CandRsenal

It's here.

I've been awake for 60 hours and still have sales doodle to fix for the next two.

Wish me luck!

Small Arms of WWI Primer 094: Serbian Mausers 1899 and 1908

Our regularly scheduled episode for next time will be delayed.  I'm frankly exhausted with this collaboration project.

George's 2nd Great Work

The first is waiting for the 100th episode.   But he kindly provided another.  It's fantastic!  I am overwhelmed by the details.

The Needle Moves Again

For the past several months we've been frozen near 145,000 subscribers, with gains of only a hundred or so every few days.  Patreon also flat-lined at 80% of our goal to have Mae come over full time.  We were stuck in a spot where the show just wasn't profitable enough to have her bills covered and yet I was working 80+ hours a week for.. well always.

If something did not give, the show was actually going to collapse.  Likely with my health.  So we took a chance and...

Primer 093: Ottoman Mauser 1893

We squeezed the next two episodes together and now have to RUN to get Project Lightening done.  Crazy year so far!

What is Lightening?

By the way, in a day or so I am going to be asking you patrons to preview and critique some editing on the project.

Times gone by

Taofledermaus has been bullying me to try to community tab out on YouTube.  In doing so I relisted the very first C&Rsenal video, a demo of the Type 14 Nambu animation.

I somehow completely forgot I had a near-complete Type 94 animation that was NEVER publicly released.  These were done with actual photographed parts and, at this stage, were frame-by-frame down to the individual wires in the springs.  I later created a sort of staggered, anchored, equatione...

Montenegro!

I will have more goodies about the Ian collab later this week, but for now: our regularly scheduled program.

Happy New Year!

So where are we at as we start 2019?

1. In just one week I have to film a secret project over 3 days.  It's going to be the most challenging and demanding thing I have ever done in terms of sheer volume of footage etc that needs to go correctly.

2. Despite not reaching our funding goal to onboard Mae full time, we did it anyway because I was about to collapse.  The transition is in its 3rd week and I'm actually only doing direct episode work for about 30 hours a week...

Gasser 1870

Happy New Year

On Christmas

First and foremost: Happy Chrimmas to you all!  Whether you consider it a truly holy day or just a holiday, I sincerely hope you're spending it warm, safe, and with your loved ones.  

If you're not so lucky, well my own family took what was the last of several severe hits just before I started this show.  Even now, years later, I haven't really figured out what Christmas is supposed to look like going forward; the lifelong pattern is disrupted.  But I ha...

Happy Chrimmas (early)

Thanks for your support in 2018!  
I sincerely hope all of you and yours are safe and happy.

Staging

Sometimes we film a thing

Small Arms of WWI Primer 090: Austro-Hungarian Werndl

Alternatives

I finally had some time to setup SubscribeStar... and they've frozen the ability to setup new donations as they have to change their payment processor.  I have also hear Paypal refuses to work with their platform over the ingress of both right-wing content and, apparently, pornography.

So, while I have a username reserved we'll have to wait for them to resolve this before I promote it as an alternative.

If I am being honest, this controversy may damage the show.  Wh...

New image set

Mae had an idea for a new angle on our photography.  It's fascinating and terrifying.

For those of you leaving..

Patreon has recently removed another batch of notable personalities.  Some of you support them and some of you don't at all.  Please try not to fight each other over it here on this post? 

We are always aware that our association with firearms, despite our historical and education approach, makes us vulnerable in the long term with any platform that is sensitive to external pressure.

For anyone curious, Stripe, Mastercard, and Paypal have all put pressure at v...

IMA: caveat emptor

Some have voiced concern at a lack of details and I apologize.  I should not have spoken up until things were settled.  I was annoyed and short sighted.

If you'd like something from IMA, just read every line of the massive descriptions and pay attention to their return policy.  The price will not reflect the quality.  Don't be surprised if what you sent back ends up damaged without any question of it being your doing.

Take 2

I know it seemed minor but I guarantee the swapped vickers and maxim names would have been 98% of all comments for the next 10  years.  Better to just be correct.

Small Arms of WWI Primer 089: British Vickers MkI

I'm going to bed!

Songs of the Great War

It's the giving time of the year and so I have put together a present for all of our Patrons.  The attached is a zip file with 24 songs from the Great War.  

I took some time to clean them up to the best of my limited ability and they are all sufficiently old enough to be in the public domain.  

Thank you all for your support this year and next!

Don't Fret, it's on a stick

Just a little insider view of the learning process we go through with new equipment.

Test fire

This Madsen is  unique.  Definitely a pre-war design, it is in 7mm and has no inspection marks.  We kinda suspect it was part of a lost Bulgarian shipment, that's a whole story.

It's missing one part and we're pulling some favors to get a reference image from the closest available model we know of today.  Even so, we'll have to work out the final shape off what's available.

Good news is it only affects the feeding of the last round.  So I got to do this.

2018-11-24 03:09:29 +0000 UTC View Post

Thanksgiving

I have put in an insane amount of work on this series and, even now, want to push it further.   Along the way I've had help from friends, loved ones, and even strangers with a shared passion.  People who just want the history explored for all to see.

You all, the patrons, are my means and motivation.  You voluntarily stepped up and funded what you wanted to see: in depth history.  Thank you for making this work possible, for helping every month to tell the...

An Anvil Exclusive

Mark is trying to get more content over to Anvil's Patreon in the form of exclusives.

He gave us permission to share this one here, but consider sending  $1 his way specifically to support our team gunsmith!

https://www.patreon.com/anvil

Small Arms of WWI Primer 088: Ottoman 1890 and German Capture

Unrelated to the episode... I'm nervous.

I don't want to give too much away but Mae is taking 90 days to try full time C&Rsenal.

It will make the holidays tight but it is necessary to see if we can actually grow the audience.  As it stands we've mostly plateaued on audience/fundraising... short of long term sustainability. 

Mastering B-roll

The official plan for Primer, over the next year, is to reduce redundant information and to rely much more heavily on video taken on range as overlay for narration.

Practically?  You will likely eventually see the animations put overtop discussion of features, Mae's more direct handling commentary will go over her shooting, with a shorter conversation at the end.  I've also invested in a teleprompter and will try to drive the scripting towards avoiding doubling information.  So ...

Small Arms of WWI Primer 087: Belgian Mauser 89/16 and wartime production

Sorry for the delay, I was a bit sleepy at launch.

I have heard mixed reviews on using the PremiPremiere feature.

Why your help matters.

I always say funding gives me time to outsource tedium. Well because we have enough to bribe a photo-editor, I have been able to start cleaning up a backlog of images and can use them to promote the site and roll into a book. 

Since I could just spend a little to get a couple hours work done, I threw in this quick experiment. So any time you guys save me can be applied to more creatively producing and promoting the content!

2018-11-05 19:20:49 +0000 UTC View Post

Planning.

I had a lovely morning with the family and then, finally, blocked off 6 whole hours just for untangling the various plans that were in effect for C&Rsenal.

We have, almost feverishly, been chasing down a myriad of guns for episodes.  Ammunition production, parts repair, loans and shipping, research material, and more have to be stacked up ahead of time.  Well, as of right now I have absolutely no combinations of fireable pieces and available ammunition.  However, this w...