Quote Originally Posted by ggggr View Post
A phrase I was introduced to yesterday by Phil (PjBingham).
I think it means that after you have got a rough gun up and running again, even if it is still rough, that you have formed a bond with it and cannot let it go.
I know I have this problem, which is why I have so many crappy old guns.
A few of my favourite pistols are my dog rough Scorpion, a rough Tempest, and a rusty Senior I got from John (Duomatic 410). I had trouble letting go the .177 Tempest with a bit missing out of the frame, where I think someone had fitted some flat bar to make a shoulder stock. That was the one I got off Hsing-ee. My niece had the sense to claim that one before I started to do it, but it was still hard letting it go.

I have the feeling that this affliction is more common amongst those of us who tinker with the really rough stuff.

Do you suffer from this?
I think it is actually ATTACHMENT issues. You get attached to the object and then cannot let it go or detatch from it. If you do, you will have the nasty feeling of ALIENATION.

The phenomenon is actually quite deep. In re-building the machine, in this case air-pistols and rifles, you put your labour both mental and physical and sometimes artistic, into the object and transform it from one state to another. The object then contain or represents part of you, it can legitimately be seen as part of you. So of course it is difficult letting go of part of yourself.

Karl Marx had a whole theory based on this phenomenon, in that a person works for another person, say fixing old air-pistols and making them useable and good again. The boss, who owns the workshop and the capital to buy old pistols as raw materials, then takes the refurbished pistols and sell them, giving the worker only some of the money. The worker is therefore alienated from himself, as his labour disappears into the object and he does not receive full compensation for it.

If people have the skill, they love to make and fix things. Its much more satisfying as the objects - clothes, airguns, furniture, cars whatever - contain part of their owner. Its a strange process but much more interesting than just buying something made by people unknown in a distant factory.