Trail Seeker

Sometimes we say things things that have potential dual meanings and it bites us in ways we didn't expect. Take this experience for example, back in the early 90's I was building muzzleloading firearms, not for sale, but for personnel use. The difference in my case was I building them, not from a kit, but from components. A L&R lock, Davis triggers, a chunk of beautiful curly maple wood and home brew tow plate for example. I had assistance from a competent gun builder named Ron who offered help for a minimal fee to a group of black powder enthusiasts.

After building my first rifle, I started on another one. This one is a petite percussion rifle fashioned after the Vincent brothers from Ohio. This rifle was for my wife. My rifle is a flintlock and the frizzen had a little to much slop in it, this was an annoyance that I thought should be remedy. I got a hold of Jim who has some amazing talents in metal work, he agreed to build me a new screw that holds the frizzen in, it would take up the slack and make the frizzen feel like it was solidly in place. When I picked up the part from Jim, he charged me $10, I thought that was a lot, but I also realized he gave me a cut price since he made the part from stock material and the machining involved took him some time.

Back at Ron's shop, I proceeded to tell the group about the part I had made, I followed the story with the comment "that is the most expensive screw I ever bought. They all cracked up laughing.