Is Anyone Out There?

 I'm still wondering if it's worth trying to revive this blog. Once upon a time there was a Site Meter and I could see that a few people read this thing. Seems the dog ate Site Meter and so that's gone, and there are no comments, so, is this worth the effort?

The Sharps Model of 1874

 The Sharps is probably the most famous of the old west rifles that was the least made. It's roots were in a percussion breechloading rifle used in the War of Northern Aggression by the Blue, before the development of the brass reloadable cartridge. The Sharps model of 1848 was not liked by the big brass of the Army, it was too easy to fire quickly and the high brass feared that the troops would waste ammunition. It was also much more costly to make that the muzzle loaders of the day. Only the Berdan Sharpshooter 1st and 2nd Regiments were issued these rifles although a few other volunteer outfits bought them. I sometime wonder how much the war would have been shortened had the government gone ahead and spent the money for the more expensive rifles for all the troops.

 Oh, the word Sharpshooter had nothing to do with the fact that they shot the Sharps, it's derived from the German, "scharfschutze" long before Christian Sharps was ever born.

 Post Civil War and the Great Westward Expansion there were two major stumbling blocks in  the way, the American Bison and the "Indian" tribes. There were simply no fences that could stop a buffalo herd from going where it wished, eating and trampling crops and causing domestic cows to join the herds. not to mention the odd notions of the tribes thinking they had the rights to the land.

 The Army having pee-poor luck at corralling the tribes the idea came along to exterminate the buffalo and the Great Slaughter began. It started slow with just a few hunters supplying meat for the railroad crews building the rails 'cross the plains,  then someone figured out how to tan the hides of the great shaggy beasts and make the leather for the drive belts of the great factories of America.

The Sharps factory started converting it's percussion rifles to cartridge soon after the war but between 1869 and 1871 they start making what became known as the 1874. It doesn't have to make sense, it started when there was no model number. It was only later when they started calling it the 1874, when they developed another, less popular, model, the model of 1877.

The Sharps was initially chambered in .40 and .44 calibers in two lengths and then, soon in .45 and .50 calibers. The initial cartridges were bottle necked, only later did they discover that bottle necked cartridges stocked with black powder give accuracy destroying hard fouling just in front of the case neck. We still aren't sure exactly why. At any rate the forty caliber cartridges were mostly for target and hunting smaller game, few thought they were big enough for buffalo, elk and the great bears of the West. We call the cartridges today by their caliber and powder charge, ie. .44-77, .45-70, etc. Back then they called them by the caliber and case length, .44, 2 1/4, and 45-2.1 No matter what you called them the old buffalo rounds flung a chunk of lead weighing an ounce or more at something over the speed of sound.

 When the Army developed the .45-70 round it soon became popular in the Sharps, also, as well as the previous government cartridge, the .50-70.  Hunters discovered there was little difference between the .44 and .45 calibers but the fifties showed a marked increase in killing power. There were two cartridges in .50 caliber, the .50-70 and .50-90. Both were referred to as the Big Fifty. The .50-90  was the rifle a feller named Billy Dixon picked up at the battle of Adobe Walls in  June of 1874.  Twenty-eight buffalo hunters and traders held of some 700 odd Comanches and Kiowas. A hunter, late famous scout. Billy shot a Medicine Man off is horse at a later surveyed distance of 1538 yards. Dixon later won the Medal of Honor at the Buffalo Wallow fight as an Army scout.

 The Sharps Company was essentially a custom shop in it's heyday, making it's rifles essentially to order  A buffalo gun was usually heavy,  at least twelve pounds, going up to as much as twenty to reduce recoil over long strings of shots.Barrels were usually octagonal, thirty inches or so long.If memory serves 34 or 36 was the maximum offered.  Double set triggers were an extra cost option but were usually ordered. The standard sights were a buckhorn rear and a post front ut almost all the ones shipped to the buffalo hunters went with tang rear and globe front sights, or the telescopic sights of the day. 

  A Sharps fitted for the buffalo range would cost two months wages of a factory worker, three times that with a telescope. Yet a hunter with a crew of skinners could make that in two days. A bufflo running crew would consist of one or more hunters, at least two skinners per hunter and a cook. 

 Sharps were not the only buffalo gun of the west, there were a lot of Trapdoor Springfields, Remington Rolling Blocks and Ballards out there, too but the Sharps is the most famous. 

The great buffalo herds were wiped out by the time anyone built a lever action repeater strong enough for the buffalo cartridges By then Sharps had closed it's doors, literally having killed the reason for it's being. They like to say that Winchester was the gun that won the west. Sharps made the west safe for Winchester. Without the big buffalo cartridges the anemic Winchester shooters would have been trampled into mush. 

Trump

 The Donald is still, when last I  heard, leading in the Republican polls and the Washington Republicans are in a quandary about it all, they simply cannot understand.

 After all, there is no record of Trump being conservative, or even being center-right, if anything he's always been a crony capitalist. A little history might be in order. In '06 the economy was doing fine and somehow a bunch of wild eye leftists took over Congress and promptly torpedoed the whole economy, Bush didn't help much what with being busy trying to win in the Mideast.

 When, in '08 leftist notions killed the housing market, dragging the rest of the economy down the media dubbed it the Bush recession, paving the way for a pair of leftist Dems with no record of ever doing anything useful fighting it out for the nomination. The political party that trademarked the Republican War on Women decided on a strategy of bros before hos and nominated our current Golfer in Chief and kept both houses of Congress, the next couple of years were a nightmare for the economy.

 So, we sent Republicans to take over the House. They immediately elected a gelding as Speaker.Instead of fighting, he rolled over. Sometimes he cried on TV.

 Meanwhile the White House and the media kept on blaming Bush for all the problems .The Washington Republicans did nothing. We got this new "health care" bill passed that somehow gave no care to anyone but did cancel the policies of millions of citizens.

 Came another election, a presidential one and somehow we got another it's his turn Republican that the base couldn't stand.He would only attack other Republicans, never seemed to fight for our side. Somehow, a large portion of the base stayed home on election day and the Pipsqueak in Chief pulled it out. We had several Republican candidates for the Senate that the Washington Repicans found beneath them and did not support and so the Dems kept the Senate although they lost seats and they lost governors and did not regain the House.

 Teh Republicans in Washington kept crying tears the sie of horse turds, saying things like that nastty TEA Party won't support us when they, themselves would not support Republican TEA Party candidates.

 Finally came the 2012 election when Republicans won both houses of Congress, finally controlling the purse strings and able to fight back, as they had said they had to. "If only we had both houses we could do something" They did nothing. They are still doing nothing.

 Want to know why trump? Why a crony capitalist with no record of conservatism is ahead? It's simple, it's the geldings in the Washington, DC wing of the Republican Party. We little people have given you our money and our votes and you've pissed them away, over and over. That's why Trump.

Winchester 92 Short Rifle

In the spring Maria Isabella and I decided to take a trip, she had some surgery coming up and, at our age such things are always a crapshoot so we wanted a fling, just in case. So we took a drive out to Grand Junction, Colorado with a stop in Dodge City on the waay. We first stopped in Dodge city, it looked nothing like the set in Gunsmoke. I guess Climate Change has made the difference.

The main purpose of the trip was to look at a rifle we wanted to buy, a little Winchester model 2 short rifle, the takedown model.  We drove out, looked at it, shot it and then, when we got home, jumped through all the hoops and bought it. It is one of the new ones built in Japan in the .45 Colt cartridge, something that Winchester never did from 1892 to 1942 during the original run of these rifles and carbines. Notice that it has the rifle buttplate and the octagonal barrel.

 When we left Grand Junction we drove to Denver and saw one of Maria's brothers, then wnded our way toward home, slowly. We spent a night in a postage stamp sized room just inside Kansas and then saw Hays, drove into Wichita, spent the night and saw the old cowtown there. Then we stopped and bought a hatand a couple of oversized bandannas at a hat and westernwear shop, plus a pie safe and shoe shine bucket at an antique shop.

 It was a fun trip, even though no one in Dodge City ever could explain why a US Marshall was throwing the town drunk in jail. We spent my birthday there and every time I turned around Izzy was making total strangers sing happy birthday to me. By the time my birthday was over I wanted a divorce and we weren't even married yet. My next birthday we are not leaving the house.

Is This Worth Reviving?

 Hello, world. I've been out of pocket for almost two years now, recovering from my late wife's death.I'm wondering if this blog is worth trying to revive or if, perhaps I should start a new one or just keep on with Facebook with family.

 Those who have been through this know just how depressing loss of a spouse is. I will not claim any great strength but I did manage to avoid drink and drugs, that might count for a little something. I can only credit a loving and benevolent God.

 In the Spring of 14 I started digging my way out of the hole. First thing I did was go buy a Pug puppy that helped me get out of myself a little. Then I joined a couple of Internet dating sites, nothing much came of it for a while until the Fall of '14 when I met a lady. The first thing she did was force me to get off the dime and go see my Congresscritter about why my VA pension was still in limbo after over two years.

 Next thing I knew I had 100% VA disability pension sitting in my bank account, backdated. So, she took some of it and bought us a Sharps buffalo gun. So I did the only thing I could think to do, I married her. Any woman that can buy a Sharps is a definite keeper.

So, now we're looking for a new, improved Resume Speed, Texas, one with room to shoot a big rifle. We may have found it, thirteen acres with a house, barn and stock pond.

 The top picture is us in the Long Branch Saloon in Doge City on a late spring trip.

 So, I'm wanting to start writing some. Should I stick with Facebook? Start a new blog or try to revive this one?  There will be lots of adventures, learning to load a real buffalo gun cartridge with black powder and lead bullets, other things like moving.