The Lovely Bride threatened to move some of my crap off the kitchen island so I started doing some early spring cleaning in the reloading room lest she start piling my crap up in there indiscriminately. I happen to be very discriminating about how my crap gets piled up and I wasn't going to let her do the piling.
The day wore on and I found myself in a full-blown project involving a broom, a dust pan, a cordless drill, shelving, a new tool box on wheels and I forget what else. There was a lot of crap piled in that room and a lot of the piling hadn't been done by me.
Along the way, I found a couple of primed .22 CCM cases and I also found a can of .22 caliber air gun pellets. Sometimes events just overtake us.
The pellets measured about .219 so they went into the cases pretty easily. I didn't know whether the primer by itself would get the pellet all the way out of the barrel but I knew how to find out. At fifteen yards they were a couple of inches below my point of aim but dead on left to right. The really impressive thing was the sound. There almost wasn't any. Less than a CB cap. Less than a pellet gun. Somewhere between a pellet gun and a gnat fart.
The Lovely Bride wasn't watching the target at the first shot and it was so quiet she asked if the pellet had gotten out of the barrel. If I hadn't seen it strike the target I would have wondered too.
When I'm done with the cleaning and re-piling in the reloading room, I'll have to prime a few cases and do some more shooting to see how they penetrate cans (and whether a few tenths of a grain of powder is desirable without making it too loud) but I think I have stumbled onto what just might be the ultimate suburban squirrel gun.
Nobody in their right mind is going to go buy a Cooper in 22 CCM just to shoot pellets out of it but the thing is that its case is just a tad smaller than a 22 Hornet so the same thing ought to be do-able in a Hornet; probably even a .223. Being able to use something like a .223 to quietly take small game without altering the rifle might come in handy.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Karl Rove Could Learn A Lot from Phil Robertson and A&E
In the broader scheme of things, the ginned-up controversy over what Phil Robertson said in the GQ interview was really insignificant. It was just another attempt to create a boogey man for the left to point at and say "see, everybody is so mean to me..."
That being said, anybody with their eyes open ought to be able to see that the reaction of ordinary Americans was telling.
Anybody that might be wondering what kind of candidate to run for political office ought to look at the groundswell of support for Mr. Robertson and look for a someone that could generate that kind of grass roots support in the face of a media blitz to discredit them.
Somebody who's real. Somebody who isn't embarrassed to tell you what they think. Somebody who has convictions that don't change with every new poll. Somebody grounded in American values.
I could go on but what's the point. If there is such a candidate, the establishment RINOS aren't going to let a candidate like that get past the primaries. They prefer to lose elections and the whole Country to running a candidate the unwashed peasantry actually wants.
That being said, anybody with their eyes open ought to be able to see that the reaction of ordinary Americans was telling.
Anybody that might be wondering what kind of candidate to run for political office ought to look at the groundswell of support for Mr. Robertson and look for a someone that could generate that kind of grass roots support in the face of a media blitz to discredit them.
Somebody who's real. Somebody who isn't embarrassed to tell you what they think. Somebody who has convictions that don't change with every new poll. Somebody grounded in American values.
I could go on but what's the point. If there is such a candidate, the establishment RINOS aren't going to let a candidate like that get past the primaries. They prefer to lose elections and the whole Country to running a candidate the unwashed peasantry actually wants.
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Santa's Workshop
Having nothing particular planned to do on Christmas Day, I slept in and was just getting around to deciding what stress-free and relaxing things would occupy my day when the in-laws called. A dinner invitation; not twelve hours after we left their house last night. If you don't make plans for Christmas Day, plans will be made for you.
That one phone call eliminated all the possible big projects and all the jobs that couldn't be left incomplete without dire consequences. I thought about loading some of this or some of that but just wasn't in the mood and finally settled on tackling a small job that I had left undone more than fifteen years ago. It hadn't made a difference so far so if I didn't get it done by dinner it probably wouldn't be a big deal.
Sometime back in the mid-1990s, Precision Small Parts started making a clone of the Baby Browning. They called theirs the PSP 25. Later the name changed to Precision Small Arms and PSA 25. Mine is the PSP rendition. It had a terrible trigger and the extractor had a sharp edge that was causing it mis-feed when I got it. I had taken it apart to clean up the rough spots. I just couldn't get the danged thing back together again.
The problem wasn't that I didn't know how it went back together. I just couldn't get my fat fingers to maneuver one particular spring back into place. I didn't have the right tools and couldn't decide what the right tool would be so I put the whole mess in a zip lock sandwich bag and stuck it in the back of a drawer in the reloading room. It just sat there until today.
Everything went back together just fine until I got to the troublesome spring again. I had my fifty-cent set of forceps and was confident that I could get it back in place but enough years have passed that I didn't remember how it went back in anymore.
This is part of a diagram at Numrich Gun Parts Corp's site. That squirelly, double-coiled spring identified as "19" was the tricky part. The diagram showed me the proper orientation but there's still a problem. It looks like pin #18 goes through the sear (#17) and then through the top coil of the spring. I put it back together that way and it didn't work. The free end on the top part of the spring stuck out past the sear into the magazine well. The magazine wouldn't seat and the sear wouldn't move when I tried the trigger. A closer examination of the gun made it obvious that the spring needed to go on a pin that is part of the safety lever (#16). It is built into the back end of safety lever and you can't see it on the diagram.
It was a little harder to get the spring into the right place but the forceps did the trick. I added a snazzy set of white grips that made it about twice as fat as its supposed to be. Seriously. With those grips on it, its fatter than my Kahr PM 40. Its not something that I carry anymore so it doesn't really matter but its a LOT fatter.
My brother in law found a range close to his home so I may load up a pile of .25 ACP and join him there one day soon. I've never seen anyone shooting a .25 ACP at a range before. I'll be able to tell my brass apart from everybody else's.
Christmas dinner was good. The in-laws were watching some movie about the birth of Jesus and that sparked conversation about which actors played which roles in which movies. Father-in-Law was trying to think of a Western with Steve McQueen and Yule Brenner but didn't think it was The Magnificent Seven. The Lovely Bride said "not that war movie with Clint Eastwood and the tank." I said "that was Kelly's Heroes and the bald guy was Don Rickles." She says "no, the big guy." I said "Telly Savalas" and she said "yes, that's him." I agreed that Don Rickles and Telly Savalas are both bald but also suggested that although being bald was necessary, it wasn't sufficient to make either of them Yule Brenner. Somehow, that ended the conversation and Father-in-Law and I found ourselves wiring a set of air horns under the hood of his truck.
Money is too tight for presents at our house but I still got a Baby Browning (clone) for Christmas and got to spend time with good folks. Many a Christmas has been worse.
Monday, December 23, 2013
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Go South Carolina!
South Carolina declares war on Obamacare
Bruce Parker reports for The Daily Caller, Dec. 9, 2013, that a bill set for fast-track passage in the South Carolina Senate in January aims to eliminate Obamacare in the state. The law could become a model for other states fed up with the federal health-care law.
Read the article at Fellowship of the Minds
Brrrrrrrrrr
The blizzard finally got here this afternoon. 40 or 50 degrees colder and it might be snowing.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Monday, December 2, 2013
The Writer Makes Some Very Good Points
From Straight Forward in a Crooked World
I came across this quote today.
"While there is some concern of overpenetration with a handgun cartridge, your primary concern should be that your defensive round of choice will have sufficient penetration to reach vital organs and cause incapacitating blood loss in an attacker."
On the surface the statement is clearly logical enough, provided we remove one aspect of it.
"... your primary concern should be ...."
Lest you ever find yourself in a lethal use of force encounter...or potential lethal use of force encounter, sufficient penetration of your ammo is far from the primary concern.
Your primary concern is to make sure that what you are seeing is in fact accurate, ala use exemplary judgement.
And I mean it. THAT is your primary concern.
Read the rest at the link. The comments are good too.
I came across this quote today.
"While there is some concern of overpenetration with a handgun cartridge, your primary concern should be that your defensive round of choice will have sufficient penetration to reach vital organs and cause incapacitating blood loss in an attacker."
On the surface the statement is clearly logical enough, provided we remove one aspect of it.
"... your primary concern should be ...."
Lest you ever find yourself in a lethal use of force encounter...or potential lethal use of force encounter, sufficient penetration of your ammo is far from the primary concern.
Your primary concern is to make sure that what you are seeing is in fact accurate, ala use exemplary judgement.
And I mean it. THAT is your primary concern.
Read the rest at the link. The comments are good too.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Lazy Weekend
A bad yoke on the transfer case delayed the Jeep's maiden voyage as my portable reloading bench. The one on my $5.00 spare transfer case is also bad. In this case, one is none and two is also none.
I did get the brother in law's 9mm cases reloaded. Fifty with 125 grain lead bullets and fifty with 147 grain Gold Dots. I wanted to use Vihtavuori 3N38 for the Gold Dots and it's not listed on any of the Little Dandy rotor charts that I found so I wound up testing one rotor after another to see which would throw an appropriate charge.
With the Little Dandy, you have to take the whole rotor out of the measure and put a different one in to "adjust" the charge. They may come with some kind of cap when they are new but I got mine second hand and they don't have any way to close off the top of the hopper. That means that you have to pour the powder out of the measure and pour it back in when you change rotors. Not a huge deal if your powder is on the chart so you have a place that's close to start with but a PITA if you don't.
I told The Lovely Bride that I wanted to get a rubber stopper or a cork to fit the top of the measure the next time we went to the hardware store and she reached into a box of odds and ends, pulls something black out and says "would this work?"
What she had was one of those plastic flippy doors that you put on the ends of your scope to keep crud out. It was a Butler Creek L11 for the ocular end of a scope. It slid on kind of loose but tightened up nice and snug at about the last 1/4." It snaps shut tight enough to hold the powder in the hopper so I can turn the measure over to change the rotor without having to dump out the powder first. Leave it to her to find a better solution that didn't cost me anything.
With the 9mm done, I loaded a few 250-3000 Savages and a few 25-35 Winchesters. My particular 250 was built with a 1 in 14" twist barrel. Sometimes those will stabilize pointy bullets and sometimes they won't. Mine was key-holing 100 grain factory ammo so something shorter was needed.
I had a few boxes of 75 grain Barnes original X bullets so I loaded some of them to try. Stabilization is a function of rpm and bullet length and rpm is determined by twist rate and velocity. Despite being mono-metal hollow points, the little 75 rainers are considerably shorter than the 100 grain bullets that I had tried. Being lighter, they will go faster too. They ought to stabilize well enough. If it won't shoot them, it will be for some other reason.
I loaded the same bullets in the 25-35 but for a different reason. I really liked the way the 117 grain round nose bullets penetrated the pine logs we used as a our first back stop but they shot so high I couldn't lower the sights enough to get it on the target I was shooting at. The lighter, faster bullet ought to help with that. If its not enough difference, I'll make a new, taller front sight blade but I want to try this before I start taking original parts off the barrel.
I did get the brother in law's 9mm cases reloaded. Fifty with 125 grain lead bullets and fifty with 147 grain Gold Dots. I wanted to use Vihtavuori 3N38 for the Gold Dots and it's not listed on any of the Little Dandy rotor charts that I found so I wound up testing one rotor after another to see which would throw an appropriate charge.
With the Little Dandy, you have to take the whole rotor out of the measure and put a different one in to "adjust" the charge. They may come with some kind of cap when they are new but I got mine second hand and they don't have any way to close off the top of the hopper. That means that you have to pour the powder out of the measure and pour it back in when you change rotors. Not a huge deal if your powder is on the chart so you have a place that's close to start with but a PITA if you don't.
I told The Lovely Bride that I wanted to get a rubber stopper or a cork to fit the top of the measure the next time we went to the hardware store and she reached into a box of odds and ends, pulls something black out and says "would this work?"
What she had was one of those plastic flippy doors that you put on the ends of your scope to keep crud out. It was a Butler Creek L11 for the ocular end of a scope. It slid on kind of loose but tightened up nice and snug at about the last 1/4." It snaps shut tight enough to hold the powder in the hopper so I can turn the measure over to change the rotor without having to dump out the powder first. Leave it to her to find a better solution that didn't cost me anything.
With the 9mm done, I loaded a few 250-3000 Savages and a few 25-35 Winchesters. My particular 250 was built with a 1 in 14" twist barrel. Sometimes those will stabilize pointy bullets and sometimes they won't. Mine was key-holing 100 grain factory ammo so something shorter was needed.
I had a few boxes of 75 grain Barnes original X bullets so I loaded some of them to try. Stabilization is a function of rpm and bullet length and rpm is determined by twist rate and velocity. Despite being mono-metal hollow points, the little 75 rainers are considerably shorter than the 100 grain bullets that I had tried. Being lighter, they will go faster too. They ought to stabilize well enough. If it won't shoot them, it will be for some other reason.
I loaded the same bullets in the 25-35 but for a different reason. I really liked the way the 117 grain round nose bullets penetrated the pine logs we used as a our first back stop but they shot so high I couldn't lower the sights enough to get it on the target I was shooting at. The lighter, faster bullet ought to help with that. If its not enough difference, I'll make a new, taller front sight blade but I want to try this before I start taking original parts off the barrel.