CLA show trip

**kyratshooter** · 08-21-2010, 12:47 AM

Each year the Contemporary Longrifle Association holds a show in Lexington, KY. The best builders of KY rifles and frontier knives nationwide and the top collectors bring their goodies for display.

The show is this weekend and me and a couple of friends (yes, I have real live noncomputer friends) go down there each year.

It is one of those cheap trips. Admission is only $10 and after you get in you can't afford anything they have anyway so you don't spend anything.

We are talking about rifles starting at $10,000-$15,000 and hawks and knives in the $5,000-$7,000 range. We always claim we go to see what we can not afford this year.

This is our version of an art show. You look, you study and admire the craftsmanship and abilities and appriciate the wares for what they are.

**crashdive123** · 08-21-2010, 06:47 AM

I wonder how much they'd charge me if I drooled on one of the rifles or knives?

**Ole WV Coot** · 08-21-2010, 07:22 AM

Check out Tom Nixon from WV if he has anything showing. He does great work and haven't seen him for many years, like about 20.

**Rick** · 08-21-2010, 09:52 AM

Have a safe trip and enjoy the show. Pics, man, pics. I've never seen a $5 grand hawk.

**hunter63** · 08-21-2010, 11:03 AM

Originally Posted by crashdive123

I wonder how much they'd charge me if I drooled on one of the rifles or knives?

LOL, I had a rifle maker camp directly behind me at the last rendezvous, he put up ropes to keep me back.........Maybe some day.......

Anyway sounds like a good time, pic's, pic's pic's.......
Stay hydrated.

**kyratshooter** · 08-21-2010, 07:36 PM

http://www.longrifle.com/

All I can do is link you in. Pictures were not really welcome at the show unless you were press. These guns are as much art as guns and copying/forgery is a problem.

I walked myself to death. The show is in Rupp Arena and fills the place. That is the UK basketball arena/convention center/unofficial capitol or the state. There were hundreds of tables and you do not just walk down the middle and look at both sides. These items demand minute inspection and the makers need to be interrigated on the finish methods and procedures. They like to bragg and we take advantage of it.

It is not just guns, there are dozens of knife makers, leather workers, horners, painters and even publishers selling their wares.

I espically enjoy talking with the writers. The guys lost me when i ran into A. Thom , the man that wrote "Fiollow the River", the story of Mary Ingles. I had done a presentation to her family reunion on the 250 aniversary of her escape from the Shwawnee at the Big Bone Lick Archeology site.

What I really enjoy about this show is the dozens of origional rifles and snothbores from the first 300 years of our history. I saw relic guns from as early as 1500 in the Spanish colonies and a progression of development up to the cartridge era.

It is good conversation ammo for the students of the gun that will quickly tell you "they did not do this" or they always did that" and espically "You will never see this on a gun carried by our ancestors".

At this show you will see every "rule" of gun history broken within a 4 hour walk. Smothbores with front and rear sights, longrifles from the mid 1700s with peep sights, surplus military weapons reworked and rifling cut in the barrels, longrifles made using scrap hardware fom Besses and Charliville muskets, tube sights, scopes, stocks made from all the woods the "experts" claim were never used.

You also see that the gunmakers of ancient days were not the perfectionists that gunmakers are today. Some of them were not very good a various aspects of building. Some were good at wood, but not metal. Some did good finish work but their mechanics were horrid. The finishes of then and today were very different. Things were not sanded to a glass finish and brushed with polishers, they were scraped and stained and carried in all kinds of weather.

After going to this show one time you quit paying any attention to the "experts" of book or computer.

It was a good day. wish you guys could have been there.

**crashdive123** · 08-21-2010, 08:02 PM

Sounds like a great show.

**Rick** · 08-21-2010, 08:11 PM

Wow! Some real treasures on that web site. I notice wormy chestnut boards go for $3500. I wonder what you can get for a wormy administrator?

I'm glad you had a good time.

**kyratshooter** · 08-22-2010, 01:41 AM

Originally Posted by Rick

Wow! Some real treasures on that web site. I notice wormy chestnut boards go for $3500. I wonder what you can get for a wormy administrator?

I'm glad you had a good time.

Sorry Rick, wormy admin goes to the curb.

You guys would have gone bonkers over the knife selections. There were literally thousands of hand made blades available. Every shape style, materal and discription.