Sitting in the shop this morning, contemplating a Browning BPCR in .45-60 that is to be scoped, when a man appears at my little half-door with an object in a towel. Ahhhhh......those mysterious shrouded items that sometimes come into gunshops that causes a tingling in the fingers and dryness in ones mouth from anticipation!
This one was placed on the door shelf and the owner slowly peeled the blue terrycloth away like a Burlesque Diva, I felt myself rise and float across the intervening space of floor between us with no memory of walking, there in the soft blue folds was a Borchardt!
Although I hear the owners story of finding it atop of a cabinet in an old rental property with my ears ....my eyes and fingers are telling me a story of a rifle built for the military back in the time when walnut and steel were expected to be married into a rifle instead of just co-existing to form a tool, I opened the lever and look at a bore still shining and crisply rifled............all ten inches of it.........Yes my children, this once tall and sleek warrior designed to campaign on the plains where it's superb unequalled accuracy would allow the lucky soldier that carried it the ability to smite the enemy at distances threefold what his opponents weapons were capable of.
Yes ....10 inches of .45-70 rifling supported by a homemade chestnut pistol grip and fore end, martially marked and with 30-40% original finish intact, a brass peg driven into one of the original rear sight mounting screw holes so as to take advantage of the accuracy Sharps built into it.
I am a strong man......I weep only now, when alone, I have found thru years of these type incidents that openly weeping in a gunshop is considered un-manly.
Ol'Tye,
A Saturday morning story,
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- Posts: 366
- Joined: Thu Jan 16, 2003 3:44 pm
- Location: Shenandoah Valley of Va.
A Saturday morning story,
Member #3, of the "Brought Enough Gun Club"
- Omaha Poke
- Posts: 972
- Joined: Tue Feb 25, 2003 6:52 pm
- Location: Edmonds, WA