Authenticity Levels: Progress or Decline?

[Old Reb]

Re: Authenticity Levels: Progress or Decline?

Cody,
You are correct. Danny would never use WD-40 and mold and rust are known to be authentic. I also left out taking a wood chisel to your Enfield to contour the stock and carving "Pig Pen" in the stock. As for Mr. Doug, his uniforms are always clean despite five days in the wilds of Kisatchie. He also has nice leather gloves but not near as nice as the ones worn by Marse Craddock. This information is not supplied for the eyes of the experienced campaigner but for any newbies wishing to hone their appearance to that of a seasoned campaigner. Also, while wood ash will clean metal and polish brass, it is not to be used to clean ones teeth.
Tom

[Thomas Alleman]

Re: Authenticity Levels: Progress or Decline?

Well when I started out, 11 years ago, I went to the Quartermasters shop in Kimball, MI and got my federal outfit. I joined the 24th MI, my ancestors unit, and went to events then got to go to events with the Hodge crowd I did not have great stuff but the attitude was there. I wore my stuff well and pass without a look. Then I started to say hey these guys are what I like. Then it began.

I got rid of my old stuff get the ************ this the Child's that, new leathers, hat, and started doing Confederate.

That in itself is a adventure ongoing. I started to barrow stuff then had a Child's RDII kit made, then it got worse. Got a frock, confederate haversack, canteen, and so on. I recently got some more reb stuff and now am working on getting all confederate leathers. Got to much to hold in one bag. And then what to wear. Each event has its own set of uniforms it seems. I still want one of those undyed penitentiary jackets, and yeah a sweet civilian coat. I am getting there though, got a few more coats and pants. Rebs might have poor but reenacting them properly is just a journey that will end when I die. My fed kit could use a frock and damn I need a greatcoat yet but it is good to pass.

As for reenacting as a whole I think it is better, more guys see or hear or go on the AC and read all the story's of how good the event was and see pics of our bad selves and say I want that. I know that we impress wherever we go. I see better, OK passable, sutler stuff, at least it is jean cloth. So it might take awhile but we have started something.

There is now Authentic rev war,1812, another period I do among others, and has seeped into other periods. As guys are getting out of civil war, even I was burned out for a bit, I am getting back into by going to mostly Actual battlefield, preservation, living history's, and other EFUBU types. This forum has done good work, BULLY to the AC.

I did some firpir at Outpost III not as much as at outpost II but more when I deserted and stayed with it untill frank told me to stop, thanks allot frank for ruining the moment, just kiddin. Yeah so that aspect of it could use a bit of help and yeah I have a copy of the stuff put out for the Hodge March 2000 and there were great accounts about weather conditions of the army, uniform lists, a ton of stuff. which helped immensely when putting my impression together for reb, oh wait I went fed. Still that is key to getting us in the mood. Outpost II was my favorite event by far, no offense to Outpost III but I did it all and want that again. Go big or stay home is my new motto. Then cry when I stay home wishing I went big.

[mattifatti]

Re: Authenticity Levels: Progress or Decline?

I asked before in this thread but did not get a reply. Does anybody know of where to purchase a copy of the Columbia Rifles Research Compendium? Every vendor I talked to said they didn't have copies and that they were not being printed at the current time. Any luck in having somebody willing to sell their copy to an aspiring progressive??

[Charles Heath]

Re: Authenticity Levels: Progress or Decline?

Does anybody know of where to purchase a copy of the Columbia Rifles Research Compendium? Every vendor I talked to said they didn't have copies and that they were not being printed at the current time.

Matt,

You may be about a year too late to pre-publication order a copy, but check directly with The Watchdog. In a previous thread about a month or so ago, Craig Barry or Bill Christen mentioned they still had about 50 copies in stock.

[mattifatti]

Re: Authenticity Levels: Progress or Decline?

Thanks Charles, I took your advice and he still has some, so I'll be placing my order shortly.
Thanks,

[Charles Heath]

Re: Authenticity Levels: Progress or Decline?

Matt,

Bully for you. I'm not sure why the CRRC2 turned out to be the marketplace Edsel that it is, but like so many previous limited run works, a good number of people will be banging around for a copy about the same time stocks are exhausted in that time honored "day late and a dollar short" modus operandi.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Authenticity Levels: Progress or Decline?

I'm not sure why the CRRC2 turned out to be the marketplace Edsel that it is, but like so many previous limited run works, a good number of people will be banging around for a copy about the same time stocks are exhausted in that time honored "day late and a dollar short" modus operandi.

For what it's worth, an excellent way of getting information in book form into the hands of readers these days, is through a POD (print on demand) service. I'm not talking about newer incarnations of the old "vanity presses" like Publish America which overcharge for their books in exchange for an ego massage about how wonderful you are, but basic bare-bones print-on-demand services like www.lulu.com .

My wife shopped around for a family history printer recently, and Lulu was the best bargain for her book. You can calculate and compare costs based on dimensions and number of pages, color vs. black and white, etc. There's no charge to upload a book, so there's no investment other than time, and no minimum order.

Once the book is uploaded to the site, customers can order it from Lulu's website, one or two copies at a time, in several choices of binding including hardcover or spiral bound. You can set the price at whatever you want, either Lulu's cost and make no profit, or any number of dollars above Lulu's cost. Lulu takes a 25% commission on your profit only (not the base price of the book) and pays the remaining profit quarterly into your Paypal account.

Linda's gone through the whole process, and it really is that easy. Hardest thing was getting the text converted from a Word document to pdf with fonts embedded, and she paid a local computer shop to do that, but a more computer-savvy person could do it themselves. Otherwise, there were zero set-up costs, and all the customers have gotten their books as promised. Lulu handles all the order-taking and shipping.

It's a great application of technology, for books that authors want to sell themselves. No more buying a certain number of copies and hoping they sell, no more "going out of print" once they're sold

If anyone is contemplating a similar research work that they plan to sell mostly through referrals and word of mouth (rather than a commercial publisher's publicity department, for example) I'd highly recommend looking into it.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[billwatson]

Re: Authenticity Levels: Progress or Decline?

It produces books for a reasonable cost with minimal upfront expenses, a couple hundred dollars, just about ideal for someone who wanted to produce something for the reenacting community without risking the farm. Big commercial publishing houses are caught in a trap, they need mass printing to reduce unit cost to produce books that will sell by the thousands at a low unit cost in the brick-and-mortar book stores. A POD book costs three times as much per unit to produce, but without all the distribution costs and risks attendant on commercial sales by the thousands, the unit price can still be low. That's what I'm doing with John M. Gould's "How to Camp Out," discussed on here earlier this year and reproduced for those who wanted it within a couple of months. The actual work took about two days. $12, paperback.

Broken Lance Enterprise will have donated almost $600 in 2007 from book sales to historic preservation, by the way, including South Mountain Friends and, in a few days, Cedar Creek. All from return over expenses in a POD setup like Hank describes.

I've got it even easier than Linda did: My "day job" requires me to know the same kinds of software used in book publishing, so I don't even need Lulu, it does direct to the POD printer.

POD would be a good thing for this community. CRRC would have been a challenge and might have had to be laid out differently, but it could be done POD .

Every now and then things work out.

[billwatson]

Re: Authenticity Levels: Progress or Decline?

Jim Conley posted this poll six months ago and 452 people have taken it. Of that number, 81 said they are new to serious reenacting.

Seriously: 452? The thing that strikes me is that this is the optimistic end of the range for the question "how many campaigners are there?" But after 6 months in a prominent spot, can we take this as a pretty good number for how many there are who are actually "engaged" enough to take a poll (or, maybe, go to an event)?

And 81 are "new," which is admittedly not a precise word and didn't need to be for Jim's poll. It's a thought-provoking number, though.

[Craig L Barry]

Re: Authenticity Levels: Progress or Decline?

Matt,

Bully for you. I'm not sure why the CRRC2 turned out to be the marketplace Edsel that it is, but like so many previous limited run works, a good number of people will be banging around for a copy about the same time stocks are exhausted in that time honored "day late and a dollar short" modus operandi.
__________________
Charles Heath

Charles Heath hit that one right on the head. We published a first run of 1000 and now we are about out of CRRC # 2s, but it took a year and it was very slow going at first. We got some reader feedback on possible reasons for that, but we suspected the "word of mouth" would kick in and we also started advertising the book. Now we are getting mulitiple requests for the few remaining...both from individual reenactors and commercial accounts. Lesson learned, we will be more conservative about the numbers published in the first run for future works, and allow adequate funds for advertising pre-publication.

People procrastinate.

[JimCarrol]

Re: Authenticity Levels: Progress or Decline?

I have been reading this thread for a while now... I am always looking to improve my impression....

[JimKindred]

Re: Authenticity Levels: Progress or Decline?

This poll has been going on since June of last year and it is time for it to end. Any polling information it could have provided has long since past.