As I flipped my shooting usa calander over to october, I finally got an Airgun picture . If I was a kid for only one day I would have a slingshot in my pocket and a airgun/ bbgun in my hand and a dog at my side ,just like the kid in the picture.Now I am an adult and I was always thinking that a Barnes calander would be pretty cool to have . A new Barnes airgun photo on every month .
Gary
How many years worth of calanders would I have ? Hmmm


Ps: this is a Winchester from around 1970ish in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West Cody Wyoming .

Thanks
Kurt

Nice Kurt, thanks1
Jeff

Hi Jeff.

You are going to have to teach me to post Bro. Haha. Look at yours and then mine at the same time! Ha

Hi Kurt,

Good idea. I've thought of it before and just never knew what to do about it. Maybe with today's "Print One and Done" possibilities like the Walmart photo lab, it would be possible.

I've gotten myself up to my eyes in so many projects that just seemed so neat. Enter with a huge smile on my face and in my heart. I draw artwork. I engrave die plates. I make tool steel stamps. I think and prototype. I make up samples and photograph and edit and post. And wait ....

Get a couple of people with big smiles and are thrilled to get a piece of the project .... and then an equal number if frown mails asking when their order will be done. So I really feel like a duck in a shooting gallery Kurt. Half afraid to have fun or push a fun project.

I was just thinking when driving home. Same topic as Aaalllllllllllllllll of the things I've taught myself to master. And how throughout four decades plus ..... I've had to pretty much badger people to let me do some detail work on their projects. Listen to this .... there's a website online ..., it does NOT sell and it does NOT push any given work. But is posts pictures of knives and throwing axes and such. Well, it records people's likes and comments. There is a compartment of style that the readership likes. I mean it reeeaaaaaaallllllllly likes. The knives show a crusty pockmarked background steel. Most have just been hammered to beat up the steel. Pitted in any way possible. The the edge is ground on to about a third of the way across the width of the bade. That leaves a real thick heavy blade. To this, the makers rivet on slab scales of wood. That's it. Might have a lanyard hole. Might have a pig tail of Paracord and a wooden bead or some such. That's it. Now, it there is a sheath, it's leather. Textured to look all beat up. Pitted piece of iron used as a punch to texture the leather.

End result is neat. I like it. It's gonna be a horrible blade to use because it's thick like a chistle. It won't slice. But you can hack away with it. If it's a bigger scale, they really love it. And, I mean they REALLYYYYYY LOOOOOOVE it. It will have 4,500 likes and hearts and hundreds of comments begging someone to identify the piece and say where to get one.

Now, when someone posts an engraved piece that's inlaid and polished .... Yeahhhh .... not so much. It will finally get several hundred likes and six comments. UNLESS, the engraving is really primitive and sketchy. If the inlay is crooked and elementary. And it's finished dark and muddy. Point being - the more skill, skills, skill sets, detail, concentration the piece took .... the less it's desired.

Now, to the bone in the pork chop: do you KNOW how many people can/could make the first style described? How about the second type? Let's agree that we could not even count the number of people who could make the first type. We get down to counting on fingers and toes for the second. Can you "outbid" the first style's twelve million plus makers? No. Can you out produce them? No.

When I get where I'd like to make a few simplier pieces to pay some bills, I'm always torn. I know plain rules. But plain doesn't show decades of skills and it doesn't pay bills. Skilled takes time and costs. But reputations and decades of skill sets want to make visible quality. I was/am torn about making items like belt buckles, pocket cases, boxes, etc. I'd like to make a new or a few new Stamp/Dies. But I always sell a few and then .... and plain always sells better.

It's a terrible thing to be an Artist when you want to paint a room with a mural and the customer wants .... "Flat Biege". Haha.

Ahhh!!! You can see my brain is shaking off pain and wants badly to create. It was born creating. But it's going to go thru a stressful period where I'm not going to be able to work fast enough, make enough, catch up enough, and won't have time to Create. But; I might just be able to make a did or two. A plain one???? Haha. Any ideas readers? Subject matter you'd wear? Nike? Reebok? is Tommy Hillfigar still marking clothes? I always just buy plain ones .... Ohh!!! DUHHHH!!!!!

Kurt. Regarding gun numbers. You will not believe me, but I don't know. It's terrible. But I began in a fit to prototype and prove I could make many types and expand all the boundaries of the envelope of airguns. Then my health sandbagged me. It's been a series of catch up, prototype, deal with health, catch up, build, move .... and never go back and number. I've posted them publically since the beginning. All the information is there but not tabulated. My bad and only explainable in the setting it's taken place. But, there's lots and lots of materials, tens of thousands of pics, and gazillions of gigs of postings.

Thanks for the chat Kurt,
Gary

Gary
I know I get it . I feel it pained you to make a fixed blade knife . With such complex thought pattern and talent it's NOT your best but I love mine and I know Jeff does too .
Did you know that Michelangelo was a sculptor and architect , ? Can you believe they called him to paint the ceiling of a chapel ???? What the heck . He was not happy and I'll show you who can paint . That's probably why it took so long . I would have mopped on a coat of white and said see YA ! But kinda like you ..... I'll show them
Anyways the Walmart calander would be great . Maybe I'll run an add in the wanted section of the Rendezvous , Wanted 11 pictures of different Barnes airguns.....wait make it 10 hehehe . I'll hafta think about it

Thanks
Kurt



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/04/2016 09:05PM by kurt wag.

Hi Kurt,

Hah. I read "The Agony and the Estacy". Great read.

I guess my main take away point from all that ramble was my constant amazement with the normal reader's passion over the Simpliest possible rendering of something. Something which, in most cases; they could make for themselves.

I'll be back. Dinner. Yummm ..... Man Like!

Good dinner. Yummy.

Hey. All that has just been thinking out loud. No life changes involved. No dolphins harmed in the canning of this thread.

Kurt, it would've fun to seek out pics we have enjoyed of the different Airguns I've made.



Gary

Yes I agree with you on all points gary and I'm guilty too . I watch a couple of guys on YouTube make a knife in 3-5 min . This one fellow speeds it up and for the couple min it's on I think hey I can do that . We all know it's not that simple . But easy to learn IF someone shows you how AND sets everything up for you . I think about all the welders I've given test to when hiring . Within a couple of hours I could teach them how to pass the destructable weld test we do . Now apply that to the task at hand or throw a big gap to fill or dirty material , pin holes ,porosity , worm tracks and I'm back over teaching again . Those things are edited out of the final video .

The entertainment and short attention is what keeps me looking at the videos but I usually start picking them apart .

Thanks
Kurt