After 2 Years in the Shop

My brother finally  got his car out of the shop this past weekend.  1951 Studebaker Champion Starlight Coupe.  169 CID Flathead six.  3 speed with electric overdrive.  For gas mileage it gets in the high 20s on the highway. 

Boston Massacre and Obama's Lies

Very informative post at Seraphic Secret  linking to an article at National Review Online about who really made the decision to Mirandize the Boston Bomber.  

Honey?

Tread

Started to move the cars out of the way so I could get the tractor through the gate and mow the front yard.  Not sure how it happened but that turned into fixing a heater bypass elbow on the car and a new set of tires for the Jeep.  I guess the historians will sort it all out after I'm gone.  Probably entangling alliances or something to do with George Bush.

Decided to go all out and get the tires with something called "Tread" on them.  Its supposed to make it drive better in all sorts of ways.  If it does half what they say it will, I will be happy.

I remember my Dad used to get tires with tread on them.  Funny how if you live long enough things come back into style. 

Still displeased with the rear driveshaft.  I relieved the hell out of it and its still binding.   The local driveshaft guy says you can't get a CV joint yoke for a Dana 300 transfer case.  Says they only make a few every few years because there's no demand.  I'm suspicious of people telling me something can't be done when doing it would mean they'd have to work so I decided to find one for myself.

I grabbed my canteen and rations for three days, put on my Indiana Jones hat and my snake boots and typed "Dana 300 Transfer Case Yoke for CV Joint" in the little Google box on my computer screen.   This was the Very First Hit:

Damn.  I'm too old for this kind of exertion. 

The yoke is scheduled to get here on Thursday.  On Friday, the local guy will get his one chance to build me a CV joint driveshaft.  If he doesn't jump at it, I'll ship the yoke to a place in Georgia that will do it.

Ya Can't Make This Sh*t Up

GPD: Would-be squirrel-killer injured after taping cartridge to BB gun

 A man who tried to shoot a squirrel for dinner by taping a .40-caliber cartridge to a BB gun was hospitalized with shrapnel wounds after the cartridge exploded, Gainesville police reported.

A sworn complaint was filed against William Daniel Lloyd, 31, for discharging a firearm in public and possession of ammunition by a convicted felon, Officer Ben Tobias stated in a press item.

Officer Diana Mattern responded to a medical emergency call at 600 SE 12th Terrace and learned that Lloyd had taped the cartridge to the end of a BB gun to shoot a squirrel, Tobias said.

Lloyd fired the BB gun, causing the BB to strike the cartridge’s primer. The cartridge discharged and fragmented, striking Lloyd in the upper arm and lower leg.


Read the whole story at Gainesville.com
 
Found at  Knuckledraggin

I believe I'd have just shot the squirrel with the BB gun.

I know.  I'm strange that way.

Gainesville Florida Democrats try to Get Their Own Democratic Black Caucsus' Charter Revoked

GAINESVILLE - The rift between the Alachua County Democratic Executive Committee and the Alachua County Democratic Black Caucus is growing bigger. The leadership of the county democrats wrote a letter asking the state democratic party to revoke the charter of the Alachua County Democratic Black Caucus. However officers of the black caucus tell me they are fighting back.

Some of the Democrats who supported Republican Ed Braddy for mayor over Democrat Craig Lowe are being called out for their choice. This is the letter members of the Alachua County Democratic Party wrote to the florida democratic party. In it they list a number of times were officers in the Alachua County Democratic Black Caucus publicly showed their support towards Ed Braddy.
   

Charles Goston with the Black Caucus says they supported candidates policies not parties in this non-partisan race. "African americans in Alachua county were going to respond in time, they have given us nothing so they can't expect anything back from us. When they get ready to respect the African American votes than they can get the same thing back from us," Goston said.


Read the Whole Article at WCJB News

The Armed Citizen Project

 This is AWESOME!

 

 

A nonprofit group in Houston, TX known for helping single mothers has begun an ambitious new effort to help an entire neighborhood, and ultimately, the entire nation. This nonprofit stands apart from most others because of how it is trying to help. Namely, they arm single mothers and other vulnerable groups in society. They are the Armed Citizen Project.

 

Read the Rest Where I Stole  Found It :  Free North Carolina

90% of Americans In Favor of Gun Control?

That's Gonnna Leave A Scar

Pretty Much Covers It

Sad but True

Borrowed from Theo Spark

Network News

Listening to a talk radio show while driving home yesterday, I chanced to hear  a clip of a couple of liberal newscasters talking about the You Tube channel that one of the Boston bombers had set up.  I want to say they were from MSNBC but I'm not sure. 

The gist of what they were saying was that there was no reason to jump to any conclusions about the two bombers' motives just because of all the jihadist videos the older one posted because he had just as many main stream rap videos on the channel.  They said it as if they actually thought it was a rational line of reasoning.

A perfect blend of dishonesty, stupidity and insanity. 

Ruth's Recuperation

The old Jeep continues plodding down the road to reliability.  This weekend we said goodby to the old brake proportioning valve and the brake lines.  The old one leaked and since that wasn't a big enough PITA, one of the new exhaust system's pipes rested on the valve.  The same pipe followed the frame about 1/4" from the brake line all the way back to the rear spring.  Worked fine until we got in stop  and go traffic and the fluid started to boil.

The driveshaft continues to be troublesome.  The yoke is still binding even after I relieved the hell out of it.  There's nothing left to relieve so I will have to have a CV joint driveshaft made.  I told the driveshaft guy that's what I wanted but I let him talk  me out of it.  The yoke for a CV joint is a flange and they are hard to find for the Dana 300 transfer case so we tried a regular driveshaft to see if it would work.  We saw.  It won't.

In the mean time, there's some really annoying chatter with the drivetrain in a "float" situation.  When neither under power nor coasting it makes a hell of a noise.  Fortunately, I have a box full of Dana 300 bearings and seals and I have two spare transfer cases.   This evening I drug out my $5.00 spare transfer case to dismantle and see if its worth rebuilding.  Nothing but the best for my Jeep!

 It doesn't want to be dismantled.   That's why it was only $5.00 at the Jeep show.  The shiny thing on top is a lead ingot.  I use a cornbread mold to cast the ingots for my bullet casting.  Here I'm using this ingot to cushion the gentle rapping of a 4 pound hammer.   The little dark specks on the concrete in front of the lighter colored concrete block are the bearings from the output shaft housing.  The races are stuck on the output shaft and in the housing.  Same for the input shaft and housing.  If this doesn't work, I'll have to try my $10 spare.  If that doesn't work, I can always do what normal people would do and pull the transfer case that's on it and rebuild that one.  Trying to avoid that because there will be a lot more down time that way.

The steering is an entirely different story.  Last year I put a reinforced mount for the steering box on it.  The original mount is three stamped pieces of steel that are designed to flex and come loose.  The new mount is a heavy cast iron clamp with a big fat bolt that runs through it to clamp it to the frame.  I tossed the factory steering shaft and put on one that has real needle bearing universal joints at each end and put a new bearing in the bottom of the steering column.  There's no slop. No free play.  Nothing.  No more turning the wheel 1/4 of a turn before anything happens.  Its like the steering wheel is actually connected now.

It starts and runs better than I remembered.  Its fun to drive.  Once the driveshaft and the chattering are fixed, it will really be a good thing to have around.  It has an HEI distributor in it  but I saved the old breaker point distributor, coil and coil wires.  I can make it EMP resistant in about 15 minutes.  The Norks can kiss my butt.

Suprise, Suprise, Suprise

Boston bombing suspect and fugitive Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a “normal pot head” who supported President Obama for re-election last November, according to friends and his Twitter account.

From the Daily Caller

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Now there's a solid Anglo-Saxon name if ever I heard one!   I suspect that Chris Matthews will be on the air sometime today to explain that Dzhokhar is Chechnyan (or whatever the hell they speak over there) for "Cletus."

Greatest Movie Line Ever

Boston Marathon Analysis

When I saw the smoke I knew it wasn't C4.   Of course, I didn't know any more than that.

 Theo Spark      has an interesting post on the subject.


And then there's the completely coincidental presence of  bomb-sniffing dogs   at the finish line before the first blast.

Spring Cleaning

A shooting buddy was helping his son do some cleaning around the house and they made a pile of various types of ammunition that neither of them use anymore.  Rather than go through the hassle of trying to sell it box by box, they sold it all to me.

 I got it all for less than the store price for just the 45 ACP in the pile.  All of the shotshells are 3 1/2" Ten gauge.  Mine has 2 7/8" chambers so I may dismantle them for the components and reload them for my gun or I may just give them to some duck hunting buddies.  Probably some of both.  There's eighty-five loose shells in that box.  There's also a  box with several hundred once-fired paper 12 gauge hulls in the deal.  It wouldn't fit in the picture with the rest of it.

That inspired me to clean out my car and I found a few interesting things there.

A box each of 35 Remington and 300 Savage along with a set of Herters dies.  They are the ones with the window in the seating die so you can make sure the bullet is going in straight.  There was also a partial box of Winchester White Box 45 ACP but it doesn't count because I hadn't forgotten that it was there.

Then the local Gooseburg actually had some of this in the powder locker this morning:

They also had several cans of  4831 in IMR and one in H.  This was two days after the delivery came too.  The best part was the price.  Back in pre-ammo drought days, they always seemed to be a good bit higher than everyone else.  Having seen powder on GunBroker selling (yes, selling;  not just asking) for $80 a pound, I was prepared for almost anything but the price was right where it was priced last fall.  

Cheeseburger!

32 S&W Adapter Progress

The .32 S&W adapter works pretty well.   The top group is three shots offhand at 20 yards.  It looks like a two-bullet hole but three went into it.  If I hadn't heard the bullets hit the cardboard box holding the target, I wouldn't have been sure myself.  I decided that nobody would believe it if all five shots went into the same hole so I dropped my aiming point for the last two.  Now I figure nobody will believe I intentionally shot it this way.

It ain't gonna win any shooting matches but it sure looks like any squirrel or rabbit within range of a shotgun would be in serious danger from a small pistol cartridge fired from a rifle.

Besides being easier to carry than a gun, these are incredibly quiet.  I'm serious when I say that I heard the bullets hit the cardboard box.  One could conceivably shoot small game in suburbia without disturbing the neighbors.  It's quite slow to reload because you have to snap the spent case out of the adapter and snap a new one in but that's only a problem if you miss.

Cartridge Adapter Project

The 32 S&W / 303 Savage project progresses well.  I loaded up 25 of the little guys for test purposes.  Lube is a concoction that Buckshot and I came up with about 25 years ago when we were testing different ideas about how to keep shooting if all the ammo or components disappeared.  Its starting to look like we were ahead of our time. The main ingredients are a wax toilet ring, some candle wax to stiffen it up and a pinch or two of graphite.  The bullets were loaded without sizing and the powder charge was 1.2 grains of W231.  Yes, the decimal is supposed to be there.  The powder charge doesn't even cover the bottom of the powder scale's pan.  A pound of powder will last a  long time.

The picture shows the 32 S&W round, a 32 S&W atop the Marbles adapter and a real 303 Savage cartridge for comparison.  I tested it for sound in the back yard and couldn't believe how quiet it was.  When I first read Ragnar Bensen's  Survival Poaching,  I was skeptical when he said that a 32 pistol cartridge fired from a rifle makes as much noise when the bullet hits a deer's head as it does when you fire it but I'm a believer now.  The sound was more like a "swish" than a bang. Much like a 22 CB cap.  It did echo off the neighbor's house but not even as loud as a pneumatic nail gun.  Not even close.

For months now, our local Ganderberg hasn't had anything in rimfire but 17 HMR and some rat shot.  This morning even that was gone.  They don't even have spaces on the shelves for rimfire ammo anymore.  A friend in Oklahoma was on Facebook yesterday talking about 500 round  bricks of 22LR  for $80.00 at a gun show.  Something like this adapter gizmo could start to make a lot of sense with rimfire ammo gone or priced out of sight.

Marbles made adaptors for lots of different cartridges.  I have one for 25 ACP in 250 Savage and I would have bought one for 32 ACP in 30-30 but someone else had bid on it first and I decided that I could do what I wanted to do with the ones I already had. 

The Marbles adapters are essentially a collet shaped like the body of a cartridge case but without a neck.  The pistol cartridge snaps into the top and forms the neck of the  combination cartridge.  A firing pin inside the adapter does what firing pins do.   I also bought a couple of recently made adapters for things like 32 ACP in 30-06.  Those particular adapters are shaped like a  complete case and the pistol cartridge goes in a chamber in the bottom of the adapter.  I honestly don't know if one works any better than the other.  The second kind is generally a good bit cheaper.   I suspect that someone that actually knows how to use a lathe could make either kind without too much trouble.  Don't get hung up on the difference in bullet diameters between 32 ACP and the "normal" 30 calibers.  Its not enough to matter.

With a little luck, I will be able to fire a group later this week when I go to Hog Valley and will have some idea  if the bullets land where the sights are pointed.

Casting Call

One of my stupid projects is to put together some ammo for my 303 Savage using 32 Smith & Wesson ammo and a Marbles cartridge adapter.  The idea being that a few rounds of 32 S&W wouldn't take up much space or weigh much  in a coat pocket and might turn out to be a fairly quiet load for smaller game like squirrel and rabbits.   Of course, it would have to shoot reasonably close to where the rifle is sighted in for its primary ammo but that's what's called an excuse to go shooting and find out.

I bought the adapter a few weeks back but had no luck locating suitable bullets so I bought a mold to make my own.  The one that I bought is a Lee two cavity mold for a 93 grain round nose, flat base bullet.   Something as small as a 32 S & W doesn't do well with much more.  I cast up a small pile of them this afternoon and am pleased with the results.

The first mold that I ever bought was a Lee.  I'm not so into shooting cast bullets that I can tell any difference between how a Lee bullet performs compared to something like a Lyman or an RCBS.  I bought a couple of Lee molds that were custom made once.  Some guy had them on his table at a gun show and he wanted something like five bucks each.  He had a 110 grain wadcutter mold for a 44 Special.  It casts a little wafer that isn't much thicker than a couple of dimes.  Funny.  Life's too short to be a bullet mold snob.

Bullet casting may be no more forgettable than riding a bicycle but I hadn't cast any in a year or more and it took me a while to get in the swing of things.  This particular mold is a two cavity one and I kept having trouble getting the closest one to the handles to fill out.  It wasn't the mold.  It was me.  I'd sometimes stop pouring before I had the puddle on top of the sprue cutter so they wouldn't fill out right.   Eventually I got my act together and things turned out fine.

It may be old news by now but Lee has changed the design of their molds.   Their blocks always used to have a sort of tongue and groove design on each end and a couple of steel dowel pins at the top.  Those made sure the blocks closed in alignment.  These new ones had none of that.  These had two tapered steel pins on one block and two steel-bushed holes for the pins on the other. 

That's the new one on the left.  The 44 mold on the right is the old style.  They worked fine.  It was just odd to see such a change in the design after all these years.

Tomorrow I shall load up some 32 S&W and some 32 S&W Long.  I doubt I've done that in twenty years.

Ruth continues her convalescence and rehab.  She got new mufflers and a new cover for the hole in the floor over the transmission.  Also new plug wires and a host of little odds and ends to make driving easier.   I have to go to  Hog Valley  next week and that's why I have Ruth in the first place so that may be her first voyage outside the neighborhood.

To give you an idea of what Hog Valley is like, I will tell you that the place where Marjorie Kinan Rawlings set South Moon Under  is on the way to Hog Valley.  You pass that house and go about 7 or 8 miles farther into the forest to get to Hog Valley.  Me an Ruth fit in purty good up thar.

I may still have to put new ball joints in her but she drives so much nicer now its hard to believe its the same Jeep.

Not Just A Game

Sins of Omission

Borrowed from Blues Blog

Swinestein