Smoke Wagon Arms

09/08/2026

08/18/2026

In the fall of 1780, a few hundred mountain farmers got word that a British officer had sent a threat up into their hollers, and they decided to answer it in person. ⛰️

They were the Overmountain Men, and they were not soldiers. They were settlers from the Watauga and the Nolichucky and the Holston, the far side of the Blue Ridge, people who had come west looking for land and been left largely to themselves. They farmed, they hunted, they raised children in cabins a long way from any government. The war out on the coast had mostly been somebody else's war. Then Major Patrick Ferguson sent word over the mountains that if they did not lay down their arms, he would march his army into their country and lay it waste.

That was the wrong thing to say to those people. Word went out through the settlements, and they gathered at Sycamore Shoals in late September, more than a thousand of them by the time it was done. They came with their own long rifles and their own horses and whatever food their wives could pack. A preacher blessed them. Then they climbed up over the high gaps in an early snow and started east.

They found Ferguson on Kings Mountain in South Carolina in October. The fight lasted about an hour. The mountain men fought the way they hunted, moving tree to tree up the slope, and when it was over Ferguson's command was finished. Thomas Jefferson later called it the turn of the tide of success. 🇺🇸

Then, and this is the part that tells you everything about them, most of them simply went home. There was no army to stay with and no pay to collect. There was corn to get in and stock to feed. They had come down out of the mountains because a man had threatened their families, and once that was settled they walked back up into the hills and got on with their lives.

Somewhere in these mountains, somebody in your line may have shouldered a rifle that September and walked over a snowy gap because it was the right thing to do.

They were not called to it. They just went. 🌿

08/17/2026

☞Today in Old-West History -- On today’s date 149 years ago, Friday, August 17, 1877, notorious Old-West outlaw gunfighter William Henry McCarty, Jr. (1859-1881), whose aliases included William H. Bonney & Henry “Kid” Antrim, earned his moniker “Billy the Kid” & the first notch on his revolver after he got into an argument with an Irish immigrant blacksmith by the name of Frank P. “Windy” Cahill at the Atkins Saloon near Fort Grant, a U.S. Army outpost at the confluence of the San Pedro River & Aravaipa Creek in Arizona Territory.

☞Blacksmith Cahill called Billy a pimp, whereupon Billy responded with a few curse words. Cahill then slapped the Kid’s face, knocked him to the floor, pinned him down with his knees, & began to punch him. The Kid, realizing that he was no match for the burly blacksmith, immediately drew his six-shooter & fired a single round that mortally wounded Cahill who assumed room temperature on the following day. Billy was locked up in the post guardhouse, but he soon escaped & began running from the law.

☞The circa-1880 photograph depicts Billy the Kid at around the age of 19. This famous photograph remains the only universally-accepted, authenticated photograph of Billy the Kid. It is a tintype (ferrotype) photograph, which is a direct-positive print processed from light-sensitive emulsion-coated sheet-metal within the camera, so there was never any negative used in the process. Thus, all tintype photographs by necessity are mirror images of reality -- laterally (left-to-right) reversed.

08/03/2026

Before and after!!

08/01/2026

Worked on some old ones this week.
Late 50’s Browning SA 22 takedown, Wi******er 1903 auto 22 and Hi Standard Double Nine Fun Stuff!! Message me for services.

07/30/2026

☞Today in History -- On today’s date 163 years ago, Sunday, July 26, 1863, famous former Governor & President of Texas, Sam Houston (1793-1863), met his earthly demise at the age of 70 when he died from the effects of pneumonia at his home, Steamboat House, at the town of Huntsville in Walker County, Texas.

☞Requiéscat in Pace, Sam Houston.

☞Before coming to Texas, Houston was Governor of Tennessee & he was a friend of U.S. President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845). Houston resigned the governorship & eventually came to Méxican Texas in 1832. He was made commander of the Texian Army during the Texas Revolutionary War, leading the Texans to victory at the April 21, 1836 Battle of San Jacinto.

☞Houston was elected as President of the Republic of Texas, served two terms, & retired in 1844. After Texas joined the Union in 1845, Houston was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1859, Houston was inaugurated as Governor of Texas, but his opposition to Texas joining the Confederacy led to his forced resignation in 1861.

☞In 1862, Houston moved to Huntsville, Texas, where the surrounding hills reminded him of his boyhood home in Tennessee.

☞It was at Huntsville that Houston rented the famous “Steamboat House” from Dr. Rufus W. Bailey. The Steamboat House was built in 1858 by Dr. Bailey as a wedding gift for son, but the couple refused to live in it because of its unusual architecture, which caused the locals to give it the nickname "Steamboat.”

☞In 1863, Houston developed a persistent cough & his health began to deteriorate. In mid-July of that year, he contracted a case of pneumonia & he died on July 26 at Steamboat House with his wife Margaret by his side. As he lay dying, Sam Houston spoke his famous last words: “Texas, Margaret… Texas…”

☞The left-hand photograph depicts the bearded visage of Sam Houston in a photographic portrait by pioneering American photographer Mathew B. Brady (1822-1896), “The Father of Photojournalism.” The right-hand photograph depicts a vintage picture-postcard view of Sam Houston’s Steamboat House.

07/29/2026

Old school—1910 Re*****on model 11
“Whippet”

New school—Mossberg 590 w/ Woox furniture and Crimson Trace laser saddle.

07/21/2026

Ultrasonic cleaning…..it gets to the internals, without having to disassemble. I’d say 60-70 percent of the fi****ms I get that have feeding and ejection problems, come from dirt and grit down inside where you can’t see. Here’s some before and after. Maintenance is a must!!