Some years ago I was working in the shop when my phone rang. It was JJ Miller and as I had not heard from him in some time I was happy to take the call. When I said "Hi JJ!" I could tell he was upset. "What's going on?" I asked. He stumbled a couple times and then he said, "I was going through my stuff and I found Twyla's pistol!" I was a bit confused and said, "Her pistol? What pistol?" He said, "The Smith & Wesson .45 Colt that she won at the Holiday."

Blindsided I fumbled for words and finally got my brain working and said, "I forgot completely about that gun JJ. How did you end up with it?" He told me how he found it in his collection .. did not know how he got it ... and wanted to send it back to me. I said, "JJ .. maybe we gave that to you when we were there." He started crying and said, "No. And I want it to go back to you and your family."

Well by this time we were both in tears. Some wounds stay kinda raw forever.

The short story is that a few weeks later I had the pistol in my hands. A S&W 645 Classic, it was the last one out of the factory. It was not the last one produced but it was the last one shipped. Ken Jorgensen worked for S&W at that time and he had the gun shipped to John Taffin and asked him to put it in the raffle at The Shootists Holiday. 1t was 1997. All the paperwork including Ken's note to John were in the box.

After she won the gun we gave it to Tedd Adamovich and he engraved her name on it, the date and made a nice set of grips for it. The original grips were in the box with the paperwork.

I took the gun out on the range with some standard velocity loads - 250 gr. RN over 6.0 gr. of 700X. I shot it for a few months and then gave it to my daughter. It will stay in the family.

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DON'T KNOW HOW TO POST PIX HERE JIM SO SEE YOU ON GARY'S SITE

https://postimg.cc/QBR9PF3C

She did the scrimshaw.

It should work the same as on Reeder's site as we use the same system to run the forums on, but I don't recall posting any pics over there so am only 90% sure of that. Thanks for sharing that pic. I need to dig out my set of Twyla Scrimshawed grips and get some pics. She did beautiful work.

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WORKS!! MORE TWYLA ART!

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That is great work! Not much attention paid to Javelina in art.

I took it with that gun and SSK's 260 gr. truncated cone flat point. I think it was 1987. Won an award from SCI for it. I donated the skull to the SCI Wildlife museum in Tucson.

That makes me happy Jim!

Great gun, great people and great memories!

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https://facebook.com/M2bKydex/

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Sincerely,

Hobie

Powerful and amazing in all so many ways.

JJ Miller is a great guy.

I bought a set of true ivory grip panels for a 1911 from Charles Graff anout 18- 20 years ago. Twyla scrimped my initials and some scroll work on them. Through my neglect I let them get lose and the top right corner broke off the right panel.

The last time Jim Taylor’s daughter was in Arkansas at my home I gave the paneled to her. They will have more meaning to her and her children than to my family. She was one of a kind and a good friend.

I did try to post a photo but my computer told me that my format was not supported.

Hey, Tom. Send me a copy of the picture to webservant AT sixshootercommunity dot com and I'll be glad to swap it into a format supported here and upload it for you.

Very nice Jim. I'm glad it is in the family.