Recent content by David LaPell

I decided to test something I had seen 20 plus years ago recently, and that was makeshift armor from the Revolutionary War. During the Battle of Valcour Island, Benedict Arnold and his small fleet of gunboats and ships engaged the larger and more heavily armed British fleet on October 11, 1776...

From what I've been told, the statement "One foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel" apparently applies to the current happy couple.

I've been out of the game for a while. My local gun shop has a blued 4-inch Model 19, not sure the dash off the top of my head. Does have the pinned barrel, recessed cylinder. Almost no flame cutting at all, the action times up perfectly. I would say the gun is overall about 85%. They want 750...

I keep wondering if I'm adopted. Lately and over the last couple of years with the drama and my family, especially with my mother and sister and all that, I was hoping things had calmed down finally. No such luck. Last week we were invited to my mother's wedding, not everyone can say they've...

This past Saturday my son and I went to Fort Ticonderoga to watch a re-enactment of the little known third Battle on Showshoes that happened on March 7, 1759 between Robert Rogers and his rangers and the French garrison at Fort Carillon (later Fort Ticonderoga). Rogers and his men were out to...

I roasted a couple of Cornish game hens with Bell's stuffing.

I haven't been able to do as much as I wished to, firearms or otherwise, mostly because there's been so much family drama, and just when I think it's over, the dial gets ramped up from mildly insane to lunatic. Last March, my sister passed away. She had cancer but she also had been putting...

I've been looking to get another blackpowder musket, they're so much fun to shoot, but with the costs being what they are, and in some places hard to find, I haven't been able to have a lot of success, until now. I found a second hand Navy Arms Zouave .58 musket for about 1/4 of the price of a...

Nope, I'm on my second Sony DSC-H300 camera. I wore the first one out, I bet I took 20,000 pics with it over 5-6 years at least. It's 20.1 megapixels and a 35x zoom. It's actually much cheaper than a cellphone with a camera with anything close for resolution, but they don't have the zoom...

Yesterday was the first ever Wheels & Wings event at Hanger743 also known as the Warbird Factory in Latham, NY. So I took my son, who is an aviation nut, has taken college courses already on aviation, has had several flights in smaller planes and has a real passion for WWII aviation at his age...

I used Thompson Center #13 BP cleaner (has ammonia in it) and then followed it up with #9. I use that #13 BP cleaner on my muzzleloaders and black powder cartridge guns and have never had any issues so far.

I got the duffel cut 1944 dot K98 to the range this morning. I tried out 10 rounds of Federal 170 grain ammo and 5 rounds of Yugoslavian 196 grain surplus ammo out to 50 yards. The first five rounds were Federal, and with these guns having a tendency to shoot high at closer ranges, I held a 6...

I'm hoping to learn that tomorrow morning.

I used a large metal roll pin that I JB Welded to the main stock along with two smaller pins to keep it from flexing left or right.

I finally for the Acraglas in this week to finish up my 1944 dot K98. Yesterday morning I took the finished parts as they were ready to go and got the Acrasglas on it. I put three coats of the release agent on the barrel, locked the action in place and taped it together to hold it all in place...