to level the floor.

We stripped almost all the old plaster off the laths and Matthew cleaned off the backs of them with a reshaped washing up brush — we took out a couple of laths every foot or so to create the space to get at the backs. Having got a glimpse of what was above them we reckon that we can remove all the laths and leave the ceiling beams exposed, setting the plaster back a couple of inches. The ceiling is very low, so this will generate the impression of a higher ceiling and be a return to how it was originally — you can actually see the original plaster finish on the underneath of the upstairs floorboards in one place.

It will be a bit more work but worth it. It looks as if half the room originally had unpainted oak beams, and the other half somewhat narrower beams painted in with the ceiling. Old riven laths make an interesting surface to plaster on to — I have done it successfully by wiring in intermediate laths across the gaps.

The original plaster date unknown but possibly 18th is just visible between the laths, which would have been 19th or early 20th century. With barrels that short I will probably opt to use Swiss No 2 powder as the faster burn rate compared to Czech I normally use should compensate a bit for the short barrel.

I am now using semolina for all shooting and find it perfectly satisfactory and much handier to load for clays and game — I have no intention to revert to wads…. I re-plumbed the main house incomer to accommodate the new water softener and get rid of some of the visible pipework- by the time it was all installed with stop cocks to allow the water softener to be removed when we do the floor it added up to around 35 compression joins in 22 and 15 mm pipework, mostly 22 mm.

We l ook more like a bunch of bank robbers than anything else! Cracking on with the kitchen, although I did spend this morning up at school doing my safeguarding training. Two very simple but clever things I picked up at Screwfix — the first was a simple sheet of black plastic that rolls up and slips inside a rubble sack to turn it into a bin that you can throw, drop or shovel rubble into — you just lift the sheet out when the bag is full, and use it in the next bag!

Its called a rubble mate — and is brilliantly simple and effective. Anyway they sent me a new one and I got to keep the damaged one for spares. Here is a picture of what I hope is the worst bit of the wall. The cheapest, and least reamy handmade glass was made in Poland, the most expensive was French or German.

Tom got very good at it — he is more patient than I am, and spent a whole summer doing every window in the place beautifully. It turns out that most of the walls of the old kitchen are in a poor state — its old lime plaster onto the chalk rubble inner face ofthe wall, and some patches are hardly adhering at all — plus some clever clogs had the brilliant idea of combatting dampness in the walls by sticking on some bitumen backed material and although most of it has been removed there are still patches of bituminous residue that require the surface of the wall to be removed in order to get rid of them.

All good fun. I went shooting clays again this morning at Cambridge Gun Club with Pete and Bev — most enjoyable, not least because it was a nice day, and I managed to hit more clays than I thought likely! Even the driven, that I used to knock down, now seem much higher — or are we just getting older…….. A bargain! Lot of interest among the muzzle loading fraternity at the idea of doing high speed photos of a number of different guns — problem will be to keep it organised and make sure all possible variables are accounted for and documented for it to have any value.

We do have a number of crack shots with flintlocks, and they spend a lot of time tweaking to get fast ignition, so we can probably get a good range of speeds. A friend came round yeserday with a high speed camera so we took a film of a little pocket pistol priming being fired without a projectile — it looks rather beautiful, so I put it on you tube with the link below.

I did take time off for a swim but I managed to set up a new engraving station in my main workshop — I just got it set up when a packet of bits to engrave arrived. I ventured out yesterday and had a haircut first since Christmas? Why is nothing to do with Covid clear cut? Plus emails with questions about guns that need identifying or my opinion on what they are or what to do to them — all good and interesting stuff.

Also that will block any more furniture building for the time being….. Once you get out to the Outer Hebrides its pretty much still shut down — we did visit a couple of marinas that were nominally closed, but that just seemed to be no loos or showers, and no charge — not a problem as the boat had a super shower and we could still get water.

We visited 6 islands in total and only had to miss three or four days due to strong wind forecasts from the wrong direction. Really nice boat from Alba Sailing — the only charter company left on the North West.

So back to work — getting ready to move the kitchen temporarily while I demolish the old one! I also have to pick up a gun and get some practice as I have several shoots at the beginning of the season. More details of the sailing on separate post. Tucked up in Loch Maddy while the wind blew 30 knots not while I took the photo!

The cockpit tent came in for a lot of use. Son Tom is back in Cambridge and he and Giles brewed up a plot to build a woodfired pottery kiln in our back garden since neither has the room. I guess I will have to spend the next couple of weeks preparing to move the kitchen into the gun workshop, so we can destroy the existing kitchen. May be a week or so before I get back to this computer! I just finished the small table for the new kitchen that will have a marble top.

I seem to be busy all the time and can only steal moments to go into the gun workshop. There will be a problem in the Autumn when as it will have to be turned into a temporary kitchen while the main one is destroyed and rebuilt! Not sure how I will manage — I may take my gun activities out to my shed where my metalworking machinery resides, but that has no heating so will not be very comfortable for sitting still for hours. Another problem to tackle!

The cheap ones come with less facilities, and soft start on a router is almost essential in my books. Here are a couple of early test pieces for a simple flintlock engraving;-. Both lock tails are based on classic designs — the bird got rather a long beak a slip! Here isa photo of the cabinet — its made of oak with elm panels in the door and handles made of bog oak;-.

It is black but still shows the grain, and cuts and polishes well. Here are a couple of photos ;-. I also got a request for gravers and sharpeners so I had better get myself in gear. Yesterday I made a panelled cabinet door for the kitchen units — lots of messing about with the home made router table — height of cutter is set by an old car jack! Anyway I put an Osma Polyx finish on at lunchtime so had to vacate that workshop to avoid dust. So I retreated to the gun workshop for the first time in 3 months, and made some more gravers.

It takes a good half hour to grind and handle one, so I managed 4 and still had time for a swim! Ive been putting up some trellis in the back garden — why is all the stuff you can buy a horrible ginger colour? I actually had a bit of a break from the units and installed 4 lengths of trellis on top of the garden wall sawing up the 4 x 4 posts was good exercise for the arms.

I am working hard to make up for the ravages of Covid — I think I lost more than 10 Kg. I am told that I no longer look like a walking skeleton! I struggled a bit to get my head round the dovetail router jig — its fine when you are used to it, but I made a few mistakes when I started and had to remake a few bits.

The fronts are Oak, but the rest is made from Cherry from old library shelves from a Cambridge College — I got a load when a big library was gutted and did our library shelves and paneling, but I still have 40 or 50 shelves left — perfect for internal joinery and about 30 years old so very stable!

We are desparately hoping that our yacht charter in Scotland can go ahead in mid July — probably touch and go, in the lap of the gods, or Nicola Sturgeon at any rate. I am busy clearing out my shed so I can gt on with my kitchen units — so far I have come across the mumified remains os 2 rats and assorted other evidence of their existence!

Anyway a skip is called for to dispose of the rubbish that is accumulating in the yard. The weather makes me glad we got the swimming pool up before they ration water! My daily swims show up just how unfit Covid 19 left me — I get breathless after a couple of lengths, I think last year I could do 10 straight off and 60 in a session. It is getting better every day so there is hope. It looks like we are able to shoot clays again — with the proviso that we book slot — I guess we still only get one companion to button for us!

I have been busy lately — more or less back to full activity. Richard and I installed the beautiful solid oak back door and frame — I swear in a hundred years the door frame will be holding the house up! It is amazing how much stuff one keeps just in case!

Giles and I put our 10m long swimming pool up last Monday and it is now filled with 30 tonnes of water. It is just a very big plastic bag, and is now 12 or 13 years old — each year we erect it with trepidation in case it has sprung an invisible leak.

This year it lost 1 inch in level overnight, but it turned out to be a leak underneath the pump due to a perished rubber elbow. No chance of getting a replacement, so a bit of attention with rubber adhesive and self amalgamating tape might just work — will fit it tomorrow and see.

Part of the leak anguish is that you can no longer buy such a long bag pool, and 10m is only just long enough to swim to and fro in. Apart from trying to keep the garden under control I have restarted the Kitchen renovation project — The main phase of taking down the ceiling and digging up the floor is scheduled for later in the year, but I am currently designing the custom units and making up some trial bits to check my construction techniques.

So far I have made one drawer with dovetail joints- and run off a few trial frame sections. Before Covid 19 hereinafter referred to as BC I ordered up a load of oak and my joiner friend Richard started to make a new back door to my deisgn.

I had a few years ago lowered the outside ground level by about 6 inches so the threshold will also be lowered in the new door. I had slightly arbitrarily decided by how much to lower the cill, very fortunately when I took out the old cill and the wall below it, I found that the very solid flint foundation were about 2cm below the bottom of the new cill.

Not sure what I would have done if the foundations had been any higher, as I dont expect Richard would have relished shortening the door frame and door at this stage.

Anyway it goes in on Tuesday next. I found a splendid company in Norfolk who make hand made pamments unglazed clay tiles -at least the daughter seems to make the pammets either spelling is OK and the mother runs the office — a nice family business and they are made in Norfolk, not Spain or Eastern Europe.

As you might guess they are not free! Fortunately its not a very big Kitchen — about 14 ft square — they should be made by early September. The Coronavirus rumbles on — we seem to lag behind most of Europe in getting ourselves sorted out — while the WHO and every other country recognised a suite of symptoms we stuck to 2, then rather grudgingly and only after being shown up by an academic on the radio, added two more — still well behind the rest of the developed world — well done Boris!!

Giles and I discussed back and forth how to do the camera zoom, and I settled on a model servo linked to a short arm fixed to the camera lens, and did a few sketches. Giles 3D printed them for me and I had a go at fixing them up. It should have worked but the torque required is really high and would probably need a high torque servo that draws a lot of current which is not really compatible with a system that is supposed to run off 4 AA cells! Anyway I think the project is now on hold awaiting inspiration!

See photo below. What a fantastic day — just like the middle of summer, it felt like a sin to go indoors, especially as the forecast for the next few days is cold and cloudy! Torque required to turn zoom is too much for my little servo, but a bigger one would consume too much power — stalemate!

Finally getting my mojo back! Finished the next post Covid youtube — it was something I could do without getting too flaked out! Not sure how many more will happen. I started a little project — my camera for all my stuff is a Canon M50 and I thought it would be good if I could zoom it without touching it.

All it needs is a small, geared electric motor coupled to the zoom barrel. I have got a suitable geared micro motor but the drive is the challenge. I tried with an O ring on a small pulley on the motor rubbing on the barrel, and with a longer O ring round the barrel of the camera and the motor pulley but the friction in the zoom is greater than the drive friction.

He has an M50 too so should be able to see the problem. Still thinking about the next one — quite a lot of work to find all the examples I need! Had a few messages from regular viewers of this blog wishing me well.

I did a couple of takes for the next one on my Post Office pistols — just need to check them out and do the edits and add some stills and it will be ready to upload. I am now trying to sort out in my mind what to do for the third Covid video- possible the history of the devopment of the flintlock in England to or something like that — cover all the little tweaks that made the English gun makers the best in the World.

I am a bit weak on the early stuff but I do have a wheellock without the gun. Still making progress- nice walk today and my appetite is getting better. Just read that it takes 12 to 28 days to build immunity to a second infection — I hope that is from when you get it, not from the end of it!

Anyway, a big thank you to everyone who has sent me good wishes — It does make a difference. My first post Covid video is now complete — I sound a bit breathless, which is, I guess, a leftover from the virus — it seems to come and go a bit. Anyway its in Videos on this site and on you tube. I took my car out to the local shop for a bottle of milk this morning first time in 7 weeks and boy did I feel daring!

Did two sections of my pistol video — just got to sort out a bit of editing and it will be done. Feeling a lot better and went for walk — not in the garden. Might see if the car will go tomorrow. Daring stuff!! Must be feeling better to post two days running! Still sorting the pistol video — I am still a bit breathless so tried a draft. Probably Ok. They are lovely little pistols and get me wondering about their early history.

There must be more information on them somewhere — as far I can tell there are not many around — at a guess somewhere between half a dozen and a dozen, unless there is a hoard in the National Firearms Archive or some other similar collection. And still here, Getting to feel like doing things at last, which is a big change — still not up to speed yet as I lost a lot of weight, but definite progress.

I thought I would make a couple of youtube videos as we are all living our lives through the internet now. My first targets are the two Public Office pistols from Bow Street. He mentioned that the Bow Street run Horse Patrol started in, but illustrated a pistol engraved for the Dismounted Horse Patrol and dated One assumes that the Mounted Horse Patrol was founded about the same time as the Dismounted? Anyway I hope to have a convincing story soon.

Slowly, Slowly making progress. I am now spending time downstairs, rather than spend all day in bed, which makes a nice change. And the nice weather helps too. It will be some weeks before I am out and about though.

Covid 19 is a lot nastier than is generally acknowledged if you are oldish or vulnerable or male, so redouble your efforts to avoid it. Thats my biggest problem — a coupe of hours a day is all I can get…..

The nett result is that I am having to do a bit of urgent remodelling of the house — sticking a new staircase in my workshop for one thing and turning the workshop into another kitchen — fortunately nothing major, but no serious work for a week or so! I was contemplating escaping to our little cottage in Cornwall when it seemed that it might only be for three months, but the reality is that there is really no clear endpoint. Either way the best guess is that we are in it for at least a year or 18 months…………….

And the food too……or maybe just believe the supermarkets when they say it will all pan out in the end………… Oh and we got our new head teacher — we were delighted to appoint the deputy who had been acting head for a while.

I hope to get a moment to do some gun stuff but the pressures build… Plus some of the old film cameras I put on ebay are selling. It will be interesting to see how the kids get on with it. No-one has come up with any suggestions for the photos below — I have no ideas! I made a couple of bits for the lathe so that it kicked out the traverse if it was about to run into the end of its travel — I have had damage a couple of times when the saddle had hit the buffer, resulting in a bent gear shaft and a sheared pin — I think it will now work, although I did run a tipped tool into the chuck while setting it up — bang went the tip.

Anyway I nearly froze to death in the shed so it was a bit of a rush job. I went to look at a pile of oak planks that a friend has — they are warped like mad but I may be able to find enough straight pieces for drawer fronts. Looks like the kitchen is going to be an all consuming project for the summer! Went in search of old style flooring tiles pamments for the kitchen floor. One place was a large industrial barn on what had once been a farm with one person surrounded by massive piles of drying tiles and fired tiles and kilns and clay — turned out she did the whole thing herself — nice tiles too — think I might use them — a lot cheaper than sourcing antique pamments which cost an arm and a leg, and are difficult to get in large enough batches to cover 20 square meters.

Driving to Norfolk was a nightmare in the heavy rain — worse coming back because the wind was blowing from the east and sending the spray from lorries across the fast lane. Geoff collected the last of the Smiths that I had converted to conventional nipples — he is threatening to go on a shoot with all three guns and two loaders for an experiment in 19th century shooting — he will have to hurry before lead is banned!

I sold the pair of Belgian percussion pistols today, which was nice, although I can see all my spare cash being channeled into the kitchen renovation! Still after 26 years it does need an overhaul…. I went to see a possible shoot yesterday as two of our best muzzle loading game shoots have closed.

I got the oak for a new back door today — my joiner friend had advised I got laminated engineered oak, but to my surprise one of the uprights arrived seriously bowed so will have to be changed. It is a major project as the old and fragile lath and plaster ceiling will have to come down and be repaired or replaced with similar, and the floor will have to be dug out to a depth of m. Anyone want to buy an 11 bore Westley Richards double percussion — nice….

I collected my Dremel cutting disks from Screwfix this morning — really useful service, I ordered them on Saturday and they were ready to pickup locally by noon Sunday. The first was moderately OK — I cut a nice slot across the nipple around 2 m. In the end I cut the slot a bit deeper and broke off half the nipple top with the punch and hammer and whacked the rest with the punch until it started to turn — by the time I got it out the nipple was a complete mess, but most importantly the gun was completely untouched by all the messing about.

This means ALWAYS paying attention to the holding and fixing of the part you are working on — damage usually results from careless handling or inadequate holding. In getting the nipples out I held the hooks on the breech in my lead lined vice jaws with the barrel supported on a padded surface, with a bit of cord to stop the barrel turning and pulling the hooks out of the vice, and with a pad under the barrel near the jaws in case it dropped out. That meant I had both hands free to work on the nipple, and could use any necessary force without risking the barrel coming free.

It now seems clear so I fitted the new titanium nipples and its ready to go. I nearly got to the point of drilling out the nipple, but that is a very last resort as it is likely to damage the threads, and that would make the gun less safe to shoot.

I must check the other two guns for blocked flame passages. At this point it had just started to turn, having broken the rust joint. Note the fracture surface — the nipple was pretty hard too.

We eventually got the nipples out of one of them, wrecking my tool on the way, and got all 4 noses out with some difficulty using a Mole wrench and lead sheet to protect the old nose — one needed a burst of flame to get it hot then a drop of water to cool it suddenly. But we completely failed to shift the nipples from one of the guns, even with heat. Anyway, a bit of fiddling and I was able to knock out the broken bits and put in a new one.. All working now. I put together Nicks little double barrelled pistol — the one I had trouble browning.

Its now quite a pretty pistol and the cocks line up and work! The other two Smiths are coming over tomorrow, so I can see if all the bits fit.

Not sure how much to charge, always difficult……. The only problem, if problem it is, is that my knurling tool ran properly in 2 of the noses, and in the other 2 it doubled up the indentations so made an even finer knurl. Anyway one of the trio of Smiths will have a finer knurl on its noses. I do not intend to remake them! When got there I found that they had changed my appointment without telling me, so it was all in vain! I got frustrated with the photographs I was getting — not sure if it was vibration from manually pressing the button, or limits of the Canon lens, so I reverted to my very expensive fixed focus Canon Macro lens and got bluetooth firing, and got much sharper pictures.

I also wanted to see how long it took to engrave lettering. The whole bottom line from marking the lines and setting out the lettering to going over it and tweaking any mistakes took 15 minutes — about 12 minutes for the main cutting and tweaking.

Letters are 2 m. Over time these factors changed enormously, although its somewhat difficult to look back and judge early antiques. There was a period in the 18th century where the attention was in the silver mounts and there was often very little in the way of engraving — elaborate silver mounts must have been an important differentiator to mark out better quality weapons and clearly added value. Even then my guess is that the cost of engraving was not too far out of the traditional fraction of cost.

This was coupled with a 24 hour turnround time! A top engraver might work on gun for 3 months, so the cost probably accounts for a bigger fraction of the overall cost. I got into this when I was thinking about lettering of guns and how long it took to do — I think all those 18th and 19th century guns were engraved very rapidly without a great deal of finesse — when you look under a microscope at almost any engraving of the period, you see great economy of effort!

Lettering is usually cut with 2 or 3 strokes for stressed verticals and one cut for unstressed, and all letters are cut in one cut direction before the work is rotated to cut any other cut directions. One interesting thing is that I have a fired cap, and the central pimple is blown through — I wonder if that is designed to happen.

Now here is a puzzle for visitors to this blog — what are these caps for? They seem to have a healthy load of priming? He raised the issue that many of those pistols had been rather badly re-engraved with the Public Office and Bow Street attribution and had just been plainParker overcoat pistols — he also thought it unlikely that a genuine one would remain unissued — both good points.

Anyway it made me get the pistols out and look very carefully at all the engraving under my microscope at x30 magnification — this convinced me that all the engraving on both pistols is completely original and all by the same hand. The slight corrosion and rust build-up in the letters, and the slight rounding of the edges is exactly what I see on old guns where there is no question of faking. The pistols may have been issued and had very light use — there is some wear on the steel, but other than a few scratches from slips of the turnscrew and a little wear to the corners of the barrel they are matching and only lightly used — a fine pair of rare pistols.

Even the insides of the locks are pristine. I cannot find any figures for how many pairs Parker supplied, but he was the sole? Thinking about engraving lettering and re-cutting or re-engraving on antique firearms, I came to the conclusion that every gun engraver of the day must have done the same things over and over again, and very quickly too, so that he or she?

Its still true that one develops particular hand movements and tend to produce lettering and scrolls that have a particular look. You can adopt different styles, but it tends to require more fiddling to get it right and that shows.

I did a bit of simple engraving on a few parts for Dick — touching up a brass lock, and putting scrolls down a cock, and a line round a pair of small cocks and engraving a couple of cock screws. Here is the splendid old yacht I bought back too……. Collapsed for 24 hrs when I got back though -bug but not the coronovirus. Also a load of old cameras — Pentax- and lenses — they do have some marginal value so I suppose they will have to go on ebay. A number of gun jobs have appeared — mostly small engraving jobs for Dick.

George was killed in the second World War in He was quite young by the standards of most experts — he died at the age of 39 — so I suppose its not surprising that its not perfect in every detail but overall its very well worth a read and fairly cheap second hand as there was at least one reprint. Its about 17 thousand times as far to the moon minimum , miles which usually takes 3 days……. And Bob was expected to return to earth at 5 p. Elon Musk eat your heart out! Not sure why — probably I let up in pressure on the drill and the titanium work hardened and the drill snatched when it restarted?

I did manage to make 2 in the end — you have to put just enough pressure on the drill to keep it cutting and not stop the feed, which is tricky with the tailstock. There is plenty about very early antique firearms, and fancy persentation stuff, a fair amount about pistols, loads about military stuff and a lot written about American firearms history, but the sort of guns that most antique collectors, particularly beginners in the UK might get hold of are quite poorly represented.

Most of the coverage is in books specific to makers, who by definition, are at the top end of the market and beyond the reach of many collectors.

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