Parts Shipment the First

Mmmm...checkered slide stop. Apparently the AO frame is mil-spec or thereabout. This one was a drop-in fit.

Next up, replacing the hammer and trigger.

Auto Ordnance 1911A1: Adventures in Cold Bluing

Once upon a time I picked up an Auto Ordnance 1911 at a gun show. I'd been in the market for a government model for a while and of all the offerings in my admittedly short price range the AO seemed the best of the lot. It had a number of features that appealed to me. It was a pretty basic gun - not a whole lot of extra features, but I liked that. I liked that it had the proper vertical slide serrations, and that it had plain checkered plastic grips (Springfield Armory...looking at you here). And I liked that it just looked right. Just a parkerized base model 1911 that wasn't lugging around a billboard on the slide (a la Springfield and Rock Island).

So I shelled out the princely sum of $325 American and went home with a new toy. There was but one issue with my new wondergun: the finish.

It sucked. I mean, we're talking Remington-870-Express-field-finish leave-rusty-fingerprints-the-day-after-the-purchase sucked. I assumed when I bought the gun that it was parkerized because it had the correct tint. Non-reflective and gray with maybe a touch of green somewhere back in the process.

It wasn't parkerized. I have a number of guns that are. I have an M1 carbine I bought a few years prior that absolutely positive will not rust. I have a 1937 S&W Brazilian that I had parked that hasn't discolored in the least in five years. I have a 1903 Springfield arsenal rebuilt in 1944 with a finish that looks like hammered shit - but it's parkerized, and it too refuses to rust. Which brings us back to Auto Ordnance and their mystery mix. Which, regretably, is nowhere near as tough as the finish they put on their wooden grips, which after several painful and frustrating hours one night I decided would be one of those few things to survive a nuclear holocaust (the others being Twinkies, cockroaches, Cessna 150s, and Keith Richards).

Thus began a magical adventure in shoestring refinishing work that, unbeknownst to me, would become a yearly ritual. Usually this minor voodoo ceremony takes place in the late summer when the humidity is at its worst and those lovely rusty cancer spots start appearing with alarming frequency. Offhand, I think is the fourth year I've refinished this particular pistol. The first time wasn't pretty. Me being young and dumb and possessed of the twelve dollars needed for a Birchwood-Casey value refinishing pack, I figured this couldn't be too hard.

I flipped through the information pamphlet that came with the kit. Looked easy enough - clean and degrease, steel wool, blue and rust remover, clean and degrease, soapy water, perma blue solution, and oil bath, and and overnight setting period. I think. Pretty sure the first go-around I just looked at the pictures. Come to think of it that's probably what happened the second time, too.

At any rate I set up shop an enclosed space, popped the cap on three different chemicals (at least two of them mildly toxic, I think) and went to work. All in all I didn't do half bad, considering. I got most of the solution on the pistol, which I'd shown the foresight to partially disassemble, and I think they even went on in the right order. I wrapped everything up in maybe thirty minutes, cleaned up my mess, and wandered off to bed and a night's worth of sweet, sweet chemically-enhanced dreams.

In the morning I considered my handiwork by the light of day. It was a funny kind of bluing - all blotchy and uneven. Looked sort of like camouflage. Or like it'd been refinished by a moron. I chalked it up to crappy materials and that was that. Except for one small detail.

Apparently cold finishes have to be set properly. This means following the stuff in the book, rinsing the parts with water, and drowning them in oil. But not just any oil. Birchwood-Casey preservative oil! Which I didn't have. That's when I learned that if instructions call for something by name...it might be a good idea to have some on hand. A couple of shop rags later I'd wiped off most of the solution I'd put on the night before. But it quit leaving greasy tracks on my hands and it wasn't rusted so I called it good. And that was that.

A year or so later...the time came again. I bought another kit, field stripped the pistol, and went to work. The cleanup was considerably easier this time as the gun had almost zero finish. What little was left after the first escapade had been worn off, and in its place had grown more rust. But by this time I had a secret weapon: steel wool. But still in the throes of youngness and dumbness I overlooked the crucial fact that while steel wool has marvelous scouring abiliities it also had the unfortunate tendency to shed. I repeated the process and when I sealed the gun up at the end I'd almost bet it was half an ounce heavier for the steel shavings left inside. A surgeon, alas, I am not.

Me and my favorite pistol then spent a glorious year of shooting and regular cleaning. It didn't jam, I shot minute of milk jug, and together we burned through enough ammo to have furnished a tri-country crime spree and made John Dillinger proud. Every once in a while it would spit out a couple of flakes of steel dandruff and by the next annual refinish event I decided I ought to do something. I bought a can of BC's aerosol cleaner/degreaser and went to town. By the time I finished those internals were spotless. Not a speck of dust.

What I didn't realize was that cleaning and degreasing meant removing lubrication. So when I put it back together for a third time I did so without putting on much in the way of oil. But it kept ticking. I shot a little less that year, sprayed it down after every range session, and let it spend most of its off time lounging on a pillow full of dessicant.

The next time I figured out that you need to clean/degrease, refinish, and oil. I probably could have gotten that sooner had I bothered with the instructions, but hey.

Which brings us to this year. After five years of pretty good service my precious was looking sort of ragged around the edges. Being marginally less young and dumb than previous, I came home last night and reached a decision. This time around it was going to be total war. No stone unturned, no part left un-retouched, and no more splotches.

And here we have the results so far. Complete disassembly (first time for that - reassembly promises quite the adventure). All the parts I'm going to keep have been refinished. I've got a checkered slide stop on the way with plans for a short spur hammer and a stamped GI trigger for now. Perhaps someday I'll get around to the checkered mainspring housing.



Updates to come as the disaster progresses.

Calexico

Years ago, Atari came out with a first person shooter by the title of Dead Man's Hand. Being a fan of westerns (and games where I get to shoot things) the box art caught my eye on a supply run for printer paper. I walked out of the store a few minutes later having snagged it from the bargain bin for the princely sum of $12.95 American.

Dead Man's Hand is a fine game in my estimate. Not terribly difficult for the novice player, the controls are simple and straightforward, and it features a rather ingenious scoring system that essentially adds limitless replay value to what would otherwise be a middling gaming experience. Perhaps I'll get around to writing a formal review at a later date.

At any rate, I had unknowingly picked up two gems. One was the game itself. The second was the musical scoring which, as I came to learn, was provided largely by an unfamiliar entity listed in the closing credits only as 'Calexico'. Unfamiliar with what a Calexico was or what it might do, I took to the internet.

The first page of my search led me to youtube. With the dawning realization that I was looking at an actual band I clicked on the first link which was, I believe, The Ballad of Cable Hogue. I must have watched the video half a dozen times before I recalled that there were others available. I watched everything youtube brought me and thereafter I counted myself a fan.

My first CD was Carried to Dust - at the time, their latest. I popped the disk in the CD player and listened to it onthe way home. Having heard maybe one or two songs from the album I didn't know whether I'd wasted my money or not. I recall listening to the full CD once and the impression that it wasn't as good as some of their other stuff, but it wasn't bad. But a funny thing happened - I listened again the next day and heard things I had missed, and while the disc doesn't have the atmosphere of some of their offerings it turned out to be pretty good overall. I suppose it gets under your skin.

I purchased a second, The Black Light, in preparation for an upcoming long range vacation. I was going west and I recognized a fair number of songs from the back of the case. As it happens the Black Light probably the favorite of the four I own. Not only does it have a marvelous western vibe running through the background, it makes for exceptional cruising music - something I can safely say about most of their catalog. The music and lyrics have a particular bite when you get far enough out from modern civilization or far enough into the remnants of the old. If you (like me) consider yourself sorely out of place in this century you'd do well to lay hands on a copy.

The last two I bought together. Spoke, the band's chronologically earliest offering, and Feast of Wire, which like a few of their other albums seems mildly schizophrenic the first few times around, yet settles into a kind of rhythm later on. As with all their music there lies a sense of movement. Not necessarily progress, but the feeling that the world is grinding slowly on to a future strange and remote while curiously familiar to that we've left behind.

So what is Calexico?

Calexico is rust and sand and horse sweat. It's saddle leather and hot blood and the baking desert sun. Woven through the lyrics you get crime, folly, tragedy, and the retelling of stories that have been told since man could speak and will live on as long as there are men left to tell. It is ageless and timeless yet pristine and new in its antiquity. If you've read anything of Cormac McCarthy's that has even the remotest connection to the west....you put that to music and you're in the ballpark for Calexico.

Definitely worth a look by my estimate.

The Limitations of Research

Second to firsthand experience, research is probably the most important aspect for the would-be writer. Of course it could be argued that actually sitting down and typing your soon-to-be bestseller is the most important, but to anybody who actually writes that kind of talk is blasphemy. Seriously - nobody who actually writes actually wants to follow through. Not when there's a whole internet out there full out of other aspiring authors too busy putting off their masterpiece in favor of wasting bandwidth with likewise delusional souls who believe that, someday, somebody somewhere will give half a damn about their precious.

And that's why research is great. It's a grand opportunity to delay productivity in favor of surfing the web, usually accompanied by drawn out AIM and chatroom sessions among wannabes whilst keeping a browser window open (and minimized) so you can claim you're hunting background stuff for that suppressed germ of a novel (also minimized). To the uninitiated, this is pure unadulterated bullshit.

Pfft. Shows what they know.

But research, like mind altering substances, has a downside. And like mind altering substances the ultimate result won't be obvious for some time (although excessive research probably won't result in you standing on a dimly lit streetcorner in the wee hours of the morning selling yourself for that one I-swear-to-God-this-is-the-last-reference-source; but I suppose that depends on the degree of your addiction). Usually the worst of the side effects lie dormant until you've compiled sufficient materials to adequately cover in depth all the fun little nooks in crannies that - honestly - your intrepid readers will overlook.

Then it strikes the beginning writer. With a vengeance.

Let's say you've finally got it. You've reached the point where you know your subject matter backwards and forwards, at least from a technical standpoint. In due course you've accumulated a small library of data in various formats. You could probably take a test and recognize most of the relevant information, maybe pass if you're lucky. You won't have the same understanding as if you'd actually...you know...gone out and done it, but still.

So you resign yourself to inevitable fate. You sit down at your computer (your typewriter, presupposing you're one of those literary types who thinks people care that you use a means of word processing that's been obsolete for the last half century; alternately, you may just be one of those with a sadistic bent towards yourself) and commence to grinding out what will someday become the Bestest Selling Novel Ever, henceforth marked for brevity as the BSNE.

And this is where the problems start. You're typing along. Making good time, even. And then you hit a point in your writing when you pass beyond your firsthand experiences with human interaction, dialogue, sex, drugs, rock, roll, or sub-molecular engineering.

No problem, right? That's why you did your homework. Now's the time to fall back on that reference cache you've been building all along. Sweet, eh?

Well, no.

Because by and large, trying to write on technical knowledge gained secondhand has one of two possible outcomes:

a) it completely stalls the progress of the story whilst you go into gory details of your newly acquired expertise, giving your hard-won readers the impression that they've transitioned from your otherwise smooth style to a mistakenly-inserted clipping from a shop/field/armory/heavy equipment manual, or,

b) you only thought you understand the concept, so you jar the reader out of the story while making it painfully obvious (or hilarious) that you don't know jack about shit

(I suppose theoretically you might actually get it right. Of course, that makes for a far less entertaining and snarky blog, so I ignore the possibility altogether. Nobody wants to read about things going right.)

Either way, this doesn't bode well for your future. Unless of course you were smart with your cash advance and stocked up on tuna, peanut butter, and pork and beans. If so, you may yet be able to move into the nearest hobo jungle and live well. Perhaps you may become their king. And I salute you.

For those of you who still cling to the feeble hope that you'll someday make a living solely off your writing, this presents new problems. Chiefly, you've alienated a chunk of your target audience. You know those people who didn't respond when you asked for help on the boards? Yeah. Apparently they possessed the knowledge you could have used. And while they weren't willing to help you during the creative process, they're more than willing to leave you a one-star review on the on the retail book site of your choice. Cold, huh?

Well, no. Not really.

Certainly, it would have been helpful for the been-there-done-that guys to come riding to your rescue. But they weren't obligated. You were. The chief quality control inspector for your work is you. You can't count on help from fellow board members, internet dwellers, ersatz reviewers, or editors. If you want it done right, it behooves you to learn it for yourself. And no, self-taught doesn't amount to much when it comes to technical detail.

This is the Achilles heel of researching for fiction. This is why so many otherwise competent writers fall flat in the most crucial aspects of their story. Not because they don't have the heart or the desire, but because they exceed their practical grasp.

For instance:

Let's conjecture that you've formulated a story around, say, a NASA engineer. Fine and good on paper. Unfortunately, the trouble here is twofold. Short of actually being in that aspect of the realm of all things aerospace you don't have the nuts and bolts hands on knowledge necessary to know whether or not your story is plausible. Assuming your story IS in fact plausible, you'll likely find that any actual NASA engineer who takes time to read your story will - despite their assurance that it's not bad - keep close to the vest that it's painfully obvious that you're not a NASA engineer.

For the record this isn't something limited to your high-end sciences. It works out the same for a number of topics frequently appearing in fiction. Since the blog here is trending western, I'll make the example in that vein. Personally, I've read entirely too many westerns where it becomes painfully obvious that the author has never ridden a horse, fired a gun, or slept outside. Why is it obvious? Easy. I've done all of the aforementioned (though in truth I've never tested my luck to the point of shooting from horseback).

If you've never been shooting, having an eagle-eyed gunslinger for a protagonist is probably not the best choice. If you haven't spent at least a little time looking at the world over a horse's ears, you'd do well to avoid the professional jockey or ace horseman as a hero. If you've never slept outside, you probably ought to seriously reconsider the feasibility of writing a western. This goes double if you've never been further west than, say, New Jersey.

Of course, this isn't to say that it's impossible for you to succeed with the aforementioned limitations. But it does mean that the odds are very, very long.

It also doesn't mean that you need to give up your aspirations. Rather, it means you need to be approaching them differently. Get out. See some of the world. If nothing else, get a job - you'll learn all sorts of fascinating minutia that you can turn into credible material for a workable tale, even if it's not your project of choice.

Also, you'll make money that can be traded for products or services. Much easier than bartering with canned goods.

Reinforcements!

Strange news. Today when I went to check the mail I found a curiously nondescript package waiting. Once the padded envelope passed the taste test and allayed any fears of an anthrax attack I brought it inside.

It seems I'm now host to a small band of Confederate cavalry troopers. I did not see that one coming.

Curious. Most curious.

The Importance of a Frontier

A frontier, generally defined, is the outlying territory of a proscribed state, region, or otherwise defined geographical body. In popular thought it entails a chunk of territory nominally under the governance of a specified body, with varying degrees of control and perhaps limited enforcement of law or delivery of services by the aforementioned.

In American culture, the frontier is often understood to mean anything west of the edge of civilization roughly from the time of first settlements along the Atlantic coast up to approximately the turning of the 20th century. Essentially, we're looking at a ballpark figure of, say 1600 to 1900 A.D. The initial understanding of the frontier would have been anything beyond a few miles inland, moving further in time to be marked by the Appalachian range, the tropical southeast, the Great Plains, the arid southwest, the Rockies and, ultimately, the Pacific Ocean and points east. Admittedly by my definition this could include later United States ventures in the Orient, but in the circles I frequent I have never once heard of America's adventures and misadventures in the Far East falling under the purview of the frontier, so I'll omit those references for the time being.

So.

That leaves us the idea of the frontier on the North American continent as it pertains to the westward expansion of immigrants from northern and western Europe. Yes, I am Whitey. Fish-belly Whitey unless I spend too much time in the sun. I am neither Hispanic nor African nor Asian nor American Indian to any appreciable degree, so I'll leave those viewpoints to others better prepared and qualified to discuss them in any detail. I'm also aware that what the majority of Europeans and newly-minted Americans viewed as westward expansion translates to an incursion as far as some of the preceding are concerned. If you feel compelled to discuss some of the finer points - hey, I've got a comment button at the bottom of the post. Feel free to add your two bits.

Now - on to the point.

Westward expansion began in fits and starts. With the earliest colonials on the east coast counting themselves as citizens of their respective home states and remaining largely dependent on the same, civilization on the continent generally remained small and isolated near the shore, particularly in close proximity to ports and harbors through which the colonies could receive supplies, military aid, and new settlers. Time and the natural growth of colonies would send hopefuls - both native-born and newly immigrated - further west.

Not until after the American revolution did the continent see any form of organized exploration. This came in the form of the Lewis & Clark expedition (1804 - 1806) a federally commissioned survey dispatched with the aim of evaluating the territories recently acquired from France (via Napoleon Bonaparte) in the Louisiana Purchase. The primary goal of the expedition was threefold: chart the and ascertain the navigability of waterways of the Pacific Northwest, primarily but not limited to the Missouri River; make record of European presence and the threat of later intervention in American affairs; and determine the availability of natural resources and the suitability of the territory for future settlement.

Unsurprisingly, the findings of the party raised considerable interest both government and private. Thus began the first widespread movement of Americans from the original colonies. Cities soon after grew up along the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. Further gains were made in 1818 with the fledgling United States' picking up the area surrounding the Red River (which comprises, partially, the present-day border between Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana) through a treaty with the British. A year later, some of this new claim was traded away to the Spanish in exchange for Florida.

The next large scale acquisition came in 1845 with the admission of Texas - lately having revolted against Mexican rule - into the Union. The annexation would provide an initial gain of lands claimed by the Texans in addition starting anew war with Mexico. At the close of the Mexican-American War (1845-1847) a victorious United States paid for a sizable tract above what would become the familiar U.S. - Mexico border. Some six years later, the Gadsden Purchase brought the boundary to its present location. This was chiefly to a facilitate the construction of a transcontinental rail line, initially planned much further south than was eventually completed.

In the interim, the California gold strike at Sutter's Mill lured more Americans west still. Several hundred thousand went west. Roughly half reached the gold fields by sea, remaining shipboard the better part of a year. The rest went overland, crossing the Rocky Mountains on foot or by wagon. By 1855 the rush had subsided and migration dropped, spiking briefly in 1859 with the Pike's Peak gold rush. The numbers would not rise again until the close of the American Civil War (1861 - 1865) when America once again turned west, following the newly laid tracks of the Union Pacific. In 1869 they met the rails of the Central Pacific in Utah, and four years after close of hostilities a man could take the railroad from ocean to the other.

Thus the wave of desperate, displaced, and hopeful - former soldiers, prospectors, and businessmen - left the cities of the north and the ruins of Dixie for a new and better life. The west of the day offered a new start, new opportunities. A man with nothing could build for himself a good honest living. Or a dishonest one, were he so inclined. This became the era of that springs to mind at the mention of the American frontier; the rough, wild years before law and civilization fully caught up with settlements between the Mississippi and the slopes of the Rockies. The age of the self-made man, the cattleman, the gunfighter, the outlaw, and the iron lawman as related through movies, books, and television.

By the middle 1880s the era was winding down, and by the early years of the 20th century the majority of the land was fenced off, the native tribes that harried settlers mostly killed off or confined to reservations, the buffalo gone, and law and order firmly entrenched. The age of the gold rush and gunfighter passed into dime novels and television serials.

Now. Why do I make a point of all this? Why throw all this out there in its condensed form, especially when you can find all this information - and considerably more - better organized and more eloquently put elsewhere?

Well, because I've been thinking. I've been pondering on the meaning of the frontier - what it was, how we view it, and how - for the most - we no longer have anything comparable.

I believe we're lesser for the fact.

To illustrate my point, I'd like to bring up to arguments I've gotten on the matter. The most vocal of the two claims that space is a viable frontier (lots of Star Trek fans I have, I suppose). Another faction, less represented, tells me the same of the oceans. To both of those I'll concede they have the makings, but I'll counter that it's not the same.

A classic frontier is about as egalitarian as you can get. It's open to everybody, regardless of language, blood, education, or political bearing. To my way of thinking a frontier is something open to the common man, something he doesn't have to pay to experience. Something that doesn't require he present a degree or a paycheck stub or anything so commonplace as a driver's license. To be a part - to stake his place in the world - all he needs is legs to take him there.

Now there's some great innovations come out of both the space programs and undersea exploration. At one point in my childhood I was certain I'd grow up to be an oceanographer or a marine archaeologist or something similar. I can't claim as strong an enthusiasm for the stars as I hold for the deep, but in either case it's a moot point; nobody's getting into that line of work unless you're A) a college graduate working for a given institution, or B) independently wealthy to the point that nobody cares how smart you are.

That means, regrettably, that short of a lifelong commitment most of us will never see Earth from orbit . We'll never see firsthand the things that live and lie on the floors of the world's oceans. That right there tells me that neither can be called a frontier. A field of study, yes. An exotic playground for the privileged few, certainly. For the rest - something that can only be experienced secondhand.

A true frontier offers a challenge for all who accept. It offers adventure for the willing, fortune for the driven, and a second chance for the destitute. It allows a man indentured in earlier times to be master of himself and his own livelihood. It acts as a safety valve for society at large, siphoning off those that don't feel compelled to play by the rules of civilization. You don't need formal education. Wits, yes. A college degree - hell, a high school diploma - markedly less so.

I believe that with the end of the frontier, with the loss of unsettled and lawless places the world over, mankind has begun the slide into a kind of dulled servitude. You go out - you get a job - you work it until you die. You don't need to explore. There's nothing LEFT to explore. Wherever you may go society has already been, leaving you nothing but the same constricting bars as and padded corners as the drab city you left. America has become homogenized to the point of its junk food. The hamburger you buy in Tennessee is the same you buy in Colorado and New York.

Nowadays a man can be born into that same life of slavery. Unlike his forebears a century before, he can't escape. There's no escape left to him. No mountains to which he can flee, no river he can cross, no land where he can be his own man. He can be a company wage slave or he can starve. Presuming he makes it to retirement, he may find that the men for whom he traded large chunks of his life have lied and cut him loose with a fraction of his promised benefits because, alas, once he stops working he ceases to be useful. They may then sleep soundly at night believing themselves shrewd and sound businessmen.

They don't need the frontier. They never have. The frontier is of no real use to kings or lords or dictators.

The frontier is the domain of the free man.

Lord, how I sometimes hate the modern world.

An Introduction, of Sorts

Being a man born in the wrong place in the wrong century, I don't suppose it makes much sense that I start a blog. Naturally, that's just what I'm doing here. I'm not especially good with technology as it pertains to software and computers, but I can get by all right. On occasion I flatter myself to think I have something interesting to say.

At any rate, I have no great regard for the modern world. I dislike its traffic, its congestion and its blatant consumerism. I'm more than a little antisocial in that regard. After some consideration, I've come to believe that my generation has not yet truly had to face the kind of hardship and deprivation that made this country in the first place. We're soft - and to delude ourselves into thinking otherwise we manufacture crisis out of inconvenience.

This does not, however, mean I subscribe the idyllic versions of the past. I suppose I'm something of a revisionist history fan in some regard; the myth of a golden age in any era is a personal peeve of mine.

But - plenty of time to touch on that later. In the interim I hope I can add something to this strange online world of ours, throw out the occasional factoid, and maybe get a couple of grins in there somewhere.

Thanks for reading,
Gold River Prospector