Flintlock

[HerbZ]

Tac:

Thanks for the history lesson. I stand corrected.

And my history here in America is indeed brief. My family has only been in America since 1906, the year my grandfather, then a journeyman cabinet maker, left his homeland to avoid conscription into some monarch's army. He tried to settle in New York City, but said the elevated trains kept him awake all night. So he took a train as far west as he could afford to go. That landed him in Cincinnati where he was hired by the Baldwin Piano Company, which to his amazement and gratitude taught him to make piano cases for baby grands. By the time the United States entered the First World War, my grandpa was an American citizen and it was then that this former draft dodger volunteered for the U.S. Army. The Army of course knew exactly what to do with a man of my grandfather's skills and accomplishments with tools and wood, they made him a carpenter. My grandpa built all kinds of things out of wood for the Army, at different bases and camps here in the states. Like millions of others, he took sick the next year with influenza. He nearly died, but recovered and was discharged. He returned to making baby grands at Baldwin in Cincinnati, where he founded a dynasty of Ford driving tool collectors, some of whom can actually use most of the tools they own. (My older brother has some of grandpa's specially curved planes that are only good for shaping one part of one piece on a baby grand piano.)

Otherwise, don't y'all get too down on Tac because he shows up to a knife fight with a rapier. I believe that's considered humor over there in the UK. It's my own fault if I showed with a potato peeler.