p51
Sr Member
My father, the greatest craftsman I've ever known, passed away on June 6 at the age of 87. I find that date ironic as I've always been into military history and June 6 will never again be mainly the anniversary of the Normandy Landings in 1944..
I DO NOT want a bunch of condolence replies. I've got more of that than I could ever use at this point.
In the mid 1960s, he built a Civil War cannon (a M1841 6-pounder) that we re-enacted with into the 1990s.
Other than the barrel (the only thing he couldn't cast), he made every single piece of it, and anything that could be bronze, he made it as such. He couldn't bring himself to paint it after making those wheels.
He also built several cannon models, and this 1/6 scale James Rifle appeared in Finescale Modeler from this series of photos I took soon after he completed it.
Dad's last gun barrel is on my model railroad layout. I wanted a memorial on my layout to that unpleasantness in the 1860s (some Southerners call it, "The War of Northern Aggression, but East Tennessee was quite pro-Union during that timeframe, something I bet they're proud of in a PC-centric world). He said he only needed to know what kind of gun barrel and scale I wanted. As I know the types, I said I wanted a 12-pounder 'Napoleon' in 1/48 scale, and it showed up in the mail about a week or so later. I jokingly said he didn't drill the vent at the back, which would be smaller than a tiny fraction of the diameter of a human hair. He thought that response was funny.
I made the pedestal, and I still can't bring myself to weather it as it'd look (all such bronze barrels outside are oxidized in green unless someone polishes them regularly).
When my brother and I (along with our wives) cleaned out Mom and Dad's home where we were raised and grew up (Mom is now in an assisted living facility and will never be able to live on her own), we found the rest of the other cannons and mortars Dad had made that we couldn't find and out folks couldn't recall what had happened to them. I kept the James Rifle and my brother got the rest in this shot. I have a mortar like this already as Dad made one for me when he made the rest.
This is me, my brother and Dad, at the Natural Bridge battle reenactment in Florida, in the late 70s.
God, how I miss him...
I DO NOT want a bunch of condolence replies. I've got more of that than I could ever use at this point.
In the mid 1960s, he built a Civil War cannon (a M1841 6-pounder) that we re-enacted with into the 1990s.
Other than the barrel (the only thing he couldn't cast), he made every single piece of it, and anything that could be bronze, he made it as such. He couldn't bring himself to paint it after making those wheels.
He also built several cannon models, and this 1/6 scale James Rifle appeared in Finescale Modeler from this series of photos I took soon after he completed it.
Dad's last gun barrel is on my model railroad layout. I wanted a memorial on my layout to that unpleasantness in the 1860s (some Southerners call it, "The War of Northern Aggression, but East Tennessee was quite pro-Union during that timeframe, something I bet they're proud of in a PC-centric world). He said he only needed to know what kind of gun barrel and scale I wanted. As I know the types, I said I wanted a 12-pounder 'Napoleon' in 1/48 scale, and it showed up in the mail about a week or so later. I jokingly said he didn't drill the vent at the back, which would be smaller than a tiny fraction of the diameter of a human hair. He thought that response was funny.
I made the pedestal, and I still can't bring myself to weather it as it'd look (all such bronze barrels outside are oxidized in green unless someone polishes them regularly).
When my brother and I (along with our wives) cleaned out Mom and Dad's home where we were raised and grew up (Mom is now in an assisted living facility and will never be able to live on her own), we found the rest of the other cannons and mortars Dad had made that we couldn't find and out folks couldn't recall what had happened to them. I kept the James Rifle and my brother got the rest in this shot. I have a mortar like this already as Dad made one for me when he made the rest.
This is me, my brother and Dad, at the Natural Bridge battle reenactment in Florida, in the late 70s.
God, how I miss him...
