Midweek update #1

Thank you

C&Rsenal

Its hard to take Facebook seriously on matters like this.

I was wondering what was going on, but I am curious to see what you have coming. Glad to see that you and the team are still doing well and venturing into new things and that you will have more time to yourself now that you can reduce work hours.

Nicholas Mew

Good to know!

C&Rsenal

We try to do some shorts on instagram, more practice than anything.

C&Rsenal

That's the plan!

C&Rsenal

I'll keep them coming.

C&Rsenal

Thanks!

C&Rsenal

I was spread as thin as possible for 4 years. Hopefully the new efficiency will free time for a new show. Maybe only one episode a month, but we should definitely try to grow.

C&Rsenal

Probably not. We always miss special numbers and dates because the easiest method of production is just working through the tetris-like alignment of books, researchers, ammunition, and items. If I could get a few episodes ahead I bet I could start actually knowing what was going to be on which number.

C&Rsenal

As a giant history nerd, I really enjoy the long-format Primer series. I look forward to each new episode, and I support on Patreon and purchase merch (Patented Plastic Pokie t-shirts, please!). I will say that I avoid most social media outlets like the plague, so Patreon updates are good for me. I'll never see the stuff on Facebook and Instagram. Best wishes and keep it up!

Kent W.Fevurly

Series are good, but don't overlook the opportunity to just speak truth (i.e. educate the honest student) when you can. If you have something worth a video then make it.

Maybe a mid-week [well, mid-fortnite?] update on C&Rsenal with a "behind the scenes" look or outtake or somesuch along the lines of Ian's "Apocrypha" posts here on Patreon? [Just spitballin' ideas here...]

Bruce Brodnax

I got rid of facebook in 2008 and have no intention of going back. So updates here would be nice... though at the same time, I don't really care. XD I trust you guys.

Planescaped

I like the mid week update. Keep update the great work!

Kevin R

Don’t spread yourself too thin othais. I’d rather have a smaller amount of good quality content than a mash of mush. I do like the mid week updates. Hang in there fella your work is not unnoticed

Do you guys have anything special planned for Primer 100? I thought maybe that was the 1911 but now I'm not so sure.

Matt Bakken

So just to explain. The rough sketch for shotguns is to have Mae intro the piece directly but then switch to narration, then finally wrap on her speaking directly again for the wrap up. One narrator the whole way through, but with 90% of the video being firing / handling footage. Still unsure if we are doing animations etc

C&Rsenal

Thank you for telling us! We're very happy to have you and I'm glad you've found the work valuable!

C&Rsenal

It's all trial and error. Don't prostitute but do try new things!

C&Rsenal

With some luck we may include foreign.

C&Rsenal

Thank you for the suppport

C&Rsenal

I am definitely going to drive the social aspect here. Many shows are using live chats with donations etc. I think we can use Patreon as a sort of forum/community. Might add resources off-site as it evolves. But in the long run I'm going to start driving attempts at user engagement to Patreon.

C&Rsenal

There is some pretty neat stuff buried in there. As usual it's always a means to discuss the greater history around it.

C&Rsenal

Don't worry, we're on normal humanish hours now!

C&Rsenal

Don't worry, the plan is to keep Primer twice a month and only ad commercial over top. I promise there will be some interesting mechanisms and history at play there too. Once WWI is done we'll start taking whatever we like, whenever we like.

C&Rsenal

You are absolutely correct. We're looking forward to clearing WWI precisely because we can start load balancing the common and the rare!

C&Rsenal

The Ace Tourer is a strange bird. It's a Honda Spirit motor with ACE aesthetics and Valkyrie hard bags.

C&Rsenal

We try to keep it classy. Research is 1/3rd of my schedule.

C&Rsenal

Definitely agree. It seems people wanted former marines to run the guns and didn't want a lot of context. It became a contest.

C&Rsenal

On it

C&Rsenal

We're trying!

C&Rsenal

Well some over-run has been added quietly to the store. We'll announce it in a few days, but it's there to be found. We're definitely looking at more merchandise. Feels odd but people seem to like it so I feel less guilty. We're holding the 1911 for as long as possible in the hopes of freeing up some time to get to Springfield and do a much classier piece of work on it.

C&Rsenal

Just trying to split some of the recovered hours into community time

C&Rsenal

Glad to hear!

C&Rsenal

Viewership was great. Just didn't engage in downloads like we hoped. The patches are actually what brought us back from being in the red!

C&Rsenal

We were so freaking unprepared for: A: what people want B: how little time I would have

C&Rsenal

A lot of those are about making people curious enough to come look at more.

C&Rsenal

The strange issue is the more I post to Patreon the more money we lose. It sorta reminds people to come around and cancel. Every major post that was not an episode link, including this one, has resulted in a net loss. I'm just pushing through the weeklies to see if I can get a community going that leaks a bit less. I will try to keep the content flowing to YouTube though like we have the shotgun takedowns.

C&Rsenal

Weekly updates are a good thing. Not only are we curious to what y'all are up to, but it improves creator/patron conductivity....an important factor in building brand loyalty. As for a future format sans your ugly bearded mug, I caution you to remember that brand loyalty is frequently based on connecting with the "face" of the brand. Voice-overs are far less personable than face-to-face dialogue and thus less engaging to the audience. Without the face-to-face delivery of Walter Cronkite, he never would have become America's "the voice you can trust." While the amount of on-camera time is a balancing act that likely depends on the specific content of a given episode, the value of it should not be under-estimated.

Richard Anderson

Interestingly we did not get the same engagement we did for even the first poster run all those years ago. I suspect digital goods are not a high value to our viewers.

C&Rsenal

Yeah, we were fishing for the impatient and hoping to not punish the regular subscribers.

C&Rsenal

Project Lightening got you at least one Patron on here (me!). I wasn't familiar with C&Rsenal but have been watching and supporting Forgotten Weapons for a while, so Ian's involvement in the project is what brought me over and I'm really glad it did. What you guys are doing is really valuable- a lot of folks seem to think history isn't very accessible to them or isn't all that interesting and shows like yours help break down that imagined barrier. I'm really disappointed that Project Lightening didn't show more of a benefit financially- it was clearly a ton of effort and time and done with a lot of care.

Stick with it, it will pay off in the long run. I feel really bummed for y'all that the Project Lightening collaboration didn't bring in more subscribers and patreons. Looking forward to seeing the new series and hearing from you more often here, you're doing an outstanding job!

> The topic has been roughly decided: US Repeating Shotguns. itshappening.gif

Michael Stueber

Othais Thank you. I really enjoyed the mid week update.

Kyle Hughes

I appreciate Othais' desire to keep us all informed, but I can easily see how trying to do this with all the various social media could be more than a full time job by itself (and we already have plenty of people doing that). Maybe you could somehow consolidate your interaction. When the social media starts interfering with research and production, then my vote would be to scale it back. Maybe you could recruit a few good volunteers to spread the word on other gun forums.

Red Marley

While Evan't thoughtful comments may turn out to be true, I think to the contrary, that there is a chance of expanding your audience beyond the military arms core group (though I still believe there is room for further expansion of the core group too, by reaching out to all the military and tactical online forums). I could also envision a series on 'guns of the old west', similarly reaching out to cowboy action forums, and a dedicated muzzleloaders series. Stay healthy brother, you got plenty of work to do!

Red Marley

I didn't think I was interested in the history of US repeating shotguns until I saw your posts on Instagram. Turns out I am.

John S Wren

I think the you need to get some sleep. Especially before you take on the 1911 series. So, what ever that takes has my vote. If we ever get around to voting on what will improve the show.

gary g. davis

Okay, first off, I'm not a US resident. so that's me in the minority, and I'm not likely to be picking up any US repeating shotguns this side of the Pond any time soon....What I'm interested in is the military historical stuff, can't wait for the 1911 too, and the prospect of seeing Othais and Mae getting into Thompsons and interwar stuff...and then WW2 stuff.

As to growing your appeal to a larger audience. You might want to consider doing deep historical "nerd" dives and strengths and weeknesses of historical designs us normal guys actually have a reasonable chance of picking up on the used gun rack for a reasonable price. That has applied to some of your "Primer" episodes already on the WW1 guns by happenstance and those were the ones I actually found most interesting. U.S. commercial shotguns of historical note as you suggest sounds nice. But how about some "primer" episodes on the different Swiss straight pull rifles or other such guns that I personally actually run across that I have an actual chance of actually picking up one of my own. Or the single shot falling block martini henries that I have run across far less of but are out there in circulation that I could actually get one of my own. I would love deep dive "primer" episodes on those guns. Stuff I actually have a halfway chance of getting my own hands on knowing the deep "nerd" dive on is more interesting and more important for me personally. And I think I'm probably not in the minority on that. Then it's not just entertainment I'm supporting with my Patreon dollars but rather potentially practical applicable knowledge on what I have or what I may know to purchase or know to pass up when I come across it on a used rack in some gun or pawn shop somewhere sometime. Plus people search the internet for info on stuff they are actually considering purchasing on their phones all the time now. I bet your primer episode on the Krag-Jorgensen has popped up in the search results on many younger peoples phones while they were trying to find info on that weird looking rigle they found on a used gun rack somewhere for a good price, that's a potential new viewer and in time potentially a new Patreon supporter. I doubt that happens very often for other episodes on guns that are extremely rare in the used market.

Did we ever get that detail on the motorcycle you used to do that bit of touring last year? Full lecture of history of usage and specs on that would be entertaining - and you might start to get the biker crowd tuning in as well

chris hodgson

Gun nerds of the world unite! Press on to victory! OK, maybe a little over the top. Truthfully I enjoy your output to date sufficiently to follow whatever additional efforts you might undertake up to but not necessarily including 101 ways to prepare ramen. Your scholarly approach to the trials and travails that people like John Moses Browning worked their way through absolutely keep me interested.

Wayne Dygert

While Project Lightening was ambitious and somewhat entertaining it seemed to have a very high effort/cost to benefit ratio. Your strength is in the historical context which you flesh out like no one else. Understanding the people and companies and politics of the times illuminates so much more than just the function of the firearms. I will bump my support to see there is enough Ramen to keep you going.

I personally really enjoy these updates othais.Do keep writing them!

Keep up the good work. You are living the dream!

I think more special merch is a good idea too. My patches came in today and Id likely have added a shirt or the like if one were available.

Al Lowe

I'm happy with whatever you all do. A thought to bump up viewership, maybe do the 1911 episode? It would likely draw in a huge increase and get new viewers hooked on the rest of the others. I was also hoping brownells would hype the whole thing more but they were pretty quiet about it.

Al Lowe

Sounds good Othias, just make sure to make some time for you and Mae as well. I love what you do so more content is just a good thing.

Henrik Jönsson

You do you, guys, it's what I'm here for. More content? Yes, please!

Anders Weidik Bendsen

I say go for it for the weekly updates. I say All In for the shotgun series, I think it would be very educational for the genre, probably very much about commercial shotguns people dont know about. I definitely enjoyed Project Lightening, but maybe if WW2 light machine guns were included, I think the audience range would been lot more but wouldn't make sense since WW1 series right now. Has the patches sales been a help?

James G. Jones

Jokes aside just keep it up. We all love it. It's my weekly hour of turn off the devices and watch you or Mark do your thing.

Kyle Gilmar

I was told I would get a bug every month.

Kyle Gilmar

Weekly updates would be fine, but since I follow you guys on Instagram that satisfies me. For instance, the little clips of taking down the shotguns (or "losing" the takedown lever in the grass lol) or showing how the action works on the young repeating arms shotgun...or watching crozier eat the grass. It's not a wall of text or a video that requires editing and time that could be allocated elsewhere, just a simple clip measured in seconds.

Paul Kerns

Dude! Not going to get into either instagram or discord! Too much bleep in my inbox as it is. I hope that the instagram stuff is ported to Patreon, that is the avenue I have chosen to support through. I don’t want to sound gripey, but I really do not want to search through multiple platforms hunting your material! ALL of us on Patreon pay... I’m sure many pay more than I do. It peeves me that I subscribe monthly and may not see all the material. I know you have a lot on your plate, please keep us paying subscribers in mind. Love your work.

Harold Snyder

I believe the main issue with project lighting was accessibility. Us primer fans are accustom to hour+ long videos, but new viewers may not be. As well, wwi lmgs don’t get the same attention or notoriety as other firearms. Something like an in depth comparison of squad level small arms of WWII would be much more alluring. I’m personally more interested in the obscure stuff, but for large projects like lightning, mass appeal may be more appropriate

Updates sound gud! And congrats on sharing a portion of your workload with Mae.

Minion

Weekly updates are welcome. As a sample of one, I didn't buy access to the Project Lightening videos, not because of the money, but because finding the time to watch all that video immediately was a problem. It was simply easier to watch them as they were released gradually.

John Dallman