Grandmother's Birthday

We got to go celebrate Grandmother's (Harry and Eleanor's Great Grandmother) 85th birthday. Unfortunately Harry and Amy were unable to attend the actual party on Sunday, in part because Harry has fully embraced the concept of the Terrible Twos.



Grandmother was in good spirits but a little weak to hold a big girl like Eleanor.

The rest of the weekend was pretty successful, with the kids somehow keeping to their schedules.



In our little language development classes we are taking to help Harry express himself we have learned the various classifications of children based on their language abilities. Harry started off the class as a "First Words User" but is moving on into the "Combiner" phase. Mom got evidence of this capability when she broke out the breakfast food for the weekend. Harry knows "coffee" and he knows "cake" and he quickly realized the wonderful result of combining those two words.



Dad had to do some work from home to make sure the "Exchange" had dealt with the time change seamlessly. This took a surprisingly long time to do but Eleanor was patient.



And after all that tough work was done, Dad relaxed with Harry to watch some Toy Story. (The actual order of weekend events may be altered to aid me in making a narrative.) Harry is completely obsessed with Toy Story (except when he is completely obsessed with spices.)

Swiss K31 Refinished

I got to shoot the K31 a couple of times since Christmas. The first time was in NJ in the field out back of Uncle Bob's house. My initial impression was that it was very very loud. I've shot shotguns and .45 pistols and little .22's but this was rather different. Mach 2 or so coming out of the muzzle means the bullet makes its own little sonic boom. Pretty cool.

Anyway, on that outing I didn't hit a whole lot until I got pretty close and got over anticipating the recoil. The second outing was to the NRA indoor range in Virginia. There were a bunch of Blackwater guys there with their Evil Black Rifles so it was amusing to pull out the K31. I did a bit better, though I was shooting "off hand" - standing without support. I'd post the targets but since they were human silhouettes it might look a little creepy. Next time I will shoot at concentric circles.

In between outings I refinished the wood on the rifle. When we were out in the miserable January weather, I noted that the K31 just sucked up the rain. There was no finish to speak of on most of the stock. A little Easy Off oven cleaner took off what remained and then some stain and a little polyurethane finished it off.



This photo shows the anchor points for the sling, though I do not yet have a sling... or a bayonet. I may have to rectify that before too much longer. Also evident is the fact that I couldn't really get the stock looking like new. Oh well, this way it looks nice and old.



I didn't do anything with the metal and you can see here how nice the finish is. The sight is adjustable for long distance shooting. The units for those numbers is yards. 1500 yards is just shy of a mile, for reference.



And here is a loaded magazine. The ammo is very pretty. It's nickel jacketed, that's why the bullet is silver, and sealed to the case with a bead of beeswax. Leave it to the Swiss to make bullets complicated.

Old .22 Rifle - Before, During, and After

This is a follow up post about Great Grandfather's old (naturally) .22 rifle. I mentioned having finished the refinishing for this old workhorse from the farm but I never posted the pictures. That is about to be corrected.

To Recap, this is what the rifle looked like when I got it from Uncle Rich. It looked like it had served long and hard depopulating the fields of groundhogs.





Here it is in the middle of stripping and sanding the stock.



And the final product. I went with a darker stain and a nice dark bluing on the barrel. All that is left is to grind off the old chrome on the bolt and blue that up. But I am in no rush.







And how does it shoot, you might ask? Intermittently. We had a bunch of "no fires" when we took it out a couple of months ago. I was using cheap Remington ammo and it was raining so more testing is required to determine where the fault lies. I'm looking forward to it.

Creepy Crawler

OK, maybe not so much creepy as cute.



UPDATE: The green tinged lighting reminds me of The Matrix. That is a little creepy, I suppose.

Old Video

Now that Eleanor is trying her darnedest to crawl, I decided to take a trip down memory lane. We're going all the way back to 2006 with this video of Harry trying to get places before he could crawl or even tolerate being on his stomach.



Mind you, that's only his "I'm mildly annoyed" scream.

Baby Pictures

The children continue to grow and gain new abilities. Harry is really starting to talk up a storm. It took him a while to get interested in verbal communication but he's quickly catching on. Why, he's even learning his spices and practicing his Rachel Ray smile.



Eleanor is plumping up a bit. It's a nice effect I think, very appropriate in a 5 month old. She has recently discovered that her big hands let her get into Harry's toys.



More pictures here from our trip to NJ over New Year's.

New Year's in NJ

K31

So this is yet another gun post. For Christmas I got a Swiss battle rifle called the K31. It's a bolt action rifle that first entered service in the Swiss army in 1931, hence the name. Bolt action rifles were standard equipment in WWI and even WWII, with the major exception being the US M1 Garand. The Garand was a semi automatic rifle that spit out a bullet with every pull of the trigger. As a result I have to find the appropriate ethnic restaurant if I want to hear any Japanese or German on this continent.

But back to the K31. The Swiss, being a people incapable of determining whether they preferred Churchill or Hitler, managed to stay neutral throughout all of Europe's great wars of the last century. Hence, the K31's were never fired in anger. Part of their success with neutrality hinged on the fact that the populace was armed to the teeth. In fact, the rifle I now own was issued to a Swiss citizen and was kept in his home. He was expected to show up, with rifle and ammo, in case of an emergency.

The guy who had my gun was named Mathis. I found this under the buttplate.



Mathis was a bit rough on the wood. Switzerland is cold and snowy and soldiers in the Swiss Army often wore spiked boots to help them traverse the icy Swiss Alps. Occasionally they would be forced to kick their guns free of the snowbanks they used as rifle stands. The stock shows signs of this kind of treatment.



I have already refinished the wood but those pictures can wait until I compile my range report. Needless to say it still looks old and if anything the stain I used only served to accent the various nicks, scratches, and deep gouges. I like it though.

So more to come. And some baby pictures too, of course.