Catch-22. Bet you most twenty and thirty-somethings don't even know what you’re talking about.

I’m a neo-luddite so I believe the future of mechanical aptitude is dark and will go the way of buggy whips and cheap gas. Our good friend technology has been elbowing aside craftsmanship, skill, art, and our desire to even protect those things.

I look at the current crop of guns that same way I do cars. Mechanically eons ahead of what I grew up with but totally lacking in personality and character.

I am sure everyone has dissambled a gun only to sruggle like hell to get it back to together again.

The Ruger Mark II was apparently sent out as a test, then.

I thank God for men that are mechanically er...ept!Only they can overcome my ineptitude with mechanical thingies,electrical stuff,automotive issues,plumbing goop,ropes,vacuum cleaners,gun cleaning disassembly,reassembly etc.They can speak Klingon as long as they can fix it.

Elle,
Leave out the gun reassembly part and I'm your guy. And I speak Human.

Engineers speak Engineerish; the science of technical writing is understanding Engineerish, the art of technical writing is translating Engineerish into understandable English and make no mistake good technical writing is an art!

Agreed that the Ruger MK II is perhaps the Midterm for Mechanical Aptitude 441, for the final a customer brings a box of parts which he swears are from three different guns (and he swears that all the parts to all three are in the box). To receive Mortar board and tassel from Aptitudinal U the Final is to reassemble and test fire all three! Good luck and a long trigger string!
SA

Mr. Petzal: Was the gun sneaking off to go hunting by itself when you apprehended it? Or did you know it so well that you comprehended its inner workings?

One shining moment in my file of boyhood memories was when my father had disassembled one of his guns. He looked at the pieces for a while and to save his life could not have reassembled it.

Somehow, it all made perfect sense to me. I just rearranged a piece here and there and flipped one or two over and slammed the whole thing together. I was probably 13 or 14 years old. Well my father was stunned! He said, "Buster, you are a mechanical genious!" It was definitely an affirming and somewhat defining moment in my life!

For Shaky: Incidentally, I have repaired automatic door closers -- though they are usually better off thrown out and replaced... BB Guns I've had no success repairing -- some things just don't fix! Yet, since childhood bb guns usually carry some sentimental value, people are reluctant to throw them out until there's an estate sale. Broken hearts? They always get referred out to the One Who can fix anything -- broken hearts, broken dreams, broken lives,...

I envy you, Zermoid. I can almost guarantee that if I take anything apart, I will NOT be able to get it back together.

One of my first jobs as a teenager was to assemble bicycles at a discount store. I lasted one day.

It is one of the miracles of the 20th Century that the Marine Corps was able to teach me how to disassemble and assemble an M-14 and M-16. I learned it just as a monkey might--by repetition.

Nowadays all of my shotguns get visits to gunsmiths every several years, depending on how much shooting I have done with each of them. They do all the taking-apart-and-putting-together. I have had the bolts taken apart and cleaned on my centerfire rifles. I handle the bores myself.

The mere thought of taking anything apart or attempting to fix something fills me with a sense of foreboding.

also. Thats when the "o shoot" feeling comse. After your done cleaning the gun, you think, okay, now, which of the parts goes first? Is this even to my gun?

I don't have a problem assembling my Ruger MK II, and have replaced many parts in the trigger assembly in my 10-22 but I took the bolt on a Remington 700 apart one time and when I put it back together it would not chamber a round... of course I found this out after driving two hours to hunt.

So Jack did you find aptituded in ye old Oxford English Dictionary?

Worst thing you can do is buy a stock and put your action into it yourself. When I tried it the gun would automatically discharge every time I closed the bolt... thank GOD I had a father who beat me every time I pointed my muzzle in an unsafe direction and made me hunt without shotgun shells my first season and with them in my pocket the next... of course I was eight years old.

Elle, loved your web site... Jim I hope you have a Harley or you don't stand a chance.

As someone who has always had trouble operating a can opener, I can empathize with DP. On the other hand, I've always felt like there are two kinds of thinkers, and both are of equal value. There are the conceptualists who can see the big picture and cut to the heart of the matter like a surgeon, and there are the more linear thinkers, who may not see the big picture but who can break down and assemble its component parts in minute detail. The conceptualists is an architect, while his linear counterpart is a carpenter. I do think the mastery of mechanical detail is something of a dissipating art, though. My own father, who was a self-employed home builder, was typical of men of his generation; he could sharpen a knife until it was scary, take apart and reassemble an automobile engine wearing a blindfold, and build a custom rifle from scratch, starting off with nothing but a rebarreled action and stock blank. At the same time, he could draw blueprints for an entire house and served on the local school board. I'm afraid I'm more typical of my own generation. I'm at home dealing with big ideas, but anything more complicated than an oil change requires me to pay a mechanic, and try as I might I still can't sharpen a knife worth a damn.