Sort of Almost New Shooter Report

The Lovely Bride works in an office staffed mostly with elderly ladies who just work so they will have something to do.   One of them lives alone,  "out in the country" and has decided that she needs a gun for protection.   The lady has arthritis so bad she can't completely close her hands so finding a gun that's a good fit isn't as easy as you might think.

TLB brought a few to work one day a couple of months ago and the two of them sat in her car so she could show the lady the differences between automatics and revolvers.  Specifically TLB wanted to show her how each worked so she could see if she even had the strength to work an auomatic.  She couldn't so she decided that she needed a revolver.

Earlier this week I went to get my ears lowered and saw this at the gun shop next door.

Its a Charter in .32 Magnum and its pink.   I don't know why women like pink guns but a lot of them really do.   If Smith and Wesson would come out with a Dooney and Bourke line of guns in pastel colors they'd run everybody else out of business.  

Anyway, a .32 Magnum would be easy to shoot and the big grip would be easy for the lady to hold so I sent the picture to TLB and she took the lady to see it the next day.

I  had told the shopkeeper that I was going to send them by so he already knew the background.   He opened the cylinder and showed her it was empty, closed it and handed it to her.  

She went completely nuts dry-firing it.

Clickity-Clickity-Click-Click Click as she's waving it all over the place.

"Oh, this is nice. I can shoot this one"

TLB told her to stop dry-firing it and to stop waving around. 

"Why?"

"Because you might damage the gun and you are scaring the other customers."

"I didn't know that.  Besides, there's no other customers in here."

"I told you it was bad when you dry fired my Smith & Wesson in the car."

"Well, yes but I thought it would only hurt your gun because it has that Scandinavian stuff in it."

"Its Scandium and that's not why.   Besides, you have to treat every gun as if its loaded all the time.  If it had been loaded, you would have killed somebody."

"But he showed me it wasn't loaded and there's nobody else in here."

A big redneck dude darted out from behind a rack of rifles and scurried out the door.

"What if he was mistaken?"

The shopkeeper took the Charter back and handed her an Airweight  S & W.

Clickity-Clickity-Clickity...   "Oooooh I like this one too."

"STOP DOING THAT"

"Why?   Will it hurt this one too?

Click.

"Maybe.   And if it does you're going to have buy it and you'll be buying a broken gun and you'll still have to buy one that works."

"Oh. OK."

So she asks about the difference in the calibers.   The shopkeeper shows her a .38 LRN, a .32 Magnum  JHP and a .32 S&W Long LRN and explained that there's a variety of different bullets for the 38 and that the .32 can shoot three different kinds of ammo in addition to the ammo having different kinds of bullets.


"The 38 is so much bigger.   Can I put a bullet in it?"

"Um - No" said the shopkeeper.

"Why not?  I just want to see how easy it is to load."

"We're not allowed"

He owns the store so he should know.

Then she asked about a "9mm Glock" because that's what her son wants her to get.  The Shopkeeper handed her a Model 19.  She couldn't get a grip on it and she couldn't pull the slide back.  Just like she couldn't work an automatic in the car a few weeks before.

So now she's sure she definitely wants a revolver but she still wants to talk to her son first just in case.  In case of something.  She doesn't know what.

Its frustrating that the son keeps trying to steer her toward a gun that he likes even though she can't operate it but maybe he will get her to take a safety class.  

I sure won't go shooting with her if she doesn't.

Admit it...

You've had the same thought

 

That Settles It

Dog Takes 2 Bullets and Still Scares off Home Invasion

When a group of men forced their way into a Tampa home Tuesday night, Legend the dog wasted no time trying to protect his people.

The gentle giant sprang into action, biting one of the men, as the home’s occupants struggled with their attackers.

The whole story complete with annoying pop-ups is at the link:


http://800whistleblower.com/hero-dog-who-took-2-bullets-during-home-invasion-expected-to-recover/#

No Thanks. I'd Rather Get The One That Still Has The Factory Warranty

C.S.S. Hunley Anniversary

On 17 February 1864 The Confederate States Navy submarine, H.L. Hunley made her first and only attack on a Union Navy warship when she staged a night attack on the USS Housatonic in Charleston harbor.

From Defending The Heritage's   Facebook Page

Gnashing of Teeth

Ruth, the old Jeep, developed a little noise in her belly. Along about January, it went from a whine to a scream so loud It drowned out the engine.   That's the little V8 with a pair of 2 1/2" magnafows on it.   Seemed like it might finally be time to see what all the commotion was about.

I could move the rear output shaft yoke up and down a good 1/16 of a inch.   That will make your gears howl so I pulled the transfer case and checked it over to see what else might be sloppy.   The only real trouble  turned out to be the output shaft so I changed those bearings and races.  There were a few seal issues too.  Pretty much leaked into and out of every seal but the two output shaft yokes so I changed all the seals too.

 

The book said that end play on the output shaft should be between .001" and .005."     Its controlled by a stack of shims on the output shaft.   You assemble everything, torque it all down and then check the end play.  If its too tight, you take it back apart and add a shim.  Too loose and you take it back apart and take one out.  Then you check it again and adjust some more until you get it right.

I usually like to be toward the smaller end of the tolerance range when I'm working on something  but after having this project interrupted by a broken hot water pipe under the slab and having to re-plumb the whole house in a weekend, .005" on the first try looked pretty darned good.       

Two things make these Dana 300 transfer cases fun.  One is that they hang down off the back of the transmission at maybe a 30 degree angle so you can't just perch them on a jack and lift them into place.  The other thing is that about 95% of the thing is iron and steel.

Its heavy.

If you have the Jeep on a lift, its not such a big deal but if you are on your back under the Jeep trying to bench press the thing into position, turn it at the right angle, line up the studs so they go through the flange and then jiggle it enough to get it to slide into place, it gets old in a hurry.  I've never seen a transmission jack that will hold one of these at the right angle and I didn't want to buy or rent one even if I found one so I conjured up a rig of my own.

It bolts to the bottom of the transfer case using three of the bolt holes for the bottom cover.   Just takes longer bolts.   A single bolt attaches it to the jack in place of the saddle.   The 4 lines to  the right of the bolt are grooves that I cut into the wood with a die grinder and a cutoff wheel.   A router would work too.   Similar grooves are cut into the underside of the piece that's bolted to the case.

The two pieces of wood are connected  by a plain old door hinge.  I used a screwdriver instead of the hinge pin.  Originally that was because I couldn't find the pin.  When I got to working with it, the screwdriver turned out to be an important part of making the rig work.   It gave the whole thing a lot of flexibility to help when it came time to jiggle and it let me disconnect the jack from the case and get it out of the way just by pulling the screwdriver out when the case was almost home and ready to be bolted up.

In use, the ends of the turnbuckle rest in the grooves and you select the grooves that give you a close approximation of the correct angle for the case.  Its way too tilted in the picture but you get the idea.

By using the jack and the turnbuckle in combination, you can lift the case, keep it at the correct height and change the angle to match the flange.   You can actualy rotate the transfer case a few degrees relative to the flange to line it all up.  Then its just a matter of moving it forward and jiggling it so the spline on the transmission slips into the transfer case input shaft.  

It took less time to build the rig and install the transfer case than it usually takes to install the transfer case just using muscle and foul language.   My back didn't beat me up afterward either.    I could get used to this.