wes1761

Happy Birthday Ms. Duchess......a fellow Gemini!!

Gone to new owner

I just bought a 21' sailboat.....I pick her up tonight. I will try to post pics ASAP....

Selling my Brass barrelled Blunderbuss to try and get my boat. Its new, been sparked, Brass Barrel roughly .75 cal or so. This is the 15" barrel. Selling new at MVTCo for $555 now....I will sell mine for $450 plus shipping. This is what she looks like: http://www.middlesexvillagetrading.com/MSBB.shtml Thanks, Wes

Thanks guys!! Makes me feel all warm and Piratey inside!!

Insert Jealousy here...... I miss the Fort!!

Found a little sailboat for the kids and me, so I have to raise some cash. New, never fired double flint pistol. I have sparked it and flashed the pans for ignition testing only. It is roughly a .62 Cal. This came to me from Middlesex Village Trading with a broken butt, but it has been repaired with epoxy and a steel shank up the center. I also stripped it down, restained it, and rubbed it out with tru-oil. I am a distributor for Middlesex as well, and the locks retain the warranty for springs and frizzens. Will take $400.00 plus shipping of roughly $8.00 or so through bulk mail. Thanks, Wes

Slept right through it.....

I am waaaay jealous!! Iwanna work on wrecks!

marine archaeology has unearthed evidence that copper and lead sheathing was used on some Roman and Greek vessels, and from the 15th century lead was used for sheathing by the Spanish and Portuguese navies. John Cabot's son Sebastian, who in 1514 saw a Spanish ship sheathed in lead, may have brought back the idea of using lead to England, and certainly a number of English ships were clad underwater with lead in the 1670s. Other methods of protecting the hull were also tried in England and elsewhere, including an extra, sacrificial, layer of planks beyond which the teredo was unlikely to penetrate. The Dutch admiral Piet Heyn may well have experimented with copper sheathing early in the 17th century, and the British dallied with the idea of using both copper and brass during the first half of the 18th century. However, the earliest evidence of it being used in the Royal Navy came when an examination of the wreck of the 74-gun Invincible, which sank in 1758, revealed that she was partly copper sheathed. The first documentary evidence that copper sheathing was ordered for the keels of two British naval ships is dated October 1759, and in December of that year the keels of two more ships were sheathed in this way. Though experiments on other methods to prevent fouling continued at the same time, the first trial of a ship with a fully coppered hull began in October 1761 when the 32-gun frigate Alarm was sheathed in copper. This proved successful but few other ships were similarly treated. This was partly expense and partly because galvanic action had occurred between the copper sheets and the iron bolts by which the planks of the Alarm's hull was secured to her timbers. Though a sloop called the Swallow was built in 1770 with copper bolts, thus becoming the first ship whose underwater hull was totally copper fastened, it was some years before the copper sheathing of smaller vessels began. Then in 1779 orders went out to copper the entire fleet, and in 1783 orders were issued that copper bolts should replace iron ones in naval shipbuilding. Copper sheathing then became general, and other navies soon followed suit.

The reason I did copper is I didnt have enough brass! I have seen iron, brass, german silver, and I remember a reference to copper parts. I figure I can explain it (depending on the year I am portraying) as it needed a replacement butt plate and on the ship I was on, I used a small piece of hull sheathing........more modern than GAoP, but I like it Thanks for the compliments guys!! Pistols are next!

Done made the buttplate out of copper.....

Got some nice chunks of walnut from a buddy, 2 are thick enough for blanks, and the other a bit thin, so it might end up as a bench. 2 I rubbed out to see grain and they are nice! rough walnut slab, 4 inches thick (at thickest) and for size, its in the back of my F-150 More new toys on the horizon!!! Carl, I'll be cutting your blank this week.....

City has opened the newest park complete with a 140 acre lake. Lake is 1 1/2 miles long, 1/2 mile wide at its widest point. Really nice breeze going almost all the time so I am looking for a smaller sailboat to start running the kids around. There are currently 50 slots for RV's, a boat ramp, trails are almost complete, and the marina is almost complete. There are a few kayaks and canoe for rent, and you can put your own boat in. No gas or diesel motors are allowed to be used on the Lake. The primitive camping area is slated to be put in too.... NOW, all I need to do is get a Pirate Festival going!!

I also forget that we are getting into the beginning of "event" season, since it is warming up a tad....now if it would just rain every OTHER day for a change!! Or quit all together for a bit....

A few posts, then a bit of quiet. I think its just alot of people working and being busy......I sure hope its not dying...this is my favorite place in cyber land!

Here is a story tha was on the news a few weeks ago.... http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/258177/97/Local-swashbuckler-builds-pirate-ship

Saw this on yahoo: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110527/ap_on_sc/us_blackbeard_s_ship

Bo'sun Carl.....I'll try to get the stock blank cut out for ye, I am not 100% sure if I am going to get down to the Fort...we are close enough that a drop off/pick up is gonna be easy. Wes

We haVE had shoots there in the past, you can walk to the river. Its roughly a mile or so...used to be fairly good trails....

Prayers for your Cousin on the way Bo!!

Mission...I am still looking into making that Trepan....just running out of research material at the present. Will keep you posted... Commodore Swab...I still have a bunch of extra lock parts!!

That PBS documentary was on Popcorn Sutton... http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=popcorn+sutton+moonshiner http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/the-last-one-the-end-of-an-era/Event?oid=2468684

As far as a tutorial, look up "Popcorn Sutton" and see if there is a way to watch the documentary on him. There was a documentary out there that showed him doing a run. Also look up the Foxfire books, there was one book that covered it as well. Good luck, I think you might have a problem looking for it online.......people get spooked pretty quick...

Feel free to add me as an Itinerant Tinker...maker of functional and ruggedly useful items that are sometimes more usable than pretty.....or just a name...My first name is Wes, so I am tinking of becoming Wesley Harlowe (different spelling of my middle name).....and just leaving off me last name.....