Rough Forged Update 23 OCT 20

[Tiger 2 Tank]

Not sure you can compare Rough Forged with other books. Other than HG, this is it. There are no other books out there about these rifles. The K.98 books are awesome, no doubt about it. I think authors are kind of like painters and painter’s styles. The K.98 books were written and done one style and Rough Forged was done another way. Like Rough Forged, the K.98 books have mistakes and things some people don’t like.

I remember one thread here where someone commented they were really disappointed in Kriegsmodell Vol. 3....because there was a small section in it with an Stg.44! What in all Hell. . And I really liked the Stg.44 part in that book. So, some will like things that others won’t.

Reference:

http://www.k98kforum.com/showthread.php?14006-A-little-disappointed-with-Vol-3

So, even with the small mistakes, re-done soviet rifle, it’s okay with me. Just glad these books are now out. HG was just not enough for me. My final thought is that if you have a copy of HG, don’t get rid of it. There’s information and (black and white) photos in HG that are not in Rough Forged. So, I think all three books make a good set. I know some thought about selling their HG books when Rough Forged came out.

For the nah sayers, I get it. So, not downing you all either. After G/K.43’s, my next favorite is the P.38. There is a book that came out not too long ago where there is misinformation in the book on the cyq / cvq stamps for the Spreewerk P.38’s. The book goes into this as a code change. But, the consensus and accepted (I guess “known”) information is that it is not a code change but simply a broken die that they continued to use. So, I did not get the book because I felt the author should have known or knew that the “code change” idea was wrong but still went with the information and put it in the book. I kind of thought that a better way to have done this was to run both theories; one being the known version and the other as a theory the author thinks could have happened and let the reader be the judge. I am softening my view on this book somewhat, but I haven’t gotten it and don’t know if I will in the future or not. It’s disappointing, like the flaws found in Rough Forged.

So, to sum up all this, I’m glad Rough Forged came out.

 

[RyanE]

So, even with the small mistakes, re-done soviet rifle, it’s okay with me.

The rifles and scope mounts in that section are not "re-done". They are fake, and very obviously so.

Typos are mistakes. A mistake is the claim in K98k Volume 2 that Brunn I didn't start producing MG34s until 1941 when, in fact, at least one 1940 dot MG34 has been found. Even Myrvang's book doesn't confirm their existence. That is a mistake. And stuff like that is going to happen in any book, even books where chapters are sent out to multiple knowledgeable people for review.

This is a bit more serious and unfortunately calls the rest of the book into question. I know books are hard work and no author wants to publish serious errors, but we have to call this out when it happens, no matter who it is, if we don't want our field to end up like German helmets.

 

[Wright]

Long time lurker NOT new to collecting.

Whats with all the fake crap, those guns were outed YEARS ago, who proofed this? Rough Draft??

 

[nirvana]

Long time lurker NOT new to collecting.

Whats with all the fake crap, those guns were outed YEARS ago, who proofed this? Rough Draft??

It looks like all of the fake SVT sniper stuff was contributed by one guy, or at least all the photos were contributed by him. I won’t post his name as a courtesy. Does anyone know who he is? Does he have any credibility as a collector or researcher?

 

[Absolut]

Darrin, if for your correction sheet you want pictures of original SVT40 sniper rifles, I'm happy to help you with these. Attached are some samples of a 1941 SVT40 sniper rifles that is magazine and mount mismatching, as well as an arsenal overhauled 1942 SVT40 sniper rifle. Finally, I also attached pictures of my AVS36 troop trials rifle that has a mismatching but original scope mount with PE scope on it. This mount, in combination with the PEM side mount, surely must had inspired the Germans to the G.41(W) sniper rifle trials, since their mount was offset too.

 

[flynaked]

Beautiful rifles!!

 

[nirvana]

Darrin, if for your correction sheet you want pictures of original SVT40 sniper rifles, I'm happy to help you with these. Attached are some samples of a 1941 SVT40 sniper rifles that is magazine and mount mismatching, as well as an arsenal overhauled 1942 SVT40 sniper rifle. Finally, I also attached pictures of my AVS36 troop trials rifle that has a mismatching but original scope mount with PE scope on it. This mount, in combination with the PEM side mount, surely must had inspired the Germans to the G.41(W) sniper rifle trials, since their mount was offset too.

And that’s what a good notch looks like. It wasn’t done at some weird angle with a dremel tool. Excellent specimens.

 

[Darrin]

Thank you Gentlemen, that is helpful.

It's not the contributor's fault, I am entirely responsible for what was and was not included and put into print. I took those photos myself in say the 2011-2012 timeframe and I haven't seen those items since.

At this point I want to include an Errata page of just text in each volume before they ship. I'll mail or email the same to all of you that received a book. Let me catch my breath on the shipping and I will sit down and do a more extensive Errata pdf to be downloaded with images.

Chapter Six exists in this history of German self-loaders for only three reasons: first, to illustrate the German experience with the Soviet self-loaders, second, to give a preparatory discussion of the SVT gas system as it will be copied later by the Germans, and lastly as a preparatory discussion of the PU series of telescopes; as the Germans would later copy several internal features later in their universal telescope program. I feel those three goals were well-achieved in this chapter, but in retrospect, the chapter was written many years ago, newer information has surfaced, and I should have taken another look at it more closely, more recently, and should have included more dedicated SVT collectors in the mix of about a dozen proofreaders, which would have eliminated the issues described. I was consumed with getting the history of the G.41/G.41/K.43 absolutely right and then entirely focused on financing, working with a new editor, printing contracts, deadlines and getting it through the process- all in the midst of an unexpected retirement freeze, mobilization for nine months of COVID away from home, riots, and two hurricane efforts. Not an excuse, just what it is.

Of note, aside from the above, I make no apologies for writing a hopefully interesting and valuable history of German self-loading development in my usual sequencing and writing style. Clearly, some of you here on this forum wanted a G/K.43 book written and formatted in Karem/Steves style (the same complaints were aired in 2000 that I should have followed Law’s style). I have purchased their excellent three volumes and I consider Mike a friend. But, I'm Darrin and I organize, sequence and write the way I write wherein my overriding goal is to create an interesting story out of a chaotic series of developments and events often happening simultaneously. I believe I achieved that and I also believe that Rough Forged has added a tremendous amount of new information to the field of German small arms collecting in general and the G.41/G.43/K.43 specifically.

In any event, that's where we're at and I appreciate the patience and the helpful advice.

Regards,

Darrin

 

[OttoVonBismarck]

Anyway I can buy a new outer dust cover? Might have put a slight tear in it as I was trying to put the books back inside

 

[ChrisG43]

Rough Forged

Are there a lot of people still waiting for their copies? I haven't seen mine yet, but that might be nothing unexpected.....excited to get my copy..... Chris...

 

[mdarnell19]

Darrin,
This is hands down the best source in English for the SVT. There is a SVT 40 book but it is in Russian.

https://www.m9130.info/svt-40-sniper-rifles

Alex (the owner of this given website) has written a couple of books and I consider him to be the foremost expert on Russian WWII weapons. You can always email him also. He is super friendly and willing to help. I hope this helps.

And FYI, the rifle that Absolut is 100% legit SVT sniper and one of the best known in existence. Here is my rifle for another reference. Also a non refurb sniper.

 

[nirvana]

Darrin,
Despite whatever criticisms I’ve made, and I hope that they come across as constructive rather than destructive, you’ve written a solid pair of books. I bought copies with the expectation that they would contain interesting and historical information, and they do. I wouldn’t return them, but I will certainly appreciate whatever errata pages you put out. Book writing is hard, and writing in general sucks to do. (I do it for a living). But please keep it up.
Chris

 

[Darrin]

Chris 1, Please shoot me a PM with your last name and I'll track where your books are.

Chris 2 (Nirvana). Thank you for your kind words.

Matt, thank you for the link.

Brian-we lost a lot of detail in images because they were simply printed too dark or sized too small. I see and appreciate that better now. The original images actually show detail very nicely. I'll have a meeting with the printer and editor soon and we'll address. I honestly would love to crayon every marking, they just show up better, but it's the panel receivers and the phosphated receivers and components that present the challenges and no one wants to ruin a nice phosphated piece by highlighting and removing crayon, talc, paint, etc. Blued smooth surfaces are easy. Phosphated, rough forged are not. Have to work with oblique lighting or something better or enhance in the editing software better.

Sleeves. Original plan was two books, no sleeve. I wanted a box. Quotes for boxes came in at $20 a set. Printer wanted shrink wrap only, I insisted on something, hence the sleeve. I can probably print more of those and replace damaged sleeves, they're affordable, but let me get caught up and see how many we'll probably need to print.

Regards,

Darrin

 

[OttoVonBismarck]

Chris 1, Please shoot me a PM with your last name and I'll track where your books are.

Chris 2 (Nirvana). Thank you for your kind words.

Matt, thank you for the link.

Brian-we lost a lot of detail in images because they were simply printed too dark or sized too small. I see and appreciate that better now. The original images actually show detail very nicely. I'll have a meeting with the printer and editor soon and we'll address. I honestly would love to crayon every marking, they just show up better, but it's the panel receivers and the phosphated receivers and components that present the challenges and no one wants to ruin a nice phosphated piece by highlighting and removing crayon, talc, paint, etc. Blued smooth surfaces are easy. Phosphated, rough forged are not. Have to work with oblique lighting or something better or enhance in the editing software better.

Sleeves. Original plan was two books, no sleeve. I wanted a box. Quotes for boxes came in at $20 a set. Printer wanted shrink wrap only, I insisted on something, hence the sleeve. I can probably print more of those and replace damaged sleeves, they're affordable, but let me get caught up and see how many we'll probably need to print.

Regards,

Darrin

Thanks! a box would have been awesome but i see why the $20 would have maybe hurt sales. I was a bit nervous to really open up the books and read them last night based on some of the crticisms, but I was extremly impressed! I really liked the flow of the book well done. Not to mention the K98 books seem to average $150 a piece and both of these combined were $150 good deal

 

[agentcq]

Received two sets today - one for a friend and one for myself. Maybe the first sets to hit Canada! It was nice to see that I made the contributors list.

I haven't had a chance to look through the books yet, but interested in the comments on the SVT's. Probably one of the most misunderstood WWII rifles out there and information is always changing. Podolsk vs. Kovrov, 2x Tula factories, snipers, Finn Captures, Finn Bear Mounts, etc. Pretty good research out there now and we do know that any legit factory sniper was Tula produced and generally fell within very distinct serial number ranges. The Soviets & Finn's were in such a dire situation, I would believe that there were field examples made with salvaged scopes/mounts, but authenticating one would almost be impossible.

Alex is likely the best authority on Soviet WWII rifles by far. Excellent web site and excellent books.

 

[Absolut]

I have received my two sets (one for the office, one for at home) yesterday. First disappointing thing is, about 60% of the cover for the two on one set is torn open. Might be due to being shipped over the ocean - please for those oversea shipments make sure they are better secured to avoid this for future.

Regarding the book itself: For having had time only a few minutes aside of an online meeting I mainly flipped through the book. There surely is a ton of information in it. Plus I also cannot comply with what someone in here had suggested. For my understand the book has a lot of pictures in it and this truly is a huge benefit to previous literature on this topic.
What I however didn't like and see as a potential is the fact that the edges are so large. There was much space lost or given away simply to white edges. This especially hurts pictures, because they then are smaller. Regarding pictures, of course this is likely a result of so many different sources and not having had the possibility to picture everything yourself (or with different equipment at different time frames), but they are sometimes off each other (some very dark, some extremely good, etc.). Additionally they are not always in the same agle; like I've seen muzzles of rifles both facing left/right and some top/bottom. This is however critizism at very high level and I need to mention in this context I rather have a not this good picture than no picture at all.

Secondly however, I once have sent Darrin Weaver pictures of my G.41(W) with the scope rail on its left side already a few years back with some information plus granting him the permit to use them. Additionally we (and I guess Darrin) also know that Terrill has one of these rifles, which is the same one as pictured in The German Sniper (if I know correctly?), plus there is a third one that originated from the Sturgess collection and was sold by James D. Julia Auctions a few years back. And I know of another one in a private collection here in Europe, plus finally I know of one of these rifles in the property of the Austrian Army. It is really disappointing to have submitted pictures and information of a whole batch of trials sniper rifles which then do not make it into a book on the G.41 rifle because this in my opinion makes the book incomplete - especially since the author has had the information, but didn't use it. Darrin, it would really be appreciated if you could give feedback on why you didn't feature this in your book.

 

[Darrin]

Thank you for your comments.

A book is like a blank canvas, the words are the paint, the photos illustrate the salient points of the text, and even I do not know what it will look like in the end when I begin a project. Many times it has to do with fit, how it adds or detracts from the story, if I have publishable photos, if I have supporting contemporary documentation to substantiate what is being discussed or illustrated, et al. There were lots of things that weren't included and hundreds of collectors sent me photos of their rifles, some good, some horrible, everyone wants their rifles in the book, and you have to make some hard decisions about what to include or not include. In regard to these specific rifles, the subject is already illustrated in Senich's book, but we can take another look at the subject and if supporting documentation comes to the surface that really adds or helps with the story-that ultimately ends with the ZF.4- as well as publishable photos, then we can look at including. Firing trials, for instance, discussing them in use vs. G.41 with Zf.40 vs. the K.98 with Zf.39 or something along those lines. The original Julia photos would have been useful (take a look at those auctions from your old catalogues and see whose initials follow the disassembly, examination and write up of all of those rifles) but they where not included on the disks supplied to me back then and Julia was subsequently bought and destroyed by Morphy Auctions.

Margins...?

As for vertical vs. horizontal, it just screws up all of the text, fit, layout, either way one can't win. Do you want to see details of very rare long guns that contribute to the story (i.e. vertical) or would you complain that I shrunk them down to fit horizontal and lost all of the details (as happened with some of these pics anyway)? Some of these we have like two photos, that’s it, no one knows where the gun is, it may not even exist anymore, there’s no opportunity to re-photograph it, we have the two photos and we have to go with them, and oh BTW, they’re already too low-res to zoom in without pixelating. So, you make a decision to go vertical and live with the criticism. If you can run the text down one of the gutters to fill the page, great, if it screws up the next pages and the beginning of the next chapter, you have to make the hard decisions. Collector took a hard copy photo 30 years ago and the gun is missing now, what do you do? Guy sends you cell phone pics of something you really need to illustrate but won't send the rifle to re-photograph it. What do you do? It was easy when I was just an author, I could blame the publisher. But, I'm the publisher now too and it's a big boy world. I take my lumps, learn from it, move on. Lots of things to look at improving or adding down the road.

The sleeves can be fragile, but I insisted after the books were printed on something more than shrink wrap. I am coordinating with the printer for replacement sleeves as even I rip one here and there after signing. Just updating- packaging and shipping have improved and we are on our third iteration of shipping box sizes. have not received complaints of damage since (overall damage rate from the first 200 was less than 2% and those I replaced for free). All books are shipping with Errata added to each volume. I thought I would be able to examine the SVT mount referenced in the earlier firestorm, but the owner said it was sold several years ago so that's a non-starter, so we'll have to live with the Errata pages and try to correct if there's a next printing. Errata page should be up on the web page any day now as well.

Sales have been good, feedback everywhere else generally very positive, I have a really good day, I feel like I shouldn't be having such a good day, I come here to end it with K.98k Forum buzzkill about margins. And that's where we're at.

Take care,

Darrin

 

[mrfarb]

Darrin,

As someone who actually walked in the shoes you are wearing at this very minute, don’t let the negative commentary knock you down at all, it’s meant to help. This forum is the hardest of all imo, mainly because we have some very bright people who frequent it. Many have settled here from forums run by dealers or uninterested parties attempting to quash free and open debate because we don’t censor or steer conversations. You will get unvarnished opinions about things because these guys don’t pull punches for dealers, or give established experts a free pass. Many have a passion for their respective area of interest far above the “normal” consumer/collector. Bruce and I took our lumps along the way, wear them with pride. These comments will only sharpen your blade and make your books better if you take them in context, which you seem to be doing. Keep your spirits high, you’ve done this before...... it takes a lot of gusto to commit information to paper that you can’t easily edit, unlike an electronic post. You pour the foundation and people walk on it, that’s what we do.

Mike


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[CanadianAR]

I thought the outer jacket was a nice touch for shipping, but I kind of assumed it’s more or less packaging.

Agreed on Mikes point. Maybe there’s some stuff to be improved, but no one else wrote the book did they?

 

[Absolut]

Darrin, it sounds a bit of an excuse if you mention "it was anyway published in Senich's book". Yes, I understand that so far no documents regarding these rifles have shown up and it therefore is tough to write on them. But I don't think half or a single page with some pictures and a short technical description would had hurt the books too much, especially since it would had been important for future because collectors could be set aware of how such a rifle and mount looks like. Plus I think these rifles are indeed an important intermediate step in the development of the semi-automatic sniper rifle. Yes, my main interest and focus are sniper rifles and I therefore might be more interested in seeing such items, so take it as my opinion only.