Making a Muzzle loader Pistol

I just finished building a Traditions Trapper pistol muzzle loading kit. It took just about a month to build. It was really rough to start with so I had to fix a lot of stuff before I could move forward. I took off 2 brass pieces and replaced them with cherry wood which looks just killer!

I cut a big piece of cherry off a large board and used my table saw and a chisel to make the barrel channel, and the drill press and files to make a hole to insert a brass rod to house the ramrod. The brass tube was used in part to help stabilize this extra wood for the stock. I did have to notch the brass tube so that the piece that the wedge pin will fit. So I fit the 2 pieces together and used 2 ton epoxy to glue it together. Then I cut off the extra portion of the cherry wood so I could work with it.

I drilled holes through the base of the barrel channel in order to get epoxy all around the brass tube. I also waxed up the barrel and used excess epoxy to "bed" the barrel, which worked very well. Then I clamped it all together and let the glue dry over night, and then started to sand and file the stock in the rough.

I had to put bluing on all the steel parts and fit them all together. The sights had to be fit in the barrel, and final fitting of all the parts had to be done. Then I spent a week sanding and filing the stock to make it smooth. I sanded in a place for my thumb and it feels really good. Then I spent another week finishing it with 3 coats of light cherry stain, followed by about 5- 6 coats of Tru-oil with steel wooling between each coat. The last coat, I did not steel wool, but just rubbed a lot with a clean cloth. After a day of drying it feels just silky smooth.

Finally I got to assemble the whole thing and just see how cool it looks. I can't wait to go and shoot it! I just made a loading stand for it last night so I can take it to the range and sight it in. I used some dense foam to form fit the handle in, and then covered it with leather from some scraps I had. This way it will not scratch my gun when I am at the range loading it, and it is a very sturdy stand to let it sit in.

Newest Vineyard Photos

I haven't had a whole lot to say about my grapes now that the trellis is all in and they are just growing. They have just grown CRAZY this last month however. I like how you can see how many leaves there are by looking at the shadows on the grass. I can actually sit in the shade under my vines, just like the Bible says that 'We will all sit under our own vineyard and fig tree'. That is not word for word, but you get the meaning. I can't grow fig trees here, but at least I have the vineyard going!

I did get a new cluster of grapes growing off one of my Marquette plants right after the birds ate my only ripe cluster, so that is pretty cool. I do not think it will mature, but I am going to eat at least 1 before it gets cut off. I anticipate that it will be be VERY TART!

My Concords are growing very well and have grown up to meet each other, so that it is starting to get thick. I might start also growing a Bluebell up each side so that if the Concords do not produce these will. I don't know if I may pull the concords someday, but we will see.

I have tried Marquette wine from 2 different winery's now and I am just not that impressed with it. It is kind of a bummer. But I've also tried 2 different Frontinac Gris wines and have liked them both. So I think next spring, I am going to plant 10 more Frontinac Gris plants so I can make more of that and not just put all my eggs in the Marquette basket.

New Oil Paintings

I have done some more oil painting and I am just loving it! My second one is another Bob Ross mountain painting that I substituted pink mountain snow for grey because I had a bunch left over on my pallet.

The third one was from a picture of a sunset that my wife took while we were on a trip to Winona. This was my first original painting without having an example in a book.

The fourth one was a sailboat that was 2-3 miles away when I took the photo. I enlarged the photo 19 times so it was just real fuzzy. I wanted to paint it impressionistically, but I ended up blending all the colors together.

The fifth one is a copy of a Monet painting that I liked and that my wife said I could hang a large one in the house upstairs if I could pull it off. I think it turned out very well, and I have already bought a new 26x30 inch canvas so I can make the large one.

The sixth one is a copy of a photo of a villa in Tuscany, Italy of a vineyard that I liked. I just did this on watercolor paper in about an hour and a half. I just kind of went for it and it turned out quite well. This one, the Monet, and the sailboat are all little 7x9 inches. The other ones are on 11x14 inch canvasses. I got a real deal on multipacks of canvasses so they were only $2.40 each. This makes it affordable to paint one new one a week without breaking the bank. Also, using a 40% off one item coupon, I have been able to get new, large tubes of paint, and 50% off brushes have allowed me to get some nice brushes at a good value.

I have been busy lately, now that the trellis is put in, and just haven't done hardly anything except walk around among the vines. The things I have been working on are projects that have been put on hold for the spring. I finished building my powder horn for black powder hunting, and I am teaching myself to paint with oils.

I never thought that I could paint with oils, I just wrote it off that I would have to wait until Heaven to learn, kind of learning how to speak Hebrew. Well, I have started learning Hebrew, and now I have started learning how to paint. I have made 2 paintings so far and it is a lot of fun. My whole purpose in painting is to be able to paint my wine bottle label so I do not have to buy someone else's artwork. But along the way, I am finding all kinds of beautiful things that I can paint, so I am very excited about what the future holds.

My biggest news in the vineyard is my one grape cluster that has been growing this year. It has grown well, and started to turn color going from green to purple in about 1 week. But then, one morning I came out to see it, and it was gone. The birds had eaten all the purple grapes and left the 2 green ones. It was so much of a bummer. But I am glad that I learned this lesson this year instead of having my first crop get eaten next year. Now I will be prepared.

The vines are growing thick and starting to drape over the wires, and some are hanging half way down to the ground. My wife even said that it is starting to look like a vineyard. It is going to be exciting next year to see how it grows even more vigorously than this year.

Finished Trellis

As I look back at my previous posts and remember what my grapes look like right now, it is crazy what 10 days will do. I just finished putting the last wire on the trellis and this job is finally DONE! Just in time also. I would have been in trouble if I had not put in the posts and wires when I did, because the vines have grown so fast in this hot weather that they would have started to break off or get damaged from their weight just being on the strings. So a note to all those out there that might be planning to start a vineyard (Sam!), get your trellis built during the first year and don't wait for the second year to do it. It could get away from you and put you behind a year.

Some of my vines are overlapping each other now, which means that each of them are over 6 feet long. So my goal for the year of getting cordons grown out, even after cutting them all the way back to the ground, has been accomplished. Not all of the plants will get to this point, but 4 Marquette's in a row are this big already. I have high hopes for others as well. I am thinking that I will get some good production next year from some of them, and the following year (4th) will be great! A couple of my new plants from 2010 are doing really good, so they will be right on schedule. But everything will be growing good roots so if I do not prune everything back so hard next spring, they should be on schedule also.

I just posted on my Facebook page that I love doing art. Growing a vineyard is art because the plants are trained in such a way that they are fulfilling what I have thought they should look like for 2 years now. My trellis is better than what I thought it would be like, the plants are doing better than I expected at this point, I get to play with them each day and train them in the way they should go, that they have to be art. My latest idea is to paint my own custom wine bottle label with acrylic paints so I do not have to resort to using pre-made labels. It will cost a lot more in the long run, but I think it will be much more satisfying. I can't wait to start on it, but I have a lot of other projects to finish first.

I was reading John 15 in the Bible where J-sus is talking about how He is the true vine and we are the branches. There is a lot of spiritual significance to growing a vineyard. I would like to do a whole study on it and write up an hour's worth of teaching on it for a Sunday School lesson someday, that would be a blast! It is interesting that out of the 66 books in the Bible, only 1 does NOT have something about either wine, grapes, or vineyards, etc. It was pretty important to Israel to have references to these in nearly the whole Bible. It must be important for us today as well. That will have to be what I research and study.

Wires are up

It has been really busy lately. I got 5/6 of my wires up this last weekend and trained all my vines onto the wires and off of the strings. I still have 1 post to put in, but it has been raining and I need it to dry out before I can do it. Otherwise, the clay soil will dry up and pull away from the post. But with the 2 upper wires in, I bought myself some time. I planned it so I could just loosen the wires, dig and plant the post, and then just set the to 2 wire onto the top of the crosspiece near the screw eye, and use small gauge wire to connect the wires onto the screw eyes. Then, next spring after I prune, I can take the wire off the tightener and string it through the screw eyes and re-tighten it with a new crimp. I wound extra wire on the tightener so I could do this already.

After training the vines onto the wires, I pruned off all the growing points except the canes I wanted to grow longer. I tried this earlier this year on younger plants and it made a big difference in both leaf size and quality, and enabled the vines to grow longer. I think in a couple weeks it will bounce back and look great! Right now, it looks a little sparce, and not as filled in because I trained the vines to grow onto the wires where there was open space, not just so it would fill in and look full from the deck.

I am training 2 trunks up on each plant, and then splitting each one on the upper wire. Because of our potentially harsh climate in winter, if one dies off, hopefully there will be one left. This will take a little more management on my part, but that is the fun of it! It doesn't seem like work to be out there, just fun. Next year, this should fill in really nice and be even throughout the trellis.

I am finding out that my plan to grow vines on my chain link fence might not be the greatest idea. I have been noticing that if a leaf sticks out through the fence into the "woods" behind my yard, it gets eaten by deer, now that I know what to look for (from a previous post). So if I let them continue to grow on the fence, I think that anything that sticks out will get eaten, even my grapes! This is not acceptable. Therefore, I think I am going to have to install posts in my yard, maybe a couple feet from the fence, and use a 4 cane kniffen system to grow them on. I can get them a little higher by doing this also and make more of a wall of foliage. This should protect my vines and grapes once they develop, and keep the deer away at the same time. Now I just have to make sure that the 2 gates to the yard stay closed.

It is interesting that of all my new vines I bought this spring, how different their growth is from their location in the yard. The Frontinac Gris is kind of a slow grower and less vigorous than the Marquette. But the 2 Marquette I have growing in 5 gallon buckets so I can transplant them next year by the front door, are kind of stagnant. They had a burst of growth early on, then their leaves have turned a little yellow instead of dark green like the other plants. I hope they just stay alive until I can transplant them next spring, then I think they will grow great.

I have a guy at work that is willing to give me all the old cedar deck wood that he ripped off his deck because he is replacing it with new treated wood. I think I will use this to make the arbor out front if it is good enough, so I can get the Marquette growing out there next year. This is a great way to get good wood (cedar) to build it with. I really did not know how I could afford to buy cedar to do this project, but now I do! Praise G-d for His provision!