No Es De Vaquero

Pero esta cerca.

If my niece learned anything in her high school Spanish class that should mean its not a Vaquero but its close.

Ruger Blackhawk in 45 Colt.  Super Blackhawk hammer for the lower spur, Belt Mountain base pin, Bowen sights and a trigger job that's slicker than buzzard snot.   I'll have to get a belt and a holster and maybe some ebony grips but I am muy pleased with this trade.

.22 CCM Part One

A good friend of mine is a realtor.  I don't hold it against him.  He just cant help it.  Its his nature to buy and sell and haggle.  He's good at it and has a lot of fun doing it.

He has so much fun that he sometimes haggles and makes deals on my behalf and then lets me know about them later.  A case in point led to this post.

A mutual friend had a Cooper rifle in .22 Cooper Centerfire Magnum and had decided to sell it.  My realtor buddy told him that if anybody else in town would want the thing, it had to be me.   I looked at it and it was a beautiful little rifle.  The wood is so perfectly checkered and the lines so crisp you first think the stock is plastic.  It has three forward locking lugs and two extractors on the bolt.  Its little but it is really built.

The Cooper was a neat little gun but far to pricy for my budget.  I told my buddy that I really liked it but couldn't afford to spend the money.  Being the kind of guy that he is, he said he'd hold it as long as I wanted.  No handshake or down payment were necessary.  It was on hold come hell or high water until I told him different.

Fast forward two or three years (years!) and I have some disposable income.  The rifle was still there and my friend needed to pay property taxes and buy tags for three vehicles so I decided it was time to redeem the little gun and take it home.

Now I'm the proud owner of a fancy little rifle in .22 CCM, a few hundred empty cases, two sets of dies and I have no idea what to do with it.  You see, the .22 CCM  is sort of a center fire, reloadable 22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire.  The picture below shows a 22 WMR on the left and a 22 CCM on the right.  The CCM case is a tad longer.  Sort of like comparing a  458 Win Mag. to a 458 Lott. 

In reality, its performance puts it between the 22 WMR and the 22 Hornet.   Like the .50 Beowulf, it seems to be the answer to a question that hardly anyone has asked.  I'm not saying that's a bad thing.  In fact,  I kind of like it but what's it gonna be good for?

The .22 CCM will fire a 37 grain bullet at a muzzle velocity of about 2300 fps.  That will do  in anything from a marauding squirrel to a coyote so its not useless.  Ought to be hell on turkey necks too.  We do have coyotes in the neighborhood and the squirrels have gotten right brazen this year.

From the price I paid for it, I infer that the .22 CCM will kill squirrels five to ten times deader than a Marlin in .22 WMR kills them.  I suppose that extra horsepower might be comforting when charged by a Leprous armadillo as well.


The little Cooper came with Leupold bases but no scope rings so I made a trip to Gander Mountain for those.  I have a 1950's vintage Savage 99 that was wearing a late model Leupold scope and it just never looked right.  I already had an old Weaver scope for the Savage and now seemed like the perfect time to put it on and put the Leupold on something more appropriate.

The Leupold came off the Savage and the Weaver took its place.  Now the Savage looks like a rifle its age should look and the Weaver is bright and clear so it should do well in the woods.  The Leupold went on the Cooper.  I bore sighted it by sighting down the bore at the eagle emblem on the back of a 65 Chrysler Imperial and then adjusted the scope to match where the bore was pointed.

Having not loaded any ammo yet but still inspired, I scrounged up a Bushnell scope and a set of high rings and put that all on a Ruger M77 in 22 LR that also came to me through the realtor buddy.  The Ruger looked like hell when I got it but the bore cleaned up nice. I bore sighted it the same way as I had the Cooper.

So I have Tuesday off, the weather is supposed to be clear and I have three rifles that need to be sighted in.

Hence the title.

Facebook Censorship

Read the story at http://www.naturalnews.com/038484_Gandhi_quote_Facebook_censorship.html


Found at Sipsey Street Irregulars

Doomed

Just got done with High Plains Drifter and now Eldorado is on.

I can hear a Vaquero or maybe an Uberti whispering my name already.

The Firefighter Shooter

 What you probably won't hear on the news about the firefighter shooter

* The perp was convicted of killing his grandmother in 1980.
* he beat her to death with a hammer - something like 30 blows to the head.
* he pled to manslaughter and did 18 years. Released in 1998 and spent only 6 years on parole.
* He lived with his mother and had threatened to kill his sister when his mother died.
* the mother died 2 months ago.
*The sister (who according to coworkers carried concealed all the time out of fear of her brother) is missing, assumed dead in the fire.

Regardless of these facts, It will all be about the guns (press is already saying he used an AR)

God help the victims, including all of us.


From a post at the 24hourcampfire

Oops

Somebody had to post it!

Different Kinds of Christians

A while back I bought a couple of books that made me stop and rethink some of the stuff I've known for years.  One was Stonewalll Jackson the Black Man's Friend and the other was Patton, Blood, Guts and Prayer.

I hadn't really read much about Jackson's concern with the slaves' salvation and I was interested to read how Mr. Kean would reconcile Patton's having an affair with his own niece and his being a particularly devout believer.

In Jackson's case, most of what I had previously read went along the lines him being so fearless in battle because he believed in predestination and therefore believed that his time was appointed and God wouldn't let him be killed until that time so he didn't need to worry about it.  Mr. Williams' book covers a sideline story about how and why Jackson started and supported a Sunday School for the slaves even though such an undertaking was illegal at the time.    Williams casts doubt on whether Jackson ever really made peace with the whole predestination thing and that, in itself, sheds something of a new light on Jackson as a man of valor. 

The tale told of Jackson's Sunday School class shows his deep and sincere concern for the spiritual welfare of his black brethran.  One incident is particularly revealing.  Shortly after the First Battle of Manassas, there arrived in Springfield Va. a letter from Jackson.  The town turned out to hear the great man's words thinking the letter must be his account of the battle which he was so instrumental in winning.  The letter spoke nothing of the battle.  It simply asked about how the negro Sunday School was doing in his absence and included his tithe.  Sometimes lot can be learned about someone from what they don't say.

All in all, it opened a new dimension in my feeble little understanding of the great man and that was certainly worth the book's price.

The Patton book proved worthwhile as well.  I once had a Military History Professor who had held onto an intense dislike for Patton for over forty years.  My Professor had been to one of Patton's little speeches  and was disgusted by the language.  He told our class that there was simply no excuse for someone to talk that way.   When I did my term paper on Patton,  I pointed out that several sources confirmed that he wasn't raised with that kind of language but had adopted it intentionally because he had to turn nice, American farm boys into cold blooded Kraut killers, I got an A and a comment on the paper thanking me for pointing that out as it was something the Professor had not considered all those years.  Keane makes no excuses for Patton's language but does explain that it was something the man started doing intentionally to motivate his troops.  I expected that much but really thought I had a trump card in that there was no way to say the man was a great Christian when he had an affair with his own niece and it may have gone on for years.

Keane makes no excuses for the affair.  He simply tells us what Mrs. Patton told her daughter about it and leaves it at that.   It seems enough.

The famous prayer for clear weather gets good attention and the various stories about the prayer's origins are covered and weighed in detail.   According to the Pastors involved, Patton told them that prayer was a powerful force and that all of his men praying would bring an immense supernatural power to bear on the weather and the enemy. 

The book goes into much more detail about the prayer and about Patton's religion in general than I care to write about.  I don't intend to write a book review here.  I just want to explain what it left me thinking.

What it left me thinking was that Patton was not so unlike so many of the great, heroic men in the Bible.   David took another man's wife and then essentially had him murdered to cover up what he had done.  Abraham was so afraid when a king noticed his wife was smokin' hot that he told the king that she was his sister so the king wouldn't kill him to take her and he let the king take her away to marry her.   What a spineless worm! (And boy did that piss the king off when he found out about it).

So Patton was flawed but no more than the rest of us.  He was flawed but still  knew that the work he had to do, his success or failure, came from God and he was willing to turn to God and seek His provision for the troubles that were ahead.

A little bit deeper dimension on Patton as well.

Hampton's Red Shirts

Ok.  The deal with the book I posted about the other day is this:

Its about how honest, decent people in South Carolina rose up and threw out the corrupt, carpet bagger reconstruction government in the 1870s.

The Democrat Party was split and their ranks were divided on how to proceed but they had the sense to unite when Wade Hampton was nominated for Governor.

They faced rigged elections and politicians who bought votes and paid off their friends out of State funds.  They faced rabble rousers who instilled fear in the black population by telling them that if Hampton were elected they'd be put back into slavery.  They faced hostile press up North and even some at home.  They faced the threat of Federal Troops sent to keep them in line.  They faced threats of riots and murder.

They came up with a plan and they turned out in large numbers to work their plan. 

They succeeded.

CamoSpace Social Network

A couple of years back I stumbled across a social networking site called CamoSpace.  I was not the least bit interested in Facebook but I noticed that a few people that lived in areas where my family is from were on CS so I gave it some thought.  Eventually, with nagging  encouragement from The Lovely Bride, I decided to sign up.

First thing I did was conjure up a screen name.  Lantry wouldn't do because the number of people who recognize where that comes from is way too small.  No.  This had to be something that would give people a general idea of my age and that I have a sense of humor.  I came up with one that I thought would make people have to think for a second to get the pun that it made.  TLB thought it was great.   Once that was done, I started the signing up process.

Its simple.  You fill out a form and you are in.  Some blanks are mandatory but others aren't.    So I'm on CS and decide to start building my page and I put up pictures taken from my tree stand, pictures of a foggy lake taken at sunrise and stuff like that.  I thought it looked pretty nice until I noticed that it had a field called "Star Sign" on my profile page.  Your birth date is one of the mandatory fields and the site sticks your Zodiac sign on your page.

Well, crap.  I don't do Zodiac stuff.   Since I don't do Zodiac stuff, I didn't want something on my profile that suggested that I did.  I sent a message to whoever runs CS asking if there was a way to remove it.  They were polite enough but told me there wasn't.   I ruminated over it for a few days and I finally decided to take all my stuff down and not fool with the place.

While I was doing that, I noticed that I had several friend requests.  Some were predictable like places that advertized on CS but others were from people I didn't know and had no earthly idea why they thought they'd want to know me.   I never answered any of them.  I mean, why answer any of them when I'm shutting down my page and leaving?  It wasn't until about a month ago that I found out why those people may have wanted to friend me.

You see, when I dreamed up my screen name, I was thinking of old cartoons like Quickdraw McGraw, Wally Gator and Augie Doggie but  I couldn't think of one based on them.  Yogi Bear seemed promising but a pretty bland screen name. I mean, would people think I steal pick-a-nick baskets?  So I took the Yogi theme a step further and made my screen name a pun on Yogi.

Yogi Bear is "smarter than the average bear" so "The Average Bear" became my screen name.  Everyone was supposed to know how clever I was  because I made them think of Yogi Bear without mentioning his name.  Everybody would know how modest and unassuming I was because Yogi Bear was smarter than me and I admitted it.  It would have been great except for that star sign problem.

About a month ago, I was telling a co-worker about how CS still sends me emails now and then even though I haven't fooled with it for two or three years.  I told him about why I left and that I might go back if they ever let me take that "star sign" crap off my profile. I even told him about the unsolicited friend requests and then I told him about how clever my screen name was.

The laughing eventually subsided and he managed to catch his breath long enough to tell me that a "Bear" is now slang for a heavy-set, hairy homosexual. 

OK.  So I'm not up on the latest slang used by homosexuals.   It kind of worries me that my co-worker is but that's a whole-nuther discussion that he needs to have with somebody besides me.  The question in my mind now is whether that was why I got those friend requests? 

I still think CamoSpace is probably a good site but I don't reckon I'll go back even if they do make the Zodiac stuff optional.

Encouragement

Much to be found here.

Its available through the Confederate Reprint Company 


Forgot to add the obvious:  Nobody paid me to suggest you buy the book.

This One's for Buckshot

Found at:  Ninety Miles

You Decide

Reading what I can stand to read in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook killings leaves me pondering whether "Progressivism" is a mental problem or is just pure evil.

The school Principal charged the gunman in a futile attempt to stop his horrible plan.  A teacher hid her kids.  When the killer demanded to know where they were, she lied.  Told him they were someplace else.  He killed her but her kids survived.  Heroes, both of them.

Would the Principal have used a gun to stop the killer?  It sounds like she would have used anything she could.  Would the teacher have preferred to have answered the killer's demand with a hail of lead?  I can't imagine that she wouldn't.  No matter whether they were liberal or conservative,  pro gun or anti.  I think that in those few, horrible seconds, looking at evil incarnate, with so much hanging in the balance, they would have taken up arms had they not been prohibited from doing so.


Hint:

 (Sign stolen from Free North Carolina )

Yet, the "Progressives" focus now is how much gun control do we need because of what that diseased psychopath did last week.  Its most definitely not on what can we possibly do to keep it from happening again.  They don't even want to talk about what would be effective.  All they see is an opportunity to pass new laws.

That's why I can't tell if "Progressivism" is a sickness or is just plain evil.  If they wanted to protect the children, they would be open to any suggestion no matter where it came from.  They'd look at the statistics and evaluate the evidence.  They'd look at what works.  Only, they won't do that.

They don't care how many kids die in the future.  Think about that.  If they cared, they would be looking for solutions.  They don't care.  What they care about is new laws that will not protect the kids.   New laws that will still leave them defenseless the next time someone runs amok.  They would rather facilitate future killing by saying guns are the problem and by leaving the schools defenseless as long as they can get gun control laws passed.  Are they sick or evil?  You Decide.

Europe & USA Have the Same Rate of Mass Killings

From Front Page Magazine

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/europe-has-same-rate-of-multiple-victim-shootings-as-the-united-states/


Of course,  facts, reason or anything that would actually stop the killings will have no bearing on the legislation that's in  the pipeline. 

I Want One

"Cuzzin" Massad Nails It

Excellent piece at Massad Ayoob's blog.

AGAINST MONSTERS

Like so many things that end up posted here, I found it linked at one of the great blogs that I ferquent:

Robert's Gun Shop


Uhh.  Why ain't you clicked on it yet?

Coonties

This one sure is early this year.  Friggin Mayans got everything screwed up.

Sandy Hook

My heart goes out to the dead and the survivors.  From our little homestead our prayers are with you.

They call this a tragedy.  No.  Its an atrocity.

Already the internet is filling up with lamentations over America's "Gun Culture."   This wasn't part of any Gun Culture.  This  was a twisted, pathetic loser.  I don't know any gun people like that.

The world is full of evil.  It always has been.  Why do we allow our elected representatives to deny people the right to protect themselves from it? 

Zeke!

The Best Dog

The best dog I ever had died 4 years ago today.

Some day I will write about him.

Not today.  He deserves better than I can do today.

 

 O.J.  12/07/1997 - 12/11/2008.  With his sister, Nicole, 12/07/1997-09/11/2011, a damned good dog in her own right:

Rest in Peace ol' Buddies.  I hope that story about the bridge is true.

Lots of Good Stuff Here

Whether you just have a casual interest in history or are a serious student, there's a lot of stuff here that you just won't find at your local college bookstore.

http://confederatereprint.com/index.php


H/T to Free North Carolina


What the heck are you doing here.  Go.  Click on it for heaven's sake.

Pest Control

Along about lunch time this afternoon, The Lovely Bride announces that there's a bee on the ceiling in the living room.  I looked at it and it weren't no bee.  It was some kind of wasp or hornet.  Striped like a yellow jacket but considerably bigger.  It looked like it was chewing on the ceiling so I didn't want to wait for it to leave of its own volition.

I balled up a big wool boot sock and proceeded to miss it about a dozen times before a memory gave me the solution.

A few decades back, the Lovely Bride and I had rented an old farmhouse that turned out to be  infested with wolf spiders.  Now that I have checked on line they looked more like Huntsman Spiders but we call them wolf spiders around here so I'll stick with that.  Whatever they are, they are generally harmless but TLB has a psychotic fear of spiders and it just didn't make for a happy home to have herds of spiders as big as your hand roaming the house at night.

Wolf (Huntsman?) spiders are generally too fast to hit with spray and they are quick enough that they are hard to hit with a magazine or to stomp with a shoe so I came up with an effective solution in the reloading room.

The Lovely Bride had a revolver in .32 H&R Magnum and I primed a few cases, put a pinch of AA#2 in each (I measured the charges, I just don't remember the data) and then filled the cases with uncooked grits.  Topped them off with  over shot wads cut from notebook paper secured with nail polish and had nice little shot shells to use indoors.

One of the fun things about those spiders is that their eyes shine when you hit them with a spotlight.  I'd walk around the house at night with a flashlight until I saw a pair of beady little eyes looking at me and then I'd blast it to kingdom come with the .32 shotshells.  The grits didn't penetrate the drywall but would blow a spider to bits at close range.  When you swept up the spider bits you also cleaned up the grits. 

Not wanting to hit the bee/wasp/hornet with a broom and have it come after me in the house, I charged a .357 Mag. case with a pinch of WW231 and topped it off with cornmeal.  Didn't need an overshot wad because I would be pointing the gun at the ceiling.  I took aim, asked the obligatory question ("Do you feel lucky?") and let him have it.

That's where expansion ratios intervened.  You can make a .32 work well enough but when you move up to a larger bore, the powder just isn't fast enough to burn well because the grits or corn meal don't weigh much.  There was a soft little "pop" and it didn't blow the beast to smithereens.  All it did was make it fly to the nearest window where TLB beat it to a pulp with a shoe.

All things considered, it was a successful hunt.  We wanted the thing off the ceiling and we didn't want to get stung in the process.  We accomplished both without damaging the ceiling or anything else besides the bug.  Then we ate our hamburgers and went back to our normal lives.

Makes as Much Sense as Anything Else

Mauser Therapy II

Spent most of the day at the office trying to get caught up on  work.  I'll go for weeks wondering where everybody went and then I'll get a month's worth of work dumped on me in the course of just a couple of days.   Got home, caught up on my email other mindless tasks and thought it might be a good time to pick up where I left off on the Mauser Project.

The headspace was close but still needed just a tad more room.  I had already picked up a chamber reamer, headspace gauges and an extension handle that lets you make a small cut without taking the barrel off the action so it was just a matter of getting started.   

With the bolt stripped, it looked like it would work but I couldn't figure out how to get the collar that holds the extractor in place to come off the bolt.  I didn't want to bend the crap out of it so I left it there.  The bolt would go into the action just fine but it wouldn't come out.  Without the extractor on it, the collar expanded just enough to hang up on the way out.   I wound up compressing it with a small set of needle nose vise grips and then wiring it in the compressed position with part of a paperclip. The scary thing is that it actually worked.

I was able to put the reamer into the chamber through the action, give it a few twists, take the reamer out and check the headspace with the stripped bolt and gauges.  It didn't take much before I had it closing on the go gauge and not closing on the no-go.  Then I reassembled the bolt and slid a resized shell casing up under the extractor, closed the bolt and then opened it again.  When I drew the bolt back, the ejector kicked the shell out just like its supposed to.

Next I'll have to open up the feed rails so it won't be a single shot.  That ain't happenin' this weekend

Memory Lane

I usually don't play videos that are linked in blogs and I never play music so I might as well post something that violates both of my traditions at once.

The Colored Recruits


Now that I'm getting an Edison phonograph in just six more days, I got to thinking about some of the records my brothers and I used to play on the old Edison that stood in the storage room on the second floor of my Grandparent's house in North Carolina.  

While looking through the 44 pages of Edison-related stuff on Ebay I actually ran across one of the records.  I told the Lovely Bride that I'd bid on it but there was already one bid and there was a chance that my brother was the bidder.  She didn't think so since he is the one who has the Edison and all the records now but I held off until I could contact him. 

I emailed him about the record being on ebay and he emailed back asking if I was bidding on it.  I told him that I wanted to but didn't want to bid against him if he was the bidder.  He was and by the time we communicated someone else was bidding too.  He bowed out to let me have a clear shot at it and now five of us are bidding.  I'll bet two of the others are my cousins.

Trying to tell the Lovely Bride about how much fun it was for little kids to listen to those old records  was about like trying to give a haircut over the phone.  She just doesn't appreciate it for what it is.  Its totally analog and acoustic and she's thinking its not worth listening to unless its digital.  You wind the thing up with a crank.  Its "Spring-Punk."  The blank stare started to really bore through me so I told her about this one record that was a recording of an old Vaudeville skit called "The Colored Recruits."  Its been about four decades since I last heard it but I could remember a lot of the jokes and parts of the song at the end.  She suggested that I Google it to see if I could find the words to the song.

No way, says I.  There's no way that anybody would have heard of it  and there's even  less way anybody would let them put the words to it out in public.   Being probably 95 years old, there's words used in it that just aren't used anymore.  Words with "gg" in the middle.  The way it portrays the characters is intended to be comical and some of the jokes are funny but, viewed from a modern perspective when everybody is just itching to be offended about something, its a friggin' tincture of poison oak. 

Like everything else in the history of mankind, its there. 

I'm linking to it because it brings back memories of trips to North Carolina to visit my Grandparents for Christmas.  The earthy smell of their basement, helping Grandfather shovel the coal into the furnace, all the wonders concealed in the garage and even snow by Christmas the same year I got a plastic M-14 that shot spring loaded plastic bullets and yes, sitting around the Edison playing their WW1 era "Diamond Disc Records."

By modern standards its offensive to some.  Sorry.  I don't post it to offend.  Everybody's entitled to his own sense of humor.   Take it for what it is.  This was mainstream entertainment in its day.  Its not anymore.  The fact that you can't go into a music store today and find anything remotely like it that makes fun of African Americans proves that we don't have racism in this country like we used to.  Not that we don't still laugh at people that are different from us.  Its just that the only character in our current pop culture that comes readily to mind is Cletus the slack-jawed yokel from The Simpsons.  He's a stereo-typical hillbilly so its perfectly acceptable to ridicule him. 

Now that all the disclaimers are done, go back up and hit the link to the time machine.  Just don't go bidding on any records until after 8:00 AM tomorrow! 

Lathe Repair

Finally got the tailstock on the lathe fixed.  When I got it, the tailstock was rusted together and someone had tried to force it apart with the feed screw.  That ruined most of the threads inside the barrel.  It was easy enough to get apart but the barrel wouldn't go back in.  I had to sand the rust off the barrel and inside the bore and then buy an Edison phonograph to get it back together.  

Actually, I didn't have to buy the Edison to get it all to go back together and work but I ran across the Edison while looking for a motor for my polisher.  I was looking for a motor for the polisher because I was going to polish the tailstock barrel instead of sand it.  When I  plugged in my new polisher, it blew the circuit breaker and the GFCI in the kitchen.

While I was looking on Ebay for a used electric motor for my old polisher, it suggested "Edison Phonograph."  I hadn't thought about my Grandparent's Edison in a long time so I went shopping through 44 pages of stuff on Ebay and I found one that was affordable.  How in the hell Ebay knew I'd be interested in that is beyond me.  Edisons have a crank.  They don't have motors.  Never did find a motor for the polisher.  Can't afford one now that I bought the Edison anyway.

Got all that done today and then used the feed screw to chase whats left of the threads inside the barrel and it works.  It has a few tight spots but it works. 

From what I was told when I bought it, this may be the first time since the late 1960s that the tailstock has worked.

Hard to believe I've written all this about a tailstock without posting a picture  like this

but I did!

Funny

Innovative Technologies Belted Magnum Sizing DIe

Probably fifteen years ago, a good friend who owned a pawn shop gave me one hundred "once fired" 300 Weatherby cases that were in a bunch of stuff that he got when he bought out a competitor.  These were the real deal.  Norma-made and in the boxes with the tiger on them.  I thought I had struck gold.

The very next hunting season, I grabbed twenty of those cases and loaded them up with my favorite deer load.  Of course, I waited until the night before opening day to load them and when I tested them to see if they'd feed from the magazine exactly one of them would chamber.  One.  All the rest would stop just above the belt.  If I tried to force them, there would be a bright ring on the case where it was too fat to fit in the chamber.  Regular sizing dies don't size all the way down to the belt.

I hunted the next day with my one good bullet in the chamber and a different load in the rest of the magazine.  I don't remember whether I got anything but I do remember thinking a lot about how to size those cases down so they'd fit.  I decided that some kind of collet like you'd use in a lathe would work if you could work out how to make it stop squeezing at the right amount of sizing.

I had other brass so I never pursued the matter and a few years later I ran across an add for a sizing die by Innovative Technologies that was made to solve exactly the problem that my brass had.

Its a collet die and the call it their Belted Magnum Sizing Die.   It works.  I stole the photo from their website.   Innovative Technologies   My reloading room is not real photogenic right now.

I weighed the cost of replacing that brass against the cost of the die and figured it was worth buying.  I never did fix the Weatherby brass because an airhead on a cell phone rear-ended me at a traffic light and wrecked several discs in my neck and back.  Can't shoot anything with significant recoil anymore so the die just sat in a closet until last weekend.

While fiddling with the project Mauser, I noticed that one of my "at least once fired" 7mm Rem. Mag.  cases was doing in the Mauser exactly what the "once fired" Weatherby brass had done so I got the die out and decided to learn how to use it.

Its really thought out well.  You remove the lock ring and screw the die into a single stage press from the bottom.  Slip the lock ring over the top and lock it down nice and snug.  The expandable "fingers" of the collet slide down the case and bottom out against the top edge of the belt.  You lube the fingers with Imperial Sizing Die Wax, slip the case into the shell holder and then you use the press to stuff the whole thing into the die.  It takes some force but you are resizing the thick end of the case so that's to be expected.  Withdraw the case as you would any case from a regular sizing die, take the fingers off and you have a case that's as close to good as new as you can get.

How do you know the die really sized it enough to fit your rifle's chamber?  How do you know whether the stuff you just fired even needs this kind of sizing this time around?   That's one of the parts that I think is so well designed.   The top of the die is designed as a Go - No Go gauge.  If your case will slide in the top of the die all the way to the belt, it will fit the rifle.  If it won't, it won't.  Its no big deal to check cases before you load them.

I'm waiting on a box of bullets to load into some cases that my brother in law left with me and I thought I'd do all the case prep today so there would be less to do when they get here.  He had eighteen nickle plated cases and two in plain brass.  All were Winchester brand.  I noticed that the nickle cases were a lot harder to size than the brass ones (I think they were fired in a different rifle) so I got the Belted Magnum Sizing Die out again and checked all the cases in the Go - No Go end.  The plain brass ones were fine but none of the nickle plated ones fit even after I full length sized them in a regular die.  All of them got their bottom ends resized and all of them fit now.

In one operation, the die pretty much took them from this:

To this:

   

Nice.

Well, which one do you want in the tree stand with you on a cold morning?

Anyway, like I said, the die works. It costs almost $90 but at the price of brass these days, if you have more than fifty belted cases that need their bottom ends slimmed down, it makes sense to get one.

They also have a neat looking headspace measuring rig and a magnetic spirit level for making sure you mount your scopes right and they say the magnet is strong enough to leave it on the rifle and use it to keep the rifle level when shooting.   Haven't tried either so I can't say anything more than they look good.  The site is worth a look.

I guess I should add that ain't nobody paid me nuthin' to say none of this.

Happy Holidays from Our Betters

Found at   American National Militia                        

(Thanks to a friend's Facebook  post)

Posted Verbatim:

Obama’s Gun Ban List Is Out

Posted on 11/20/2012

Obama’s Gun Ban List Is Out

Alan Korwin – Author Gun Laws Of America GunLaws.com Here it is, folks, and it is bad news. The framework for legislation is always laid, and the Democrats have the votes to pass anything they want to impose upon us. They really do not believe you need anything more than a brick to defend your home and family. Look at the list and see how many you own. Remember, it is registration, then confiscation. It has happened in the UK, in Australia, in Europe, in China, and what they have found is that for some reason the criminals do not turn in their weapons, but will know that you did.
Remember, the first step in establishing a dictatorship is to disarm the citizens.
Gun-ban list proposed. Slipping below the radar (or under the short-term memory cap), the Democrats have already leaked a gun-ban list, even under the Bush administration when they knew full well it had no chance of passage (HR 1022, 110th Congress). It serves as a framework for the new list the Brady’s plan to introduce shortly. I have an outline of the Brady’s current plans and targets of opportunity. It’s horrific. They’re going after the courts, regulatory agencies, firearms dealers and statutes in an all out effort to restrict we the people. They’ve made little mention of criminals. Now more than ever, attention to the entire Bill of Rights is critical. Gun bans will impact our freedoms under search and seizure, due process, confiscated property, states’ rights, free speech, right to assemble and more, in addition to the Second Amendment. The Democrats current gun-ban-list proposal (final list will be worse):
Rifles (or copies or duplicates):
M1 Carbine,
Sturm Ruger Mini-14,
AR-15,
Bushmaster XM15,
Armalite M15,
AR-10,
Thompson 1927,
Thompson M1;
AK,
AKM,
AKS,
AK-47,
AK-74,
ARM,
MAK90,
NHM 90,
NHM 91,
SA 85,
SA 93,
VEPR;
Olympic Arms PCR;
AR70,
Calico Liberty ,
Dragunov SVD Sniper Rifle or Dragunov SVU, Fabrique National FN/FAL, FN/LAR, or FNC, Hi-Point20Carbine, HK-91, HK-93, HK-94, HK-PSG-1, Thompson 1927 Commando, Kel-Tec Sub Rifle; Saiga, SAR-8, SAR-4800, SKS with detachable magazine, SLG 95, SLR 95 or 96, Steyr AU, Tavor, Uzi, Galil and Uzi Sporter, Galil Sporter, or Galil Sniper Rifle ( Galatz ).
Pistols (or copies or duplicates):
Calico M-110,
MAC-10,
MAC-11, or MPA3,
Olympic Arms OA,
TEC-9,
TEC-DC9,
TEC-22 Scorpion, or AB-10,
Uzi.
Shotguns (or copies or duplicates):
Armscor 30 BG,
SPAS 12 or LAW 12,
Striker 12,
Streetsweeper. Catch-all category (for anything missed or new designs):
A semiautomatic rifle that accepts a detachable magazine and has:
(i) a folding or telescoping stock,
(ii) a threaded barrel,
(iii) a pistol grip (which includes ANYTHING that can serve as a grip, see below),
(iv) a forward grip; or a barrel shroud.
Any semiautomatic rifle with a fixed magazine that can accept more than
10 rounds (except tubular magazine .22 rim fire rifles).
A semiautomatic pistol that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine, and has:
(i) a second pistol grip,
(ii) a threaded barrel,
(iii) a barrel shroud or
(iv) can accept a detachable magazine outside of the pistol grip, and
(v) a semiautomatic pistol with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds.
A semiautomatic shotgun with:
(i) a folding or telescoping stock,
(ii) a pistol grip (see definition below),
(iii) the ability to accept a detachable magazine or a fixed magazine capacity of more than 5 rounds, and
(iv) a shotgun with a revolving cylinder.
Frames or receivers for the above are included, along with conversion kits.
Attorney General gets carte blanche to ban guns at will: Under the proposal, the U.S. Attorney General can add any “semiautomatic rifle or shotgun originally designed for military or law enforcement use, or a firearm based on the design of such a firearm, that is not particularly suitable for sporting purposes, as determined by the Attorney General.”
Note that Obama’s pick for this office, Eric Holder, wrote a brief in the Heller case supporting the position that you have no right to have a working firearm in your own home. In making this determination, the bill says, “there shall be a rebuttable presumption that a firearm procured for use by the United States military or any law enforcement agency is not particularly suitable for sporting purposes, and shall not be determined to be particularly suitable for sporting purposes solely because the firearm is suitable for use in a sporting event.” In plain English this means that ANY firearm ever obtained by federal officers or the military is not suitable for the public.
The last part is particularly clever, stating that a firearm doesn’t have a sporting purpose just because it can be used for sporting purpose — is that devious or what? And of course, “sporting purpose” is a rights infringement with no constitutional or historical support whatsoever, invented by domestic enemies of the right to keep and bear arms to further their cause of disarming the innocent.
Respectfully submitted, Alan Korwin, Author Gun Laws of America http://www.gunlaws.com/gloa.htm
Forward or send to every gun owner you know…
Watch This, If You Want More Proof:
YouTube – CNN- Obama To BAN Guns SPREAD THIS FOLKS, PLZ!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv3p2lLmjGk
A partial list of gun rights groups:
Gun Owners of America
http://gunowners.org/
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership http://www.jpfo.org/
FREEDOM=GUNS
http://www.tcsn.net/doncicci/freedom.htm
National Rifle Association
http://www.nra.org/
Second Amendment Committee
http://www.libertygunrights.com/
Second Amendment Foundation
http://www.saf.org/
Second Amendment Sisters
http://www.2asisters.org/
Women Against Gun Control
http://www.wagc.com/

Happy Thanksgiving

This brings back memories

Gettin' Closer

The six contradictions of socialism in the USA

From The Peoples Cube


The six contradictions of socialism in the United States of America

• America is capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.
• Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.
• They think they are victims - yet their representatives run the government.
• Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.
• The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
• They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.

Macular Degeneration

My Mother is almost eighty-three years old and, for the past five years or so has been fighting a delaying action against macular degeneration.    The other day at lunch, she showed me a little card that she carries in her wallet.  It has all kinds of grids and lines on it and she's supposed to look at it every day and call her doctor if the lines look like they are moving.  I remarked that I had just watched an episode of I Dream Of Jeannie where Barbara Eden was wearing a sweater with black and white stripes and they looked like they were moving.  She diagnosed me with macular degeneration right there in the restaurant.

I had an eye-doctor appointment in a few days anyway so I promised that I'd have the Doc. check for macular degeneration along with whatever else he checks.

So the appointment was today and after he had checked my vision and shined the bright light into my eyes I remembered to ask him.  He remarked that I had just turned fifty-two and wanted to know why I thought I might have it.  I told him that I didn't think I had it but my Mother did and I had promised her that I'd ask him to check for it.  So he wanted to know why she thought I had it and I explained about the card in her wallet and the lines on Barbara Eden's sweater.

He looked at the macula, said they looked  fine and then he projected a bunch of little grids and spider webby-looking designs on the wall and asked if any were moving or if any had dark spots or areas that were missing lines.   I told him no and that all of the designs looked fine.

He turned the lights back on and said that my macula were fine and that if I ever saw Barbara Eden in a striped  sweater and the lines weren't moving, that's when I need to call him.

 Its nice to have a doctor with common sense.

End of the World

From my brother's Facebook page.  He works for a power company

Old Fashioned Thanksgiving

Seriously.   That picture has to be 50 or 60 years old.

Mauser Therapy

Been reading some good books lately and have a post about two of them smoldering in the back of my head.  Have not had the time or focus to address that post so here's how the weekend went.

Met one of my brother's in law at 5:15 Saturday Morning for an airboat ride  out to a hunting place on one of the islands in the lake.  He's a latter day "Daniel Boone" type that lives to hunt and generally knows where the deer are going to be walking.  He lives on the shore of a lake about 20 minutes from where I live and he hunts the islands in the lake.  Its a big, marshy lake with lots of islands and the deer walk across the lake from island to island.  Its that shallow in lots of places.

He dropped me off at a climbing stand and I settled in with my Thermacell and bug tamer suit just about the time the pre-dawn chill set in.  Just before sunup, I started hearing gunfire.  I say "started hearing" because it went on all morning all around me.  Not only was it the first day of "doe week, " but there was also some kind of special hog hunt on the adjacent management area so the woods were crawling with dogs.  Everybody in three counties was around the lake or on the islands.   Naturally, I saw nothing.  Not so much as a squirrel.

Brother-in-law saw more.  Someone wearing an orange hunting vest was walking around the woods making noise.  We suspect it was some kind of local Bambiista out there to keep the deer from showing themselves to hunters.  He also saw two guys who sat down about sixty yards in front of his stand and proceeded to shoot a doe that would have been his had they not been there.  Both of us were surrounded by shooting on all sides.

When we got back to the house and started putting two and two together, we began to suspect that people who had seen his stands decided to set up nearby because his are in good spots.  Why spend time scouting and learning the woods  when you can just set up close to a stand put up by somebody else that has done the work for you?  We may have identified a whole new species of woodland parasite.  Don't know whether this is related to the recent election or not.

Got home and decided to work on a project that has been sitting around for a while.  Another  friend had been given an old Mauser that had been bubbad really bad and he gave it to me.  The stock was broken and had been glued back together by someone who had never heard the words "epoxy" or "surgical tubing."  It was glued with plain old white glue and didn't look like it was clamped in any way.  Someone had decided to taper the steps out of the military barrel too.  It looked like they used a file instead of one of those big old lathe machine things.  Then, I guess to prove that they were not completely without a soul, they decided to mount a scout scope on the barrel rather than drill the receiver.  "Set punch" is another couple of words they evidently never heard because they drilled lots of holes trying to get whatever their was rig lined up.  So it had a bunch of little holes right over the chamber and a bunch more a few inches down the barrel.  Maybe it will make a good jack handle for the Jeep.

The action itself was in good shape.  Its a Peruvian action made in Belgium by that Fabrique place that everybody thinks so much of.

I had bought a take off barrel in 7mm Remington Magnum not too long after my buddy gave me the wrecked Mauser and its blueing was a close match to that of the action.    A few weeks ago I stumbled across a stripped bolt that had been opened up for a magnum case so I bought that too.  I've never fooled with opening up a bolt face before so it seemed like a good idea.  I have no rifle chambered for the 7mm Rem Mag but I have dies and brass and it began to dawn on me that I had the makings of a decent hunting rifle.

With that pile of parts and nothing pressing to do the rest of the day, I opened up the original extractor and put it on the new bolt.  I lapped the locking lugs and the cocking piece, cleaned it up and screwed the barrel on hand tight.  Using an "at least once-fired" and resized case just for fun I decided to see if the headspace was close.  Its maybe a couple of thousandths too tight.   I mean it is so close I can force the bolt closed.  Not bad luck for using a barrel, bolt and receiver that came off of three different rifles.  I still want to true the receiver up but I have the mandrel for that.   I'll have to get a reamer to get the last little bit of the chamber right but the less I have to ream, the less chance I'll have to screw something up.  Once that's done I'll still have to open the feed rails up but there's no hurry for that.  I have next to no idea what I am doing and will be taking it slow.  Its not like I need this rifle for hunting.  I just want to learn how to do all this.  So far I have less than $200 in the project and I don't want to learn by making mistakes that will ruin the receiver.

It kept my mind off work and the parasites in the woods and whole rifles take up less space than piles of parts so it was good all around.

Is it Really Just A Week Away?

I swear that could be my Grandmother in that picture.  I mean the one on the left.

Basic Training

Buy Ammo

I rarely buy ammo already assembled but National Ammo Day is November 19 so I plan on doing so.

http://www.ammoday.com/

I Thought They Gave it Away

Here I thought the Lame Stream Media reported only State-Approved "News" out of ideological purity.   Now it seems they are prostitutes in every sense of the word.

This is the link for the "Read more..." :

http://mariomurilloministries.wordpress.com/

Can't Remember Her Name

She's a Saluki.     She might be one of the most visually impressive dogs I've ever met.   Tall and lean like a Greyhound but with long hair on her ears and tail.  Imagine a small deer with a long tail and floppy ears and you won't be too far off.  Impeccably mannered and friendly to a fault, the most impressive thing about her was her gait.  When she was running, she ran like a deer.  The video below is my lame attempt to capture it for posterity.  In the video she is done running and is just trotting around enjoying her time out of the pen.  My camera was too slow to catch her when she was really stretching her legs.  I would not have made a good turret gunner on a B 17.  I gave up on getting a still picture until she settled down.

 And finally, a couple after she's had some water and a chance to cool down.

It was something kind of semi elegant like Sophia or something like that.

This Sounds More Like the Truth

Found at  Small Dead Animals 

Voted Today

First day of early voting in my neck of the woods.  Got there about an hour after the doors opened and the line was in the parking lot not quite to the street.

The workers inside said that they got there 45 minutes before the polls opened and people were there waiting on them.  They said it had been that busy all day. 

I did not vote for the Barr / Sheean ticket.  Seriously, how can there be enough deranged people to put them on the ballot?  What we have now isn't corrupt enough or incompetent enough or communist enough and doesn't hate the Country enough?  Hard to imagine.

This was the only day that I have ever regretted not being in Alan Grayson's district.   They won't let me vote against him because of that tiny little technicality.

Actual Shooting Content

Business has been slow the past week so I decided to make a trip to the range.  That always makes business show up to keep me from going.

A few things needed to be checked to make sure they'd function so I put them in the trunk and left for the range after lunch.

The Hurricane is out in the Atlantic but we are still getting winds from the edges.   What?    Oh.  Right.

The Hurricane is out in the Atlantic but we are still getting winds from the edges.  A 20-25 mph crosswind with gusts that make you lean into them to stay standing up straight kept the Mosquitoes at bay but eliminated any thought of shooting for accuracy.

Ya.  I know.

Anyway, the wind kept the mosquitoes at bay so I wasn't constantly slapping democrats or any other blood sucking pestilence and I did leave the range with some good information.

First up was the new-to-me Savage 99 that I got a few months ago.  The load that I concocted for it almost shot to the sights as they were set when I got it.

The top shot was a fouling shot.  I didn't try to hold a decent sight picture so it doesn't really mean anything.  The other three were shot offhand at about 30 yards.  30 yards?   I know.  Not particularly good shooting but considering I was rocking side to side in winds like we had today it was good enough to tell me the rifle still has whatever it had when it left the factory seventy-two years ago.  I will have to return on a calmer day to see how well it really can shoot but I'd hunt in any swamp with it as is. 

Next was an M1 Carbine that I had never fired.  I wanted to make sure the rifle was reliable and I also wanted to find out if a load I put together for it was actually going to work.  Military ball from a box of cartuchos imported from somewhere worked great.  It did seem to want to throw the empties forward for some reason though.  Several of them bounced off the handguard.  Might have been the wind.  It threw some to the right like normal.  I wasn't really paying attention to whether there was a correlation to wind gusts and where the brass landed but my 45 did the same thing a little later.  Some to the right and some right in front.

Naturally, with the wind playing havoc with the sight picture,

there  was no point in trying to see how accurate the little beast is but I still had one more test for it.  I bought a box of eighty-something grain .308" Hornady bullets intended for the .30 Mauser and had loaded some of them in .30 Carbine brass to see if they'd make a "high velocity" load.  The  load was good.  It was impressive in a Ruger Blackhawk (no, no Helicopter picture)  and it seemed to be pretty good in the little rifle except that it wouldn't feed. 

Details.

The bullet profile has a fatter ogive than real .30 Carbine bullets and a lot more exposed lead.  The lead hit the breech and stopped the music on every other round.

This is what a typical stoppage looked like.


Below is the same round after clearing the jam.  You can see the spot where it  hung up and you can see how fat the exposed lead is.

So I learned that the bullets won't work in my rifle.  Its good to learn that now instead of when something goes bump in the night.

Besides, they are still great in the Blackhawk.

After that came a Garand.  I had installed an adjustable gas cylinder plug a while back and needed to calibrate it.  I ran into trouble because the little lock screw was tighter than the plug and I couldn't get it out of the plug so I could adjust the screw underneath.  The whole plug came out. I had no pliers or anything else to hold it while I loosened the lock screw so I never did get it calibrated.

Ugh.

Just for fun I did fire a few rounds of the ammo that I loaded for it a while back.  Again, not for a group.  Just to feel the rifle shoot again.  I'll have to loosen the lock nut, tighten the plug and go back to the range. 

A friend has an M1A and it gave me a case of flash hider envy so I also put one of these on the Garand when I did the adjustable plug.   I think mine's bigger.   Heh.

The final test was for the new magazines I got for an "Officer's sized" 1911.  I got them from a place called Joe's 1911 Mag Mania .  They were  $14 each in stainless and I wanted to make sure they worked before I started using them in my carry gun. 

The two on the left are the new ones.  On the right is either the one that came with the pistol or a Chip McCormick mag that I bought when I bought the gun.    The new ones were flawless.  I'm happy with them & that's one step closer to making the little 45 my carry gun.

I learned good and valuable things about every gun I took and the wind and the lock screw made it so I have to go back and do it all over again on a calmer day.  I say that's a pretty good afternoon at the range.