Did you ever find a gun?

muzzle loader

My father was a policeman and in the 60s they were building a highway and knocking down whole streets full of houses from the 1880s and he and the other cops would scrounge around looking for stuff and he found a 1911 still wraped in paper hidden in the basement also 3-4 muzzle loaders with 2 side by side shotguns I was small and would play with them. T:banghead:hey had large hammers on the sides and the shotguns had hammers on the sides also. my father was not a gun guy.I came home one day and they were gone he traded them to another cop for a air conditioner or something like that that he could use . he was more parctical than me.even then I knew I wanted them

Pack Rat

A man I met 2 years ago called me to look at his old guns. He inherited and "operates" a silver mine used as a summer sheep camp at about 11,500 feet above Lake City, CO.

He brought over 4 pistols all made between 1885 and 1912, three were H&R top breaks and obsolete rimfire pistols, and a S&W Lemon Squeezer. I cleaned them up and put some penetrant on one to get it open so we could inspect the barrel.

All had been hidden in a 1880's cabin wall by a pack rat. I was surprised to find that a rat could carry something that big, but upon further study I became convinced.

Well, I bought his Safety Hammerless, but it has a broken split spring in the trigger group...not easy to find so far.

When my ex wife and my ex son ran off years ago they also managed to stuff a new mossberg 12 gauge pump, a Rossi 22 pump and a $600 paintball gun in the trunk. The boy got busted in Mississippi drinking and driving and got the car impounded. Of course the local tow company wouldn't let me have the car since it was in her name so they were able to "find" some really nice guns before the finance company got the car. Love is grand, divorce is 40 grand. But it was the best money I ever spent.....

No, if it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all.

All the time it seems I find guns.

Problem is I find them in gun stores and have to pay for them.

But found as in just out and about found? No. Never.

When I was an offshore fisherman I found a torpedo. Un-fired. It was exciting. Coast Guard came out... good stuff... The captain kept it I believe.

Buzzkill alert.

When my father was on his last legs...on a respirator...I grabbed my nephew who was getting kind of bummed out by the hospital visit and we went over to grampa's house to grab a gun or two to go shooting...to cheer up the nephew.

He had a Universal M1 Carbine copy and a Ruger single six. I was going through the old suitcase where he kept them all and I run across a box of .38 special. He didn't own a .38 special...did he? Kept looking and come across one of the old blue S&W cardboard boxes with the metal reinforced corners. Inside was an all-steel, Model 40 "lemon-squeezer". Some body had put a different grip on the right side...one of those black plastic ones that have sort of shelf on it that hold the trigger finger at a better angle and kind of serves as a loose clip for over the belt in IWB mode. The original left side walnut was on there and the right side walnut nowhere to be found.

My father never came of the respirator and died a couple weeks after that so I never ever got the story on that thing at all. Don't know if he'd had it for years or if he'd just got it. A total mystery and so it will remain.

Does that count?

mcdonl said:

When I was an offshore fisherman I found a torpedo. Un-fired. It was exciting. Coast Guard came out... good stuff... The captain kept it I believe.

Click to expand...

I read an article years ago, maybe in Multihulls Magazine, about some guys in a boat who found what appeared to be a small rocket of some kind off the mid-Atlantic coast. The CG or Navy took possession, but would not tell them what it was.

A buddy of mine here in NC found a couple of hand grenades! Not sure what he did with them though.

This is a neat thread.

Keep up this thread. I'm glad it got brought back to life. Really interesting.

I'm a hiker and trail runner. I sure wish I found stuff!

I'm also a bicycle rider/racer, so most of what I find is at the side of the road. You know, like used condoms, toothbrushes, screwdrivers, cig. packs, even found two sex toys once. That was odd.

A buddy of mine here in NC found a couple of hand grenades! Not sure what he did with them though.

This is a neat thread.

Click to expand...

Did you ever hear any good fishing stories?

Does finding a Savage model 24D in the back of a garage while at a yard sale and getting it for $20 from the homeowner count. Said it was her EX's and wanted it gone.

A friend of mine picked up a couch at a garage sale for $20, when he got it home he pulled the cushions off of it to vacuum it clean. Well under the cushion he found a Hi standard 12 gauge pump that had been cut to a 12" barrel and the stock was hacked down to pistol grip only.

We were younger and dumber in those days and we would actually take the thing out from time to time with our other guns to blast the day away. Not very fun to shoot, lots of recoil and muzzle blast. After about a year of occasionally shooting it my buddie brought it over for my dad to see. At that point my dad explained to him the trouble he would find if the law found the gun in his possesion.

My buddie promptly went out and purchased a legal 26" barrel and un cut stock for it. He still has the gun today 15 years later and yes he did throw the old barrel away.

HoosierQ:
http://www.baramihipgrip.com/ is probably the product. Sorry to hear about your dad. When my dad finally kicks the bucket (hopefully a long time from now) I won't have to worry about finding strange guns - I bought all his guns for him.

I've never had any luck finding guns. Hell, I've got a Glock 20 that's been hiding from me the past couple of months. One day it'll make a mistake and I'll catch it out in the open, it's just a matter of time.

In many years I've only found a billfold with $90 in it.

Just the money.

renovating

a house an friend had inherited from his gran ..
we ran across a Lefaucheux pocket revolver in some
odd 7mm caliber. It was wrapped in 1942 Newspaper
and hidden behind a roof-beam.

After some research it appeared to have been a
bootleg ... made after the belgium-original, but
probably in a metal workshop of the Krupp/Hoesch
steel plants in this area.

beautyful historical piece, loaded too.
But the barrel was too rusty to even think about anything ...

....

similar to this model:



a friend has found 2 Speartips from around 1400 with his metal detector...
....still in rather good shape, preserved in clay.



interesting thread indeed.

[QUOTENo, but I once found panties under my car seat. ][/QUOTE]

ZO6Vettever, does that go along with the story that starts, 'Jim, how long have you worn a girdle?'

I found a loaded .22 rifle in a case in a friend's attic when I helped her move. Glad I found it, she forgot it was there (it was Grandpa's, had been there a while) & thought it must be unloaded. I was taught to always check. I hate surprises...

I haven't found any I got to keep though. I did buy one that a neighbor found cleaning out a relative's house. Getting warmer, I hope.

In 1976 I found an old pepperbox revolver of unknown make in the barn on my Dad's place while cleaning out some junk that had been lying around for who knows how long. It was wrapped in what had once been oily cloth and not in bad shape. I was in my twenties, young and dumb, and traded it in straight up for an excellent condition used Ruger Security Six in .357. Sold the Ruger about ten years later--but who knows what the pepperbox was worth. Wish I still had the Ruger too.

Waldo, you sound like a man after my own heart. I too am a junk collector. I love to dig bottles and found parts of firearms in dumps-most so rusty I couldn't figure out what they were. One was a pump shotgun. In one dump, I found a modern 'hash pipe' next to an 1870's Safety Canning Jar. I sold the jar for a couple hundred bucks and keep the pipe in my 'show and tell' area with other weird junk I find metal detecting and bottle digging.

I once found some sort of old west revolver in an embankment. It was pretty rusted, so i assumed it was authentic. But I got some second opinions that it was actually only a toy or cap gun.

Well, the best I can do is tell you about helping open a safe that had been abandoned in a warehouse for about 10 years. When we finally got it open, there was a S&W 357, a TEC9, a matching pair of .22 single shot derringers (italian knockoffs) and a cigar box full of folding knives along with titles to a bunch of cars and trucks also in that storage shed. I got a two bladed Case XX folder out of the deal...I feel cheated.

Butch.

I don't know how I missed this thread in the past, but it was a really interesting read...but unfortunately no guns found by me. :banghead:

Back in my hot-blooded youth I quit a job due to an issue I had with my manager. Finances got tight while I was waiting for something in my industry to open up, and instead of hitting Mcdonalds or retail and lying to some poor schmoe to get a job I'd quit as soon as I could I went down to Labor Ready to suffer for my indiscretion.

I got picked up to work on a crew pouring garage floors in a then-new development out in Redmond, and I'm in the semi-finished garage leveling out the floor for the pour with another guy. A real fireball, this one was, had an opinion about everything and couldn't actually not talk for more than a few seconds. Well, in this development the pedestals for the hot water heaters were already installed, as were the heaters, and as Mouthy McMoutherson was smoothing the dirt under the pedestal he catches something shiny and picks it up. Comes up with a cheap, nickel-plated .25, packed with dirt and says, "Look what I found!" while he spins around pointing the weapon at me, with finger in the trigger guard, and the drywall crew having lunch in the corner. I mentioned that it was convenient that since he had picked it up it now had his prints all over it, and let him know he had a choice: call the police, or I will. He got bent out of shape, called the on-site boss over and let him know the age-old rule of finders keepers applied. Unfortunately the boss sided with me, and Redmond PD came out and collected it.

I got called back to work the same crew the next day, didn't show because I had had enough of that fool to last a lifetime, and got in with another company in my chosen industry the day after that so I never heard anything else about the mystery .25.

My father-in-law has an old German Mauser from which his father found during WWII. I actually think he has 2 of them. Myself, I found my old BB gun that my mom took from me and threw away. That's about it!!