TBT…

This one’s a bit different. Sam Jacobs over at Ammo.com wrote a nice piece on Carbine Williams…

America loves an outlaw. Some outlaws simply need to find their calling, and David Marshall Williams is such a man.

A convicted murderer of a sheriff’s deputy, no less, he turned his prison experience into a tale of personal redemption and revolutionized the field of semi-automatic firearms for over a century.

Two of his ‘little patents’ ended up allowing things like this to work!

Full article, HERE.

I have this little Winchester M-1 carbine sitting in the safe. It’s an unmolested 1942 version with a type 2 rear sight on it.

It’s getting into hunting season, and I, for one, am ready to get out in the woods and get some meat for the freezer, ESPECIALLY after looking at the prices in the stores this week.

And there is a run on turkeys??? Really???

Apparently because of the WuFlu, a lot of the turkey farms didn’t have enough help, and now the shortages are coming to the fore. Suppliers are telling the ‘little shops’ that they probably will not get any turkeys, because the suppliers have to fill the big box stores’ orders first.

Sigh…

 

Comments

TBT… — 20 Comments

  1. Look for a farmer that raises heritage birds?

    If we end up buying property, I may raise a few turkeys each year. I really don’t like the conditions under which the commercial ones are raised. The poor toms can’t mount a hen without tumbling off because of how large the breasts are now. I swear the most disgusting episode of Dirty Jobs was ‘Turkey Inseminator’. And, yes, I am weird.

    • Even worse job: the guy who has to obtain the material needed from the Tom….

  2. I wouldn’t miss turkey THAT much. Especially if some well cared for feral hog meat was taking up space in the freezer. Thaw out that bad boy, cook and serve it up. Meat is meat and being thankful for whatever is on the table works too.

    I wasn’t smart enough to buy a real military M1 carbine when I had the opportunity. I have a stainless Universal carbine that works well, but long term durability was not thought of at the time.

      • And it houses a little oiler about the size of half a pencil, around which the sling is anchored.

  3. The farmers weren’t short of help, not really. Those farms are designed to be run with only a few people. The real hangup is in the slaughter plants where w have been chronic shortages of workers leading to back ups at the farms which causes the turkeys to grow too big. The slaughter plants will not take birds over a certain size so when the delays caused the birds to get too big the farmers are forced to eat the loss and the birds are put down by company policy once again at the farmers expense despite the situation being the company’s fault as the slaughter plants have always been poorly managed with bad conditions and mostly low wages depending on illegal workers. If you could earn substantially more taking unemployment then working a slaughter plant job for long hours in horrible(there are often gang problems in the plants) conditions it doesn’t make much sense for their employees to show up. A table bird like what is sold for the holidays is actually a bird taken early from the farms as turkeys are normally harvested between 38 to 42 pounds so that they may be used for producing canned and table meats such as turkey bacon or sliced turkey . It makes sense that they are having trouble producing enough birds taken at the right window of a growth period when they can’t even seem to keep up with taking their canners before they get too big for the machinery.
    I spent several years in the industry from the early 90s to the mid 2000’s and at that time the company we worked for transformed from a family owned business that happily worked with it’s employees and growers to a board ran corporate enterprise known as “Conagra”. The company went from working with their growers and their plant production members to operating off a debt slave model. The growers are effectively contractors who are given birds to raise by ConAgra” this model is followed by almost all other industrial growers poultry growers” The growers are made responsible for all aspects of raising the birds and paid based upon how efficient they are at raising the birds with the company supplied medicines in the company supplied feeds and the company supplied birds. If the company refuses to supply medicine and the birds die the growers held responsible if the company supplies sick birds from the hatchery the growers are responsible if the company delays on shipping food the growers are held responsible. The company forces the growers in position that they have to take this by mandating company designs for the growing farms that cost at this point millions of dollars, at the time my father got into the industry when I was a child it only cost us about $600,000 and it was only that cheap because my father was able to pinch every penny he possibly could by salvaging or making whatever equipment he possibly could and by keeping up with that pennypinching behavior as well as keeping his head low without aggravating the company. By doing this he was able to be one of the only farms to actually completely pay their farm off in southeast Kansas nearly every other farm either went bankrupt or had to sell out to another grower who also ended up in deep debt. The company can effectively use that debt to ruined any farmer at any time for any reason by sabotaging a couple cycle of birds which they have proven themselves willing to do if a farmer starts to complain, talk about lawsuits or unionizing.Part of the reason my family got out after 12 years( when were were finally able to start making profit) was that within a year of the company finding out the farm was paid off the company gave my father a mandate that he must build new turkey barns or shut down as the company claimed the barns that were paid off were now obsolete and if you wanted to continue as a grower he must remain competitive and have brand new updated( same thing but slightly larger) turkey Barns . Can’t have employees that aren’t debt slaves, they might be willing to speak up for themselves after all

  4. Back in the day when boat loads of surplus carbine parts came on the market, and “kits” were available, I assembled several for customers, including two for myself. Still have all the tools and a small stash of parts.

    I shot one of mine on Monday that I had not shot for several years. I was momentarily surprised at how low it shot. Well, duh. It has a new Winchester barrel and front sight. Because the early flip rear sights had no provision for elevation, the front sights were deliberately made high, and brought to proper zero by filing them down. I will leave this one as is, maybe swap it for one that is already filed down.

  5. With the economy deliberately shut down, and paying people not to work, it’s no surprise there’s lots of gaps and shortages along the way while trying to get everything started up again as it’s not as easy as throwing a switch to get everything back and running smoothly again. Add inflation from government flooding the zone with money and its no wonder there’s problems.

    A shortage of turkeys, when we have so many turkeys in government right now is rather frustrating.

  6. I dont have an actual M1 Carbine either; I to have a “Universal” carbine.
    But you remind me that I ought to take it out more, and possibly start loading for it, too. I have the stuff for it… Just need more bullets. (And primers and powder, but those are constants)

  7. All- Thanks for the comments, and Seth, appreciate the inside look. JMI- No… I remember that episode. Just no!

    • Sorry for the rant, just got to talking about those crooks and the dam sort of broke louse. The promised dream was a job that could pay a farmer a take home income of 100-140k a year in 90’s dollars. Seeing so many families crushed under the debt from bad luck or out right maliciousness and seeing the prize yanked away from my family right after reaching it left me far more cynical than i should of been in my teens and twenties.

      • It was a useful and interesting rant.

        It seems to me worth wondering about regulations, and large combinations being effectively a shared monopoly, due to regulators working with the big guys, and limiting market entry by little guys.

        Like Amazon, and that requirement that internet businesses contribute local sales tax.

        Problems we are having now are clearly partly the result of very long term rot or corruption. So, how deep does it go?

        I dunno.

  8. I bought a Carbine some years ago during Bozo’s administration, while the big ammo shortage was happening.
    It took four months for my stash of ammunition to be delivered.
    Mine’s new… and a neat little rifle.

  9. I’ve always wanted an M1 Carbine. Still kicking myself for not buying a couple when you could get them for under $100….

  10. I remember shooting an M1 in Texas, on holiday, when I was a kid. It seemed so easy compared to the .303s I’d been blasting away on with early teen enthusiasm.

    Dear God, even then, the mid ’70s, we were running on WWII fumes, and taught by vets of Arnhem etc. My lot were perhaps the last generation to be taught by those men.

    There’s a point to this which I know you know better than I, so I won’t bang on!

  11. I’ve got an Inland made in early 1944. The place I got it from another one in much better than this one. I can always use a spare