I’m trying to catch up on all of what has happened in the previous months. I discovered a draft of an entry I was about to make just as this whole cancer thing kicked off.

You see, I was scurrying about in mid-March, trying to get the pieces together for shooting the Brown Bess for the first time. It occurred to me that I had no hard case long enough to hold the 58-inch musket. Most production cases end at 56 inches. There was one soft-sided case out there, but it was outside my budget. I, therefore, went to the garage and started picking through wood scraps. As it turned out, I had a bit of 3/8″ plywood and some 1X3s that would work. It was going to be a tight fit, but I figured I could make it happen. I went out to Lowes and bought some brass catches and a length of piano hinge. I used 1-inch nylon from a dog collar for the handle. The furring strips were glued to the plywood sides and secured with a 16-ga finish nailer. The finish is a dark mahogany Poly-Shades stain/finish that I had left over from the bins project.

My workshop is in the basement, and I spent the next few days pounding up and down the stairs. I had just gotten the bare minimum completed when KYHillChick called me to dinner. I trundled up the stairs and felt something go in my left calf muscle. At the time, I figured it was just a strained muscle and spent the next few days resting in the recliner. It turned out this was the first of the blood clots the returning seminoma was going to cause. This turned out to be the trigger that set off my Chemo odyssey.

I had taken pictures but never got around to posting them. Here they are, Bess’ Box.

The box is big enough that it could conceivably hold two long arms, range rod, and gobs of accessories.  As it is, I’m just wrapping the Bess in a blanket;  I’ll build internal compartments and firearm restraints later.  This was meant as a quick and dirty project to get the Bess to and from the range.

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