tezet

Please have a look at: http://www.1911forum.com/forums/showthr ... adid=23891
Pictures I posted today for sharing some memories with all Armand Swenson fans.

Viel Spaß and best wishes from Germany.

Thomas

Desert Dog

Greetings Thomas,

I would really like to see those photos, but since I am a banned member of the 1911Forum, I can not view the attachments. There are several others (the owner of this site included) that are banned member as well. Could I please ask you to post them directly here, or allow one of our members who has access to the site, to copy the photos and post them for you?


DD

tezet

DD,
go ahead and copy the pictures by ??. I could not figure out how to post it directly.
Have a great day.

Thomas

Sherman Parish

I tried picking through the URL from 1911forum, no dice.

upload the pics to imagestation, open them up to view them full size, right click and pick properties, copy the URL and paste it into a string that looks like the following:

[img]http:/.....[/img]

Great shots, by the way.

Desert Dog

If you can open and view the attachement, then you can copy it to your hard drive. When looking at the photo, move your cursor over the image, then right click on the image, and hit "Save Picture As". Once the image is saved to your hard drive, then you can upload to any image host you want. Once that is done, the the [img] [/ img] tags can be used on the image location (URL) copied and posted here.

Now that Thomas was gracious enough to give us his blessings to do so (Thanks Thomas!), would someone here with access to the 1911Forum, lend us a hand with this?

TIA!


DD

Sherman Parish

Sorry about that DD, didnt have time to save them down and get them up to imagestation. Thanks Thomas. Here they come:

Desert Dog

Sherman,

Thank you very much for getting these photos posted! Your efforts are much appreciated.


Thomas,

I can't thank you enough for sharing these memories. You have made my week, and I am sure the same will be true, for all the other Swenson fans here as well. Thank you again! Cheers!

Sie haben meine aufrichtige Dankbarkeit für das Teilen Ihrer Gedächtnisse von Armand. Ich fand Ihre Fotographien ziemlich beweglich. Viel Dank mein Freund.


DD

crc

OUTSTANDING!! Thank you

Dave Sample

hey Dawg. Mighty nice pictures of a real neat man. Thanks for getting them put up here. Like you, I have been booted off the 1911 Forum and I have saved myself hours of time that I wasted there. They have run off alot of neat people and I am glad you and I don't fit in. Wear it like a White Plume. I do!

tezet

Hello Sherman,
I have a new post at the 1911 Forum, http://www.1911forum.com/forums/showthr ... adid=23962,
it shows a Swenson price list, dated 1973. Please copy it if you wish, for the other Swenson friends.

Danke,

Thomas

Sherman Parish

Here you go. Sorry about the delay.

SteveO

I was stationed at Camp Pendleton from '87-'89. Armand lived out the back gate in Fallbrook. The bushing on my personal .45 cracked, so as young Marine captains, a friend and I went out to visit Armand and have him fix the bushing. It was the first of a number of visits to his home.

He always answered the front door himself. His shop was in the garage. Armand could talk up a storm. He enjoyed having a couple of Marines visit, and we stayed for hours each time as he talked non-stop.

I guess Armand was a boxer at one time. When talking with us, he would take a boxers stance, and actually jab and punch us (not hard) on the shoulders as he talked. It was a lot of fun. He talked about so many things; few of them related to the .45 ACP. He had lived and smithed in Washington state for some time as I recall. He would talk about his hydroplane boat which was in his driveway and he would take us out to it on each visit. He talked alot about rifles. He loved building them and shooting them. I remember him telling me that the most accurate rifle had a short barrel. "Get the bullet out as quick as you can," he would say. He told us stories, and showed us boxes of targets he had shot with rifle and pistol. He told us how he would beat target rifle shooters with a rifle he had built with something like a 14 or 16 inch barrel at 100 yards as I recall.

He would take us through the shop and show us each 45 and explain what he was doing with them. All the time, he is in his boxers stance and punching us! It was great. We knew he was quite a 'legend' then.

He fixed my 45 and re-fit the barrel. It shot quite well. In '94 I sold it in a moment of weakness. Last week, I asked the new owner for the first time how they liked it. I was told that it had never been fired since I sold it, and would I like it back. In a few weeks, the pistol that Armand 'tweaked' and that Jeff Cooper shot (while I was at Gunsite - '1978) will be home again for good. This time, it will get passed on to my son.

Mr. O

Bill Caldwell

One of the few times in my life I've ever looked at a photo of a man and felt in my heart, I was looking at somebody special.

Thanks
Bill Caldwell
Wild Bill Caldwell Tactical Weaponry

azcapi

http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?m=5751582510 ... =930132517
I have a few photos I took at Swenson's many years ago. Click on the above link and it will take you to a Kodak owned site which hosts some of my pics.

Andy

I was really moved by the photos of Armand. I met Armand and his wife at a restaurant in Fallbrook, CA back in 1977. I was in the Border Patrol and on TDY to Temecula. I had a sort'a new Colt that needed an ambi safety and a trigger job, so I asked Armand if he would mind if I dropped it off. I did, and wound up helping him strip guns, put them in the cigar boxes and label them, while keeping an eye out for coyotes on my days off. .

As the previous poster noted, Armand built rifles, too. He kept a 6mm Rem. he'd built with a bull barrel and Unertl scope, set up on a Freeland rest and bags at the window. Seems the coyotes had gotten one of Irene's poodles, so she declared War. If we saw a coyote, he was fair game. Can't remember if it was built on an Enfield action or not, but he sure liked that action. The wood on all of his rifles was pretty spectacular. IIRC, he said he got the wood while building boats up in Washington State, and that it came from old ballast timbers.

I eventually went back to Texas. Armand finished my Government Model, Then built me a full-house Combat Commander, followed by a minimalist Ltwt.

I received my Ltwt. Commander shortly before I moved to New Mexico in 1987. He wrote me a note, apologising for the delay and that I was still owed a magazine that had not come back yet from the plater. (He'd only had a series of strokes and hadn't been able to work for quite awhile!)

Later on, while we were talking guns and shooting, I asked him if I could send him another Government Model and if he could checker the front strap on the Ltwt. He demurred, as arthritis had really been hard on his hands and that he was not taking on any new work. He was just finishing up his backlog. He recommended Jim Hoag for the job, but I never let anyone else touch the Ltwt. I sent Jim another.

Armand was one of a kind. I am both humbled and proud to have ridden a few bends of the river with him. One day, perhaps, I'll round another bend and meet up with him again. !Hasta que aquel tiempo, amigo, vaya con Dios!

gyp_c2

http://images.ofoto.com/photos420/9/34/ ... _0_ALB.jpg

...thanks for the access...