A Barrel WILL turn up, one way or another; the Gods will look after that.
A hundred and forty-seven years ago, this was the VERY latest thing, such an important development that Canada, then awaiting invasion from the US, received the very FIRST shipment of these new rifles. Eighteen rounds a minute against TWO from a muzzleloader: no contest. It was the AK-47 of the 1860s and, in one guise or another, it armed every important Army in the world for a few years.
When it was about 40 years old, the Army started getting rid of them. Its place had been taken by NEW rifles that worked like a door-bolt and carried eight or ten rounds IN them. A couple of years later came powder that didn't even make smoke. As far as the military was concerned, the old girl was useless.
They sold her off for a dollar and likely she spent many years on a farm, shooting Deer for the meat-locker or Cattle when one had to be slaughtered, protecting the family farm from Cougars and Bears and Skunks and Coyotes and Wolves and all the other things that preyed on the slow-moving Cattle and the flightless fowl which the Farmer thought were so good. Finally a NEW rifle was bought, one with shiny blue finish that carried half a dozen smaller shells, each one with more power than the old girl could muster.... and the old Snider was put behind the door and left. A few years later, she was moved out to the Barn.
The man who originally BOUGHT her grew old and passed away. The Snider stood in the hayloft and rusted, now forgotten except by the small kids who liked to play with it and the Pigeons who used it for a roost and crapped on it. The kids grew up and one of them took over the family farm and then, when he grew old, he moved into town. On of the things he took along was out of pure sentiment: his Grandpa's old Snider, the Barrel rusted inside and out, the Stock white from bleaching in the corrosive atmosphere generated by all the manure below it and all over it. He may have intended to have done something with the old thing.... but it was too far gone. Still, it was the last link he had to his Grandpa and so it stayed. It reminded him of sunny days in the hay-loft, watching his Dad and his Grandpa (now slowing down with age) as they went about the never-changing chores of a family farm.
Finally, he passed away also and the new heirs knew nothing about the old thing except that it was ugly and old and rusty and it stank. The thing on the side still moved and clicked and that silly little trap-door still opened and they thought that it MIGHT be just a LITTLE bit too good to go in the Garbage. So they gave it to YOU.
You got onto here and asked about it.
"Part it out!"
"Junk!"
"Impossible!"
But you didn't listen to them.
Instead, you expended a thousand bucks' worth of work on that piece of junk.... and you RESURRECTED it.
You made it ROAR again.
You got it back some RESPECT.
A lot of people are cheering for you, including a little kid who grew old, his father and.... Grandpa, who bought her when the Army got tired of her, more than a century ago.
She's YOUR gun now.... and no-one else's.
Thank you.
