This thread doesn't seem to get enough attention!
Here's one of my rifles that needs a little bit of attention in the wood department. It's a Swiss Vetterli, chambered for .41 Rimfire (need to also convert it to centerfire so that I could ever have any hope of shooting it someday):
This here is its younger brother, a Swiss G11. This one's in 7.5x55 Swiss, and takes these wax-impregnated cardboard-like, metal reinforced stripper clips to feed the 6 round detachable magazine. Pictured with an original service sling and a Swiss 1889 bayonet:
There is a Schmidt-Rubin 1889 in the corner of the closet which fits between the Vetterli and G11 in history as a service rifle (among others) that I just realized I've never photographed. Maybe I'll get some tomorrow after work.
There is 'this':
But, nobody cares about 'that'
I picked this up for my brother's church group..Okay, okay.. It's not as bad as that sounds! My brother's church formed a shooting group a year or two ago. I went to one shooting event, and got acquainted with everybody. So, I decided I'd bring something 'fun' for them all to play with. (Of course with proper instruction to anybody choosing to shoot it, because I detest the folks all over Youtube who hand inexperienced shooters large caliber firearms with zero instruction whatsoever just to ultimately laugh when they inevitably hurt themselves):
Trusty ol' smoke pole. Mossberg 500A. This shotgun has actually seen a rather interesting life. It began as a "Cruiser/Persuader" model, with the interchangeable pistol grip only and polymer stocked configuration (back when I knew..less.. about firearms). I added the factory heat shield, a wooden stock with some tiger stripe, and the wooden forend, along with a Mesa Tactical cartridge carrier. One day while out hog hunting with an old friend, said "friend" stored my shotgun muzzle-side down inside of a very muddy/filthy truck's floorboard, while I rode on an ATV behind the truck back to the house (all on private property).
As we approached a venomous snake in the road, I had asked for my shotgun, and had some Winchester Super-X 00 Buckshot loaded into it. Unbeknownst to me, however, this shotgun which I previously knew to be in perfect condition when handing it to the fellow, now had a bore obstruction. As soon as I fired, I felt a piece of metal nick my shoulder, barely scraping me. After the landowner, and my friend hopped out of the truck to find out what had went wrong, the landowner was standing right next to a copperhead, previously unseen by any of us, as it must've slithered out from the bushes. As the snake was all coiled up, looking like it was about to strike, I dropped my Mossberg, drew my then concealed carry (a Glock 19), and was lucky to have planted a freedom seed into the cranium of said snake before it decided to plant its fangs.
Back to the shotgun, however.. The barrel had split, but only towards the muzzle-end. I credit the heat shield for helping keep it together and from doing more damage than it did. After some months passed, a forum member of a different forum offered to sell me a new barrel, which he re-finished from a blue to a parkerized finish for me, and that's where it currently sits. With a new barrel, and the same heat shield that has some battle scars (from other pieces of barrel hitting it at high velocity):
This here is my Beretta M9A3 with an AAC Ti-Rant .45 and Surefire X300U-A:
So on and so forth...I like threads like this, and we need more participants!
