Project guns are a hobby for me. While I try not to just dump stupid amounts of money on them, I do not care if I spend more on a project than other would. Due to a bad back, I sleep about four hours a day. That leaves a lot of time to fill. Work only covers about 40 hours. I read four to six books a week. I gave up TV a couple decades ago. So I work in my shop on project guns, do a bit of wood working, upgrade the house and work with my Lab. I like the Lab work best.
As Keith said a man needs to know his limits. I have learned most of mine, with guns. More important, I no longer feel the urge to fix everything or restore them. Old guns earned their scars. I will still replace a buggered screw because I just hate looking at them. A simple screw takes a decent amount of time to replace. More if it has light engraving. I do still like fitting and adding a second set of barrels to a gun. I'd rather have two barrel set than have a set of screw-in chokes put in a double. But my barrel stash has slowly been used up and I might be down to a couple dozen orphans. I'll never use them all up but have stopped buying more. To not buy more, has been harder to do than you might think. But like many here, I am getting up in years and have decided not to leave a total mess of my gun things, for others to dispose of.
So before I go in the next 20 years I am going to taper off projects, finish up a multitude of things I have been piddling on over the years and sell or give away things I no longer have interest in. My Winchester model 70's are all gone. My Browning's are almost all gone. I just gave away five boxes of magazines and gave a couple dozen very plain stock blanks to a friend who is going to turn them on his lathe. I decided I was never going to use them so found them a new home. I gave away about a thousand wooden pen blanks, that I used to make pens on my lathe. I still have more than that left, but need to sort them out and find them a new home. It was fun collecting things but now I hope to thin the heard a bit to enjoy the remaining things more.
