Bent Ramrod
12-13-2009, 02:41 AM
I guess I'm one of those people who get hooked on an author or writer, and after they have ceased being active, am always on the lookout for obscure, lost or otherwise not previously read articles and examples of their writings.
Wolfe recently published Ken Waters' Notebook, which consists of all the responses Ken had made to the letters sent in for his columns "Answers Please" and "Loading the Old Ones" in Rifle and Handloader magazines. This is the compendium of all his answers to readers' queries, not just the responses that made it into the columns. Typically, his response is complete enough so that the query does not need to be included, but in some cases, those letters are in there as well.
I am astounded at the man's output, his industry, his knowledge and his ability. Obviously, a "shooting expert" can be expected to give an opinion based on his experience, or to look up a fact or two in a reference that the letter writer might not have, but Ken routinely loaded up cartridges, tested them out, measured small details on cartridges and guns and otherwise took a huge amount of his time and did a lot of pretty expensive research, just to answer a reader's question.
His answer to my letter from the 1970's is in there, too. As it turned out, I never had the occasion to take his advice, as I found the proper moulds and tools soon after, but he looked up some data, measured sample cast bullets, gave the dimensions to me and passed on an opinion based on the data he got. I don't know what I was thinking back in those days about the service he had done for me. I guess I figured that a "gun expert" normally spends 24 hours a day checking out arcana relating to all kinds of guns, shells, bullets, primers, lengths, widths, diameters, weights, velocities, pressures, accuracy levels and maintenance and I might just as well pick up on all this largesse as long as it was happening anyway. Great gig, sure beats working for a living, etc. The American Rifleman had a staff of eight or ten people to answer such inquiries; this was one guy!
I didn't know at the time that he had a regular job as a civil engineer and all this gun stuff was his "hobby." I don't know how he could do all that research, and how he could keep doing it on that level for decades, while writing all the other articles he was doing all in his spare time. As one of his correspondents put it, "You must have the patience of a saint." That is a true word; some of those queries are pretty argumentative, some kind of off the wall. He answered all of them seriously and politely. I wonder if we are going to see anybody who was that deeply into that many aspects of shooting and reloading of that many different guns again.
His letters were also carefully typed with good spelling and grammar and very few typos and corrections, this in the old "carbon-copy" era where there was none of this spell-check or cut-and-paste stuff. Amazing man.
Wolfe recently published Ken Waters' Notebook, which consists of all the responses Ken had made to the letters sent in for his columns "Answers Please" and "Loading the Old Ones" in Rifle and Handloader magazines. This is the compendium of all his answers to readers' queries, not just the responses that made it into the columns. Typically, his response is complete enough so that the query does not need to be included, but in some cases, those letters are in there as well.
I am astounded at the man's output, his industry, his knowledge and his ability. Obviously, a "shooting expert" can be expected to give an opinion based on his experience, or to look up a fact or two in a reference that the letter writer might not have, but Ken routinely loaded up cartridges, tested them out, measured small details on cartridges and guns and otherwise took a huge amount of his time and did a lot of pretty expensive research, just to answer a reader's question.
His answer to my letter from the 1970's is in there, too. As it turned out, I never had the occasion to take his advice, as I found the proper moulds and tools soon after, but he looked up some data, measured sample cast bullets, gave the dimensions to me and passed on an opinion based on the data he got. I don't know what I was thinking back in those days about the service he had done for me. I guess I figured that a "gun expert" normally spends 24 hours a day checking out arcana relating to all kinds of guns, shells, bullets, primers, lengths, widths, diameters, weights, velocities, pressures, accuracy levels and maintenance and I might just as well pick up on all this largesse as long as it was happening anyway. Great gig, sure beats working for a living, etc. The American Rifleman had a staff of eight or ten people to answer such inquiries; this was one guy!
I didn't know at the time that he had a regular job as a civil engineer and all this gun stuff was his "hobby." I don't know how he could do all that research, and how he could keep doing it on that level for decades, while writing all the other articles he was doing all in his spare time. As one of his correspondents put it, "You must have the patience of a saint." That is a true word; some of those queries are pretty argumentative, some kind of off the wall. He answered all of them seriously and politely. I wonder if we are going to see anybody who was that deeply into that many aspects of shooting and reloading of that many different guns again.
His letters were also carefully typed with good spelling and grammar and very few typos and corrections, this in the old "carbon-copy" era where there was none of this spell-check or cut-and-paste stuff. Amazing man.