Krag carbine

[5MadFarmers]

http://www.5madfarmers.com/ria_new/ria_carbine.jpg

The thing fascinates me. Some anomalies are evident.

Another week in Mecca. Not really Krag related though.

http://www.5madfarmers.com/ria_new/ria_1904.jpg

Sigh

[Fishnerd]

Where were you?

[5MadFarmers]

Rock Island. Looking at:

http://www.5madfarmers.com/ria_new/ria_1903s.jpg

the museum stuff is interesting and all but what I was doing was:

http://www.5madfarmers.com/ria_new/ria_tape.jpg

research via microfilm/microfiche and:

http://www.5madfarmers.com/ria_new/ria_snl.jpg

Dead tree.

A good time was had by all.

Well worth the trip if you can make it. They have a lot of guns. Like these:

http://www.5madfarmers.com/ria_new/ria_carbs.jpg

[5MadFarmers]

In a bit more detail perhaps. I live a few hours from there - it's a pleasant drive all and all. Periodically I can spend a week there doing research. "Research" means taking digital cameras and the wife. She goes through film while I do the dead tree. This time I had two cameras and a lot of spare SD cards and batteries. All day she snaps screen shots of tape records while I photo the books. When I get home I download the photos to my computer and then it's process the stuff. How many photos? "Thousands." It'll take months to get through this batch. After I've gotten through them I'll know what to grab next. For the wife it's easy - she just grabs the next tape. I'm after the other stuff and I have to have the indexes updated to know what I'm missing. This time I was after some specific items and was able to get that. I also used serendipity to find other stuff. In a couple of months I'll go back for another week and more photos.

The first time I went I was after some specific Span/Am records. I found what I was after and then gave consideration to the time I could spend there. The wife is doing the tapes from beginning on so she's not at the Krag era. The stuff I was after this time wasn't really "gun related" in a direct way. I was after ordnance records of various types. The wife is very patient with my research, she did spend a week of vacation going through ordnance records for me, so I do what I enjoy. Digging. Digging into strange stuff.

Weekends I spend at the local library doing pretty much the same thing. Kind of pathetic maybe but I enjoy having the answers to my questions.

[Dan Shapiro]

I'd be willing to make the sacrifice and do the right thing by taking some of those unsafe 'low numbers' off their hands. For free!

[5MadFarmers]

Take another look at the top picture - middle gun. That is one of two 1892 carbines. Looks like a short rifle.

The middle rod bayonet '03 is serial #1.