When I came back from S.E.A. in the 60’s, I bought my first new car. A 1967 VW bug w/ sunroof, deluxe am/fm radio and a “chrome package”. It cost $1700.00. It weighed 1716 pounds. Call it a buck a pound. I got a tank of gas in Amarillo, Texas for 18.9 cents/gallon. Think I remember 10 gal tank and about 300 miles/tank
The next year GM was paying new hires 2.82/ hr. I was going to school on the GI Bill, but many of the guys I grew up with were working there. They were buying new houses, new cars and some were buying boats. It was the good life.
I started turning brass in the seventies and paid just under $1.00/pound buying 5,000 pounds at a time. I bought a new 75 Monte Carlo for 4300.00 just a tad over $1.00/pound.
Fast forward 35 years……I am now spending closer to $5.00/ pound and more than 5 by the time I pay shipping and extra for not reaching the 5000 pound price bracket, usually.
Some of the first barrels I turned could be taken to the scrap yard today and sold for what I charged. A new car costs about…… $5.00/ pound. GM (or obama) is paying more than 5X the 2.82/hour.
Lets talk about
www.brooks-usa.com Brass Barrels, aka “the Golden Gun”, a 2 time winner on the GBO Calendar. The focus on the thread titled “new SAMCC barrel” after our Global Moderator who loves his brass barrel. They are well respected by many GBO members going back to the BYCF thread
http://www.gboreloaded.com/forums/index.php/topic,63873.0.html going on 30,000 views, which is, WAY notable, on the whole GBO Forum, probably # 1. Lots of discussion about our barrels being way safe, overbuilt. No “bad” things happen with our barrels. Accidents are caused by operator error or faulty design, not by any flaw in the chemical composition of FC360. All of us on GBO take care to watch for design errors or any practice that could create a safety hazard.
FC360 is one of the most consistent of all alloys, copper or otherwise. Certs are available on all that I buy, showing exactly what and how much of what is in it. Few casting operations offer that and certainly during the Civil War, there were even fewer controls or constraints.
One can buy a lot of barrel from
www.brooks-USA.com for about the cost of a steak dinner for you and the wife at a good steakhouse with good service and all. My barrel will last generations and generations, saving hundreds of dollars every holiday for fireworks that won’t even last as long as the steak dinner did are not legal in many places where black powder is welcome. Just think of the difference in fire hazard. Black powder doesn’t cost much and fuse is even less
www.cannonfuse.com.
Sooo…when one of these “Brooks Golden Guns” is looked at two or three generations down the road, it really is Gold!
