Thread: "Too pretty to use"

We quite often hear this, or see these words in a gun classified. It's a common phrase, one that I heard someone use just this weekend.

There are many of us who have been there done that with this phenomenon. We buy the 'dream rifle' that we have lusted after for so long, but for one reason or another 6 months, a year or two years later, it get sold and the main reason we claim is that is 'too nice to get banged up'. I was one of those once. I remember the first custom stock I built, it was for a BRNO 601 that I bought off my then girlfriends father. It was also my first custom rifle and wildcat - Nelson Collie fitted a new MAB barrel and chambered it for the 6x45. Suffice to say, many hours were spent on that thing, and it was my pride and joy. As much as I loved it, it only lasted about a year or so, before it was found a new home. At that time of my life I couldn't make peace with the idea of this beautiful rifle I had built 'degrading' in the process of me using it for what it was built to do.

It's a funny concept when you break it down. Its like people that don't drive their cars to protect the resale value. I guess I've grown a lot since then, but as a stock maker, I'd far sooner see a rifle that had a few dings and scratches, and one where the bluing was starting to wear thin from the hours it had been carried, than one that had hardly seen the light of day. One of the guys at my workplace has a Rigby Highland Stalker .275, which cost him $26,000. He regularly takes it bush, and has even loaned it to newbies to get their first deer. It has a couple of marks on it, and the satin blue is stating to gloss up in a few places for him carrying it, but you know what, I think it looks better because of it. He has expensive taste, and loves a high grade rifle, but he bought it to hunt deer with, so that's what he does. I'm hopefully only a couple of weeks away from finishing a very nice stock, and once its sold, I dearly hope that it ends up doing the job that I made it to do - dings, scratches, wear and all!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not about the abuse that some people dole out to their gear. I say look after it as well as you can, but be comfortable with the fact that marks and scratches are part of the game. What I think is a worse crime, is stocks that have been refinished many times (badly) and have had their lines and dimensions sanded off in order to remove some harmless scratches. Ultimately a worse scenario than just leaving them be.

Perhaps its not really about the worry over damaging a nice rifle, but more about the itch to try something new. Maybe the idea that it's 'too pretty to use' is the reasoning we settle on to justify to ourselves that we need to sell it and get something else. If I'm being honest with myself, I can tell you that this was the case for me. I wasn't one for settling on a rifle cartridge combo, and I guess I knew it, because I was always trying to keep it in mind condition to retain its resale value. My first 'real' centre-fire was a brand new Ruger M77 MK11 Wood/blued in 6.5x55, and I wish I still had it. I really feel that I'm missing something, by not having that well used Ruger still bearing its physical reminders of all the adventures we had together.

I've got some very nice walnut lined up in my safe now, but they all missing the mana that a bit of wear and tear brings. So now, I'm making up for lost time.....