Winter's here. On the go. A soupy mix. Gun work.

Winter has well and truly arrived. Yesterday we woke to a coat of frozen slushy snow topped with a layer of crystalline snow with a temperature of about 11 degrees. The temp finally maxed out at 16 or 17. Today we woke to a frigid 3 degrees, looking for a high of 15. Yesterday Cherry Pie, after an extend bout of ice scraping and snow clearing, left for work and returned 20 minutes later. She had called her boss and told her she would most likely be late as the traffic was not moving. Good boss lady that she is, told Cherry to turn around and go home. I've said it before, she's a good person to work for.

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I had comment earlier that Cherry had preparations to allow her to stay overnight comfortably at work. I didn't say anything about her car preparations. In the car car she keeps a pair of tall cold weather boots, a long down coat, a rain coat, gloves, a hat and flashlight and a blanket.

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Last night I made a nice chunky vegetable soup with cubes of.............ribeye steak in it. Potatoes, carrots, green beans, corn and rice made up the body of the soup then I added some water, tomato sauce, Lea and Perrins as well as some Heinz 57 sauce and Kitchen Bouquet. Man was it good. We had left over biscuits with it.

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I got the wood on the FIE I'm working on reshaped, sanded and stained yesterday. I like to apply a reddish walnut stain over walnut wood. Today I will apply a few coats of a satin clear poly. Yes, that's right I'm forgoing a traditional hand rubbed oil finish on this one. I treat the poly the same way I do the oil, rub a coat in, let it dry and steel wool it then add another coat, let it dry and add another coat. Three coats makes a very nice looking, durable finish. There's another guy in town that wants me to reblue his sons Savage rifle. I'll probable use Brownells Oxpho Blue for this one. He also wants me to polish the sides of the slide on his stainless P89 Ruger. For this one I'll start with a fine grade of automotive type black sandpaper and take that all the way up to 1500 grit or so and finish with a sheet of felt impregnated with Flitz. All sheets and felts will be layed on a piece of aluminum plate to keep things nice and flat.

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