Saturday, I did take off to get some work done 'round the Castle while the weather briefly permitted. That involved schlepping all the downed limbs from the ice storm of December and building a funeral pyre for them. It's green wood, so it took all day to burn the debris of the 6 trees in the immediate area, what with cutting them up and piling them on, and keeping the fire hot enough to burn green wood without too much smoke (it was all Chinese Elm).

Sunday, we got hit with the snow, and the temps were back in the teens. So, I worked on the Vickers guns in the basement.

I have two versions of the Vickers, the corrugated water jacket and the later smooth water jacket. I keep them (generally) in WWI configuration for the corrugated jacket gun, and WWII Indirect Fire configuration for the smooth jacket. Both are ex-Turkish guns. The smooth jacket sits in an Australian WWII tripod, the other in the original Turk tripod, which sits higher, and has provision for an anti-aircraft extension in the long leg of the tripod. Purists are gouging out their eyes already, as I've got mixed parts and bits from all the users of the Vickers - Brit, Aussie, Kiwi, South African, Canadian, and Indian, too. Part of the appeal of the gun to me is all the users, and the true interchangeability of the parts. Purists are also tearing their hair at the anachronism on the corrugated jacket gun as currently displayed... Let's see if there are any purists present who will point it out...

These particular guns are dummies made by Sarco. As such, they have thicker-than-original sideplates, and do not have the recoil plates installed. The reason for the thicker sideplates is so that the recoil plates *cannot* be installed, making it much harder to rework the guns into a shootable condition. They are also minutely longer than the original receivers, so that the locks will not come far enough forward to actually strip a round from the belt. The Vickers/Maxim locks (Vickers on the left, Maxim on the right in the linked picture) are fully capable of firing a cartridge without the cartridge being in the chamber. The firing pins on the locks have been nipped, so that they won't protrude through the lock - but since the locks can be removed, idiots and the ignorant could still get themselves in real trouble.

Another artifact of this particular ATF-approved design is that the maker didn't want to do to the extra effort to drill and tap holes for the "check lever," which is a prominent component of the Vickers gun. It served to help regulate the firing speed of the gun and to prevent the charging handle from moving too far when the gun starts to wear. Simply put, they didn't come with the guns. The guns were also missing the tripod stop (which was a Brit variation not present on the Turk guns). While all the other bits and pieces were present, some weren't in the best of shape, so I spent the day cleaning and repairing and doing some arranging in the display. I'm going to build some stepped shelves to put the gunners kits and platoon parts chest, etc, on.

So, I went digging into the bits and pieces I've been collecting for 11 years now (I started after SWWBO gave me the early version of the gun for Christmas before we got married) and spent a lazy afternoon epoxying on the check levers (after some judicious grinding off of two bosses that would have fit into the sideplate), cleaning up some rust that was starting to show through the paint, replacing water plugs that didn't have the heat resistant scales on them with ones that did. And more stuff like that. I'll behead some screws to put in the screw holes on the check lever mounting plates - because I'm too lazy to drill and tap, too.

I then swapped the WWII gun so that it faces the wall, and a visitor can see the dial sight and clinometer of the indirect fire configuration (as well as the gunner's end of the gun) and the WWI gun is facing the viewer, to give them access to that view. I then arranged a good chunk of the bits and pieces around (there's more, believe me) to add visual appeal and provide props when I drone on about the guns to unsuspecting visitors. Still plenty of work to do, but I thought I'd share a window into the slow progress on the Arms Room of Argghhh!

If you'd like a little closer a view, click here.

Oh, and if you'd like to own a shootable Vickers - there is one available right now. Aside from not being legal in Kansas (and because it's a sideplate gun, possibly not in Missouri, either - though an original would be), the price is one reason why I don't own any shooters.