Holsternet–a fiction

***

Holsternet System: Start

User ID: 443905419

Network.... Start

Sub-Net GPS: Acquired

TimeStamp: 042DF2D6

Holsternet Time Check: After Hours

Holsternet Place Check: Master Bedroom

Service Main Audio: Active

Service Main Video: Active

Service AUX: ShureShot – On

Holsternet – ShureShot: Active

Service AUX: TameEars – On

Holsternet – TameEars: Active

Network Connection: LifeNet

Network Node ID: M1911

Holsternet - LifeNet Streaming: Active

Safe Node: D-Link 76617

Serial Number Handshake:  Finished!

Network – Wi-Fi: Active

Network – Internet: Active

Serial Number Handshake:  Finished!

Network – Bluetooth (v.3.o): Active

Serial Number Handshake:  Available

Safe Node: Home Black Box

Serial Number Handshake:  Finished!

Holsternet  - LifeNet – Home Black Box: Transmitting

Holsternet  - LifeNet – Home Black Box: Streaming

Holsternet  - LifeNet – Home Black Box: Alert Condition

Holsternet  - LifeNet – Home Black Box: At Home Stay Silent

Holsternet  - LifeNet – Home Black Box: Contacting

Safe Node: Startravel Handy-Trav

Serial Number Handshake:  Finished!

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav: Transmitting

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav: Streaming

Holsternet - LifeNet – Cellphone: Active

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav - Holsternet Main: Connect

Serial Number Handshake:  Transmitting

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – Holsternet Main: Direct Connect - Streaming

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – Designated POC01: My Sheriff's Office

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – My Sheriff's Office: Phoning

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – My Sheriff's Office: Busy

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – My Sheriff's Office: Retry

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – Designated POC02: My Lawyer's Office

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – My Lawyer's Office: Connecting

Serial Number Handshake:  Finished!

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – My Lawyer's Office: Transmitting

Holsternet - LifeNet – Startravel Handy-Trav – My Lawyer's Office: Streaming

Holsternet - LifeNet – Bluetooth – Designated POC03: Neighbor Ron Willis

Holsternet - LifeNet – Bluetooth – Neighbor Ron Willis: Connecting Bluetooth

Serial Number Handshake:  Finished!

Holsternet - LifeNet – Bluetooth - Neighbor Ron Willis – Holsternet: Active

Holsternet - LifeNet – Bluetooth - Neighbor Ron Willis – Holsternet: Alarm

Holsternet - LifeNet – Bluetooth - Neighbor Ron Willis – Holsternet: Streaming

Safe Node D-Link 76617: Low Power Condition

Holsternet - LifeNet – Home Black Box – RifleSAF: Contacting

Serial Number Handshake:  Finished!

Holsternet – RifleSAF: Direct Connect

RifleSAF – Holsternet: Lockdown Condition

* * *

After being awakened by the sound of breaking glass downstairs, Linda Johnson took the pistol from her under-bed holster.

When seconds count, nanoseconds are precious.

Recent Arrivals–Seven Weeks

I've been working on putting a finish on to some pieces to make a router table, so that had to play through at take up valuable workbench space.  That project is nearly done, so now its back to the SKS.

At this point I have sent the SKS bolt to Murray's Gunsmithing as nothing, and I do mean nothing, that I can do could get out the firing pin retaining pin, which is necessary to install Murray's firing pin and spring arrangement.  If my 3lb. forge hammer can't do it, then the cost of getting a 5lb. sledgehammer is about the same as sending the bolt to get it installed, so off it went to someone who is used to dealing with impossible Yugo SKS bolts.

After that I used my rotary tool to get the retaining rivet on the handguard ground down to where the rivet can be removed.  Needless to say the first hit on that with the handguard being well braced and the punch centered on the rivet saw the punch go askew and mess up the ferrule holding the actual handguard in place.  Still I got the rivet out and the damage isn't horrific, and it was worth looking around for a replacement.

There aren't any.

Period.

And no one is making replacements for one of the most commonly ruined pieces on an SKS.  What I did find was a nice full used handguard with cracked wood from Apex, ferrule and all.  That came in so I now have a gas tube spare and a cracked handguard to play around with, after driving a standard pin out of the piece.  I am surprised that the ferrule is made of much thicker sheet metal on the spare (Russian I believe) than on the Yugo version.  This handguard is heavily used and didn't have much cosmoline on it, and it was cracked all the way through.  Just to experiment I did some turpentine cleaning with a nylon cleaning brush to see what could be removed with that.

The untouched half is on the left, the turpentine cleaned on the right.  Yes a lot of grime came off pretty easily that way.

Then came the mineral spirit cleaning on the untouched half.

Turpentine cleaned on the left, mineral spirits on the right.  Just by what I got off the piece on the right, I can say mineral spirits did an equal or somewhat better job to turpentine.  Both good for what grime ails your handguard.

After getting to a stopping point on the play-through work, I stripped the SKS stock to get the old, blackened BLO finish off.

I'm playing around with some color correction and the tonal gradations are more towards the handguard than the butt part of the stock.  Note the original handguard piece has also been stripped.

I got this snap of the grip to show the line in the stock at the transition point to the handguard on the center part of the picture in the lower transition.  That is seen on both sides of the stock and is either a milling artifact or the grain of the wood exposed by the angle of the wood when it was milled showing up the ring line like that.  It is an area I will look at more as I get down to sanding the stock to make sure it isn't an incipient crack.

Sorry about the lack of decent color correction on that, but it was worth not trying to get a good balance to show the growth lines in the wood.

The other side with a bit harsher color correction to bring the current color out.  Again the dark line shows up pretty well in the lower transition area of the hand piece.

All of these were taken with halogen lighting which tends to put a really bad color shift into the yellow, which I've tried to balance out via filters and levels.  As the lighting falls off the color darkens, naturally.

The underside of the stock.

Close up on the area of concern.  I thought that this area still had some finish on it, and it has gotten two doses of the soy stripper.  What is left may just be how the grain actually is when smoothed down properly.  As that is the area that gets handled the most it may have that coloration due to that.

And looking at the top of the stock.

With the finish removed the stock feels pretty well shaped, thus all the roughness and irregularities were in the finish, not the wood as I had feared.  That tells you something about the amount of care (or lack thereof) that was done in the application of the finish.

Next up is a gentle going over with 220, 320 and 400 grit sandpaper, done with the grain.  I'm not expecting it to take much sanding, actually, and there are only a few areas of roughness and irregularities that need to be addressed and none are serious.  Once that is done I will either use a high solvent tung oil mixture or platina shellac to get a sanding sealer coat on for some bronze wool work to get whiskers.  Then a 1:1 tung oil mixture for a first base coat will follow.  I haven't really decided if I want to do a traditional finish using BLO or Linspeed after that or layer in a light button lac or orange shellac between tung oil layers.  These are decisions I will make when I get to them as I really want something understated and appealing as the growth rings in the wood have a whole lot of 'pop' to them on their own.

Recent Arrivals - Four Weeks

At this point the SKS is stripped down and the majority of cosmoline is off the stock via light applications of acetone via rag.  Do that in only well ventilated areas!  With that off the assessment of the stock finishing is what I thought it would be: it is uneven, has drips and drops on it, and the underlying stock while having gone through two sanding phases doesn't appear to have actually been worked too much after basic shaping.  There is enough uneven shaping to show that areas of the stock that should be relatively flat and smooth just aren't that at all.  While those are limited in extent just after the firing port inlet on the right of the stock and on the buttstock on the right,  they do need to be addressed.  Visually its a mess.

Another set of shop projects moved up in priority while the SKS stalled out on getting out two pins: the bolt retaining pin and the handguard retaining pin (which is more like a rivet that has been flattened out and smoothed down on one side).  For those I scoured the message boards and found this message thread on the SKS Boards which addresses forming a hex bolt to have a pin at the end and then thread it into the windage tool.  Absolutely ingenious!  I'm waiting for a few bolts to come in from Bolt Depot and then will send those with the tool to my sister who works in a machine shop to get them finished down to a 1/8" pin pusher for the front part of the bolt.  I will probably end up having to dremel the handguard retaining pin and put in a replacement and for that I should have some decent pin stock which I can pound in and then just shear off the end with a hacksaw and smooth it.  I will give a try at just using the new tool to push it out, but don't expect much success there.  Either way the handguard piece must come off so that it can be finished with the rest of the stock.

I need to get a quick router table set up and need the workbench to do the finishing work on that.  I'm giving it a nice coat of Herter's Red and then will do a tung oil coating... probably 5 or 6 of them, and that will take about a week to ten days.

Reading up on final finishes means that I now have a supply of carnauba wax in to help get a wax/tung oil based varnish made.  I was doing the chemistry set sort of looking around with alcohol burners, stands, beakers and such until one fortuitous entry of 'alcohol burner set' got me the greatest possible invention for making this stuff ever: fondue sets.  Think of it you have the burner, you have an oil resistant pot, if you hunt around you can find those with actual lids to them, you have a stand and, if you are real lucky, you can get a stainless steel one so as not to live with '70's avacado green in your shop!  Found a nice one used for $25 delivered, 2 quarts.  That should last a lifetime of varnish making.

On the finishing front I do not give up on shellac so easily and look forward to that with a set of bench drawers that I need to make to get some order to things here.  Reading up I found that shellac wax is almost as hard as carnauba wax which means the button lac I picked up needs to be processed through to yield its wax and shellac.  That is a week to two week process and since the wax is only 3-5% of the material I would need to make a lot of shellac to get it out.  A quart ought to yield enough to do some tests with, at least, and it proves out I should then have a final varnish that would look good on most gunstocks and will only add a bit of luster to it.

That's it for this report, sorry for lack of pics but should have some once I get the pin pusher.