When deciding what re-enactments I do each year, I consider many things. There are three factors: A) My own past experiences at this event. Did I enjoy it or was it bad? If it was bad, was it because of something outside the events control (weather, bad experience with the public, natural disaster, etc) or was it their fault (lack of planning, no water/wood/restrooms, poorly organized, overly demanding). 2) Recommendations from other re-enactors. If another re-enactor recommends I try an event, this weighs heavily in my decision. Especially if it is a re-enactor, I know really well. If there are multiple re-enactors recommending that I try the same event. D) Do I have anything else going on that weekend? Am I free that weekend or do I already have plans? Sometimes I will change my plans to do an event, depending on what is going on. 4) How far away from my house is it? I no longer do re-enactments that are more then a 3-hour drive from my house. ItÂ’s too much of a hassle to drive that long and set up only to have to tear down, load, drive back and put away all my equipment at the end of the day. This is a hobby I do to relax, not to run myself ragged. As it is, I usually take the Monday after each event off work.

For this last weekend, my formula went all to hell. I participated in an event I had never done before called FrenchmanÂ’s Frolic. For the last 4 years, I had done the Belvidere Pioneer Festival on this weekend instead. I should have stuck with my instincts this weekend and done Belvidere instead. FrenchmanÂ’s was a complete bust. Lets break it down using my formula A) I had never done FrenchmanÂ’s. Belvidere I had done for 4 years and always had fun and enjoyed the event, other then rain issues I donÂ’t recall having a bad time there. 2) I have had many re-enactors I have known for years tell me how great FrenchmanÂ’s is. The only people that have told me they like Belvidere are the ones that still participate in it. D) Both are within 10 minutes of my house. 4) I had planned on doing Belvidere as a given event all the way up to Clan Chattan getting together to go over the schedule of the year. Then I changed to try to keep group harmony and from the way people where talking in the group I was trying to protect my reputation as well. (I think we all know how well that went! IE I left the group back in June).

Based on my formula I normally would have done Belvidere. My formula didnÂ’t fail; I failed my formula. Let me tell you why:

The members of Clan Chattan that read this site will remember the heated discussion had about what event we did, Belvidere or FrenchmanÂ’s. I was told that it was a live fire camp with shooting competitions, many vendors, itÂ’s a re-enactment just for re-enactors (very little public, so itÂ’s really relaxed), a lot of people participate at it. I can honestly say I was serious misled. I was able to shoot for a total of 5 minutes at the post shoot. The rain was part of the factor in this. After the post shoot the range was closed for the bow competition. The way they talked it sounded like they where NOT going to reopen the range that day, rain or shine. I wanted to shoot, that was the main reason I wanted to go. They did open it up later in the day at 6:20 PM; the sunset on Saturday was around 6:50, with all the cloud cover it was too dark to shoot by 6:35. I wasnÂ’t about to get my musket dirty again for 15 minutes of shooting. It never opened again.

As for the vendors, there wasnÂ’t a single one there. No food vendors, no shooting supply vendors, nothing! There was also less then 20 camps there. I was told that one of the larger national events moved to this weekend and most of the vendors went to that. However, no one is sure where all the other re-enactors went. There was a lot of speculation, but no one knew for sure. It was a very quite camp, really sober somber.

It didnÂ’t help that it rained most of the day on Saturday AND Sunday. It also didnÂ’t help that both Ktreva and Clone got sick Saturday night and where up all night vomiting. I tried to warn her not to let Clone drink from THAT bottle, but she wouldnÂ’t listen! ThatÂ’s a joke people! They had some kind of food poisoning. Something that I didnÂ’t eat, which left one culprit, bad apples.

Ktreva was bored out of her mind the entire weekend. There was nothing for her to do there except watch Clone. At least with vendors, you can go on a walk about and see what they have, even if you arenÂ’t buying.

As for me, I joined in the post shoot... I was on the third place (second loser) team, which won me a beer. Hey, free beer is good. For those of you that donÂ’t know, a post shoot is a competition to shoot a 2X4 in half in the shortest amount of time. My friend Jim, his father, his son and his friend that camped with them where the team that won, for the fourth straight year. On Sunday, I watched the second half of the bow shoot. (It was postponed on Saturday due to rain) and on Sunday I was in the Tomahawk throw.

The point of the ‘hawk competition is to cut a playing card in half with a single throw of a tomahawk AND have it stick in the block. I would have won, I cut the card in half, but my ‘hawk didn’t stick. The block was hard and everyone was having trouble with getting their ‘hawks to stick. I wasn’t able to duplicate that feat.

After the tomahawk throw, we packed up camp and went home. You know an event went bad when you where home, unpacked, had the wet canvas hung and were able to watch the fourth quarter of a noon game. Normally IÂ’m lucky to get all of that done and be able to see kick off the Sunday night game.

If it werenÂ’t for the fact that our friend Jim and his camp was there the entire weekend would have completely and utterly sucked. Most of the camps were spread far apart and separated from one another. There just wasnÂ’t the camaraderie there that was at most of the other events. This again may be in part due to the rain, but I donÂ’t think so. Saturday the rain was finished sometime around 5:00 PM.

I donÂ’t know if IÂ’ll do this event next year or not to be honest with you. IÂ’m thinking about joining the club so any friend with me and I can go shooting there anytime we want. If I do that, then I think IÂ’ll have to go back. If I donÂ’t join, IÂ’ll probably go back to Belvidere.

Posted by: Contagion at 04:47 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 1217 words, total size 6 kb.

It was a long weekend for me. I’m having issues at work, so last Friday I had the day off. A little “vacation” if you will. It was nice because I was able to stay out late Thursday night to catch the New England/Raiders game and not have to worry about getting up for work the next day. Ironically, I was up at the same time as if I was going to work due to my truck blocking my wife’s van in the driveway. Once I was up, I couldn’t fall back to sleep.

Friday was spent with me running around running some errands IÂ’ve been putting off. I finally picked up my new modem as well as a package from a shooting supply house. On Sept 2nd I had ordered 100 .710 caliber and 100 .730 caliber round ball for my musket. I have a shoot on September 23, 24 and 25th here in Rockford. When I picked up the package, it only had the .710 round ball in it to my annoyance. When I got home I quickly fired off an e-mail to the supply house inquiring as to where the .730 round ball is and if it is on back order, why didnÂ’t they bother to tell me that when I ordered it. IÂ’m still waiting on their response. Unfortunately, I have limited places to order that caliber of round ball from or I would have ordered from somewhere else.

Friday night I finished making my bullet bag. I cheated a little and used one of nature’s natural creations as the base of the bag, a bull scrotum. That’s right my ball bag is a “ball bag”. I hand sewed a drawstring leather cap onto it and it was ready for use. Maybe later I’ll post a picture of it for you all to see. I thought I did a fine job on it.

Saturday it was time to dismantle my black powder firearms and give them a thorough cleaning. The locks on both my Blunderbuss and Brown Bess (musket) where rather rusty due to the high humidity. My Brown Bess needed a good cleaning since I do most of my black powder shooting with it and there was a lot of black powder residue stick in the hard to get to parts. The lock came apart with relative ease, however I ran into a snag putting it back together.

Last week Clone, being his curious self, got his hands on my Bess and knocked it over. Initially when I inspected it, I didnÂ’t find anything wrong. While reattaching the frizzen spring it snapped. (For those of you that don't know, a Frizzen spring is what is used to hold the Frizzen closed on a flintlock. The Frizzen is the metal part that covers the pan that holds black powder in place. When the hammer comes forward, the flint strikes the frizzen causing a spark and flipping the frizzen open to ignite the powder.) Upon closer inspection, I could see this was not a stress fracture. When Clone knocked it over it must have landed just right and put a crack into it. ItÂ’s the only way to explain how it broke. Last October I had the main spring on my musket snap because of a weakness of the spring, the fractures look nothing alike. Stress fractures tend to be more smooth and straight where this one was jagged and crooked. That meant I had to order yet another part for my Bess. At least I know I will have the part by Friday at the latest.

Other then that incident everything went well. I was able to finish my cleaning with out a problem. Normally I do the cleaning the weekend or week before a re-enactment. Next weekend IÂ’m heading to Green Bay for the Packer/Browns game, so I did it a weekend early. This saved me from having to discover the broken spring too late to be able to get a replacement part.

Posted by: Contagion at 12:46 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 678 words, total size 4 kb.

Over at the Spoon and Blade we have our latest Mortar Maiden ready to be reviewed. Go check out the delightfully delicious Davina Baillie.

Remember, you can't go wrong with girls and artillary... even if it is primitive artillary.

Posted by: Contagion at 05:25 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 47 words, total size 1 kb.