Firearms Friday: Miscellaneous Parts

This summarizes the majority of the spare parts that I have... 

When sorting through the boxes, drawers, and safes around my work bench it is amazing how much stuff that I am able to uncover. Not only is it a useful exercise in updating my parts inventory but it is also a means to reorganize all the miscellaneous items that got put aside at one point or another but never properly cataloged. Not get me wrong, anything with a serial number is well documented but anyone that does any gunsmithing or replaces parts knows that there are always pieces that simply get consumed by the workbench.

However, what I find to be the most interesting part of the process if not finding the useful parts and pieces that I can either use right away or store in my bench for later but the parts that I have no idea how I got them. Well, that isn’t completely true. Many of the items revealed during the excavation are from firearms that I used to own. We all have that miscellaneous box or drawer of parts laying around full of items that we thought we would use but never did. Before we knew it, the parts had been swallowed by the work bench and the firearm was sold or traded.

Then there are the parts to firearms that I never owned. These come about because of three very simple reasons: I hope to own that particular make/model in the future; I didn’t read the box, bag, or description closely enough and bought the wrong nonreturnable item; or, it was too good of a deal on a part that I can easily use for trade fodder. I know that I am not alone in having some things fall into one of these three categories.

At this point it is a matter of pulling together all of the different parts and separating them into a system that will work moving forward. Actually, it is more about updating the current system. This basically comes down to parts that I expect to use immediately, backup parts and those that were swapped out, parts that I will use in the future upon acquisition of the correct firearm, and those that will be exclusively used for trade fodder or will be sold. Of course, this is all in the hope that I will be able to maintain this means of organization moving forward and now that my wife and I have settled down that is actually a possibility.