August 2005

Guncart Evolution Part 2 tells the storyu of the development of my 4-wheel gun cart. (Guncart Evolution, Part 1 tells of the construction of the first gun cart of this type.) This is what the gun cart looked like when it was brand new.

It is made of mahogany, poplar, and Baltic Birch plywood and finished with several coats of semi-gloss polyurethane. The wheels were wooden with rubber tires.

March 2010

This is what it looks like now:

It's been through a lot and looks like it. Since June 2007 it has been to several matches a month and more practice sessions. It has had its design requirements changed, and the wheels...

Wheels

I believe this is the 5th set of wheels. EOT '06 destroyed those lovely wooden wheels. I put on the 12" spoked Northern Tools wheels with solid rubber tires from the first guncart. They came apart after EOT '07 while I was at Hell on Wheels. I bought 4 wheels from Lowe's, UGLY wheels. But they worked. Eventually I bought 16" wheels from Northern Tools and sold those. The new wheels came apart at the 2009 EOT, and I ran to Lowe's and bought the ones shown. They're ugly, but they work--except in deep gravel. They lost their tires at the '09 Utah State Championship, and I strapped the tires down with cable ties.

Several cable ties are missing. As you would expect, they wear out from abrasion from the surfaces we shoot on. I bring them back up to 12 per wheel as necessary, depending on where I'm going to be shooting.

The screw on holsters are from Lone Rider Leather. If you're going to be walking 2 miles during a day of shooting, wouldn't you be less tired if you removed the 40 lb. iof pistols on your hips?

Percussion Loading Stand and Cylinder Loader

Initially I was loading the pistols at unloading tables as instructed by several match direstors. When I got to Arizona I discovered that their unloading tables were tiny, and people got snippy when I used them to load the pistols. So I made the lid of the upper box into a loading station with a Powder Inc. Cylinder Loader and a Dixie Gun Works loading stand.

Recently I got tired of finding the powder flask on the ground and made a place for it:

 

Bracing

5 years of being rode hard and put away wet had some effects on the big cart. The base itself could probably withstand RPG hits, but the top is held onto the bottom by 2 vertical boards that are bolted to be base so that they can be folded down. The top was getting a bit rickety:

The top part grew corner braces on each side wherever they would fit.

More braces grew on the bottom, but the modification that solidified it the best was the addition of hinges that could be pinned together to lock the top into place. The cart is much more solid now. Some of the surface scarring is visible in this photo. When designed, the unit folded up into itself:

Note that the top box fit in the middle compartment of the base when everything was folded up for travel. Now, with all of that "stuff" on top of the box it's very difficult to put it there, so, in the ML320CDI, with a bigger storage area, it's stored at the end of the cart, beating the hell out of the cart with its hinges.

The finish, in general, has been beaten, scraped, or worn off. I've been trying to think of a reasonable way to refinish it. I sanded the top box down and re-urethaned it, and it's hardly noticeable. There's also the fact that I no longer have a 735 sq. ft. shop with a sanding room and a painting room. I have a tiny trailer/shop.

The front is in much better shape, but it's still beat up, as is the big box. You'll note it's gained 2 hinges, which limit the top to 90°.

The top box's scars are more visible here. It, too, has hinges that limit to 90°. But with the loading station on top, they're under a lot of stress:

So I added chain limiters. The original delicate chains that broke once per match have been replaced by anchor chains from the QE2, shown here.

One of my hand made handles (with routed finger grooves so you can pick the box up) has broken. There are a lot of chunks and such missing here and there.

Theoretically, at least, I would like to disassemble the cart, sand it down, fill some of the nicks, and prime and paint it, probably Little Red Wagon Red with yellow pinstripes so I could find it among all of the other natural wood colored carts when coming off the stage in the fog of war. Among the problems are the fact that surfaces rub together when it's folded up, and there's still the fact that I work in a little bitty trailer/shop. Then there's the fact that I can't keep up with feeding my guns, cleaning the shop, and writing for the Cowboy Chronicle.

Conclusions:

It's beaten but unbowed. It still works, and I still haven't found anything else that'll work with my space shooting Frontiersman. San Juan walked by once and said, "You've got too much shit in it." But San Juan doesn't shoot BP. Anyway it's nice when you have broken your '73's left-side framistat, and there's one in the spares bag in the bottom box or you see the rifle knockdown is going to require a 400 gr. bullet going 1000 ft./sec. and you just happen to have one in the bottom box.

I'm still looking for decent wheels that look good. These look like something the Russian Army rejected. Nothing inflatable need apply. If you've seen some of the places I shoot you know why. Hub and spokes that either are yellow or can be painted yellow with some permanency gets extra points.