10/1/2006
Time sure passes quickly around here. Seems like just a few days ago I posted the last newsletter. Much has happened in the last month. I have been inundated with gun work. I am still working on the model knives. Most of them are done; only a couple left to make. I have also decided to make a lock-back pocket knife model. I may soon post the models that I have completed and get the other knives on the site as I get them finished. I added a gallery of pictures of the shop to the site and also added an archive for the newsletters.
Of course, I want to mention again that on September 14th I passed the performance portion of the Master Bladesmith test. I took my test blade to Master Bladesmith Ray Kirk’s shop and tested before him. The blade performed flawlessly.
Two of our daughters are getting married in the next six weeks. So, Mary and I have been very busy working on wedding arrangements and all that comes with being parents of the brides. This has been a bit of a distraction for me, but we are very happy for the girls and they are marrying a couple of great guys.
I have become a stocking dealer of Master’s Gun Care Products. I use Master’s products in my shop and recommend them to all firearms owners. The Master’s lubricants are especially good for semi-auto firearms.
My first experience with Master’s products was on a semi-auto shotgun brought to my shop by an avid waterfowl hunter. The customer’s complaint was that the gun failed to close on a fresh round when it got cold. The shotgun was fairly new and showed no signs of wear, but it was dirty, so I assumed that cleaning and re-lubing would fix the problem. I cleaned the gun and re-lubed it with a very popular petroleum based gun oil. The gun fired perfectly while it was still warm. I then put the gun in an unheated area of my shop for an hour. The temperature was around 30 degrees. I test fired the gun again, and it would not operate reliably now that it was cold. It was during my work with this gun that I received a sample pack of Master’s products. I cleaned the gun again and re-lubed it with the Master’s lubricants. After leaving the gun to chill to 30 degrees again, I test fired it and had no problems with it. A couple of days later, I took the gun to a local sporting clays range. The temperature was around 10 degrees that day. I left the gun in an outside gun rack for an hour and then used it to shoot a round of 50 targets. The gun performed flawlessly.
I am impressed with the tenacity of the Master’s lubricants to stay where they were applied. I formerly used spray lubricants like “Rem Oil” and “Sheath” to quickly lubricate the insides of actions and trigger assemblies. I would spray the parts and then use compressed air to blow off excess lubricant and push the lube into areas that I missed with the spray. Using the PLS-4 lubricant in the same manner, I find that it is difficult to move the product even with 150psi of compressed air. It makes the job of lubing the parts more difficult because I have to be careful to get the lubricant into all of the necessary places and I have to wipe off the excess, but I believe it is worth it to use this superior product. It is apparent that these products will stay on the moving parts of the firearm and not be flung away.
I use Master’s lubricants on my Colt .45 auto and my Ruger Red Label. The pinpoint applicator is an excellent tool for lubing the Colt and the OGS-3 stays on the slide rails through extended firing. Powder residue wipes off of my gun’s stainless steel parts easily and makes clean-up much easier. I have started using OGS-3 on the blades of the custom knives that I make. My knives are handled by a lot of people at knife shows and it is a challenge to keep fingerprints off of the blades. I hope to find that fingerprints wipe off easily and the OGS-3 will protect the blades from damage. If I find this to be true, I will be recommending OGS-3 to other knife makers.
Master’s products can be purchased from me, or you can go directly to the Master’s Gun Care Products web-site by clicking on the Master’s logo and link located on the left side of several pages of my site.
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