I ordered from Gripmaker. I am a little disappointed with how much work it is going to take to make them fit. He sent a practice piece to work on first. I have it close but some of the areas needing sanded down is getting colse to the checkered areas

Would love to see how they turned out.

Shows you don’t need a lathe, mill, bandsaw, MIG welder, belt sander, drill press, buffer, surface grinder, arbor press, bench grinder, heat treat furnace, etc etc etc to build a rifle! But I use them anyhow. 

Doug Dukes' "Firearms of the Texas Rangers", page 208:

"Frank M. Moore, lieutenant in command of Co. D, (Frontier Battalion), located at Camp Bear Creek in Kimble County sent a message to Major John B. Jones at Austin (in August 1877).
Moore reiterated the need for eight additional "Winchester improved carbines" as well as a request for six "Forehand & Wadsworth pistols" if they could be purchased at reduced prices."

The author draws the conclusion that the six pistols requested most likely were the F&W Army or Holster revolver in .44 Russian, .45 Colt or .44WCF, and not any of F&W's pocket models.

(This book is required reading for anyone interested in the Texas Rangers and their armament.)

Howdy Shotgunners especially black powder shooters,

This past weekend I was experimenting with my recalcitrant '87. I thought roll crimped shells would eject more reliably than star crimped (they did). The kicker was that a buddy gave me 4 of his roll crimped BP loads. I needed at least 6 for the stage. I shot the BP loads first and finished with smokeless loads.

The next day when i went to clean the bore, I found a weird hard grey crust in the bore. It took a stainless tornado brush and copious amounts of Windex to scrape off. After the bore looked bright, oiled patches.

Is mixing black and smokeless a no-no? Has anyone else seen this happen? I plan on learning how to roll crimp some smokeless loads to make that damned '87 work better.

Rev. Chase

The true cause of the gunfight at the OK Corral wasn’t about cattle rustling , a dirty deal between Ike and Wyatt or enforcing gun control laws.... The genesis of the fight and hostility between the Earps and the cowboys was because you had a large percentage of the people who lived in Tombstone at that time that were civil war southern confederate sympathizers and saw everything through this prism....Allegiance, loyalty and tribalism resulted from the scars of the civil war and the more I learn and read about this period from the people who actually lived there and wrote about it.. I get the strong impression that many of the men who  moved to that frontier community did so to get away from what they perceived as northern federal government tyranny and perhaps establish a community that reflected their southern values and morals... They very much resented and even despised the Earps for their northern, union allegiance.

This part of the story of Tombstone of course probably wouldn’t sell many Hollywood movie tickets.

As far as movies telling the real story.. The David L Wolper documentary narrated by Lorne Greene was pretty good and has an early 70’s charm to it... It was actually filmed at the OK Corral in Tombstone as well as the Crystal Palace saloon and the film producer paid to take down the Fremont st OK corral wall to film the gun fight , the actor that portrayed Wyatt Earp carried what looked like a antique Merwin and Hulbert pistol witch I thought was very cool.,The BBC actually did a very good job with a one hour film documentary they made.. If you can ignore the thinly camouflaged British accents of some of the actors.. it was pretty historically accurate.. Right down to the costumes, holsters and black powder framed Colt saa replicas they used in filling.. Someone involved in that production knew his or her stuff.