It was a busy weekend. There’s a new gun show near Leander that a bunch of us ended up going to, and I found quite a bit of stuff. Including .220 Swift and – believe it or not – .22 Remington Jet ammo.
Then I ate something that disagreed with me on Tuesday and haven’t been feeling great. Things are looking up, but all of this is to say that I’ve been behind the curve, so I’m only now getting to more gun book blogging.
I think I’m going to try to knock off the last five books that are down here on the kitchen table so I can move those upstairs. And bring some more down later, but don’t tell anybody I said that. This is going to be a long one, so I’m putting a jump here.
A View from a Tall Hill: Robert Ruark in Africa, Terry Wieland. Skyhorse Publishing, no city, 2020. This is a new book available from Amazon, and is the 2020 reprint edition with a new preface by the author.
The subject of favorite current gun writers comes up here once in a while, but I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned Terry Wieland. He doesn’t have quite the presence of, say, John Taffin or Dr. Dabbs. I think that’s mostly because his regular writing is for the Wolfe Publications magazines, which I believe are smaller in circulation. That’s not saying anything about their quality, however. I subscribe to the electronic versions, and pick up the physical ones when I have the chance. Mr. Wieland’s columns are always the first thing I read. The second thing I read is Mr. Wieland’s articles. After that, I read the rest of the magazine. Mr. Wieland knows his stuff, including the importance of a good Samworth.
In spite of that, I resisted picking up Tall Hill for a while. Partly because…I’ve got so much stuff on my Amazon want list, if I bought everything I’d be broke but happy. The other part of it was that the subtitle led me to believe it was narrowly focused on Ruark and his time in Africa, and I kind of wanted to read a more general biography first. But something inside me a few weeks ago made me pick this up. I think it was a combination of a reasonable price and just being in a mood.
It happens that Tall Hill is really a general Ruark biography, not just focused on his time in Africa. I’m absolutely delighted that I picked this up. There’s stuff in here I didn’t know, stuff in here that I’ve heard hinted at but never read explicitly before (such as Ruark’s relationship with his parents), and things in here that chilled me. (“…the [elevator] floor was slippery with blood…As they moved him down the hall, Ruark ‘exploded with blood’…”)
More importantly, Mr. Wieland provides a tremendous amount of context about the African upheaval of the times, along with short summaries/appreciations of Ruark’s important works. There’s also some wonderful stuff in here about the nature of being a journalist, and convoy duty in the North Atlantic during WWII. Along with, of course, lots of discussion of hunting in Africa.
This is a swell book, one that I commend to your attention in the strongest possible terms.
Poor Man’s Scout Rifle: A How-To Guide, Bob Cashner. Paladin Press, Boulder, CO, 2003. This is a duplicate of a book I’ve had in my collection for a while, but it is one of those Paladin Press books that are out of print, and I only paid $10 (plus tax) for it.
As you might expect from the title, this is a book on building your own scout rifle on the cheap from commonly available platforms: the Mauser 98, the Lee-Enfield, the Mosin-Nagant, and even a .22 scout variant.
This is a 21 year old book, which is a bit of a problem. I think it has some interesting ideas if you want to hack on one of the old guns covered, or if you want to use it as a source of inspiration to bang on other guns. But:
1) In the past 21 years, a lot of these “poor man’s guns” have become more expensive. Mosins are not as cheap as tomato stakes any longer.
2) True scout rifles have become a lot more prevalent since 2003. Check the GunBroker prices for a Ruger Scout. Or do a search for the Savage 110 Scout. By the time you add in the base price of, say, a good Mosin, plus the accessories you need to scout-ify it, plus your time (assuming your time has value, and you’re not just doing this to relax after a day’s work), all of the sudden, those “poor man’s scouts” don’t look so cheap any longer.
3) If you build a “poor man’s scout”, you’re building a compromise rifle in terms of weight, sight position, and other issues. I won’t say the Savage or the Ruger aren’t compromises either, but they are designed to be scout rifles and I don’t think they make as many compromises. And is it better long term to save your lunch money for a Steyr Scout (which have gotten considerably less expensive, especually if you go for a Gen 1 version. But we’ll talk about that in a future post.), or spend money and time now to build a compromise rifle that’s probably going to be frustrating at times? Only you knoe for sure, and that’s actually a philosophical question.
I’m not saying Poor Man’s Scout Rifle is worthless: I can see some good ideas in it. And I bought into the whole “poor man’s scout” concept many years ago myself. I just think the market has changed enough to make the concept somewhat questionable. If you’ve got a rusty old Mosin in the safe that you want to clean up and scout-ify, don’t let me stop you. But don’t buy this book expecting to go out, get a cheap Lee-Enfield and some parts, and make your own Steyr Scout equivalent.
(Yes, I know, I need to get after the price tag remains on the front cover. I wanted to get this up tonight, and we’re out of Goo Gone. I plan to get some more at the grocery store this weekend.)
An Introduction to Tool Marks, Firearms, and the Striagraph, John E. Davis. Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, IL, 1958.
This is very much a borderline gun book, in my opinion. But not without interest, especially to myself and possibly FotB RoadRich. I haven’t read it yet, but skimming over it makes me think it is pretty much what it says in the title: a forensic examiner’s guide to identifying tool marks and firearms markings (such as those on fired bullets and recovered cases). I’d estimate about 2/3rds of the book covers firearms, tool marks, and the identification of same in general, while the final 1/3rd covers the Striagraph.
What’s a Striagraph? From our friends at the National Institute of Justice:
I haven’t been able to find a better description of the Striagraph. Looking at the photos in the book, I get the impression that it somehow passes over the grooves and scratches in a bullet (or perhaps some other object) and records them on something like photographic film. I can see that this would allow you to compare two fired bullets and come up with an easy visual representation: do they match, or not? But I’m not sure how that would be any different than a comparison microscope and a camera.
I’m guessing, with the 1958 copyright date, that this is more of historical rather than practical interest. Perhaps worth having if you’re wondering how they did it on “Perry Mason”, but maybe not something you want to train on in 2024. It is too new for Riling, and is not documented in Biscotti.
Purchased as part of the batch from my book buddy in the Association, so it is hard to come up with a specific price. His tag on it was $60. I’d call this “very good”. There’s a little bit of wear to the corners, and some edge wear along the top and the bottom of the spine, but you have to look hard to see those. I think I may have another book from Charles E. Thomas somewhere upstairs (I’ll have to look) and I’m actually interested in picking up some of the others listed on the rear cover. The only copy of this I see on ABE right now is going for $175.
Textbook of Pistols and Revolvers, J.S. Hatcher. Small-Arms Technical Publishing Company, Plantersville, SC, 1935. Riling 2170. Also documented in Biscotti.
The “J.S. Hatcher” above is Major General Julian S. Hatcher (US Army – ret.), though at the time he was just a Major.
You would also know him from The Book of the Garand, Hatcher’s Notebook, and (speaking of firearm forensics) Textbook of Firearms Investigation (a Samworth I don’t have. Yet.). He was a pretty famous gun guy, and put in the work to get there. (Like E.C. Crossman, he spent a lot of his Army career working on guns and ballistics, so he had tools and time to do his own experiments.) This is an early general book on handguns: choosing, using, learning to shoot, and ammunition. And this is the book where Maj. Hatcher first presented his scale for “stopping power”.
This has the Plantersville city designation and a May of 1944 ad page date. Per Smith, those points mark it as a fourth impression.
I’d call this “good” in a “fair” dust jacket. The jacket has quite a few tears and chips missing, as you can see from the photos. My book buddy had $80 on this, but again, it was a bulk purchase. There are a fair number of copies of this on ABE, but not all of them are this edition. Of the ones that I can tell are this edition, many of them do not have a jacket at all, or the jacket is in roughly equivalent shape and the price is higher. The one copy listed that’s fine in a fine jacket is $175. There’s one that’s fine in a poor jacket for $138.50.
The Shotgun Book, Jack O’Connor. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1965. Too new for Riling, but documented in Biscotti’s bibliographies. This is a Knopf Borzoi book, but it isn’t one of the original Borzoi Books for Sportsman, so Biscotti only covers it in his supplemental material about O’Connor. I do believe this is a true first.
I’ve written about Mr. O’Connor ad nauseam (and will again) so I’ll just note here that most people think of him as a rifle guy. However, it seems like he had a lot of experience with shotguns, too. Judging from Horse and Buggy West he pretty much cut his teeth on bird hunting with shotguns, so this volume shouldn’t be a surprise.
If it wasn’t for the big chip out of the front cover and a barely visible 1/2″ tear (also on the front cover), I’d call this “fine”. As it is, I’d say “good”. There’s almost nothing wrong with the rest of the book except those two things.
This is the last of the book batch. My buddy had $30 on it. It looks like you can get “very good” with “very good” jacket copies of this for around $15 off of ABE, so I may have paid a little above market, but I made up for it with the rest of the batch. There’s one copy listed as “good” in a “good” jacket for $210…signed by Mr. O’Connor.
Overall, I think I came out ahead on that batch. And isn’t that the mark of a good trade? I’m pretty sure my book buddy is happy, too.
Next time…I don’t know what. I’m going to have to open the grab bag. But I am thinking I want to document a couple of books I bought at the Texas Gun Collectors Association show last year. Yes, 2023. Yes, I am behind.