Saturday in the Basement

Today's a work-in-the-basement homeowner day. Also, the locksmith is coming up from Denver to install a boring, old-skool mechanical lock on my gun safe, which admittedly has worked fine since I took the lock apart and Radio Shack'ed the circuit board. That safe will move into the secondary role when the new Liberty safe — with a mechanical lock, natch — is delivered in the next couple of weeks.

I was swamped this week working on TBD: SURVIVAL, which will go into production next month for a July 1 premier. I'm now pretty comfortable with the format and have a good start on filling in the subject grid. Pincus and Janich are on board for this one as well. I'm also very excited about SG2, a new spinoff show from SHOOTING GALLERY that focuses more on rock and roll, so to speak. You'll see that show July 2010. Hoping for a clone to be delivered any minute now...

I ordered a couple of the Lipsey's special run Ruger Blackhawks in .44 Special yesterday. I have to say that these .44s, built on the smaller 50th Anniversary Blackhawk frames, may well be the ultimate single action revolver. A lot of his, probably starting with Skeeter Skelton and fueled by (my friend) the great John Taffin, have spent a bunch of money with people like Hamilton Bowen (shown below; click on the image for a big 'un!) and Dave Clements converting old 3-Screw and Flat-Top Rugers to .44 Specials. I have a .44 3-Screw from Hamilton and a magnificent restored 1950s-vintage Flat-Top .357 from Dave. I'm thinking the new .44s will become my cowboy action shooting main match guns...yeah, I won't be able to run with the whiz kids and their reduced load .38s, but I'll be cooler!

And as a benefit, I have a new holster rig from Nick Asadi at Tombstone Leather Products made for my 5oth Anniversary .357 Blackhawks, so the ,44s should fit just fine.

If you don;t have a single action revolver and think you might like to try one, I heartily recommend the .44 Specials! So would Skeeter.