Whew! (and nice guns...)

Bounce travel takes it out of you! The Vegas-Denver-Rochester swing pretty much sucks. Plus, the haul from Denver to Chicago was on one of United's lovely "Mexican bus" flights, needing only a couple of live chickens and a goat to make it the ultimate fun travel experience.

Still, one has to be impressed by Doug Turnbull's stunningly beautiful firearms. Both his restorations and his namesake guns exhibit a level of craftsmanship one would swear had passed from the world a long time back. Looking, handling and shooting his single actions and his 1886 big boomer lever actions (.50-110, essentially a .348 with the neck blown out to .50...Starline has the brass) I was transported back to those old gun magazines of the 1950s and '60s with their color plates of amazingly crafted guns.

BTW, Turnbull has some of the finest 1911s I've ever seen (and I''ve seen a whole bunch of 'em). One of them is a full-blown restoration of one of the first commercial 1911s ever sold (in 1912), with the deep blue blue Colt bluing of the period.

This trip reminded me of the enduring artistry of firearms, one of the things that drew me to them in the first place. Maybe we should do a coffee table book of modern custom firearms, so there's some sort of legacy for the next generation of shooters!