Attitude adjustment

[Blicero]

  Call it maturity, prudence, conservativeness, preserving history, or protecting my investments, but my attitude about shooting these old guns has changed.

  Until recently, I've never owned a gun I wouldn't or hadn't fired. Guns are meant to be shot. That belief has gotten me into some baffling scrapes with the crotchety and Legendary "collectors" who frown upon shooting collectible & historic pistols & rifles. Now I find myself falling into that crotchety & conservative subset.

  It started about six months ago, when I sold a very good friend of mine a g43. After he got it home he sent me pictures of the cracked receiver cover about which I had no knowledge. I know for certain it wasn't cracked when I obtained it. It had to happen when I had it out at the range and it escaped my detection during the post-shooting cleanup. I apologized and offered him a 100% refund, but he was still happy to own the rifle, so he kept it.

  I was ashamed. Upset. Angry. The rifle, a notoriously fragile one at that, had survived service in a world war, unscathed (save for the shrapnel-damaged & field repaired section in the comb of the stock), and weathered the following decades in marvelously complete & functional condition. A few months in my hands and its legacy as a survivor had been erased. That is a disservice and an insult to history. Frankly, it's stupid. At that point, I decided to never shoot a g43 again. No exceptions.

  That was the inception of a new attitude, the impetus of which has crept into my other fields of interest- m1s, Lugers, etc. The newest of my acquisitions, and a decent chunk of my older ones, have been relegated to "won't be shot" status. Those guns, some moreso than others, have suffered the abuses of the ages, and it's fair to say they have earned a retirement.

  Look, I will never be the guy to jump on your back about shooting your historic stuff. I will still blast away with 80% of my stuff. Have fun with them! Just be aware that every time you fondle a Luger, you're creating wear in the grips. Every time you cycle a bolt in a k98, you're abrading away the blue inside the guts. Every time you fire a 1911, you run the risk of cracking a slide. Every time you schlep a 1903 to the range, you tempt fate with a dent in the stock or a compromised receiver.

  This stuff is likely painfully obvious to you all, but in my case, knowing something and living by its wisdom are two totally different things.

  Be smart, be safe, be prudent, honor history, and protect your investments.
 

 

   

[Dannyboy53]

Dang it Kevin, I hate that happened but there is never any way one can tell that the next shot will ingloriously retire a piece of history.

[Loose}{Cannon]

Suckage.. 

But hey!..  now you have shooters AND safe queens.   

[Blicero]

Dang it Kevin, I hate that happened but there is never any way one can tell that the next shot will ingloriously retire a piece of history.

I guess it all boils down to...it happens.
What?? Shit??
Yes, s.hit happens, Forrest, now settle down.

The problem with the g43 was I followed the herd:
"Only shoot mild ammo!"
"Don't shoot a g43 without a shooter's kit!"
I thought I was being smart about it, doing things the right way, but the construction of a g43 just lends itself to being overpowered and fragile. You can use a shooter's kit to alleviate that, but it's sort of like wrapping a mirror in 2 layers of bubble wrap before you run it over with a truck.

But the g43 is only partial to my point. Even some of the seemingly indestructible ones like SKS, Mausers, and Lugers should be retired. And really, if you've shot one Luger or one K98, you've shot them all. So why tempt fate and unnecessarily degrade the quality/condition of a collectible artifact just for the sake of blowing rounds down the barrel?

[running-man]

But the g43 is only partial to my point. Even some of the seemingly indestructible ones like SKS, Mausers, and Lugers should be retired. And really, if you've shot one Luger or one K98, you've shot them all. So why tempt fate and unnecessarily degrade the quality/condition of a collectible artifact just for the sake of blowing rounds down the barrel?

Who the hell are you and what have you done with Blicero?

What would be the criteria for 'retiring' an SKS?  Verified VN bringback?  Pristine condition '53 Izhevsk? refurbed but in current VG condition specimen, general run-of-the-mill shooter with totally worn out parts (I'm thinkin' Ugly Betty style here)? 

I see your point, but dang, I never thought I'd be more apt to shoot one of something (anything) than you would be!  I'm not big on safe queens, but there are certain guns in my collection I like to shoot more than the others.  There are other's that I have shot but I specifically don't like or want to shoot. 

I think I'm more of a "shoot them all at least once, but really only "use" a select few" type of guy.  Before I met you I would have been a "shoot a few, save more that never get shot" type of guy.  Now my milsurp mentor has gone all museum curator on me! 

[Dannyboy53]

So why tempt fate and unnecessarily degrade the quality/condition of a collectible artifact just for the sake of blowing rounds down the barrel?

Since you put it that way Blicero, it's hard to argue with that logic!

[Greasemonkey]

While I admit, I have been asked why, why do I have so many pairs of certain weapons?

Why, well if I find I like shooting a particular weapon, I do one of 2 things:

1/If I find a better specimen, it gets regulated to safe queen status, I shoot the other.

2/ if I find a another thats a little more worn, beat up, used, but not abused, it becomes the shooter, the other is retired.

Like my 2 matching Lugers, one of which is a papered bringback, break a part, value goes poof .. So find a non-matching commercial variant, shoot the snot out of it, if it breaks, dial up the parts line, fix it, shoot it some more. No harm no foul, it don't match, it's been well used and abused prior, it's already borked.

Also, same with extinct ammo, I mean, where am I gonna find 10.4×38mm Swiss Rimfire for my Vetterli...... I ain't, but I still have one. I could do a centerfire conversion, but why, it's fricken over a 130 years old, it's retired.   Would I fire it if the ammo fairy bought me some, sure, maybe once or twice, just to say I fired it, then thats it.

[Ol Relic]

I'm right there with ya, Blicero.  When I first started buying milsurps, buying a rifle I wouldn't shoot would have seemed ludicrous to me.  But now I have several "safe queens". 

Everybody has to set their own criteria for what (if anything) constitutes a safe queen, but for me, it's new old stock (unissued or virtually unissued), and types that are super uncommon for reasons other than condition.  The NOS stuff is safe queened because they're not making any more new ones, and guns like that are historically interesting in the context of manufacturing history.  The second because they're presumably monetarily valuable because of their rarity, thus financially risky to shoot.

[Blicero]

What would be the criteria for 'retiring' an SKS?  Verified VN bringback?  Pristine condition '53 Izhevsk? refurbed but in current VG condition specimen, general run-of-the-mill shooter with totally worn out parts (I'm thinkin' Ugly Betty style here)? 

Relic & GM just answered better than I could, but I'll take a stab.

It's all personal.

  What's important to you in milsurps? Certain eras of history? Particular models? Particular countries of manufacture? I love German crap but I could give two ****s if I destroyed a Lee Enfield or a MAS 

  A papered VN bringback with battle scars is no more interesting to me than the Russian relegated to crate duty in the salt mines. When I see a milsurp I see the means of production, the finished product as it's meant to be, the political atmosphere, the military ideologies, the relationships between nations in any given era, much more than whatever "history" or "characterdamage" it's earned during its service. That's why I love high condition in whatever has survived long enough to reach my collection. So I'd be far more likely, if I were prone to whimsy or bouts of idiocy, to shoot that 'Nam bringback over the Izhevsk.

Another way to go about it:
At what price point do you lose comfort in damaging or ruining a firearm? $300? $500? $2 grand? If you crack a stock or blow out the mag or crack a bolt on your matching Russian, you cut the value in half. Break a safety or crack a firing pin on a matching k98 and you turn a $2k rifle into a $800 one. That's one expensive trigger pull.

  I guess that's why I love bolt guns so much. You know how many times I've damaged or broken a part on a bolt? None. Care to guess how many times I've dicked something up on a Hakim, g43, svt40, and Garand? Heck, you know about most of them.

 

[Blicero]

The hypocritical part is for the past 10 weeks I've been concealing a 1943 1911, not the easiest or most comfortable task on a 6'1/160lb frame. So much for that one earning a retirement huh?  It just makes me feel...American...and safe, far more than that Austrian plastic eurotrash I've grown used to.

I don't know. I guess nowadays I'm just seeing what's locked in my safes as representative of the security of my future, not just neat historic range bangers. So this whole rant is somewhat in self interest.

[Ol Relic]

One other thing about using a milsurp as a regular shooter: the barrel of a high-powered rifle has a service life of a few thousand rounds.  Sounds like a lot, maybe, but if you start running 80 or 100 rounds through one every range trip (and go to the range pretty often), the round count can get up into the thousands pretty quickly.  It's kinda like those charts that show you how many sodas, etc. the average person consumes per year-it's always surprising.

Yes, these things are durable and were made for combat, but remember-the reason they're still around 75 (or whatever) years after manufacture isn't because they're indestructible-it's because they've languished in storage crates for decades. 

[escobert]

I personally don't own any safe queens. If I buy a firearm it's going to be shot. But, I also haven't had the chance to buy a real nice piece of history :p