People think of reverse engineering as something done by people knocking off a product. Some rapid prototyping guys I’ve come to know say their biggest customers are companies that need to make something from 50, 20, or even 5 years ago and they no longer have the skilled staff or drawings, or they have the drawings and they don’t make sense or reflect running changes that were made in the product.

I’m reminded of your experience with the firing pins recently for, what were they, Sauer 38s? The parts reflected a running change in production. There’s a lot of that in M16 production and thanks to all the drama about the gun, a roster of the first thousand or so change orders was preserved.

I have some new gear coming and just took a break from reorganizing the “fine gunsmithing” part of the workshop. Some Murphy corollary says one can’t do anything in just one step. After pricing benches and thinking about building benches, I bought two beautiful leather-topped mahogany hotel desks from a firm that overhauls hotels (I was there anyway picking up a turbine paint sprayer for an airplane project). But of course I can’t put the desks/benches in, until I remove the old stuff that’s there, and I had to have some place to put that which means I had to put the outdoor furniture back out for the summer… which means I had to get rid of the oak leaves… but damn, there wasn’t any gas in the lawnmower…

And I think I’ll be screwed when summer ends and I need to put up the outdoor furniture. Well, as Attila the Hun used to say, I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.