A couple of weeks ago, a place where I have bought a few pieces and parts for old guns sent me an email saying that they had John L. Hinnant's book by that name on sale. The book looked good but when I went to check out and pay for it, they had added $12.50 for shipping and handling. $12.50. You'd think it was The Complete Illustrated Guide to Understanding Women for it to cost that much to ship it.
So I looked in a few other places and managed to pay less in total by paying more for the book at a place with more reasonable shipping. I payed close to $6.00 less.
The book came in last week and I've had a chance to thumb through it. I really like what I see. Some of the reviews on line said you'd need some basic competency as a machinist to understand all of it but I don't think that's the case. I certainly don't know my way around a machine shop. There's no place around where I live to enroll in a class to learn how to run a lathe. What little I do know has been self taught or just picked up intuitively as I fiddle with old tools. I find the book to be pretty easy to understand even at my advanced level of ignorance.
The illustrations are all of the same quality as the one on the cover. Very clear and precise. The author tells you how to perform a given operation and tells you why to do it the way he says and why not to do it other ways. When more than one way does work, he tells you that too. He tells you where to get certain tools and how to make others and he tells you why you need what he says you need.
If you have an interest in gunsmithing but don't really have the knowledge you need, I think this book will really help.
My copy even came autographed.
About the only thing it leaves out is where you can get a bolt bending fixture like this.
I suspect that The Lovely Bride doesn't want one of those hanging around in the garage anyway.
I've been trying to find an excuse to post that picture for years!
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