Borchardts go with Steampunk

[StarOfTheWest]

http://tinypic.com/usermedia.php?uo=...XN34h4l5k2TGxc

[Edward Tinker]

Nice antiques and nice guns, overall pretty cool

[Ron Wood]

Watta hoot!!! Love what you have done with the house! Still hope to get there someday.

[Thor]

The title of this post and some of the comments seem "off" to me.

[StarOfTheWest]

Steampunk is a subculture genre that combines a Victorian look with high tech, as if power sources has proceeded along the lines of steam, or perhaps Tesla.
It is imaginative, beautiful and at times very science fiction.
Think H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, or the most recent well publicized ripoff of it, the remake of the move "The Wild Wild West".
Steampunk has been around for years, and has very little to do with punk, and a whole lot to do with steam.
The genre has attracted folks of all ages, even some of us old fogies, (as we can afford the best toys).
Look it up on Wikipedia if you still have no clue what I'm talking about.
http://tinypic.com/usermedia.php?uo=...GBrIh4l5k2TGxc

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by StarOfTheWest

Think H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, or the most recent well publicized ripoff of it, the remake of the move "The Wild Wild West".

Or "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"...which was a dud, but has some interesting Steampunk ideas...

Yes, I love that decor also...especially the Doggerman...

[StarOfTheWest]

By gosh, Postino, you get it!!
Thanks to all for the kind comments and even thanks for the befuddled one.
Y'all are great, and I might post more later that show the guns to better advantage.
BTW, the Borchardt and the 02 Carbine were the ones I chose to play with in these shots.
Don't have to shoot em to have some fun with em, guys!!!

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by StarOfTheWest

BTW, the Borchardt and the 02 Carbine were the ones I chose to play with in these shots.
Don't have to shoot em to have some fun with em, guys!!!

Yes! Fondling can be more satisfying than shooting...the heavy weight, the smooth cool steel, the heft in your hand, the satiny functioning as you rack the action, the click/snick as it cycles...

...Did I say that out loud???...

[StarOfTheWest]

Heck darlin, a good Luger is better than sex.
(did I say THAT out loud?)
*grin*

[nukem556]

I can get behind some of the steampunk popularity, and the Borchardt fits right in....richly polished wood, lush tapestries, finely machined mechanisms.....my question is, where does AC/DC enter the picture?

[StarOfTheWest]

Oh, I just have very eclectic musical tastes, lol, and it all fits my house and personality perfectly.
I *love* the bagpipes in that AC/DC song in my sig line, and as I was an entertainer for about 20 years, it has meaning to me.
I love Beethoven and Paul Kantner too, but Abney Park is my favorite.
Got a Steampunk pic with the 02 Luger Carbine too, if you want to see?
http://oi54.tinypic.com/2rf7mns.jpg

[Dick Herman]

Steampunk ties my interest in antiques and fireams together. Thank you for putting a label on a concept that I have enjoyed since first reading Jule Vern's works.

[Frank]

Hey Star, when are you going to show some pictures of your Hanna Reitsch Museum Room and the room dedicated to Belly Dancers?

[StarOfTheWest]

Left the 20 year long belly dance occupation behind in Denver when I retired from it 13 years ago, Frank.
And since the stroke, I am wheelchair bound, but working hard on recovery.
The Hanna Reitsch stuff and the militaria collection is safely stored here in the mansion.
Thanks for asking.

[Mauser720]

Wonderful pictures, Star. Glad to see you still have your Borchardt. (I thought at one time you were going sell it.)

[StarOfTheWest]

I would still consider a good offer on it, but it is happy here, so it has stayed.
Thanks for the kind words on the pics, just ignore the old lady playing dress up, and enjoy the guns and ambiance.
Fritz the Dog sends his greetings as well.

[Mauser720]

A friend of mine who lives in Missouri has a model of a steam powered tractor. Since I thought it was very interesting, I asked her if we could fire it up and see what it would do. She said "Okay"; however she had never personally started the thing up. It used some kind of fuel pellets and I just assumed that we would need quite a few in order to get the steam pressure up to the actual operating level. So I put quite a few of them in the furnace, or whatever that part on a steam engine is called. It sat on her kitchen floor for quite awhile and then gradually started to sputter and hiss. I had the steering wheel set so that it would run in a big circle. And eventually it was running around in this big circle on the floor just fine. But it kept running faster and faster, and she did not know how to turn it off. Eventually we both realized that unless we did something, it was going to fly off and run into a wall or break something. Quick thinking lad that I am, I just assumed I could grab it as it ran by me, and lift it up from the floor, and just let its wheels spin until it ran out of steam. Initially, this did work; however, as it continued to run faster and faster while I was holding it, it blew one end of the boiler off and splattered black soot and crud all over my face. Fortunately I was not hurt, but I looked pretty ridiculous and it was quite a while before we could both stop laughing. I did send her steam engine back to the factory and they did repair the boiler. And I never started that thing up again. That was my first and last experience with steam power. I'm not sure if this qualifies as "steampunk" but I certainly did look like a "steam punk."

[StarOfTheWest]

Wow! What an experience!
Steam power can be quite deadly.

A lot of NYC modern skyscrapers are still heated from a central city steam boiler system that runs at 3200psi, although it gets stepped down in stages before it is used in the buildings.
Every once in a while though, a major full pressure steam line blows out under the streets there, and it is impressively catastrophic.

The old steam locomotives were horribly dangerous as well, due to potential explosions.

Sounds like you had tons of fun, but narrowly escaped some possibly very bad injuries or scalding.

Much like our manned space program, the steam pioneers were very courageous, and risked dreadful deaths to bring progress to humanity.

[Vlim]

One of the steam punks of his generation, an American inventor who had also dabbled with machine guns and who developed some sort of repeating mechanism that also found it's way into a type of pistol some people like, decided to look into the challenge of manned flight and he set out to do the ground work for a heavier than air flying machine, powered by a very efficient and light set of steam engines.

He reached his goal, his flying machine took off, but in a controlled environment powered by those 2 steam engines. All this quite a few years before the Wright brothers came up with their solution.

One of the steam engines survived and is still on display somewhere in the UK. The other steam engine is, well not entirely missing as we know where it was, but out of reach nonetheless. In 1912 it was shipped to the US, in a steam liner called the Titanic.

The inventor was Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim.

[StarOfTheWest]

Thanks Vlim, I had no idea!
Fascinating!

I kept an old framed print of Hiram Maxim on the back parlor wall for years, btw, just so I could tell visitors about the internal toggle action on his guns.