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Last Updated: Aug 28, 2009 - 10:45:21 AM |
"The past isn't dead; it isn't even past."
— William Faulkner
Here's a memory that sometimes comes bubbling up from the tar pits in my head:
I
am maybe 10 or 11 years old, and I and my father are in the gunroom,
what might be a toolshed in other homes, and he is meticulously
teaching me to reload. I am so nervous I'm shaking. We've already
resized the .357 brass in an old Herters single-stage press, after
rolling the rounds in some stinky lubricant. Now the 25 rounds are set
in a wood block, and my job is to pour in the powder — Bullseye, I
think — from a little dipper using a funnel.
"Don't worry," he says. "The funnel will catch all the powder."
Yesterday
we'd cut pure lead wire and swaged the pieces into .357 copper cups in
an old Corbin press, made several dozen bullets.
When we were
done on this day, we'd go out in "the country" and I'd shoot my first
home-made rounds from his gun, a Ruger Blackhawk Flat-Top. My father
believed in that Flat-Top and the .357 cartridge the way some folks
hone to the Gospel. He'd carried a 1911A1 in the Pacific, and there was
always Colt New Service DA revolvers around the house, usually in .45
ACP or .45 Colt, but once he got the 6 1/2-inch Flat-Top with the
walnut grips sometime around 1959, everything else went on the back
burner.
Dave Clements' Time Machine!
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A 1950s vintage Blackhawk restored perfectly
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The last time I
talked to my father — the very last time I talked to my father — the
conversation was yet another of our many, many conversations about
guns. I told him I'd sourced another old Flat-Top .357, maybe late
1950s vintage, and put it on layaway.
"You gonna convert it?" he
asked. Of course, I replied. Yet another .44 Special. While he admired
my custom guns, there was always the .357 Magnum handgunner's distain
for big bores.
"You know, son," he said, "there's not a thing in
the world you can do with a .44 Special or a .44 Magnum or anything
else that you can't do with a .357. But I'll sure like to see it when
you're done with it!"
Then he sighed. "Besides, you're going to get my Flat-Top eventually, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't make it a .44!"
Not too eventually, I said.
"But you know the Flat-Top is yours," he insisted. "You know that, right?"
I
was uncomfortable, so I changed the subject. But I did get to thinking
about the Ruger I'd just bought. Maybe the Old Man was right. I floated
some inquiries on the Sixgunner.com list, which is purely infested with
Ruger lovers, and a surprising number agreed with my father...well, I
thought, it wouldn't kill me to have a pretty .357 4 3/4-inch barreled
Flat-Top to show off to Dad.
I picked up the gun and sent it to
Dave Clements at Clements Custom Guns, with the instructions to not
only "pretty it up," including color casehardening the frame, rebluing
the entire gun and jeweling the hammer, but that I wanted the most
accurate Ruger Blackhawk I could get. Be expensive, Dave noted. Yeah, I
said, but when you're building a gun to make your father's eyes pop
out, it's gotta shoot. His .357 Flat-Top shot like a house afire with
those old swaged loads; mine needed to, too.
So here's where the
Real World impinges on the fun world we all play in. About three weeks
after my father and I debated big bore handguns, he went in the
hospital for "not too serious" reasons. He never came out; by the time
I got to Tennessee, he was in a coma and fading.
Most of this
stuff has been hashed and rehased on my blog, so I won't go into it
here. Suffice to say that when I went to inventory his guns — he kept
far too many loaded! — the Flat-Top was gone. There were lots of
excuses, explanations, hastily produced "paperwork" — say what you
will, but I believe greed and lies are diseases that destroy from the
inside out, and that what goes around will indeed come around. I left
my father's last house with my legacy, his 1911A1, still loaded with
WWII ball.
I pretty much stopped thinking about the Flat-Top
until I got an email from Dave Clements that said, essentially, "Send
money." If you've never had a custom gun built, the "Send money" alert
is both painful and exhilarating...yes, it pinches the wallet, but the
GUN IS ALMOST READY!
A couple of weeks later, the Flat-Top arrived.
Not to be too overwrought here, but the word "magnificent" comes to mind.
Casehardening looks great with a jeweled hammer
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It is, indeed,
beautiful — the casehardening is especially brilliant, shading from
straws to deep blues to burgandy to a dark dark red, which matches
perfectly to the jeweled hammer. Dave did the classic Colt black powder
chamfer on the cylinder, which gives the Blackhawk that classic
look.The deep bluing and the '50s-vintage aged stag make the gun a
standout among standouts.
1950s vintage stag (or stag-like) grip.
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More importantly,
Dave took seriously my mandate to "build an accurate gun." He simply
recreated the old Flat-Top from the ground up. Here's what it took to
get the Flat-Top back to 100%:
— An action job
— Set the barrel/cylinder gap
— Tighten cylinder latch
— Taylor throat the barel
— Install new trigger
— Ream chambers
— Tighten cylinder end shake
— Fit a Number 5 basepin
— New pawl spring and plunger
— Recrown muzzle
— New front sight (I like 'em narrower!)
When
anyone cranks the hammer back, they comment on how it sounds — like a
bank vault, a machine you'd trust with your life. Sounds from a lost
world.
I believe Dave Clements has created the gun of a lifetime.
And
that's why I'm going to shoot the heck out of it — cowboy action
competition, packin' pistol, a gun that's at hand. It'll get nicks and
dings and and worn bluing and honest wear. I'm going to carry the
Clements gun because that's what I think my father would want me to do.
He wasn't much on safe queens, however beautiful they are, and I will
have a range report for you all when I get off the road!
Looks good on a red background, too!
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My father would
have loved this Flat-Top, because it's an honest gun. And, heck, I
guess there's nothing a .44 Special can do that a .357 Magnum can't. At
least, that's what The Man said. Wouldn't kill me to swage some
160-grain bullets, either.
Thank you, Dave Clements, for
building me a time machine. And by the way, if you live in the South
and come across a nice 6 1/2-inch Flat-Top .357 with walnut grips,
well, I'm always in the market...I promise I won't convert it.
"We carry in our hearts the true country
And that cannot be stolen..."
— Midnight Oil
"The Dead Heart"
http://www.clementscustomguns.com/
© Copyright 2006 by DOWN RANGE TV
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