No. 114 October, 2009
Back to
The Collector page
The Collector page
The Dupont Gunslinger
By Harold Ratzburg
I'd guess that by now, anybody who knows me, knows that I have been a "gun nut" (also known as a "Collector") for all of my life. How that fascination came about is anybody's guess, but there it is and I just have to live with it.
My first memories of a gun comes about in the first and second grades of Maple Valley Grade School. With imagination of a kid, we kids found that you could fashion a gun of sorts out of a straight stem out of a lilac bush, (of which there were plenty around the school at that time) about seven inches long. What you had to do then was break the stem about three inches from the heavy end into a 90 degree angle and then peel the bark down at the angle and the bark would make a passable trigger guard. That left a barrel about four inches long. Then, armed with this formidable weapon, and if you could holler "Bang, you're dead" first --and loud enough, you could win the schoolyard shoot outs or nail those pesky Redskins hiding out behind the lilac bushes.
As time went on, I got bigger and more trustworthy with sharp instruments and Dad got me a jack knife down in town at the hardware store. The next step up in the arms department was guns whittled out of cedar shingles. A coping saw helped a lot also, for cutting around the curves of the handle. Shingles were straight grained and easy to whittle and when finished, they didn't break too easy, With a shingle nail for a trigger it made a passable sidearm. You hadda carry it stuck in your belt but a quick draw was still possible
It should be noted here that the knife Dad bought me was an "el cheapo" and didn't hold a cutting edge for beans, even while whittling wood. Being the snoopy kid that I was, I found in Dad's dresser in the bedroom where he hid his special jack knife, with a really sharp blade that he used when we had to castrate pigs. That knife was really great for whittling and I don't believe that Dad ever caught on to what I was doing with it, cause I always put it back where I found it after I was done but he had to wonder sometimes about why it didn't hold the fine edge on the cutting blade. If the pigs complained, their complaints were pretty much contained in the squealing they did while the "operation" was performed on them. I still have that knife somewhere around our house today. I also carry a scar on one finger of my left hand where that knife sorta slipped one time and got me, but at least I was cutting away from my body (like Dad taught me to) and all I got was a deep cut that was fixed up with a bandage and carbolic salve. No 911 calls back in those days.
I got to be a pretty good wooden gun maker and along the way, branched off into leather work to make holsters for the wooden guns.
The only leather I had to work with was from old "high cut" boots or pieces of old harnesses that had become obsolete when Dad got the new tractor and the horses had to go.
Do you remember the "high cut boots?" Some called them "High Tops". They came to almost knee high and laced partway up the front and finished with the little hooks for speed lacing. Old photos show that they were the only fashionable footwear for hunters or engineers to wear out in the wilds. As for kids high cut boots, the pictures in the old Sears and Roebuck that really made this kid's mouth water showed the boots that had a nifty little pocket with a snap, sewed on the side of the right boot, and that pocket could hold your nifty Jack Knife. Boy oh Boy, how I wanted a pair of boots like that, but here comes the old refrain I keep singing-----my folks just couldn't afford the extra cost of frills like that. So I never got a pair of "high cuts" that I dreamed about.
Working with that old leather was not easy cause all I had to work with was my jack knife, and an nail for punching holes. To hold pieces of leather together, I poked holes with the nail and then using copper wire I salvaged from an old Model "T" coil that I broke apart, I could poke the wire through the holes and make a passable job of "sewing" the pieces together to make a holster and belt. My first holsters were kinda crude, but when Herbie Tischauser got a store bought Roy Rodgers pistol, holster and belt for Christmas and brought it to school, I saw a way to make a much better holster for my "piece".
Eventually, my sidearms were upgraded to cap guns but I had to hang in there with home made leather holsters and belts.
Fourth of July brought out the fireworks for more realistic sounds to go with the play guns. My folks would give me, when I got old enough and they could afford it, an allowance of maybe fifty cents or up to a whole dollar to buy fireworks in town at the Five and Dime Store, next to Mees's Drug Store. The store would stock up on fireworks for the occasion, and for a whole dollar, you could lay in a good supply of firecrackers and caps for my cap gun. The firecrackers were five or ten cents per package and five cents would buy you a box of rolled caps for your automatic gun or a box of disk caps for a six shooter revolver. Bottle rockets were cheap and fun but I don't remember that they had the M-80, the really powerful fire cracker you can buy nowadays.
The firecrackers were used for all kinds of fun, including blowing up ant hills and putting under tin cans to see how high they would fly. We had a three foot piece of half inch pipe that was pounded shut at one end and bent kinda like a gun stock, so when a firecracker was put in the other end and lit, it would make a passable shotgun.
I learned a valuable lesson the hard way one time when I stupidly put a firecracker in one end of an open pipe, lit it, and then sighted through the pipe from the other end so I wouldn't miss what I was shooting at. I was one lucky kid when it went off, cause all it did was scare the crap out of me without causing any harm to my eye. I never did fess up to my stupidity to anyone, especially my folks, cause I was afraid they would say-----no more fireworks.
My folks had an old cap and ball musket upstairs in the "seed room" that occasionally they would let us kids bring down and use for a firecracker gun, but then we had to put it back. I am glad now that they did not let us kids 'play it to pieces', because that old gun, (I think Dad bought it at an auction somewhere) now hangs on the wall of our family room where I still appreciate the old memories it brings about.
I continued my manufacture of wooden guns way into my high school years. One of my classes was woodworking down in the Agricultural building where us FFA {Future Farmers of America) took shop classes. I was working on a three legged milking stool for a project which was to be made out of a piece of 2 by 10 plank, and I saw an opportunity to make a round drum---- for a Wooden Thompson Sub-Machine Gun that I was building at home ----out of the same plank. That round Thomson Drum, to hold those imaginary wooden bullets, was a lot harder to make than the milking stool but Mr Polich, the Agriculture teacher did not seem to mind that I was goofing off on another, not especially authorized, project and passed me anyway.
So----that's it readers, for this little story about the Dupont Gunslinger and his wooden weapons. One of these days I will get around to a story about the real shootin' irons that we got into when we got older and responsible enough to carry them around.
copyright 2009, Harold Ratzburg
By Harold Ratzburg
I'd guess that by now, anybody who knows me, knows that I have been a "gun nut" (also known as a "Collector") for all of my life. How that fascination came about is anybody's guess, but there it is and I just have to live with it.
My first memories of a gun comes about in the first and second grades of Maple Valley Grade School. With imagination of a kid, we kids found that you could fashion a gun of sorts out of a straight stem out of a lilac bush, (of which there were plenty around the school at that time) about seven inches long. What you had to do then was break the stem about three inches from the heavy end into a 90 degree angle and then peel the bark down at the angle and the bark would make a passable trigger guard. That left a barrel about four inches long. Then, armed with this formidable weapon, and if you could holler "Bang, you're dead" first --and loud enough, you could win the schoolyard shoot outs or nail those pesky Redskins hiding out behind the lilac bushes.
As time went on, I got bigger and more trustworthy with sharp instruments and Dad got me a jack knife down in town at the hardware store. The next step up in the arms department was guns whittled out of cedar shingles. A coping saw helped a lot also, for cutting around the curves of the handle. Shingles were straight grained and easy to whittle and when finished, they didn't break too easy, With a shingle nail for a trigger it made a passable sidearm. You hadda carry it stuck in your belt but a quick draw was still possible
It should be noted here that the knife Dad bought me was an "el cheapo" and didn't hold a cutting edge for beans, even while whittling wood. Being the snoopy kid that I was, I found in Dad's dresser in the bedroom where he hid his special jack knife, with a really sharp blade that he used when we had to castrate pigs. That knife was really great for whittling and I don't believe that Dad ever caught on to what I was doing with it, cause I always put it back where I found it after I was done but he had to wonder sometimes about why it didn't hold the fine edge on the cutting blade. If the pigs complained, their complaints were pretty much contained in the squealing they did while the "operation" was performed on them. I still have that knife somewhere around our house today. I also carry a scar on one finger of my left hand where that knife sorta slipped one time and got me, but at least I was cutting away from my body (like Dad taught me to) and all I got was a deep cut that was fixed up with a bandage and carbolic salve. No 911 calls back in those days.
I got to be a pretty good wooden gun maker and along the way, branched off into leather work to make holsters for the wooden guns.
The only leather I had to work with was from old "high cut" boots or pieces of old harnesses that had become obsolete when Dad got the new tractor and the horses had to go.
Do you remember the "high cut boots?" Some called them "High Tops". They came to almost knee high and laced partway up the front and finished with the little hooks for speed lacing. Old photos show that they were the only fashionable footwear for hunters or engineers to wear out in the wilds. As for kids high cut boots, the pictures in the old Sears and Roebuck that really made this kid's mouth water showed the boots that had a nifty little pocket with a snap, sewed on the side of the right boot, and that pocket could hold your nifty Jack Knife. Boy oh Boy, how I wanted a pair of boots like that, but here comes the old refrain I keep singing-----my folks just couldn't afford the extra cost of frills like that. So I never got a pair of "high cuts" that I dreamed about.
Working with that old leather was not easy cause all I had to work with was my jack knife, and an nail for punching holes. To hold pieces of leather together, I poked holes with the nail and then using copper wire I salvaged from an old Model "T" coil that I broke apart, I could poke the wire through the holes and make a passable job of "sewing" the pieces together to make a holster and belt. My first holsters were kinda crude, but when Herbie Tischauser got a store bought Roy Rodgers pistol, holster and belt for Christmas and brought it to school, I saw a way to make a much better holster for my "piece".
Eventually, my sidearms were upgraded to cap guns but I had to hang in there with home made leather holsters and belts.
Fourth of July brought out the fireworks for more realistic sounds to go with the play guns. My folks would give me, when I got old enough and they could afford it, an allowance of maybe fifty cents or up to a whole dollar to buy fireworks in town at the Five and Dime Store, next to Mees's Drug Store. The store would stock up on fireworks for the occasion, and for a whole dollar, you could lay in a good supply of firecrackers and caps for my cap gun. The firecrackers were five or ten cents per package and five cents would buy you a box of rolled caps for your automatic gun or a box of disk caps for a six shooter revolver. Bottle rockets were cheap and fun but I don't remember that they had the M-80, the really powerful fire cracker you can buy nowadays.
The firecrackers were used for all kinds of fun, including blowing up ant hills and putting under tin cans to see how high they would fly. We had a three foot piece of half inch pipe that was pounded shut at one end and bent kinda like a gun stock, so when a firecracker was put in the other end and lit, it would make a passable shotgun.
I learned a valuable lesson the hard way one time when I stupidly put a firecracker in one end of an open pipe, lit it, and then sighted through the pipe from the other end so I wouldn't miss what I was shooting at. I was one lucky kid when it went off, cause all it did was scare the crap out of me without causing any harm to my eye. I never did fess up to my stupidity to anyone, especially my folks, cause I was afraid they would say-----no more fireworks.
My folks had an old cap and ball musket upstairs in the "seed room" that occasionally they would let us kids bring down and use for a firecracker gun, but then we had to put it back. I am glad now that they did not let us kids 'play it to pieces', because that old gun, (I think Dad bought it at an auction somewhere) now hangs on the wall of our family room where I still appreciate the old memories it brings about.
I continued my manufacture of wooden guns way into my high school years. One of my classes was woodworking down in the Agricultural building where us FFA {Future Farmers of America) took shop classes. I was working on a three legged milking stool for a project which was to be made out of a piece of 2 by 10 plank, and I saw an opportunity to make a round drum---- for a Wooden Thompson Sub-Machine Gun that I was building at home ----out of the same plank. That round Thomson Drum, to hold those imaginary wooden bullets, was a lot harder to make than the milking stool but Mr Polich, the Agriculture teacher did not seem to mind that I was goofing off on another, not especially authorized, project and passed me anyway.
So----that's it readers, for this little story about the Dupont Gunslinger and his wooden weapons. One of these days I will get around to a story about the real shootin' irons that we got into when we got older and responsible enough to carry them around.
copyright 2009, Harold Ratzburg