Why I am a "Sixgun
man".
(The first half of my life with revolvers)
By Vern Wimmer
I started out at what would seem to be a frightening age by todays standards. (you may safely infer from this that I am past the
half-century mark). My father was a "closet" gun collector he had a
small collection and had grown up, literally with a gun as an everyday tool. He
saw nothing odd about my fascination although he soon figured that while he had
an interest in the subject his only child was bitten seriously by the bug. We
had several acres and my father, about the time I was eleven or so, decided to
build a larger house on the property since he now had a labor pool to help. The labor pool being me. He had a fulltime job which
coincided nicely with my school schedule leaving me with "free time"
that coincided with his. This actually does have something to do with sixguns because all of this served to set up my first
handgun shooting experiences.
.
My Father reasoned that I needed a bit of incentive to
enthusiastically help him be doing the little chores that accompanied
construction and befitted my age and stature. Since I was obviously a budding
"gun nut" there was his leverage point. As I said he was familiar
with guns and was a very intelligent man with a great amount of foresight. His
course of action showed a lot of thought went into the project. By the way it
would be handy to know at this point that my Mother and Grandmother operated a
successful antique business and shop. Through that operation my father secured
a Colt 1892 Army revolver. For those who do not recognized
the model, it was the gun used during the Spanish-American war, and in its .38
"Long Colt" chambering had proven to be an inefffective
manstopper thereby leading to the development of a
certain, famous, semi-automatic service pistol.
.
The specimen he acquired was in a "neglected"
state of being. It was quite mechanically intact but if it had any original
finish I was unable to find it. It had also been the recipient of untold years
of dirt and lint that had been gently deposited on top of any lubrication that
had once existed in its innards. My first reward for a hard weekend of work was
to be shown how to strip, disassemble and clean it up. That done, Dad moved to
stage two of his plan. He had carefully chosen a revolver that was very difficult
to obtain live ammo for, it would not, theoretically, chamber common .38 Special ammo, and he expressed doubt about its
fitness to handle the proper ammo. I now know that it would have been fine but
who was an eleven-year-old to question his father. After I got it in working
condition He proceeded to teach me the joys of double action shooting. I would
hate to think what that relic would have measure on a scale as far as DA
trigger pull. Now I was really getting hooked. He then executed the second part
of his plan. Soon a package arrived from a place called "Speer". In
the package were several black and yellow boxes. In the boxes were black
plastic "wadcutter" bullets and red plastic
cases. these were to be powered by standard pistol
primers. Reloading was simple, tap the spent primer out with one of the very
common nails around our construction site and hand press a new prime in
courtesy of a flat, clean surface and a piece of lath (To prevent injury in
case something went wrong) and push a "bullet" in the case.
A "trap" box/target holder was constructed. With
the open spaces of a two-story, large house under construction there were plent of places to set up a range. Part of my renumeration for my construction efforts came in the form
of primers. It was a great time for me. I started to develop a strong trigger
finger.
.
It wasn't long before I had proven my self "safe"
and worthy of being trusted with "real" fire arms. (I have skipped
over the multiple BB guns and Pellet guns I used during this period as well) Unfortunatly my first personal firearms were either long
guns or that "other" type of pistol. Jeff Cooper was all the rage at
that time.
.
About this time I had a sort of "epiphany" in my
development as a shooter. I shall sum it up as follows,
.
If a young man decides to reduce the number of quail- eating
feral cats around his folks place, by shooting one from his position on the
back of an untrained and unprepared horse, with a semi-auto .22 pistol, he is
very likely (if he and the horse survive the ensuing rodeo) to develop a
lifelong rule about never getting on a horse without his belt gun being a
revolver, and likely a Single Action.
.
My revolver world opened up dramatically during my freshman
year of college. At the risk of sounding flippant, the laws were different and,
on top of that, there was more common sense at work than legal mumbo jumbo. I
had made the acquaintence of an only slightly gun
interested campus security officer who happened to be a retired cop. He had
decided that, since he had settled on a certain other type of gun he had no use
for his former service revolver. Without undue fanfare I became the owner of a
5" S&W 27. The doors to the real world
opened that day. I was in "tall cotton" boy, I had the gun "Skeeter "
Skelton considered the greatest, and I had the other type of handgun, duely modified, that Jeff Cooper considered the greatest.
The father of a friend of mine was an employee of a certain
branch of the government that was well known for skill with firearms and, in
fact, this gentleman had given demonstrations to local law-enforcement
agencies. A short time after I acquired my Smith and Wesson I got a call from
my friend's Dad asking me to stop by on a weekend day if I had the time. He had
heard about my new gun and wanted to check it out. Of course I would make the
time. I never want to give the impression that I have passed up every
opportunity that came along. To make a long story short his employer had "decommmissioned" a large amount of practice and
qualification ammunition as being, "Old". He had brought home, no
doubt due to his rank, a huge amount with he generously shared with me along
with an equally large amount of once fired brass. To got along with this he
arranged time to give me quite a bit of instruction in the use of the revolver
for "social" purposes, as well as a small bit of the "fancy
stuff" used to get the attention of jaded locals at training classes. OK
the cotton was getting taller.
Other connections led me to getting a "Lee Loader"
in .38/.357 (from a local officer) and my reloading career started. The next
wheel gun to come my way was a Ruger "Single
Six" also from yet another person in law enforcement. Now finding time for
my classes between shooting and earning the money to shoot, and buying more
guns, was getting difficult.
.
Over the next few years several guns came and went that were
only of incidental interest so I sum up this period quickly.The
friends father, mentioned earlier, had given me a taste of the
"wonderfulness" of the S&W model 13,
the 3" round butt "K" frame .357 and it would take me an unusual
20+ years to lay my hands on a model 65 of the same configuration even though
other gunwise buddies got theirs first. I won bets at
the range, shooting a 2" S&W 49 at 100
yards. I borrowed a college buddys Charter Arms
"Bulldog" .44 Special, and did the same thing. Perhaps the two most
significant things of that period were the trading of the Ruger
Single Six, which I never came to like for some reason, straight across for a S&W K-22 (or model 17) of an older vintage but in
excellent condition. That shows the good luck I had. On the bad luck side was
the fate of my model 27. I have not mentioned that among other shapers in my
career was the presence of an old time PPC gunsmith
who had specialized in tuning revolvers for that competition. He had given me
quite a bit of guidance and when I discovered that, before my owning it, the 27
it must have been in the hands of someone who did not understand the concept of
"case hardening". My jackpot of ammo and its susequent
shooting proved that someone had done a bad thing to the 27 .
I was able to replace the innards myself but became a bit disheartened. About
that time Ruger announced they were stopping
production of the Blackhawk in the .45 Colt caliber.
This was alledgedly because of the damages done by
people who were too optimistic with their handloading.
I never knew if that was the real reason but I suddenly had to have one. Well
the same dealer who had traded me the K-22 for the Single Six had a 4 5/8 NIB
Blackhawk, so we reversed the earlier "Ruger-for-Smith"
deal. At the time it seemed like a good idea. It might have been had Ruger not "re introduced" the .45 into the lineup
after only a brief pause.
.
I spent the next few years working with my little
"battery" of guns and doing all the other things related to hunting,
fishing and shooting I could. It would take a few more years before I could
really expand my 'Higher education" in the world of sixguns.