A quiet Christmas season

I’m writing this the evening of Christmas Day. We’ve got about four inches of fresh snow on the ground and the temperature is holding in the low 20’s. This was very much a classical “White Christmas.” We had a quiet day with the traditional holiday meal of turkey with all the trimmings. I may have a piece of apple pie a little later. It was a good day!

Things have been quiet the last week since we’re in the middle of the holiday season. No meetings or other group projects to work on until after the new year. I find myself enjoying the down time. There are several small personal projects I need to finish over the next week or so. With the change in the weather and the future weather predictions I’ve heard, things should be looking up to get in a trip ice fishing. If I got started on things, I should be ready to make a trip with only a day’s preparation ahead of me.

Most of that day would be spent finding and organizing my ice fishing gear. That includes making sure the snowmachine and ice-auger are running properly, getting the rods/reels/tackle dusted off and ready to go, and checking on the snowmachine trailer so it is ready to haul the machine.

Since I’m a senior, I already have my PID card (a permanent hunting, fishing, and trapping license) so I don’t need to chase that part down. If you’re under the age of 60 and haven’t gotten your new 2020 sport fishing license yet, do so before venturing out on the ice. I’m sure the “brownshirts” will be out in force to check for compliance with the sport fishing license requirements.

I suffered some damaged firearms as a result of last year’s earthquake. One long gun had a small television set fall on the end of the forearm, gouging the wood and leaving a scar about an inch in length. I sanded down the gouge and refinished the area. The damage doesn’t affect the firearm’s function, but it does leave a blemish, potentially lowering the value of the gun if I want to sell it down the road.

The rest of the damage to about six to eight other guns resulted from having a corrosive liquid splashed on the firearms during the earthquake’s shaking. The fact I literally couldn’t get to the guns for about three weeks afterward to clean them up didn’t help. The damage is primarily a loss of the bluing on the metalwork where the liquid splashed. One shotgun set up for shooting rifled slugs has a large area of spots where the bluing was removed from the barrel, but it functions just fine — it just looks odd.

I was checking this gun the other day and found I had failed to adequately clean it around the scope and mounting rings. The scope is an older, steel-tubed fixed-power scope in aluminum rings. The corrosive fluid had gotten in between the scope rings and the scope. The steel tube had rusted and had some light pitting. The rings were unaffected. I broke the mounting down and cleaned both rings and scope.

When I tried before on a couple of the guns, I couldn’t get a cold-blue solution to re-darken the damaged barrel finish. I tried again on the steel scope tube and the finish worked this time. The pitting and other rough spots are still noticeable, but it is better protected with the cold-blue than it would be if left untreated.

I had a newer shotgun scope which I mounted on the slug gun. I mounted another older fixed power scope on the firearm which would have gotten the repaired scope. If things work out when I’m done with refinishing the damaged scope, I might mount it on another gun it would be better suited for than the scope currently on that gun.

The damage hasn’t affected the function of any of the firearms, but the guns look more “beat up” than they had before the earthquake. I try to baby my guns and keep them in good shape even though I use them. I wasn’t happy to find the damage I found when I was finally able to check the guns.

With this recent gun project, I’m got four or five rifles which need to get re-sighted in. With winter here, finding a place to re-sight these guns could be problematic since most of the shooting ranges are either closed or inaccessible. We’ll figure something out.