The Skipper's Gun Blog

2011-10-28T10:35:00.000-07:00

I've been wearing the El Paso Saddlery "Double Agent" around for the past three days and can offer some opinions now.

The holster is advertised to be both a strong side Askins-style concealment holster, and with different belt threading, a concealable cross-draw. It works fine for both. In the strong side position it carries the pistol higher and with slightly more butt-forward tilt than the Galco "King Tuk" I carry and compete with. In the cross-draw position (the rationalized reason for purchase is to carry while driving long distance) it's comfortable and can be pushed back about an inch (when worn completely between belt loops) for better concealment, or forward for better accessibility. Cross-draws require a long reach for those of us with man-sized girths.

This morning I went up to Beretta Road and worked on drawing from that position, and mostly it just has to be a deliberate action, rather than trying to work out some sort of muscle memory thing. It works fine. Cross-draws aren't worn for competition because of the long muzzle sweep while getting the pistol into firing position, but it's also significantly slower. Even if it does look way cool.

Anyway, the leather is thick good quality cow, dyed black in this case, but not yet waxed so the color isn't completely solid yet. The double thickness of leather at the top does not hide metal or plastic to hold the mouth open for re-holstering - but the leather's thick enough on its own to assure that. The open bottom is long enough to protect the complete muzzle end from incidental damage, and the best part: the stitched-in sight track keeps the sharp Patridge front sights on my guns from pulling leather.

I was first introduced to stitched-in sight tracks by the Mitch Rosen "Tito's Revenge" holster I got for the Kimber Ultra Carry II. Because of the sight track along the top of the gun, these holsters look like they might be a bit too big, but that's illusory. Sight tracks are necessary for hasty draws and for protecting the finish on that expensive black front sight.

Great holster so far. I'm taking a long driving trip soon and will report back when I've got a few weeks of constant carry.

Minor issue - had a failure to feed with 185 gr SWCs in the Dan Wesson V-Bob. First time, second to the last round in the magazine. Bullet jammed against the roof of the chamber. I've been loading that bullet cooler and cooler and figure the slide just didn't have the momentum to force the cartridge to chamber. About out of those bullets now and don't plan to get more, so I won't try to do anything about it.

BTW, the V-Bob is what I used in the vids below for the IDPA match. As I'd figured, the greater mass kept it closer to target than the SIG, but surprisingly it didn't seem to take longer to clear the holster and initially get on target.

P.S. This is the cross-draw threading. More vertical than expected, but too much butt forward on cross-draw makes it extremely hard to conceal.

P.P.S. Wore it continuously cross-draw for the week of my road trip (except in California) and it did the job nicely. Wasn't intrusive, didn't poke the upholstery, seemed adequately reachable. As it's good and truly winter now, I still use the holster in the strong side position under a coat where it's as fast as the King Tuk, but doesn't let the gun get sweated up.

2011-10-24T11:12:00.000-07:00

From the IDPA match on Saturday, the last of four matches for the year. This was Stage 4, but I forget what it was called. Something about WalMart I think. Three rounds through the first target from the retention position, then two each in the order they appear, avoiding shooting the hostages, seen here as either X'd or with the "Help Me" overwrite. I did well until it came to shooting around the left side of the leftermost barrier. Harder to identify targets and the grip becomes very awkward. Of course my real screw-up was that last shot. I added about four seconds to get the clean stage, but only picked up one point or half a second by taking it. Bad call.

So this morning I started drilling left side barrier shooting. Used the pickup cab today, but will put together a "wall" using the upright target stands, some furring strips and plywood or heavy cardboard. Probably will need some sandbags or rocks as well.

I've considered swapping hands for those left side shots, but don't think I'm solid enough with the left hand yet. I'll have to give it a try once the wall is built.

Anyway, scores aren't up yet, but overall I'm happy with my performance. I didn't kill any hostages and did about as well as I could at that particular time and place.

Last match until May. Gotta get ready for the Spring.

Results from the last match of the season. Won my class and fifth overall. I can live with that.

And Stage 1:

2011-10-05T13:35:00.000-07:00

Believe in coincidences? Today the Galco "King Tuk" holster broke. Just now the brown truck delivered the new High Noon "Topless" holster. In the interim I ordered two more King Tuks for 1911s, because for concealment they can't be beat. It wasn't until the holster broke that I realized I've got four 1911s and had only the one holster. Poor planning.

Luck wins out over poor planning! The High Noon wasn't due until November. I've also got another 1911 (Commander length) holster on order from El Paso Saddlery that shouldn't get here until next month.

OK, in chronological order. The Galco, made of kydex plastic riveted to a leather backer, was going to wear out. Kydex, wonderful material though it is, wears out. First was the sight channel, which my pistols' front sights elongated over time. Today it was the aft section of the bit molded around the trigger guard. I'd noticed that it was sometimes tough to draw and muscled through it, and other times there was no feeling of molded retention at all. As the only molded retention is the bubble that intrudes on the trigger, I examined it after shooting the DW today and lo! Broken. (The DW eats 185 gr SWCs just fine, BTW.)

You've seen the pictures of where I've moved the King Tuk clips to better work with my belt loops and place it where I want it. OK, not that much work to punch a few holes in leather and move the clips, but it was where I wanted it. I'll keep the old one until the new ones get here to use as a template. I ordered them from Midway USA, where they're in stock and marked below MSRP. Should have them Monday or so. In the mean time...

... this gorgeous horsehide holster showed up. The picture doesn't do it justice. Those are the equine equivalent of stretch marks showing in the natural finished leather. It is exceedingly stiff and needs no reinforcement at the mouth to hold it open. The finishing, leather, edges, boning, are superb. You can see where the presumed grip line doesn't follow the Colt's actual grip line - the Esmerelda grips are thinner, but higher and wider, than the stock grips. I will probably cut that bit from the holster and refinish the edges. Because the front and back pieces of leather are exactly the same, this could be worn on the left with the only obvious difference being the maker's stamp would show. The downside (there's always a downside) is that there's nothing now protecting my ribs from the thumb safety, magazine release and slide serrations. Might be best to wear over a shirt and under a coat - as I'd planned all along. Winter holster for the big gun, you know.

You can see that it will carry the gun very high. That makes it easier to conceal, but also harder to draw with the elbow scraping the ceiling to get the gun all the way out.

Yeah, it cost a bunch. I'll wear it around a bit, then if it becomes my favorite I'll order one in Commander length for the DW, maybe. The SIG, BTW, doesn't fit. The molding is so exact that the slightly different profile of the slide cross section won't go in.

2011-09-30T10:48:00.001-07:00

Not much to add today. You can see the short trigger and might see some empties from the box of Double Tap ammo in the red box. The Double Tap works fine and doesn't feel any different than my reloads, and it hits the same place as far as I can tell, only shooting the clangers this morning. This post is happening because I took the picture and wanted to use it.

Anyway, when I first got out to Beretta Road to shoot there was a guy with a portable bench and a chronograph set up shooting a bolt rifle, so I said hi and we talked a bit. He was sighting in a friend's Cabelas Anniversary .270, and knew what he was about. He shot it from 100 yards to put the group an inch high, then backed off another 50 yards to confirm it. We talked politics, USFS issues, guns. I invited him to come shoot the next IDPA match on October 22, and it's likely he'll show up.

Speaking of which, I think I'll shoot the SIG-Sauer RCS in that match. While the Dan Wesson V-Bob is lovely and shoots well, the SIG comes out of the holster faster and shoots just fine. I'm used to it.

Also speaking of which, a friend and I have been discussing which camera he should buy. Frankly, I could care less - equipment is the least interesting part of photography. Folks that are all hung up on equipment will seldom make decent pictures - it's probably the same with guns. I like the hardware and ... as you see here ... never get tired about talking about the equipment. But there's a threshold coming where it will be about the shooting and the equipment will take a back seat. "Don't show me the gun - show me the target." That sort of thing. I'm not deeply into competitive shooting and probably never will be again, but, as here in the case of the DW vs. SIG, it's gotten to be about which one, if either, will better my score. Even though the DW is hands-down prettier and better made.

Last bit: Feeling virtuous again. Carried another truckload of trash out from the shooting area two days ago after recruiting my non-shooting neighbor to come along and help.

Another last bit: That Double Tap ammo can't be reloaded. The primer pockets are shallow and standard Large Pistol primers stand proud.

2011-09-26T11:37:00.000-07:00

That's sweat on the left grip - the one I sanded a little. Seems to have done the job, as my right lower rib isn't bleeding. I carried the Dan Wesson up Boulder Hill today, under a shirt. It's not a long walk, about 3 miles RT, but it's like a mile and a half of staircase each way, and covered in loose rock. Strenuous and sweaty. Haven't pulled the grip off yet, but I'll do that and get some grease under it, as sweat will permeate everywhere and stainless isn't really stainless and will eventually corrode. Plastic pistols have the edge in being unaffected by sweat.

The gun came with a $35 off coupon for a box of Double Tap ammo. As the stuff runs about $46 for a box of 50, I ordered one box of 230-grain JHPs which are supposed to exit the barrel at 1040 fps. This is very hot for a .45 ACP. With shipping, it cost about $20, which is average for run-of-the-mill 230-gr no-name ball ammo. I'll chrono it and see that it functions in the SIG, then probably use the remnants of the box for whichever pistol I carry this Fall. Unless this stuff is super ammo, I doubt I'll be spending a buck a pop for any more of it though. Even if it is super ammo.

Finally, after a lot of consideration, I ordered an El Paso Saddlery Double Agent holster for the DW (and the SIG). It's an Askins style strong side holster with the added utility of becoming a butt-forward crossdraw with slightly different belt threading. I have doubts about any holster doing two things well, as most can't even do one correctly, and my experience with EPSaddlery is sorta mixed. They've build some superb holsters for me, but one was floppy and another had to be sent back because it was built too long. I also am not a fan of crossdraws - most bulky guys aren't. But I now have a little sports car (Audi TT, first gen) and a cross-draw won't be stressing the leather seats and will be reachable. On the strong hip it won't be as concealable as the King Tuk IWB holster, but it should work under a heavy coat just as well. I'l let you know when I've got it and have it all figured out.

Speaking of holsters, I received a left hand King Tuk for a J-Frame. Thought it would be nice to have something in case I broke my right arm (such rationalizing gets a guy in trouble financially some times), but haven't worn it yet. The 1911 King Tuk I use daily and for competition is wearing out. The sight channel that protects the sight doesn't go full length, so near the top the various sights I've dragged out of it have cut a slot in the kydex. It's not a structural problem yet, but might become one. I'll also let you know how that plays out. It's still the best concealment holster I've ever had, and if it does wear out I'll replace it with another.

OK, gotta go load some ammo.

Received and installed the Greider Precision short trigger. It took some fitting, as related in their advertising - removing about 0.004" from the bottom of the trigger itself in order to center the yoke in the frame's grooves - and looked exactly like the factory DW trigger except for length. Shape, finish, even the thread locker used on the play adjustment screw were identical. I set up that over-travel adjustment screw to give me a bit less trigger movement after the hammer drops. My 40-oz trigger scale went past redline trying to measure trigger pull, but it's really only for match rifles. DW claims something like 3.5 lb or 56 oz. The CMI magazines also arrived and except that the followers are teflon-coated rather than polished CRES, they seem identical. Bought those from .44mag.com for about $17 each - a bargain.

2011-09-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

First nine rounds from the V-Bob, shot off-hand at about 15 yards. Certainly adequate - certainly the pistol is more accurate than I can shoot off-hand. I think that's about 4.5 inches, more or less.

One hundred rounds fired with no failures of the pistol. I failed once to fully seat the magazine, which will, I suspect, lead me to eventually buy some thinnish magazine base pads like the Pachmayrs. The base plates of the magazines are already tapped for, I think, 4-40 screws. They'll protect the magazines from all the dropping to the ground they do during matches and assure that when I slap a new mag in it will properly seat.

Both supplied magazines worked fine. As I've said, I do have a problem with flush 8-rounders in a full sized gun. They require very short toe and heel on the follower, and that, in my sparse experience, means the followers are subject to cocking and jamming. Being one of those anal-retentive folks that cleans the magazines every time they're used, it may never become a problem. On the whole I vastly prefer the Wilson Combat 8-rounders that protrude slightly from the butt, allowing proper followers and sticking out a bit to slap securely into the well.

I've sanded the very tops off the left hand grip diamonds to see if that makes it easier to carry. The grip looks the same except under very close scrutiny. I may or may not do the right side once the left side, the one that contacts my love handles (actually the bottom rib), no longer hurts me. With the checkered front strap and spring housing, the grips don't really need to be all that aggressive. BTW, grips are secured with screws using the T-10 torx bit, with some sort of thread locker. The bushings don't appear to be staked, but they didn't loosen when pulling the grip screws either.

The pistol is mostly disassembled now, soaking in Hoppe's. Looks like the underside of the slide and top of the frame were bead blasted to the same surface finish as the rest of the gun. Nice. Dan Wesson claims no MIM parts, and I didn't find any. I did find the small parts are all very cleanly made, even when they don't have to be. The extractor in particular has been profiled. This was done during assembly as the blue, which would be present if the profile were made during manufacture of the part, is polished off the tip. Hand work. Also nice. Firing pin appears to be titanium, but I haven't put a magnet to it. (Edit: It's magnetic, meaning either carbon or a high iron stainless.)

The bobbed butt heel did not make me point low, as some others have reported. I guess I must index on the top of the grip - that would make some sense as both the 1911A1 and 1911 grip styles work equally well for me. However, the longer butt of this pistol does stick out farther than the Officer-sized grip of the SIG 1911 RCS, my usual carry piece. It felt a bit awkward, though no more so than the big Colt 1911A1. It's also heavier than the RCS, so it takes a bit more to yank it out and get it on target. Once there, it seems to get back into place for follow-up shots quicker. Need more practice if I want to use this in the IDPA match on 10/22.

The sights. That huge bright white circle on the front sight is distracting. As I've said before, I prefer big black square sights. With the sun behind me this morning, all I could see easily was that big bright white circle around the tiny Trijicon lamp. I'd guess it would be very effective in low light, but I need to align the tops of the sights when doing more critical shooting. Speaking of which, out around 25 yards, those 5" steel clangers flipped and spun at about the same rate as they did the other day with the Colt. Manufacturers these days have figured out how to build guns with fixed sights that actually point to where the gun shoots!

OK, back to cleaning and processing the brass.

2011-09-24T14:06:00.000-07:00

It pretty much meets my optimistic expectations. Everything's perfect. All I can give is initial impressions, as I won't shoot it until tomorrow morning (early).

This is the Dan Wesson V-Bob, a bobbed Commander-sized version of their premium Valor series. It's made primarily of stainless steel, excepting the extractor and ejector and sights, which are black carbon steel. The trigger appears to be aluminum. I haven't detail stripped it, but the underside of the slide and top of the receiver show good finish for areas not normally seen. Checkering (25-lpi) of the steel front strap and hammer spring housing are sharp (very sharp) and well executed. The checkering of the VZ G10 micarta slim grips is painfully sharp. The "Straight Eight" Heine Trijicon night sights are unusual in that they have one dot each which are to be aligned into a figure 8, and it looks like they'll work fine that way, the tops of the sights being exactly level when the two dots almost touch.

The slide stop is a shelf type, extended a bit forward along the lever, but not back toward the safety. It does look like it masses more than a standard stop, so it might need some massaging to keep it from bumping up during recoil. We'll see. The thumb safety is a massive thing that does stick forward and significantly out. My preference here is the old Colt small safety - never missed it yet - but unless there's some sort of problem it'll stay as it is.

The feel of the bobbed heel of the butt is excellent, with the part that rests in the heel of the hand left smooth to avoid instant skin abrasion. The slide is extremely tightly fitted to the frame rails in the rear with just a touch of movement at the muzzle - I'm always suspicious of very tight 1911s, but the SIG-Sauer, which felt the same way, runs just fine. And the bead-blasted finish is perfect, keeping exactly the same texture across the length of the slide and frame and onto the smaller bits.

The two provided magazines are stainless, eight round, flush-bottomed Checkmate Industries parts, also marked with the DW logo. It's a pretty handgun.

I've already ordered three more similar Checkmate Industries magazines and a Greider Precision short aluminum trigger for this pistol. All my other 1911s sport the short trigger and I prefer them. While I'm also suspicious of flush-based 8-round magazines (reliability reasons) and use +1 Wilson Combat mags with a short extension on the bottom, I'm giving DW the benefit of the doubt by ordering more of the CMIs. I need at least four to shoot IDPA and they're supposed to be the same. Four Wilson Combat mags would be far more expensive than ordering three of the CMI mags, so we'll see how it goes. Fall back position here is to use the 7-round, blued Metalform mags that I currently use with the Colt until I can order some Wilson Combats.

Dan Wesson 1911s are production handguns, not customs. All of the reviews I've read on-line rate it as the best quality of all production 1911s, and some dare to compare it with the Ed Brown/Wilson Combat/Nighthawk/Les Baer custom guns. I can't make any judgements like that because I've never fired any and only briefly handled a couple of those. If it turns out to be reliable and accurate (and it will be eventually, if not right away), then as far as I'm concerned it'll be the prettiest bang for the buck available, if not necessarily the most.

P.S. The checkering on those micarta grips is way too aggressive. I've been wearing the gun around in the King Tuk holster for only a few hours and the left grip has rubbed me raw. I'll try a bit of sandpaper on 'em before replacement though - they are durable and businesslike.

2011-09-21T10:39:00.000-07:00

Non-standard ammo. Anyone who's been shooting awhile ends up with a box here, a dozen rounds there, of ammo that doesn't get shot because he doesn't remember the provenance, or the velocity is so low it might affect group size or whatever. I've been shooting out my non-standard .45ACP lately to free up the brass for my standard practice ball load. Today it was a box plus of MagTech, a mild ball load that hardly functions the actions of the pistols with slightly stronger recoil springs, and a couple magazines worth of Federal ball that I unloaded from the Star mags before I traded it all off yesterday.

Today it was just knocking over these steel disks. (Dave, they're about 3/8th thick, not 1/2.) Started around fifteen yards and eventually they were a bit beyond twenty-five yards. It generally took around six rounds to knock the four targets over, but ranged from a frustrating ten down to a self-congratulatory four. Today I shot the big Colt Series 70, partly to reaffirm how I felt about all steel guns. Why? Because...

...I found myself lusting after a Dan Wesson V-Bob. The V-Bob is a Commander size stainless 1911A1 assembled and fitted by Dan Wesson (the company, not the person) with best-quality forged and machined parts. It has a full length grip that's been "bobbed," thus the name, and a 4.25" barrel - shorter than the 5" used on the standard-sized pistol. The "V" part of V-Bob is for Valor, the highest quality full-size model they make. Dan Wesson discontinued their C-Bob a few years back and I missed a chance to get a used one at Cabelas - kicked myself for that ever since, but it appears that the Series 70 V-Bob is an improvement in a few ways I'll get into once I've got it in hand. It can also be had with a gorgeous ceramic coating for only $400 more, but that put the black one out of range for now.

Anyway, using that credit for the trade-ins from yesterday, I ordered a stainless V-Bob today and likely will have it by Saturday.

As sort of post scriptum (auto correct wants to say "scrotum") or maybe a rationalization, the SIG-Sauer 1911 RCS I've been using for competition and carrying has somewhere between 3500 and 4000 rounds through it. The aluminum frame isn't showing any signs of cracking or other damage yet, but aluminum isn't made for continuous hammering. Aluminum is for light weight and easy carry. The full grip length of the DWesson, as opposed to the Officers length of the SIG, means one more round in the mag for competition, and the Commander length of the barrel (like the SIG) means it will clear the holster just as fast. More weight in the frame should make follow-up shots faster.

If it shoots right when I get it, next IDPA match will prove my hypothesis. Or it could be just another 1911 that I'll have to fuck with forever to make work right. We'll see.

2011-09-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

Coming back down from The Hills this morning, I was thinking about the guns I don't shoot. Like most people, I've got a bunch that collect dust that I never choose to shoot. This Springfield Armory SOCOM 16 is one of those. I was excited to get it, but even after mounting a pistol scope on the rail, couldn't make it shoot like a real rifle, so it's not fun enough.

In addition, the Springfield Armory Champion 1911 Commander-size .45 is one I don't shoot. This isn't a trend, SA makes fine working firearms - I've never had a failure of any sort on either of these guns, but for various reasons don't pick them up on the way out the door to shoot. The Champion is the only 1911 I've ever had that would feed and function with anything at all. But it's ugly and has that full length spring guide - those offend me.

I also thought about the Star Firestar .45 that's been sitting around forever. Bought it cheap to shoot up some .45ACP I'd had around, shot the stuff up, but had a few annoying malfunctions I never got around to fixing. Didn't always stay open after the last round, and the safety never felt positively engaged. Anyway ...

...today I took those three to the gun shop and traded them against credit on future purchases. I got about 75% of what I had in 'em, which isn't hardly bad. It would have been less in cash, and this way I've got funny money that can only be spent on gun stuff, which will ease my conscience next time I find something I just have to have.

I kept a Springfield Armory standard M1A and all the Checkmate magazines I'd gotten for both rifles, and have three other 1911 .45s, so none of the trades limit my shooting. What I think I'll end up fancying could be a Dan Wesson V-Bob, should one show up at the shop. Or a used Wilson Combat .45. Or ...

Gives my fantasies some body, having a credit at the gun shop.

2011-09-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

Learned a lot this morning. First impression, the Marlin 1894C kicked more than I expected. I put five handloads through the chronograph from a rest (leaning over the truck's toolbox) and my shoulder hurt a bit and will probably be bruised. How could this be, with a bitty revolver cartridge in a hefty (6 lb.) carbine?

Well, the carbine was kicking bullets out at 1715 fps average. Actually, the range was 1703 to 1737. The load is a Speer 158 grain swaged SWCHP over 16.2 grains of H110. In the 3" S&W Model 60-15 that velocity is 1174 fps. Muzzle energy of the load from the carbine is 1037 ft-lbs, compared to only 487 ft-lbs from the revolver, over twice as much energy (and almost half again as much momentum). Just for comparison, from the 18.5" carbine barrel, the .357 Magnum produces about 80% of the energy that the 5.56mm NATO round (standard Western military round) produces from a 24" test barrel, and produces well over twice the recoil at the butt plate.

Other stuff I learned:

The factory buckhorn sights suck. Gonna order a decent peep rear and substantial front as soon as I hit "post." The 10-shot group above was from a quick rest at 50 yards. You can see the stringing horizontally? That wasn't all my fault - the front sight was walking left the whole time. For now I'll stake it in place, but ultimately will get a complete new solid ramp/sight arrangement to go with the peep rear sight. Lyman or Williams, I suppose. I'm not big on "ghost ring" sights. They are quick for close shooting and do pretty well in low light, but I need more than a ghost for a rear sight - I need a tiny aperture to sharpen up the front sight.

The bullet shape I have thousands of is basically a semi-wadcutter, with a hollow point. The shoulder on that shape makes feeding a bit of a problem. They always fed, but sometimes with a tiny hitch so I'd have to stutter the lever a little. I'm not going to do anything about this. If it's still the same after a thousand rounds, maybe I'll get the Dremel out and see what I can do.

The place for the fingers in the lever is pretty small. I may consider replacing the lever after I've had a chance to shoot it with gloves later.

Trigger pull is crisp, unlike what's been reported in other folks' reviews. But it's way stiff. Again, I don't plan to do anything about that until the carbine's had a chance to smooth itself out. In my meager experience with lever actions, they smooth out nicely over time. The trigger itself flops around whether the hammer is cocked or not. There is an $90 fix for that, but it's not an $90 problem right now.

So, the summary. Nice little carbine that's fun to shoot, has plenty of power for game to whitetail size (though magazine capacity is illegal for big game in this state), has the potential to be accurate, and is incredibly light and handy. If hanging one in the back window of the pickup weren't an invitation to thieves, it would sure look nice back there.

Right now I expect to be shooting this one enough to make me happy I spent the money to buy it.

P.S. The front sight is blackened brass. That means that the bead part is shiny because it's had the blacking polished away. It also means it's soft and likely to loosen up again. I staked the base so it should stay and put the hood, which I'd first taken off, back on to at least keep the sight from falling off if it loosens up again. Ordered an adjustable Wiliams rear sight, but no front for now.

P.P.S. Williams sight in place. Extremely hard to make fine adjustments, but I finally got it dialed in for 75 yards. The 0.093" aperture was too big, so I bought a 0.050" one at Jack First. Haven't shot it since then - getting back to running has been taking up my mornings.

2011-09-04T15:30:00.000-07:00

So I went looking for one of the Marlins in .357 Magnum. Cabelas had this one for a reasonable price (you oughta see what the stainless model runs these days!) so I brought it home.

Gonna chrono my 158 and 180 grain loads tomorrow morning and see how the sights work - not a fan of buckhorn sights. Probably order a peep for the receiver.

Coulda been worse. Coulda bought something really expensive. Now I need a window rack.

2011-09-03T15:53:00.000-07:00

After having fun with the new targets yesterday, and finding corrosion on the SIG, I thought it might be time to shoot and examine the Model 60 S&W, as I'd carried it all over trails and such, but last shot it months back. It also had some rust - "stainless steel" is more wishful thinking than fact. But the rust is off now and powder residue and lead are starting to come off as it sits on the bench in the basement soaking.

Back to shooting those targets. The SIG .45 ACP knocked them sprawling, making a loud clang. The S&W .357 Magnum kicked them yards back and made more of a "whang." Subjectively, the .357 hits way, way harder than the .45. When we go run the numbers on factory loads or on comparable hand loads, momentum of each is about the same. Bullet mass times velocity of one is about the same as the other. But the lighter bullet of the .357 Magnum travels 300+ feet per second faster, giving the .357 the edge in energy by about 50%. I guess energy is what the steel targets are feeling.

So that got me all excited about the .357 Magnum cartridge again. Hot, accurate and flat-shooting. But the pain, oh the pain, of shooting a relatively light revolver in that caliber. Twenty rounds was about it, the last ten being shot with a work glove on. Obviously, what I need is ...

... a heavier .357 Magnum. Now Ruger makes some good solid guns in .357. But their DAO SP101 has the same barrel length, five shots as well, and weighs in maybe eight ounces heavier. And with worse fixed sights and a bigger bulge. It wouldn't be as painful to shoot, and discounted to $509 at the local gun shop it seemed at first thought to be a slam dunk. But, you see, I didn't pay much more than that for this little M60, and it's a better-finished revolver with much better adjustable sights. So if it's gotta be bigger anyway, I looked at some larger .357s, including other Rugers and the L-Frame S&Ws. All would be more pleasant to shoot, but all were larger than I'd want to carry around under a shirt or jacket. Woe is me, nothing seems significantly better than what I've already got.

So just shoot your .45s you big baby, you say. Yeah, but I've got 2000 158-grain swaged Speer bullets I need to use up sometime before I die. And H110 powder and small pistol magnum primers. And nothing else to use them on. Yes I know - bad planning. But I'm not done thinking about it.

Marlin makes a really cute .357 Magnum carbine...

2011-09-02T08:07:00.000-07:00

Nightmare last night. Woke up at 5AM thinking I had to get to work. 'Twas only a dream. But as I was up anyway, I grabbed the new 6" MGM knockdown disks and headed for Beretta Road to see if they brought some joy.

And they did! Set the four steel targets out, scattered around 15 yards, then shot them down. The first try took 5 rounds. Funny how when shooting multiple targets, if you miss one you have to actually think about whether to go back and knock it over, or to finish the set, then go back. Overall I shot 37 rounds today, moving them farther out, so if you want to count the marks on the steel and do some math, you can see how often I had to decide. I should come up with a protocol so there's no decision to slow down the times.

Should have shown a side view too - from the side they are an acute "L" shape, putting the center of gravity directly over the center of the base piece. That means they lean back a bit and pick up light well. They also are stable but fall down nicely - I'd expect a solid .22 hit would do it, even though they are pretty heavy.

I bought them through Midway for about $30 each. If I were a welder it would probably take $30 worth of effort to make the first, but follow-ons would be cheaper. Let's not begrudge a guy making something useful and fun his profit. I think he makes them on order, as the paint smell was evident when I opened the box.

Benefits: handy multiple targets, fun to hear clang and watch spin and fall, easy to store inside the truck (unlike the paper target stand which has to stay in the box), easy to renew with a rattle-can, apparently indestructible, don't have to be pushed into the ground (problematic in the winter here), and, because I chose the smallest size, they make me work hard for the clang/fall reward.

Found a small issue with the SIG, another one. Dissimilar metals corrosion is preventing the slide stop from doing its empty-mag job all the time. I've been carrying this piece on hikes lately, and the combination of salt water, steel and aluminum is problematic. While the frame and slide stop are very nicely coated with their proprietary Nitron finish, in high wear areas it does rub through. As along the shaft and the back face of the slide stop. Usually what one sees first is an oxidizing of the aluminum component, but I'd noticed some rust at the junction of the stop's shaft and body (where any coating would be thinnest) awhile ago. Today on disassembly I noticed a white buildup behind the body and on the frame, with corresponding loss of blued finish on the stop itself. White means aluminum oxide, of course. It's easily cleaned off, but it will come back. In my experience with similar problems on naval aviation equipment, no amount of grease or oil, and no quick or easy coating will stop it. The right solution is to keep sweat off the gun, but that means getting it out of the King Tuk inside-the-waistband holster or not carrying it when I know I'll work up a sweat. I will probably go back to carrying the S&W M60 in the yaqui slide for all hiking for the rest of the summer, or at least carry the Colt Series 70 stainless pistol below when I want a big bore.

2011-09-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, the short trigger definitely works with moderately insulated gloves! Flowers are going away now and between thunderstorms, the grass browns, temperatures are cooler, at least at night. I'm looking forward to winter, to wool coats, thick socks, the first Escalade smashed in a corner because the driver doesn't have a clue how to drive, the end of lawn care, and my Thanksgiving drive back to San Diego. Last year the question was whether gloves would work with J-Frames (no) and with N-Frames (yes), but this year I'm mostly shooting 1911s. Gotta be able to get the finger in the trigger guard to shoot, eh?

I also have to work on drawing from beneath a heavy coat. Wasn't prudent to do that today, as the temperatures are in the eighties as I type, but when the chill sets in I'll begin work on that. Still waiting for the Nigh Noon "Topless" holster I ordered back in June. Should be here around November. I've got high hopes it will be the right thing to use for a full-sized 1911 under a coat. Getting impatient - this will be the longest I've waited for a holster, longer even than for the Mitch Rosen "Tito's Revenge" model.

Doc says the knee is fine, bone- and cartilage-wise and that increasing trail miles won't hurt it any. The pain, I figure, is in the tendons and other slow-healing bits. Celebrated the news by doing a fast walk up Boulder Hill after the doc's visit, which put the descent around high noon (that was a coincidence) by which the temps were in the 90's. I'm OK with hot weather, but exertion in hot weather is taxing. Ended up cooling down with half a bottle of cheap red over ice. It worked well.

I suppose I should do a snapshot of the combo laser/flashlight that's now on the Kel-Tec PLR-16. Haven't had as much fun with that as I'd expected - emptying a 30-round magazine quickly is real fun once.

2011-08-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in the long-ago last post, the SIG was returned to the factory to fix a malfunctioning grip safety. It came back fixed in time enough to shoot yesterday's IDPA match. The match was officiated as well as last time, but they still have some things to smooth out. As they were short on staff, the shooters all pitched in to set things up, and it got done, but it would be better if the Buffalo Chip Range charged more and hired some help to do it right. And do it better. Once again, no steel poppers, so paper was substituted, but it's not as satisfactory as the clang and fall down of steel. Props were cobbled together, and didn't work so well. Two stacked 55 gallon drums doesn't make a good tree, especially when the top one topples. The base was changed to two drums after the first two shooters had trouble with falling drums. But the staff that was there were good at what they did, and treated us very well, including a delightful five-dollar lunch of burger, wurst or wieners, chips, potato salad, huge pickle, drink, etc.

There were six stages planned, but with roughly double the turn-out of the last match, we only shot four of them. I cleaned the third and fourth stages and dropped five points total for the match. While that sounds pretty good, I was once again pretty slow, compared to the youngsters and a few of the older guys too. No score yet - I'll amend this once they're posted.

I took best in Custom Defense Pistol (CDP = 1911 .45ACP) and fourth of the 21 shooters. The three faster than me were shooting Stock Service Pistol (SSP) class, the high cap 9mm and .40s. Shit! Didn't feel like I was shooting that well.

There were three women shooting this match, too. Not surprisingly, all were wives or G/Fs of other shooters, all were game to shoot, none were particularly good except for one woman who might have been decent if she hadn't been handicapped by a 6-shot revolver with only one speed-loader. Reloading a revolver without full moon clips is just hard. She hit well though.

The picture of the SIG up top is after I put in the short 1911A1-style trigger last night. My hands are pretty small, I've always preferred the short trigger even though they're not real popular right now, but with winter coming I wanted to fit a gloved finger into the trigger. I've got one more short trigger to install in the Kimber Ultra Carry II, then the 1911s will all be consistent. The other obvious difference between the 1911 and 1911A1 is that the latter has a curved mainspring housing. I sorta prefer that as well, but haven't found it makes a great deal of difference functionally. The flat one, as shown here, is slightly more compact, so I don't think I'll do any changing, unless it's to aluminum (vs. the current steel).

Surprising how much difference the shorter trigger makes. It's not where my finger remembers it to be, and the result is some jerking. Got that fixed in 50 rounds in the hills this morning though.

Sorry for taking so long to post again. I've been pretty busy, hiking trails and getting settled into the VA system at Ft. Meade. My first physical showed I'm in better shape than I thought, but the doc wanted me to lose some weight. So less and better food, and more exercise. Gonna get my smashed up knee x-rayed on the 31st, and will then know if I have to do something about it (it still swells and hurts) or just persevere to carry on and let it heal itself.

2011-07-30T12:43:00.001-07:00

Accidental discharge today. No picture.

Third A/D in my life, that I remember. I figure for as much shooting and gun handling as I've done over the last fifty years, that's not a terrible record. But still...

I mentioned a short 1911A1-style trigger that I picked up to install on the SIG 1911. I was in the basement at the bench and had taken the receiver apart and put it back together a bunch of times. The new trigger somehow would override the grip safety. The stock trigger worked fine. The operating surfaces of each measured exactly the same. The short trigger felt a whole lot better in my hand, so I was trying to figure out the reason - to troubleshoot the problem.

Eventually I gave up and put the pistol back together with the original stock trigger, checked to see that the grip safety worked, loaded it and holstered it. I'd been working all hunched over on this receiver for the last two hours and my shoulders and neck, already hurting from loading shot-up appliances onto the little farm truck, were aching. Remembered I needed to check the thumb safety too, then things got vague. Whether through the classic blunder of cycling the slide before removing the magazine or something else, after confirming the thumb safety worked, I clicked it off and dropped the hammer.

The handgun was pointed in a safe direction, and the loud and unexpected report got my nerves a-fluttering. Setting the gun on the bench, I had to order my thoughts. "First, make it safe." Did that, though instead of the routine I'd been used to at the range or even in the basement while cleaning, it had to be very deliberate, as I no longer trusted my routines.

"Second, check for damage." Chip in the concrete of a basement wall. Took awhile to find it. Found the bullet, the completely eviscerated remains of a Winchester 230-grain JHP on the floor about six feet from the chip. Couldn't find any other damage, from ricochets or shrapnel.

"Third, sit back and think about it." I'm still doing that. Gun handling easily becomes a routine. Good routines are safe. Provided you keep religiously to the good routines, it seems. It took an hour before I had the confidence to put the gun back in the holster and head out the door. But before I did that, I ordered a Harrison short trigger from Brownells. Brand new, with an adjustable stop.

I'll see if that one works, and return it if it doesn't. Being new and of known providence, unlike the one dug out of the used bucket at Jack First, I expect it will work. But I will put it in and test it carefully. And there will be no ammo in the shop at all until the work is all done.

Trigger update. Got the Harrison trigger and it fails the grip safety as well. When I put the original trigger back in, it also failed when the trigger was squeezed pretty hard. I'll call SIG tomorrow and see if they can install the short trigger and fix the worn grip safety. Yeah, that's what it is. The lug on the grip safety that should prevent the trigger from moving only contacts a tiny beveled area of the back of the trigger bar. If I were to fix it, I'd probably have a tiny bit welded on to the grip safety lug, then grind it to work correctly. Depending on how much SIG wants for the work, maybe that's what I'll do anyway.

Sent the SIG back to the factory. It should be back on Monday, in time to use it for the match next Saturday. Gotta shoot it a bunch first to make sure the factory didn't screw it up. I frankly don't have a lot of confidence in those guys.

2011-07-29T15:41:00.000-07:00

Deciding not to go haul more trash today, instead I stopped at the gun shop. Big surprise there, eh? Got to talking with one of the guys about the notorious 1911 hammer pinch. A real skinny guy. He gets bit a lot. Several posts back I disparaged folks who needed "beavertail" grip safeties as ham-fisted or something. I think I used the word "pudgy." A few weeks back, I got bit. Then again, I am pudgy. The blood blister is gone, but I'm still a little sheepish about it.

So ... figured one of those round-spurred Commander hammers was in order for this gun, so I dropped by Jack First, an outstanding parts supplier of the Numrich Arms sort, but it seems Colt doesn't sell the stainless Commander hammer. But I did get a short stainless trigger from the used parts bin for the SIG RCS for use with gloves this winter. Driving home I thought it about time to pull out the Dremel Moto-Tool and remove enough material from the hammer spur that I won't get pinched again. Taking a power tool to a hammer isn't a huge risk. Hammers are relatively cheap to replace if screwed up. The result is up there. The profile still look pretty much factory, but the shape of the bottom is such that it contacts the grip safety much farther forward and doesn't endanger my hand anymore.

As may have been reported earlier, there was a problem ejecting loaded rounds from this gun. The nose of the bullet would catch the inside of the slide at the forward edge of the ejection port at about 2-3 o'clock. Once it did that, the extractor hung on and the ejector wouldn't let the slide go back far enough to lock, so fiddling the round out was always tricky. There hasn't been a problem with empty case ejection. Anyway, taking a power tool to a very visible and expensive part of a thousand dollar gun is different than fooling with the hammer. But I had a go at the port, intending to lower it to about match the Kimber port, which has a very good rep.

I measured and taped and started grinding, taking care to bevel toward the inside of the slide. Long before I got to the planned lower edge I thought I saw the problem with ejection and beveled a bit sharper at the front of the port, then cleaned it out and put it together to test. Worked with the two ball types I had handy and with snap caps. Took it back apart, sanded and polished the ground edges for cosmetics and it's now good to go.

The picture above doesn't really show the work very well, but I think it's pretty so there it is. You may be able to see the contour difference in the hammer, but the port wasn't really lowered enough to notice except side by side with a standard one.

2011-07-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, as I was packing up from shooting, a pickup was driving toward the highway on Beretta Road. The man and his son had been driving a Honda 4x4 farther up the road and decided to stop and pick up the couch and OS chair that someone had dumped along side it to shoot up. When they stopped to load the 4x4 onto the trailer I pulled up and thanked them for doing that, feeling really guilty the whole time, as they weren't even out there shooting. They just wanted to make the place neater.

So yesterday when I was shooting I kept on being distracted by a washing machine some dickwad had dumped in the area I like to use. After 20 rounds I packed my gear and loaded the washer into the truck. Then I found a non-matching dryer (these were both perforated, dumped obviously by someone who wanted to hear a "clang" when they hit something but are too stupid to pick up after themselves) and a bunch of smaller metal stuff. I stopped at the Forest Service HQ and asked about where I could off-load, but they have no such facility, so I took it to the city dump. They take metals free, so there wasn't a cost to leave it at their recycling center.

Today I picked up an eyesore fridge, then filled it with thermoset plastic (mostly "luxury" TV chassis, etc.), found the fridge door and loaded the truck up higher. The city landfill wouldn't take the fridge and charged me $8.13 to dump the rest. I was given directions to Pacific Steel and Recycling, who would have charged me $15 to leave it, but when they saw the bullet holes and realized I'd been cleaning up the national forest, offered to take it off my hands for nothing. (They also said they would have paid me for the washer and dryer. Live and learn.) With a recent city utility bill, I can dump one truckload of less than a thousand pounds once a month at the city landfill. I'll carry that around now.

But for the most part, the nasty stuff is gone from Beretta Road. White goods and hard plastics. What's left is recyclable plastics, wood and paper. I'm not inclined to pick up biodegradables like pallets used to mount targets or target paper, which is meant to decompose quickly. I probably will start carrying around some garbage bags to pick up the milk cartons, paint cans and other debris the pigs leave on public land. Makes me wonder what their living rooms look like.

2011-07-17T13:07:00.000-07:00

I'm so stuck in the 20th Century. Maybe the early 20th Century. Went out shopping for electronic hearing protectors today, first to look cooler than in the pix below, and second to be able to hear commands and such when not actually shooting. Shopped around, bought these Howard Leight Impact Sport muffs at Cabelas. Seemed as good as any, and reviews said better than most. And the price was lower than I remember from the last time I shopped for something like this back in the '90s.

So I got home, put the batteries in and found the little accessory cable and plugged it into my iPhone. And I played my entire iPod library. 'Course, that's not huge, given I really had no way to listen except through the phone itself before. I left my cheap-ass speakers in San Diego and while my radios claim iPod compatibility, it's really fussy to dock to 'em. These things are really good headphones! And I didn't know they did that!

They also turn off the embedded speakers when outside noise hits 82db, reducing loud noises by up to 22db, and can amplify ambient noise up to 3x (or as I recall from HS Physics, about 10db). I also noticed that while pumping sound in from the phone, ambient could be heard, so listening to music doesn't completely isolate the wearer. Handy items, these. Gonna see how they work with gunfire tomorrow morning. I expect they'll be great, but will tell you if otherwise.

The world just marches on, and I haven't been paying enough attention. Maybe I should listen to my son and check out Google Chrome...

2011-07-16T21:49:00.000-07:00

Redneck? Oh yeah. Just now starting to peel off. Picture of me shooting the third stage of the recent IDPA match at Buffalo Chip Range in Sturgis. Credit for the picture is Stephanie of Black Hills IDPA, though I cropped all the fat parts off except the head, which seemed essential to the intent of having a picture.

What I'm shooting at here is the rightermost head of the two seated "thugs" before proceeding to the leftermost. The far right standing target has already been perforated twice in the torso. When shooting around a barrier, one shoots the target that appears first, then proceeds to shoot them in the order they uncover as the shooter exposes more of himself to see more targets. Here that means shooting right to left. From the left side of a barrier, it means left to right. That's called "slicing the pie." The stage also included a bunch of targets not shown, including some shot around the left side of the barrier - a more difficult position. I think I dropped one this stage (dropped one point, or one half second of time, due to missing target center), but didn't have a great overall elapsed time as it required some running, and I didn't run. I also think I messed up some mag changes and that cost me time, too.

Notice the case still in the air even though the slide is forward. The pistol isn't back down on target yet, but it's getting there. The steel drums are barriers for the shooter to negotiate, and the black poly bags simply indicate that what's under them is not part of the scoring target.

Not much else to say about the top picture, except to note that it's made me decide to get some more current hearing protectors. My muffs date from the '70s or '80s and are not cool ones like the other kids had. These guys with me were some of the other shooters. The skinny guy in the middle (Neil, USAF) took best time with his Glock .40 and I look forward to shooting against him - all of them actually - in the next match scheduled for August 20th, right after the Sturgis Rally thins out.

2011-07-14T09:39:00.000-07:00

...nasty, brutish and short. Added the forearm and muzzle brake/compensator yesterday and took it out to make noise this morning. Noise, it makes. The compensator directs blast to the sides and upward, resulting in a significant concussion to the brain cage every time it's fired from the hip. I can think of no recreational use where ear protection might be ignored. From a rest, the firearm (I have trouble calling this a "pistol") isn't disagreeable, just strange to shoot without the expected buttstock.

Over the pack which set on the toolbox in the truck bed, the sights had it grouping about three inches high and three to the right at 25 yards. Moving the rear sight to center it was easy enough, but while the front sight looks like an M-16 front that can be adjusted with a bullet tip, there are too many undressed machined edges to allow that here. I'll unscrew it enough to get closer on elevation once it's cleaned up, using, I suppose, a couple of punches. Groups at 25 were about an inch, though I wasn't paying particular attention to precision, just to placement. I suspect the oft-reported 1" groups at a hundred are possible with this thing, given decent sighting equipment. Shooting over a rest like this wasn't as awkward as I'd imagined.

Shooting from the hip, something I've never practiced and don't claim any expertise with, required me to point much lower and to the right of what felt correct. If I keep shooting it, the "feel" will probably fix itself, but those first few rounds over the target's right shoulder at about five yards were surprising. Started out so bad I wouldn't have been able to locate a laser dot right away either. I think the next thing to do is to get a cheap laser, then see if a better laser later would add utility.

Dave, when you recommended an Aimpoint, were you talking tube or open? The open one doesn't give me a clue where to find the dot, but a tube type might give me more guidance.

Cleaning. It strips easily and intuitively. The piston tube gets filthy and the head of the piston cokes up. The bolt was pretty much packed in grease, so I'll do the same on reassembly. There's no straight line approach to the bore from the chamber end, but the compensator acts as a rod guide, preventing muzzle damage. Chamber brush on a flexy pistol rod gets into the bolt lock recesses nicely. There doesn't appear to be any lube used where the bolt carrier rides the plastic receiver. I'll leave that alone unless I start seeing abrading.

2011-07-10T10:25:00.000-07:00

New toy, long story. For the last week or so I've been reading a couple of John Birmingham novels, "Without Warning," and "After America." Post-apocalyptic science fiction of the overtly heroic sort. The author pretty much gets the gun stuff right, but has eccentric tastes in what he arms his protagonists with. There are good guy pirates with Russian machineguns, a lupera in the hands of our vaquero hero, a war correspondent who selects an FN Five-seveN - he eventually marries an American government assassin who used a 300 Whisper pistol (a nameless pistol??) in one scenario, and there are P90s, and other cool shit all over in the books.

The Five-seveN has gotten a lot of online heat for being a little round in a big pistol. Opinions are divided between old guys like me who like big bullets, vs the younger folks who prefer science. Anyway, I went looking for the P90, 'cause it looked like fun to have a 50-round little lightweight personal defense weapon ("PDW" - it's a real term) for shits and grins. Couldn't find one locally, and they're expensive, so I looked at the Five-seveN pistols and they really are big, though they carry 20 or 30 rounds of 5.7 ammo and weigh almost nothing. I almost bought one.

Then I started thinking about setting up for reloading yet one more caliber and decided anything the 5.7 can do, the 5.56 NATO can do better and the tiny inexpensive bullet launcher shown here and made by Kel-Tec would be much more supportable fun. Ammo is cheap and I already reload for it, and it takes readily available M-16 magazines, etc. So I bought it, ordered (expensive) aftermarket forearm and muzzle brake, and took it out to check functioning this morning.

Stock sights are rudimentary. That's OK as there's no real good way to shoot it using the sights anyway. And the top two rounds in the first D&H mil spec magazine needed a little urging to chamber, but once the lips were polished a bit there were no more issues. It does hit where the sights point, but I only shot it that way a few times, preferring to let it rip from the hip, shooting firehose style. Despite what I've read on these here interwebs, muzzle climb wasn't really an issue - probably should have waited before ordering the brake.

Kel-Tec quality has always caused discussions. This is the first I've owned. Back in the '70s, we all thought AK-47s were no damned good because they looked like they'd been carved with cold chisels and band saws, but the AK remains the world-changing small arm of the last century. Kel-Tec may be the Kalashnikov of this century. The engineering is innovative and the parts are adequate for the job, but no more. There's nothing pretty to be found on this pistol, but there's nothing inadequate about it either. As an engineer, I'm impressed by the machinery, though as an aesthete, this firearm does not catch my eye.

So, what to do about sights? Lasers are attractive, but don't work well in daylight and use batteries (always a weak link). But they let one shoot from the hip or wherever. The holographic sights also use batteries, but life is much much longer and they aren't as affected by temperature. Still, they do require holding this "pistol" up to align the sights. Both of those are expensive options if one wants quality sighting equipment; either is more expensive than the gun itself. Anyway, something to think about.

Oh yeah, the vented forearm is a must. After emptying a 30-round magazine in but a few seconds, the barrel was hotter than the proverbial two-dollar pistol.

2011-07-10T10:05:00.001-07:00

The Black Hills IDPA had its debut match yesterday. It was well organized and well run, with five stages ranging from moderately difficult to complex, but including one where we simply stood up and shot targets like men ought, as intended by God and the U.S. Marine Corps.

I won't describe each stage because I get them all confused now, but going into the third stage it looked like I was at the top of the dozen or so shooters. Two of us were shooting 1911s like the SIG here, one shot a 625JM S&W revolver and the rest pretty much were shooting double- or safe-action autos. Anyway, I was feeling pretty smug going into Stage 3 with decent times and only one point dropped, shooting near the end of the lineup so I could see how others were screwing up so I could avoid the same, but it all went pear-shaped anyway. With a seven-round magazine, one must plan the reloading points (always plural with the small mag), but I blew the first target and put another round on it so I wouldn't lose the point, throwing off my reloading so bad my time suffered. I think I still only dropped one point on the stage, but added something like ten seconds over par.

The fourth stage was the "stand up and shoot properly" test and I dropped two points at the 20 yard target, but cleaned the rest, swapping time for accuracy. And the fifth stage was designed by people with contempt for old folks. Running and kneeling I can't do. I will be working on those things in the future though, as my inability added a good 15 seconds to my overall time.

Time - that's the thing. Time killers are magazine swaps, ground speed and getting the damned gun outta the holster, in that order. In the final stage the pistol and all magazines are arrayed on the top of a 55 gallon drum, the shooter bursts into the room, stows the mags, loads the pistol, shoots two bad guys through the window with three rounds to the one with the pistol and two to the other guy, jumps to cover behind another drum, puts two rounds into a guy with a hostage, swaps mags (in my case, by digging it from a front pocket while crouching - I'll never put mags there again), shoots one to a popper, runs around a wall, three into a very close target, armed and with a hostage, three to another armed target, reloads and two to the target beside the last one, then one to a popper, springing to the last drum, kneeling and putting two into what may be an innocent bystander. I need sneakers and some practice with random movement, and to figure out some sort of kneeling analog that won't bust up the knees. If it weren't for this stage, I would probably have been second overall in the match, but as it was I ended up about fifth overall. Turns out I can shoot with the best of the competitors that showed up yesterday, but being ten years older than the next oldest guy, just couldn't do the movements.

Next match is next month and I'm going to work on running, jumping, rolling around, kneeling and shit like that. I may have to find a private outdoor place so I don't get locked up for being a lunatic.

The gun ran flawlessly, the rig worked as well as any legal rig there (some weren't legal, but the range let folks use them for this match anyway - no objections here), and I'm sincerely looking forward to doing it again.

2011-07-02T10:42:00.001-07:00

Almost adequate. The silhouette target at 25 yards, from the obverse. Head and torso. Not all today, of course, but over the last two weeks, from 10 yards to 25 yards. There are some .22 and .38 holes that friends put in it as well as my .45s. I show you the back, as it's more impressive than what the front looked like this morning. Today it was 25 yards off-hand, right hand, left, and both.

This being the Fourth of July weekend, I figured making noise with a Colt was appropriate. Once again, no issues. I'm surprised at how nicely it piles up the brass. Either the spring is stiffer than the standard 16 pounds, or the stainless is slowing down slide travel. I was shooting with my slightly hotter than factory loads - the ones the SIG scatters hither and thither. Feels good to shoot the big gun, though the trigger could use a bit of work, or maybe just breaking in. As of now, it's only got maybe 400 rounds through it at most.

Beautiful day for shooting in the Hills. Raining on the way up, but just fleecy clouds and a cool breeze when I got there. I'd planned to hike part of the Samelius Trail today, but the rain and early morning thunder put me off. Glad it did. Nothing's better than occasional shooting interrupted by chasing brass in healthy grass and sitting on the tailgate, drinking the still-warm coffee from a paper cup.

2011-06-20T14:33:00.000-07:00

Back six or seven months or ago, when I got a good deal on this Springfield Armory M1A SOCOM 16 rifle, I mentioned that the "ghost ring" rear sight didn't work with old eyes like mine. I like aperture sights, but the smaller the hole the better they work. Anyway, I shot it a bunch and liked the handy size of the thing, and was talking about it with another old shooter down at the gun shop, and he mentioned that he'd put a pistol scope on his SOCOM for the same reason. One thing led to another and he sold me a set of quick dismount Leupold rings, which have now been sitting around for three months or so.

I had to order some 1911 parts from Midway recently, so I looked at the available pistol scopes and this Bushnell 2-6x was on sale. I don't want to get too much money tied up in this particular gun, but for about $200 total, I got the scope and rings, which I mounted today.

The scope needs to set way forward on the rail to get the needed eye relief for 6x. It should be a tad farther forward than it is here, and I'll see to it later. Because I had scope levels for setting up other rifles, I used them and once again was surprised that what's really level doesn't look level to me. It's not sighted in yet, and I'll have to start around 25 yards, as there's no way to look through the bore on this rifle and line up the crosshairs that way. I've never had a good experience with the new bore sighting gizmos, but usually just do it the old fashioned way. So maybe tomorrow ... depending on the weather. Lots of rain lately.

The result is something like LtCol Jeff Cooper's "Scout Rifle" concept. He advocated a short-barreled medium-bore bolt action rifle with a forward mounted scope for survivalist stuff. I've never liked forward mounted scopes (or scopes of any sort, really) and haven't had or used anything similar beyond popping a few rounds from borrowed rifles. But it's a way I can actually shoot this bitty battle rifle and expect to hit targets, so we do what we have to do. Presumably it will be accurate enough at a couple hundred yards, but I'll let you know when I find that out.

Dodged raindrops today to sight it in. Started very high at 25 yards, but dialed it down and to the right and shot cloverleafs. Moved out to about 75 yards and the group opened up more than proportional to the distance. Then back to about 200 yards plus or minus 15, and the group opened up to seven or eight inches, but still centered around the black.

Given that the minimum acceptable accuracy of the M14 is 3" at a hundred yards, this might be normal for a very short barrel at 200, but it's still disappointing. I checked the torque on all the screws before beginning cleaning and they're all tight. There was a gusty side wind that would affect things, so I'll take it out on a better day and see if it tightens up then.

Shooting over the hood of the truck, the eye relief worked well to 4x, but I had to shift around a bit at 6x. 2x is great all the way from back on the stock (shooting over the hood) to up forward as in off-hand. Had to screw the focus ring out a bit, but the view was clear and bright for a cheap scope.

2011-06-16T15:16:00.000-07:00

Told you the Series 70 Colt was gonna be a barbecue gun. Just got these grips in the mail from Esmerelda, and are they pretty. This iPhone picture doesn't do them justice. Fancy cocobolo, borderless checkering ... AND ... I got to pick the exact pair I wanted from her website. Not just material and style, but the grips themselves. She makes them, shows them, then the buyer gets to pick. Or, presumably, have some custom made.

The grips are "thin" (Esmerelda calls it the "Slender Series"), meaning about half the thickness of the standard 1911 grips. To mount them, the standard bushings must be removed from the frame and bushings and screws supplied with the grips put in the holes. As Colt sorta stakes the original bushings (because these things do tend to loosen), they're a tad tough to unscrew. Exact screwdriver sizes are important here.

And because I have no way to stake the new bushings on, I used a smidge of Loctite blue, the one that's semi-permanent. Loctite red would be better for the bushings, but I don't have that on hand - if they loosen, I'll get some and do it over again. The new stainless screws use an allen wrench and are also dabbed with Loctite.

I went through about the same thing mounting Kimber's thin grips on the bitty Ultra Carry II, but I figure that was the learning phase. That one has an aluminum frame, so cross-threading is a real worry. As Loctite isn't meant for aluminum, it took a careful bit of torquing (including a dab of Loctite, even though it's not supposed to work) to get them to stay in place. In fact, I may have retrofitted the bushings using epoxy if I recall correctly. That was the hardest part, getting the new bushings to stay put.

Thin grips work best for me. They don't fill my hand exactly, but help in pointability and maybe a little in concealment. The SIG came with them, so no problems there yet.

The next thing is the High Noon "Topless" holster I ordered in natural horsehide. Should take about six months, making it here just in time to use under a coat this winter.

2011-06-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

The first ten rounds from the 1911A1 Series 70. About 27 yards, resting over a rolled up jacket. Not target quality, but not too bad. Additional shooting confirmed that the pistol shoots about an inch low overall, with the position of the sun accounting for the slight shift to the left.

Fired 60 rounds, including 50 of the Fiocchi USA 230 grain JRN and ten of my slightly hotter loads using Berry's 230 grain round nose plated bullets over 6.2 grains of Unique. Used both of the supplied Colt SS magazines and had no failures of any sort. Brass from the Fiocchi ammo kicked out about four feet right and rear, and my loads kicked the brass out a few feet farther. Not that either neatly stacked the cases up for easy policing. Lots of rain means lots of grass, and I lost about ten pieces. I was planning to go one step up on the recoil spring, but nothing here indicates it's needed.

Some of the brass is noticeably dented at the mouth, showing a triangular stuttering abrasion pattern. I am not sure where on the slide it's contacting as the only brass marking I could see was at the aft right corner of the ejection port, and I can't see how that would connect with the case mouth. The brass all sized nice and round though, so it's not really a problem.

The stainless cleans up easy and, being I didn't shoot any cast lead bullets, it took 20 passes with a bronze brush and minimal soaking in Hoppes #9 to get everything out but the copper. Some copper solvent mostly got the rest out by the time I was tired of cleaning.

The ejector has been nicely beveled on the bottom, a step most folks have to do themselves with a stock gun. Same with the top chamber lug, though most makers are doing that already. The ramp is the new Colt style of narrow gutter, rather than broad funnel, and it seems to work. I'll know more after loading up some semi-wadcutters and trying those out.

Not much to add. Stainless' biggest weakness is that it doesn't like sliding on anything, even on other stainless. Carbon steel has a much better coefficient of friction and needs less lubrication, particularly after bearing surfaces have polished themselves in. Stainless always needs lubrication or it will gall. Lubricants used should be those developed specifically for nickel alloys, though anything is better than nothing. I've got an old bottle of "snake snot" left over from when I was shooting the stainless S&Ws, so I used that this time. Normally I use BreakFree lubricant, but until I look up the manufacturer's guidelines I'll use the snot.

2011-06-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

Another day of mixed emotions. The IDPA match at Buffalo Chip Shooting Complex was indefinitely postponed due to rain. But it's not raining. Several of us were out there milling around when a friend from California text'd me condolences for the delayed match. Then she showed me where it was posted on Facebook - a place I didn't know existed - and I passed the iPhone around to incredulous wannabe shooters. In the mean time I'd already signed up for a shooting class in two weeks at the same place, but I think I'll cancel it now.

In my disappointment about the match I thought I'd go to First Stop, an outstanding gun shop here in Rapid City, to peruse pretty pistols, and what should I find but that the new Colt came in! This is it, of course. Except for being stainless steel and having slightly higher (and much better) sights, it's true to the service pistols I'd carried around in the Marines (when it wasn't convenient to substitute the lightweight Commander). It has the original port size, arched mainspring housing, short trigger, original grip safety and original thumb safety, and holding it makes me feel like a kid (read: second lieutenant) again. Trigger pull is much improved (I'm told these are a product of the Colt Custom Shop), but there's a bit of beadblast overspray on the other side where the shiny flat sides weren't masked perfectly when they dulled up the top of the slide. Right back near the slide serrations. Any thoughts that I might keep it "new in the box" for succeeding generations is out the window - I'm gonna shoot this one to death.

While I was at the shop I also got a line on a used Delta Elite in 10mm Auto - the one I started out talking about last post - and am expecting a call from the guy wanting to sell it. No idea of condition or cost, but one will follow the other and I may end up with that big "magnum" pistol soon too.

Now ... I do think this one would look nice in a lizard skin holster with floral carved mesquite grips on it. Or maybe a fancy carved Tom Threepersons rig from El Paso Saddlery and stag grips...

2011-06-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

The IDPA match, my first and the first in South Dakota, is coming up on Saturday. So daily I've been drilling up at the shooting place, with the best progress being made in simple familiarity with the equipment. I will shoot the SIG-Sauer RCS, basically a short-ish Commander length 1911 pistol with the Officers-length grip. None of my .45s are full sized, and I've often thought the big ones really should chamber something more powerful than the .45 ACP.

So I went to the gun shop to order a Colt Delta Elite, a full sized 1911 chambered in the very hot 10mm Auto cartridge. Those are real hard to find and it looked like a six month wait for something that would just be a toy. And of course there would also be the accumulating of new dies, brass, bullets, springs, leather etc. to add to the already high cost. So I backed off one step and decided to go for the Colt Series 70 .45 in stainless steel.

"Series 70" means it doesn't have the firing pin lock that Colt put on most everything back in 1980. That makes it simpler to strip and clean, and possibly means the trigger pull will be, or can be made, crisper. Stainless means that if I decided to grind on it, there's no re-blueing involved, just matching the brushed finish on the raw material. And as this is a 1911A1 version, the curved mainspring housing and short trigger exactly duplicate the pistols I was issued in the Marines. It also has a sane standard grip safety tang, and not the "beavertail" every maker thinks the public demands. Beavertails do keep pudgy folks from getting the webs of their hands bit by the hammer, if they don't spend much time shooting and are sorta sloppy in their gripping of the pistols. So the material is non-traditional, but the design is the way they used to be.

As an added bonus, this pistol carries the "100 Years of Service" roll mark, having been made one hundred years after the model's (nominal) introduction.

I sorta figured this would be my "barbecue gun." That term pops up on the interwebs a lot and is roughly defined as what the gentry wear to friendly barbecues in parts of Texas (I guess). Lotsa flash in a functioning gun. Still, as I have to get leather for this one anyway, there's no reason it can't be all carved and pretty. And maybe stag grips...

Oh yeah - these are hard to find too, but I found one and should have it Monday or Tuesday.

2011-05-31T16:37:00.000-07:00

The knee is good enough now that I can start hiking trails again. Yesterday it was spur of the moment and the Sig Sauer 1911 RCS was on the belt, but this morning I went out specifically to do the Flume Loop B Trail again so I carried this Smith & Wesson Model 60-5 .357 Magnum with the first chamber up loaded with shot.

I think it's too cool yet for snakes to be much bother, but the revolver was specifically chosen so it could carry a shot cartridge up front with "mountain lion" loads behind it. No snakes, no lions. Several whitetail deer, a few pocket gophers and a variety of small birds today. The stump was at the beginning of the walk and I'd promised a picture with the new Ahrends grips. Funny thing is that there's no finish on the cocobolo wood. I'd expected to have to fit them, so I asked that they be bare, but I like the slight texture and the look and will leave them that way. Though I'm no big fan of finger grooves, snatching a small revolver from a vertical holster is easier when there's something for the middle finger to hook on to. They work, and they fill the hand nicely except for the pinky, which curls around the bottom of the butt.

In the El Paso Saddlery Yaqui Slide holster, the rig weighs nothing. It does feel a bit insecure when compared to inside-the-waistband (.45s) or pancake holsters (everything else), but with the tension screws snugged it doesn't seem to actually fall out.

Made me start thinking about a 3" Model 340 I saw on Guns America the other day...

2011-05-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

Walking on uneven ground is more difficult than on sidewalks, but that also makes it good therapy for the recovering knee. So walking, stick-assisted, up half a mile then down half a mile was probably good for me. On the way down I saw this structure in the national forest and took a picture. I don't think it has a purpose, unless it was built to provide shelter for some sort of game.

Yesterday I received a book I'd ordered back in January. "Notes on a Shared Landscape - Making Sense of the American West" by David Bayles. He's one of the authors of "Art & Fear," the best book written on making art. I found out about this book when the other author, Ted Ormond, quoted it in one of his books. Been looking forward to reading this for awhile - Bayles is very insightful. But I think he missed the mark here.

The format is a compilation of short related essays about western (Western) culture, "nature," conservation, water use and such. It is an interesting read and I cannot say his opinions aren't thoughtful and relevant. But in a couple of ways I think he's wrong.

Western culture, Bayles says, is no different than other Euro-American culture. His example of Moab, where funky cafes sit next to tire stores and cowboys contrast with tech-clad enviro-hikers, is used to argue that it's a mix-up rather than a mash-up, and not in any significant way different than San Francisco. I'd argue that there aren't many real cowboys in San Francisco and the ones here drink gourmet coffee right alongside the Patagonia-wearing crowd. Back in San Diego there were hipsters and bankers, sailors and pot-heads, cops and robbers, and the lines got hazy after 5PM. Here in Rapid City there are punks and bikers, airmen and dopers, deputies and bad guys and the lines also get hazy. But the overall feel of the place is "western." Maybe because the choices are fewer, many members of the listed cliques, particularly the ranchers and farmers, did not choose to join a club but were born to it. And the population of those is great enough to influence everything else.

Coming down from The Hills this morning I stopped at Perkins for a late breakfast. The clientele were about 80% cowboys including families. The parking lot was full of 1-Ton pickups with plates from South Dakota, Wyoming, North Dakota and one from Texas. The 20% non-ranchers included two guys that were obviously equipment mechanics of some sort, a non-specific guy with his daughter and two women (one of whom was most likely his wife), and some other bits and pieces. If that particular Perkins, including those customers, were in Oakland or Chicago, one would think it was some sort of convention. Here it's normal, and agribusiness rules. It's always been this way, and has never been the other way.

The other contention Bayles makes was that in some ways national forests have been a failure of concept and execution, particularly as compared to national parks. He says that, though there is no such thing as "nature" not shaped by man (and there hasn't been for 15,000 years at least), parks do a pretty good job of preventing man from having an inordinate impact on what we think of as nature. National forests, on the other hand, were conceived to allow best use, rather than conservation, thus they suffer from too many people doing pretty much whatever they want in them. While I haven't been to a national park as such in forever, I absolutely enjoy being able to do pretty much whatever I want in the national forest. Are there abuses? Sure there are - trash discarded, trees destroyed, roads built that interfere with drainage, possibly some over-hunting. We pay the caretakers to clean up after the more thoughtless visitors, to manage the timber and wildlife as well as people can do that, but also to give us access to shoot, to hunt, to birdwatch, to hike, to camp, to drive the jeep trails. I suppose I could go to a national park and enjoy the show, but the fact that they exist to protect "nature" from man means that there is less one can actually do in them. I think the national forests and grasslands work just fine and they, more than the parks, actually belong to and are used by us, the people.

The book is a limited edition of 2000 copies. It is well worth the price and the wait, and makes one think. Even the author is candid about his own reasons for writing it and admits that he has a perspective that may not work for others. It also has real fine pictures, though they are best understood by reading the text.

Edit: My argument about Western culture is pretty weak. Matter of fact, so is Bayles' position, though he states right up front that much of what he feels is vague. I guess for me the bottom line is that, like porn, I know it when I see it...Western culture, that is.

2011-05-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

LION!!

OK, a smallish mountain lion. The track is about 3.5 inches long. I was up in The Hills shooting off some cheap Federal .45 ACP (the kind that uses small pistol primers and therefore the cases shouldn't be mixed with real .45 shells) and noticed some tracks. Looks like a single animal. I followed the tracks back to where it crossed a main gravel road, then on toward where I know an elk watering tank to be. No signs of other lions and no signs that the animal has spent a lot of time on that particular trail. The tracks were fresh - no leaves or grass on them and the mud hadn't dried where it had been thinned - so probably earlier this morning. I'll go back and look harder in a few days. But instead of the .45 I'll take the .357 Cougar Gun, of which I owe you a picture now that the Ahrends grips are on it.

One reader said this might be a dog. Cougar tracks generally don't show claw marks. It might be, but it would be a huge dog, and there weren't accompanying boot prints. I figure the soft mud allowed claw marks to show. Additional prints found on dryer parts of the trail didn't show claws. On the other hand, cat tracks are usually wider than they are long, so the doubt remains.

2011-05-12T09:27:00.000-07:00

This combo, the SIG-Sauer RCS and Galco "King Tuk" holster, worked out pretty well. I've carried these about 16 hours a day since getting the holster, and used them to shoot the IDPA classifier a few days ago out at Buffalo Chip range in Sturgis. You might notice that the front clip, the one on the right in the picture, has been moved about 3/4ths of an inch back - just did this to correct the only weakness I've found, the tendency of the whole rig to slip around towards my back to the point the butt might print through a shirt and it's a tad more awkward to grip while shooting a timed string. Now the clip sits right against a belt loop preventing movement. The steel clip does get pretty close to the pistol when holstering though, so I'll need to pay attention to avoid scratching the gun.

The International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) just recently came to town. Buffalo Chip will be holding its first IDPA match on June 11th, and I'll be there. Clubs have to agree to do seven shoots per calendar year, so I expect to shoot all of them. The rules are interesting, though voluminous. Only guns and rigs that can actually be carried concealed are allowed, including big autos and revolvers, with a club-level class for back-up guns too. Shooters are classified prior to the matches by a standard classification shoot into four classes and competition is within classes.

The matches themselves are an eclectic mix of practical applications for the shooters, including multiple targets, shooting while moving, use of barriers and magazine changes, all against the clock. Fractions of seconds are added for anything outside the x-rings of the vaguely silhouette targets, only in this case they're zero rings surrounded by -1 rings and so on. One string might start with the shooter facing away, requiring that he turn and shoot the targets in descending order of threat, placing two bullets in the torso and one in the head of each. Or he may be seated at a desk or table. Use of available cover is required and magazines must be changed behind such cover when possible. More seconds are added for screw-ups like dropping a magazine during a "tactical reload."

The best part, the part I respect the most, is the IDPA use of penalties for FTDR or failure to do right. Any modification or rig or handload done specifically to game the match, rather than to reflect what the shooter actually carries, is penalized or the cheater is kicked out. This general loophole-closing action is to keep IDPA from going the way of other "practical" pistol sports and turning into a technical puzzle or track and field event. I'm there to learn to shoot while walking, to find the weakness of my own technique and to become a better shooter, and someone with a heavy gun and light loads using a trick holster spaced wide of the body would turn the whole match into something else.

Anyway, the load I'm using is 6.2 grains of Unique behind a Berry 230-grain plated round nose bullet with an OAL of 1.270". No failures to feed or function with this load in the fussy SIG so far. This duplicates military ball, though slightly faster. I did put a 20# spring in the gun to protect the aluminum frame from possible battering and assure good chambering when dirty - seems to work fine so far. So now I'm busy shooting out all the old handloads that don't work perfectly in this pistol so I can use the brass with the better bullets.

2011-04-28T11:01:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened in the last few days, so I figure a new post is in order.

The SIG now handles jacketed ball and hollow points as well as cast 230 grain round nose bullets. 100%! There was a small issue early on where the slide would lock back prematurely, so I fixed that by grinding a tiny detent in the slide stop lever, which gave the plunger detent ball a place to settle so the lever couldn't just flip up through recoil. The detent was a mite too big, because the magazine follower didn't have the oomph to push the lever up out of the detent, so the slide didn't lock back at all. I ground and polished a ramp to the detent, trying to get the balance of the thing and eventually it worked out.

Second thing I learned is that the SIG has tight chamber and bore dimensions. There's no room for a cartridge to wiggle, so it's possible that SWCs may never work in this gun. SIG also does not relieve or bevel the underside of the top chamber lug, so I did that - this did seem to allow the shorter cast round nose bullets to chamber easier.

In the process of disassembling and reassembling the pistol I'd loosened up the plunger tube. Using the appropriate staking tool, I tightened it back up and decided that I can't treat that aluminum frame like the old steel G.I. guns and just slam the slide lock back into place - the detent ball needs to be eased back with the tip of a screwdriver or punch and the lever gently pushed home. I may eventually work on reshaping the lever to gently cam the ball out of the way, but for now it's no longer a problem.

Shot about a hundred rounds of mixed Magtech ball, Winchester Personal Protection 230 grain JHPs and 230 grain cast ball reloads this morning and had not a single issue.

The shorter handgun on top is the Kimber Ultra Carry II. I've put a lot of ammo through it over the years, changed the recoil springs twice and have tightened the plunger tube many times. This time, with the knowledge learned from the SIG, I've decided to be gentle installing the stop lever too. I also ground a detent on the lever for the same reason as I did on the SIG and it worked here the first time (learning from my mistakes). Shot a mixed bag of about 50 rounds through this one this morning as well, including the 185 grain SWC reloads the SIG won't eat, with 100% function and no hiccups at all.

One of the things that has always irked me about the Ultra Carry is the tacky silvery three-hole trigger. I got a black Swenson trigger in the mail yesterday and installed it before going out this morning. Looks a lot better.

Also in the mail was a Galco "King Tuk" holster. This is an inside-the-trousers model made for all 1911s, so it will carry the Kimber, the SIG or the Springfield Champion at about the 4 o'clock position. It's a hi-tek hybrid model with a plastic holster riveted to the leather base which is connected to the belt by adjustable metal clips at each end. Ride height and cant are adjustable within limits, and I've found my optimum with the butt canted forward one click from full high ride. I expect to be able to carry big 1911s under a Hawaiian shirt using this rig, so as of now (having completed testing of ammo compatibility with the guns), I've put the Walther away and am packing one of the guns shown above.

2011-04-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

Forty-five bullets were running low. I'd been shooting that Springfield Armory Champion like crazy then reloading all the brass I chased down, then shooting it some more. In all it was up to something like six hundred rounds shot and though there were a few more 185 grain cast Bandit Bullets SWCs left, the next trip up to the Hills would leave me with empty shells with nothing to stuff into them. So off to the gunshop for more of those reasonably priced slugs. But could I leave well enough alone? No way! I had to go see what new inventory was under the glass.

This is a SIG-Sauer RCS, a 1911 pattern .45 ACP pistol with a Commander-length barrel and slide, and Officers-sized frame and grip length. It is chuck full of juicy features that I really like: Custom Shop "carry melt" and trigger job; 7-round magazines; checkered front strap; chunky night sights; aluminum frame and stainless slide, both "Nitron" finished to dark grey; thin real wood grips (though press checkered); normal field stripping; AND about $425 under MSRP! OK, it's slightly used and was only about $100 less than I could have chased one up on the web for, not counting shipping, but still a helluva deal.

I haven't shot it yet, but be assured that when I do you'll get more info than you want. The interwebs are full of experts' opinions on this one and they range from perfect to junk, as usual. As the experts run that range with every handgun produced, it came down to features and the rest will sort itself out over time.

The grips will stay. Leather is still up in the air - the cross section of the SIG 1911 slide is wider at the top than all other 1911s, so Kydex holsters won't fit without some whittling. I would like to be able to carry the Springer, the Kimber and this in any holster I do get, so another belt slide would probably work. As would some inside-the-waistband holsters. While I'm really happy with the Walther PPS as a 7/24 carry gun, this one could find its way into that duty too, as it's so damned pretty.

Yes, I did remember to buy 500 more bullets too.

The next day:

Got out early to see if I could beat the coming storm. I did beat the rain, but not the wind. Anyway, there was at least one fault with every magazine-load I shot. Using Magtech 230 grain ball, Winchester WB Personal Protection JHPs and my own 185 grain SWC reloads, there was always something that went wrong. One SIG magazine wouldn't hold the slide open after the last round - ever. I figure it probably did when tested, but as the material seems like soft stainless, it probably got bent a little along the way, and even if fixed it would bend back again. The other factory magazine couldn't seem to feed the last round. It would be sitting there loose on top of the follower and the slide would be stopped back. In addition to these consistent faults reloads mis-fed about one out of ten rounds.

Almost all of the faults were clearly magazine-related. The interwebs had already informed me that SIG-Sauer had some magazine problems early on, so I cleaned up the gun and took it back to the gun shop to make a deal. Money back, better mags, trade against some future buy, whatever. What we worked out was that I'd go shoot it with some stainless Wilson Combat compact magazines I had for the Kimber Ultra Carry II, and if they fed reliably, the shop would swap me one more of those against the two bad mags that came with the SIG.

So back up to the Hills. This time I brought along a neighbor to keep me company and so he could shoot a .45 for the first time. The Wilson Combat compact 7-round magazines were 100% reliable with the Magtech ball ammo. In truth, that's about all you can ask of a factory gun is that it feeds and functions with factory ball, which is what the 1911 was originally designed to use anyway. After three magazine of the ball I loaded three of the JHP. The pistol was now quite dirty, but it functioned with the JHP with only one feeding hiccup - looked to me like the bullet nose got hung up on the top boss of the chamber. More break-in of the pistol should permanently correct this. Then with the pistol filthy, I tried to shoot the reloads. Two major faults repeated with them. I loaded the 185 grain SWC bullets to the full max OAL of 1.275 inches, knowing that most folks load them shorter due to feeding trouble at that length. As they'd worked fine in the Kimber and Springfield, I've just kept them the max length. I think that they need to be shorter and will do the next batch to where the SWC shoulder is right at the case mouth. The interwebs also say that SIG chambers are tight and a bit fussy about feeding reloads, so this may fix it or I may have to go with a different bullet design if loading for this gun.

The second fault with reloads was the failure of the slide to go into battery completely. This, I think, is due to tight chambers and accumulated dirt. I do full-length resize the cases and use the Lee factory crimp die, but by this time everything was filthy, including the chamber.

But with the complete reliability of the ball ammo, I decided it's good enough. The other stuff can be straightened out later. So off we went to the gun shop, the two bad mags were swapped for one good (and expensive) Wilson Combat mag, giving me four that will now be dedicated to this pistol. The gun's stripped down and soaking once again in the basement. In addition to the cleaning, there are about a hundred hulls to load and experiment with and a holster to build.

I'm really glad the Wilson mags worked, as I really wanted to make the SIG a keeper.

The day after that.

230 grain ball ammo still hasn't had a fault.

I loaded up some cast SWCs so the shoulder was just at the rim and still had feeding trouble every fifth round or so. The gun likes a big round bullet, so it's time to find cheap cast round-nose bullets. This might be solved with a tiny bit of polishing of the bolt face and the top chamber lug though, so I may try just a bit of that first.

And the Winchester Personal Protection ammo shows one continuing problem, with the slide locking open before feeding the last round. I think that's because the round is shorter than the 1.275" max OAL and it jumps from the mag too quickly, letting the follower lock the slide back. A practical solution would be to load a ball round first so it's the last out. This Win PP ammo is otherwise good stuff. I may look for some 230 grain JHP bullets to load to give me that sort of round, but I'd load them to full length. As the fault has nothing to do with the actual hollowpoint, it must be due to length.

That target was my second magazine of the day using ball (after one of just fooling around). Shot at 25 yards, off-hand. Following groups were consistently as tight, or tighter in the case of the WinPP ammo and the reloads. The damned gun shoots where pointed, provided the ammo makes it into the chamber.

2011-04-09T17:45:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I think the best times at gun shows are when you leave, provided you leave with wallet intact. Attended a big one here this morning and looked at everything. Lots of good stuff. Sometimes even at lower prices than can be had at the excellent local gun shops. Mostly though, it's the same old stuff. And I suspect that many of the attendees were there shopping to avoid the inevitable call to BATF that's made for regular FFL sales.

What did I like? I really liked the engraving that a local guy did. He won't do commissioned work, but he sells the guns he's bought and engraved. A short-barreled Python might have been the best of them ... or maybe the boxed set of Brownings: Hi Power, .380 and .25 Baby. The only one in my price range was a tiny Colt .25 with grip safety that I could have taken home, if I'd had any use for it besides being a thing of beauty. I kept my money. I also spent too much time looking at a WWII Remington Rand 1911A1 that was found in a culvert under an outback road a few years ago. The owner had replaced the barrel and springs and put some very old stag grips on it and claims it shoots just fine. Pitted, no finish at all left, but the roll markings were readable and it seemed a really grand old relic. Completely the opposite of the engraved jewelry. I've still got the stamp on my hand and may go look at that one again tomorrow.

I found from a book seller that Col. Charles Askins' (Jr.) book "Unrepentant Sinner" is still printed sometimes, but he didn't have one. I may email him an order as the original hardcover is bringing something like $100 used via Amazon. I did buy for a couple of bucks a paperback of Teddy Roosevelt's patriotic wisdom that had been printed in 1957, but haven't opened it yet. Since I lost mine, I'd considered buying a replacement copy of Bill Jordan's "No Second Place Winner" but didn't. I don't remember it as being all that great. I guess books by my old favorite writers would be at the top of my list.

Back to guns. Lots of lever actions, original and repros. Lots of silencers and other Class III stuff. Lots of black and camo plastic guns, mostly of the AR and Glock variety. And, once again leaving guns, lots of silver coins, militaria, crafts, cowboy accoutrements and a John Bircher booth. No Nazi shit though - for this I am grateful.

I'd carried along the Firestar .45 up top, letting it peek out of the breast pocket of my coat. Don't much like that pistol as it doesn't always lock open after the last round and I don't have a lot of confidence in the thumb safety's ability to stay put. Shoots fine otherwise. Figured I should get about $375 for it with the spare magazine and holster, but I only pulled it out once when the engraver wanted to know what it was. As I hadn't decided to actually buy anything, pulling it out to offer as a trade didn't happen either. I'm tempted to take it out tomorrow to see if my new .45 ACP reloads work in it. They do in the Kimber Ultra Carry II and in the new Springfield Armory Commander (Champion). Guess I haven't mentioned those loads yet, huh?

The local gun shop carries really cheap cast lead bullets, including a 185 grain .452 SWC. Bought 250 of those for about $20, loaded a few test loads and decided on 7.5 grains of Unique with 1.275 OAL, which pushes the bullet out of the 4" barrel around 940 FPS and out of the 3" one at 890. I tested hotter loads but got some pretty bad leading, so that load seems about optimum. It's also hotter than the W-W Silvertip load from the same barrels, though without the cool aluminum-clad hollow-point bullets. Anyway, shot up some 250 of those loads now, bought more of the cheap bullets and loaded most of those up too. The Springer shot about 2.5 inches left and the same low. I've hammered the rear sight half a smidgen to the right and need to see if I under- or over-corrected. Haven't exactly figured what to do about the front sight yet as there's not a whole lot there to file down. I may just leave it and take a bit more elevation when shooting.

The Springfield, shown a few posts down, has been completely reliable except: a) one round failed to feed when Julia was limp-wristing it - rim got caught in front of the extractor and it wouldn't slip over and chamber. Polished the front of the extractor and it hasn't happened since, and; b) one extracted case reversed itself and, rim-forward, caught in the port. Two out of about 500 rounds isn't all that bad. Wish I understood the second fault better but I'll just have to see if it happens again. The Kimber gobbled the reloads up and spit the husks out smartly. No faults, but then again we didn't get into any endurance testing with that pistol.

You know, if I could find a really ratty but functional GI holster, that poor old corroded Remington Rand would be a cool period piece worthy of ... oh, I don't know ... some post-apocalyptic tale from the '50s or something.

2011-04-04T05:16:00.000-07:00

OK, what's in the picture? A woman shooting a handgun, right? Julia has just touched off her hundred-fiftieth round of .44 Special in that Forkin Custom, as well as about the two-hundred-fiftieth round of her life, including about fifty each in a .22 Ruger Bearcat and the .45 Auto shown last post. The big cowboy revolver was her favorite, and she did astoundingly well with it. In the last hundred rounds, she'd consistently put about five of six into the four-inch steel disc of a spinner target at seven to ten yards from a solid two-handed position. She could hit almost as well with one hand, but it was easier to hold the thing with two after a weekend (three mornings) of shooting.

Notice if you will, the locked right arm. That probably took the most work, getting the elbow locked up. Second was the concept of being surprised when the handgun went off. Flinching doesn't happen when you don't expect it to go off, and Julia became the zen archery master of that self-deception. The bullet seeks the target and the shooter releases the bullet. As she's young and has good eyes and nerves, by the time this picture was snapped I wouldn't have bet a six-pack against her in a shooting match.

The revolver is in the basement soaking in Hoppe's, the brass is resized and polished, and the jacket and Elmer Fudd hat are back behind the seat in the little farm truck. Julia is getting ready for the ride to the airport for her flight back to New York. This wasn't necessarily meant to be a shooting weekend, but that's how it turned out.

Next time we'll shoot rifles. She particularly likes the Springfield Armory SOCOM 16 battle rifle. That should be even more fun.

2011-03-31T10:11:00.000-07:00

For the last few days I've been angsting over .45s. I've got a couple, including a wretched Star and a pretty nice, but not completely reliable, Kimber Ultra Carry II.

Yesterday I went up into the Hills and shot the Kimber using various sorts of ammo and in fifty or so rounds experienced one fault. In about the fourth or fifth magazine, the slide locked back, probably because the ogive of a bullet in the magazine tripped the slide lock. I've since stoned that back a bit, changing the contour so a bullet won't touch it, but the mag follower will. So today I was back shooting the Kimber, both to check the functioning of the mod, and to chronograph the three types of ammo I've got lying around. But I had another fault, again on the fourth or fifth magazine. This time it looks like the bullet tip caught on the top boss aft of the chamber and when the slide tried to close it forced the rim of the cartridge back down into the magazine. That took a bit longer to clear. I'll eventually polish the top boss, melding it into the chamber. But I'm tired of fickle .45s.

So after deciding against a particularly gorgeous (and expensive) used Dan Wesson C-Bob, other officer-sized pistols, and a full-sized Kimber, I picked up this Springfield Armory GI Champion, effectively a parkerized Commander but with a slightly shorter bushing-less barrel, and with the bad old sights and the new-fangled compound recoil spring design. But it reminds me of the olden days, and the price was just fine.

The pistol came with one 7-round magazine, plastic holster and mag carrier, cleaning stuff and the very losable bitty clip that allows easy disassembly. I'll eventually get a couple more magazines, probably 8-round (Ed: Ordered ten Metalform 7-round blued flat-follower welded base mags.), and if I like the gun, maybe a leather holster. But first I've got to convince myself this thing's reliable. In my whole life, I don't think I've ever been issued or owned a reliable .45. Sometime this weekend or early next week, I'll go shoot up a few hundred rounds and see. If it works alright, then I can think about reloading for this caliber - I've been saving brass, but need dies and bullets. (Ed: Got the dies.)

Anyway, some stats:

Magtech 230 grain ball came out of the 3" barrel at 734 feet per second, with a standard deviation of 11 feet per second - very consistent, but muzzle energy of only 275 foot-pounds.

W-W 185 grain Silvertip from the '70s had a velocity of 825 fps, sd of 19 fps for muzzle energy of 279 f-p. Not impressive either.

Winchester 230 grain JHP "White Box" Personal Protection ammo had a mean velocity of 809.3 fps, sd of 10. Very consistent too, and with a muzzle energy of 334 f-p. This is relatively inexpensive for anything but ball ammo.

So ... new toy. I may have mentioned how I carried a Colt Commander back in the Marines. Back then "Commander" meant aluminum frame and shiny Colt bluing. The service pistols were all steel and Parkerized, though the Parkerizing was more patina and less finish on those old guns. I think my old Commander was the original Series 70, as well. This Springfield is what's currently called Series 70, as it doesn't have the firing pin lock that's common to most new 1911 pattern guns, but it also doesn't have any bushing, much less the collet one. In theory the lack of firing pin lock should make the trigger pull easier to tune, though I'll just settle for shooting it enough to smooth out the roughness.

More about the Springer as it ages...

2011-03-25T11:25:00.000-07:00

Found the Northwest Passage this morning. My personal Northwest Passage. There are a couple "main roads" in the area of the Hills I've been exploring, Boulder Hill Road and Beretta Road. The maps show some truck trails off those roads, and of course the several hiking trails in the area. But there's nothing shown connecting these two roads that generally parallel each other north of U.S. 16. One of the hiking trails does meander between the two, and it does overlap two-track truck trails in a few places. I'd gone looking for a crossing earlier, but generally had to turn back because of excessive snow or other impassabilities. Today though, in an adventurous mood, having negotiated a very primitive track to the top of a desolate and destroyed Bergmanesque hilltop, I figured a little snow wasn't going to prevent me from linking the Boulder Hill and Beretta roads.

Short story - the track leading up out of Johnson Gulch (beyond the end of Beretta Road) which was marked as a hiking trail, did lead to the livestock control gate I'd discovered a few days back from the other direction. Actually, the portion of the track I had not negotiated before was all of about 200 yards long and around an off-camber bend above a precipitous drop-off. Piece of cake!

After finding myself in a place I'd been before, I stopped to drink some coffee, take a leak and empty some junk .38 Special rounds through the Model 60. I was splashing lead off a rock about 30 yards out and walked over to take a closer look and recover the bullets to see how much they'd deformed, when this skull lying in the grass startled me. Put it on the rock and took the picture.

Forgot to look for the bullets. They certainly didn't even chip the Pre-Cambrian granite.

Strange observation. The .38 Special loads I shot up leaded the bore like crazy. With the same exact swaged bullet, .357 Magnum loads don't lead at all. Differences are the powder used, the pressures loaded to, and of course, case length. Somehow one or more of these allowed hot gasses to pass the sides of the bullet, melting some of the lead. The .38 uses Unique and the .357s use H110 or 2400. Similarly, now that I think about it, I use Unique in .44 Special and get some leading, and use 2400 in .44 Magnum and get none at all. It's a pity that I've got something like eight pounds of Unique, or I'd change to another powder to see if I could fix it.

2011-03-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

Been awhile since last post - interwebs have been down. Fixed now, obviously.

The El Paso Saddlery "Yaqui Slide" holster with fancy carving got here. This is it before re-dying dark brown to match my other carved leather. Nice job, though not up to the standards of the guy that carved my belt. The pattern pretty much matches - close enough that they could be a single rig. I'll make some pictures later, once I've solved the grip issue.

The S&W Model 60-15 came with laminated wood grips that were longer than the grip frame but worked very well for shooting. But this holster keeps the revolver vertical, so the longer butt became an issue when carrying under a coat and particularly, carrying under a shirt. So in the interim, I put on some rubber boot grips that came with one or the other of the 2" J-Frames. Actually, these work great for shooting too, but are downright ugly. So now I get to go grip shopping once again.

As the revolver itself is no beauty, there's no sense going overboard with ivory or stag or anything exotic. Wood will do. Dark brown wood boot grips, most likely those from Kim Ahrends. Soon as I get around to it I'll order a set direct from him. A few places carry them, but none carry his boot grips in cocobolo, the ones I think I've settled on. (Postscriptum: Ordered cocobolo Ahrends Boot grips with finger groove, unfinished.)

Back to the holster. I wore it on a couple of hikes in the Black Hills in the last few days. Though it has a vertical slot in the (holster) belt loop, ostensibly for letting one use a trousers belt loop to fix the position, I've found that unusable, but wearing the holster just aft of the right trouser seam works fine. It's out of the way and feels like there's nothing on the belt at all. The revolver is positioned a bit farther away from the body than the EP Saddlery "Street Combat," but it remains tight enough, completely stable, and concealable (though a shorter barrel would make a bit of difference).

Besides being vertical, another major difference between this and most other holsters I've owned is that a quarter inch of draw completely frees up the handgun, with nothing continuing to grip it at all. It's just right there in the hand right away. I didn't buy this for any kind of fast draw, but figure it would be as good as one could get if that were the intended purpose.

Bottom line is that the carving made it really expensive for a small piece of leather, but it functions as well or better than I'd hoped and seems to be the right thing to carry my little lion gun on the trail.

P.S. In addition to dying the leather dark brown, I've also re-blued the two screws used for adjusting tension, as they were a bit rusty and rubbed.

2011-03-11T12:58:00.000-08:00

So I was down at the gun shop today, picking up a plastic ammo box for all the reloads I'd done of stray and off-brand .44 Magnum brass that's accumulated over the last twenty years or so and a guy was looking at Taurus .22 revolvers. I wanted to mention that the one I had wasn't the slickest piece of machinery in the world, but as long as a salesman was talking to him I didn't want to sour the transaction. I paid for the box and went out to put it in the truck, then rethought it. If the guy wanted a Taurus .22 and I have one I don't want anymore, wouldn't letting him know the quality issues then offering it for sale be a good thing to do?

I went back in. The salesman was nowhere to be seen, so I mentioned to the guy who was still looking at revolvers through the glass that Taurus just weren't as good as S&W. But if he wanted one, I'd be delighted to sell him the one in the picture up top. So he followed me home and we talked. Former Marine CH-46 pilot, family man, good guy. I pulled the revolver out of the safe and showed it to him, pointing out in particular that the sight design was deficient and where I'd buggered up one of the windage screws, explained that I'd bought the thing new and had put at most 50 rounds through it, then took his check and gave him the gun.

Here in SoDak, face-to-face sales are still legal, unlike California. Nice that it's such a neat process. Anyway, I'd planned to take that and the Star .45 to the next gun show and free up some space in the safe. Gave him my guarantee that it would work or money back. Or I'd fix anything that might need fixing. And it's likely that we'll be out shooting together some time up at Beretta Road.

Even though I'm not a big fan of Taurus revolvers based only on this one example, it sure made a nice photograph.

2011-03-09T12:22:00.000-08:00

Last night I tossed and turned in bed, filled with doubts about Elmer. We all go through this, the questioning of received wisdom. Some eventually find their way back into His fold, while others, unrepentant, continue to question and to wander.

Me - I had to find out the Truth, and set upon this journey. This morning I dug out my second best .44 Magnum and took it, a couple of different handloads, targets and target stand and the chronograph up to Beretta Road to try to discern the beginnings of Truth. The beginning of Truth is that 20.0 grains of 2400 behind the Keith 250 grain cast semi-wadcutter exits my 4" barrel at about 1240 feet per second (fps) with a standard deviation of 19 fps. With 21.5 grains of the same the results are 1261 fps with a standard deviation of 21 fps.

Elmer's recommended load was 22.0 grains of 2400 with the same bullet, but I didn't have any of those handy. I will later today and will update this post in the next few days once they're measured.

Why the drama, Nelson? Well, I don't know. I guess I'd put the big .44s away because I didn't enjoy shooting them anymore. And I'd reloaded all my brass down to 20 grains because it hurt to shoot His loads. What I'm seeing here is that 22.0 grains shouldn't be all that much different from 20.0 grains and I committed heresy by loading down, thus betraying His will.

So, soon science will triumph and we will know the Truth.

Coupla comments: Loading manuals are all over on this Elmer Keith load, with some putting it well below the maximum and other a bit above recommended maximum. The older manuals think it's fine while the newer ones, probably after counseling by liability lawyers, think it's too hot. Next comment - those big old S&W 629s are slick! No leading at all with bare-naked cast bullets. Last comment - if I keep shooting the caliber, I'll eventually have to finish up the unfinished modifications I'd planned for this revolver. Grooving the heel of the backstrap is a fussy, time-consuming task when done with a triangular file. The ten grooves seem to be set at 35 lines per inch, so if I can find a checkering file of that grid, I may spring for it just to save a dozen hours of tedium.

Addendum: Shooting Elmer's sacred load this morning from my favorite 4" S&W .44 Magnum at 5000 feet elevation, about 40 degrees F, the mean velocity is 1295.5 feet per second with a standard deviation of 16.2 fps. That's a significant improvement over the 21.5 and 20 grain loads, both in velocity and consistency. How could I have doubted? I also shot up more of the 20 grainers, getting very divergent results. Now the task is to shoot out hundreds of those old 20 grain loads and refill them with 22.0 grains of 2400.

Commenting on Bill's latest comment, I too have heard that some powders changed a bit when location of the plants that make them were moved or new owners merged a powder with their existing counterparts. The only case that I followed was that of Unique, which after critical lab testing has been determined to not have changed a whit. I don't know for sure about 2400, but I'm still using up cans from the 1980s, so when I bust open the new plastic bottles, I'll do a little testing before making full up loads.

2011-03-07T14:00:00.001-08:00

It' a pretty good day here in Mount Woebegone. Snow's falling, but not too much, and it's cold, but not morbidly cold. And I've been out in The Black Hills shooting pretty much daily lately.

Loads have been finalized for the .357 Magnum S&W Model 60-15 (not shown), the sights on the Walther PPS have been drifted 0.016 inches to the right, putting bullet impact where the sights show it to be, and The Forkin Custom .44 Special remains effortless to shoot well and difficult to clean. Actually the barrel seems to have been polished enough not to capture much lead, but the cylinder throats are lead traps.

The target stand has shown no surprises and remains one of the best shooting accessories I've ever paid good money for, though I haven't actually shot the bases yet to check out that angle iron shielding. And it's still the number one diagnostic tool for anyone serious about shooting well, including me.

The Elmer Fudd coat. Yes. Last deer season I got a little nervous wearing a brown coat with other earth tones. Back then I bought an Elmer Fudd hat in this fire engine red and black plaid with fleece ear flappers. Haven't worn the hat much, but it's stuffed behind the truck's seat in case I get caught out in severe cold. But I thought it would be nice to have a bright red coat next deer season so I wouldn't be some idiot's idea of venison. Found this one in the right size in the inventory of "First Stop" gun shop priced some $50 below MSRP and dickered 'em down another $20, so I took it home. Got a few compliments on it today when I wore it out, but always followed by other comments about Elmer Fudd. And this without wearing the matching Elmer Fudd hat even. It's a Filson Double Macinaw and is warm, warm, warm. And pretty bright. Now it's hanging in the closet waiting for next deer season, or Christmas party, or possibly my impersonation of Mr. Fudd for some Halloween event.

2011-03-02T07:54:00.000-08:00

The legislatures of Arizona and Texas are both considering bills to allow the concealed carry of handguns on college campuses by those who are otherwise allowed to carry concealed. Utah already specifically allows this and several states' laws are silent on the subject.

I was in college from 1968-1972, back when North Dakota law was pretty lenient. Concealed carry was technically illegal, but tolerated. The issue back then was more about keeping firearms in dorm rooms, something most all men did - deer rifles and shotguns, mostly. I kept a deer rifle that was never used during my matriculation, a shotgun that was once in awhile, and several handguns, all legal, from the age of 18 to 21. I'm pretty sure there was no violent crime in North Dakota back then.

But now isn't then and things change. Permits are now required in all states except Alaska, Vermont ... and Arizona, to carry a concealed weapon. And herein is the main difference between Arizona's proposed law and Texas'. In Texas one would have to get the concealed carry permit, which requires a background check to ascertain no felonies, no violent misdemeanors, no history of mental disorder (yes, that's not something that can be determined with any certainty yet, and what a "mental disorder" is remains vague), be 21 years old and have taken a state-approved firearms training class. Arizona has a "constitutional carry" law, which allows anyone otherwise allowed to own a handgun to carry it concealed, provided he is 21. Considering that legal ownership is pretty much limited to those who have not been convicted of a felony or have a state-recognized mental disorder, the main differences are in the "violent misdemeanor" and training sections. And, of course, there's the overall question of whether a college campus is in any way different than any other piece of geography or society.

I'm a fan of training. Mostly because it gives someone who probably is qualified a chance to take a look at the student and see if he knows his way around the firearm, can safely handle it and effectively shoot it. I'm not sure that anyone should be disqualified from carrying because he isn't an expert shot, but anyone planning to take a class has motivation to get to know the equipment and has shown some motivation to learn, even if he brags about knowing it all to his friends before or after the class. The person seeking a permit has to actually do something to get it, not just drop a gun in his pocket and head out the door. Training, that that I've taken, has also included subtleties in state laws - they are all different, sometimes radically so. Here in South Dakota there is no training requirement, and it's one of my few gripes about the state laws on firearms.

I also think violent misdemeanors indicate a propensity toward (illegal) violence and should keep someone from being able to carry concealed. (Don't get me wrong - I do not think a propensity toward violence is bad in and of itself. It has it's place, particularly in the military. As Heinlein suggested in "Starship Troopers," perhaps the privilege of voting should be limited to those that have served, or, by extension, maybe licensing for concealed carry should be. That result would be a filtering for those who have shown through their actions that they will, when necessary, use violent means - the ultimate purpose of concealed carry in the first place. But I digress...)

Is a campus somehow different than society off campus? Nah - I'll disregard that argument as silly out of hand.

Back to Texas and Arizona. Texas, which doesn't allow open carry of handguns, limits all handgun carrying to concealed, then requires training to get a license. As a libertarian I should have philosophical objections to all of those things. Allowing carry on campus would be a bit of a roll-back of their paranoia. Arizona, which allows pretty much any citizen to do whatever he wants, should be a libertarian paradise, but it still makes me squeamish because in an open society the state makes no judgements about its citizens. OK, no objection to that part ... except ... lacking state oversight, there is no other system in place that does make those judgements. There is no effective societal judging to take its place. And libertarian or not, until a society can put effective pressure on its members to toe the cultural line, it must remain the role of government at some level to make such decisions. Maybe something as local as polling the neighbors by the mayor would be good enough - maybe better - but that isn't there to fill the state gov't vacuum. Yet. Call me a libertarian pragmatist.

So go for it Texas. Arizona, think about it a bit more. Utah - you seem to be doing pretty well.

2011-02-21T09:54:00.000-08:00

I'd planned to set this up and photograph it there, but the bases were pretty much buried in the snow, and the snow all churned up by my trudging back and forth to the truck while setting it up and taping on the target. So I used it first, then took a snapshot of it up out of the snow. This is the Target Meister Dirty Harry model I'd mentioned a few days ago.

There is no other way to become a good shot than by using paper targets. Cans and other targets of opportunity are fine, but nothing instills the discipline like a paper target. They don't lie. AND there's no other way to sight in a scope or adjustable sights that works nearly as well either. Of course, I know a lot of people who bring in their whitetails every year and have never shot at a formal target too, but a 70 or 150-yard chest shot doesn't really require all that much precision.

OK, you're looking at the holes up there and saying to yourselves, "Who is he to talk about precision?" Point taken - we'll get to those holes a bit later.

Back to the stand. It's made to use three pieces of 1x2 furring strip to space the bases and as uprights to hold the cardboard target backing. Using the width of the cardboard divider that came in the box with the bases, I inserted one of the strips and tightened down the hand screws that actually made the assembly pretty rigid. Those welded-on angle iron shields you can see in the next picture go forward and are intended to prevent damage to the base itself. The website cleverly implies that we would never shoot it there, but maybe our in-laws or less experienced shooting guests might.

So I carried that assembly out and set it at about 20 yards from the truck. Walked back to get a couple of furring strips that were cut to 6'. I'll eventually shorten those to 4' and trim the one that holds the bases as well, but thought a six foot high target would be a better way to judge stability. The vertical strips fit into a clever sort of self-clamping socket that keeps them from flopping about. This works very well, BTW. The verticals are broadside forward. I unfolded that cardboard divider that came with the stand and stapled it to the uprights, the broad face forward making stapling easy. I used half-inch staples, but some a bit longer might feel more secure.

Then a standard rifle target was taped to the cardboard and I tromped back to the truck and pulled out the S&W Model 60 3" that I'd had some trouble sighting in with the heavy handloads. The ten holes covered by green tape up there were from that revolver. I flinched badly on the first shot and called #7 and #10 out, but the rest were tight in the 10-ring. This was offhand, single action, so the revolver shoots true, leaving where it hits up to the one doing the pointing. Obviously, I need to work on that flinch. The untaped holes were a magazine load +1 from the Walther PPS, and it continues to shoot left and high. I haven't been able to drift the rear sight to the right at all, but for a CCW gun this is good enough.

Now back to the Dirty Harry stand. It's well-made and has a couple of very nice features. I wish it were a bit heavier, but there are some ways to make it stable in the wind (there was no wind at all today). Stakes and sandbags are obvious. The 30" (as opposed to 18" on most stands) bases are hollow and capped. Fill 'em with shot? With sand? (One third of the readership recommended 30" lengths of bar stock. Easiest and best idea yet.) Shorten the uprights to 4' for sure and maybe narrow the cardboard to just fit the targets I have to make less of a sail. In all I think this is a well thought out, nicely designed and manufactured target stand, and while it's expensive compared to most, the stability and features make it head and shoulders better than any of the others I found available online.

If I were designing for wind-swept prairie however, I'd make it gawdawful heavy. Personally I'd consider using old railroad track for the base, though that would sorta limit portability.

2011-02-20T10:35:00.000-08:00

Best available image, sorry.

Back from 1977 to 1981 I was the Projects Officer of the Amphibian Vehicle Test Branch at Camp Pendleton. The primary job was developmental and operational test and evaluation of the next generation of Assault Amphibian Vehicle (AAV), then called Amphibian Tractors (or AmTracs). Secondary tasks included specific off-road testing of wheeled and tracked vehicles in use or considered for use by the Marine Corps. My key reference was "Off-the-Road Locomotion" by M.G. Bekker, long out of print but listed used at Amazon for $110. Long ago this book disproved many things still taken as gospel by those who venture off pavement.

That picture up top is me driving a Suzuki Samurai I'd built specifically for competitive southwest desert rock climbing while maintaining decent on-road characteristics. I won't get into the details, but not much beyond the body and frame of that truck remained stock, and the body was also minimized.

Back when I decided I'd end up in snow country again I went shopping for my first four-wheeled vehicle in several years (only motorcycles for the previous four or five years). The requirements were complex. First, it had to be able to carry any of my motorcycles (a particular breakdown of one of the bikes actually triggered the purchase of a truck); it couldn't stand out as anything special in urban Southern California; it had to have some off-road capability, and: it had to handle snow.

There is nothing more ubiquitous than a Ford Ranger. As far as I know there is no smaller pickup that can carry a large motorcycle either. But anything with an independent suspension, front or rear, will be limited in where it can go off road, and all Rangers since the '70s have independent front suspensions. There are two versions though, one with coil springs and one with torsion bars. The torsion bar one is standard on 4x4 models and has a higher gross axle rating, and more importantly, is adjustable for height. Lifting the front of a Ranger with the torsion bar suspension is a matter of turning two screws. (Similarly, lowering the front to match the height of a loaded-down rear is easy.)

Now for snow mobility, one wants a longer wheelbase. This length provides the momentum to avoid some sideways drift and specifically spinouts. But longer also means more awkward when parking, maneuvering and other routine driving requiring some nimbleness. There are short wheel base supercab trucks with shorter boxes, but then we're back to the motorcycle issue. So I decided on a standard cab Ford Ranger - whichever 4x4 standard cab I could get a deal on.

I found a white one with the 3.0L V6, which had a good reputation, in low mileage but abused condition. Bought it, fixed as much of the abuse as I could and have been driving it ever since. There have been some problems that make me question just how good that 3.0L Vulcan engine is, but I won't get into that.

Now one of the most embarrassing situations I've ever been in was when I got stuck on a damp grass backyard with my 1995 Ford Bronco. Even with pretty aggressive tires. How can this happen, you ask. Easily enough - two opposite wheels end up on high spots and the two that hang down have no weight on them, thus no traction. So they spin. They are are allowed to take all the torque because the differentials are "open," meaning no torque goes to a wheel with traction if the opposite wheel can spin freely. The solution to this is to either have limited slip differentials or locked differentials.

But limited slip or lockers on snow are a sure way to the ditch. On a very slippery road it's good to allow one wheel without traction to spin leaving the one with traction to maintain the direction of the vehicle. If the wheels are made to turn at the same speed, then, in particular, the rear will simply lose contact with the road and gravity will take the rear of the vehicle and slide it off the crown of the blacktop and into the ditch. So the right answer to the threat of being stuck by high-centering in someone's back yard is a part time locker - one that can be turned on for positive control of each wheel or off for normal street and slippery condition driving. I had an Eaton E-Locker installed in the rear diff and can turn it on or off from the driver's seat. There is such a thing as overkill, so as this is not going to be a dedicated off-road truck ever, I've left the front open diff alone.

When I first got the little farm truck it had crap tires on it. Having just spent a bunch on the truck and being a little cautious I bought a set of five off-brand semi-off-road tires for it. They worked fine. Actually they weren't off-brand, but Cooper. Sixty thousand miles later I was starting to prepare for the move to snow country. So, new tires. There are a lot of excellent purpose-made snow tires, but they shouldn't be used in summer. Wider is not better for snow, but may be for other non-standard conditions. And there are loads of aggressive tread designs, but aggressive treads aren't a good indication of performance in snow either. Rubber compound is actually more important. Use of less carbon and more silicone rubber has greatly improved rubber adhesion in the last several decades. And tire ratings are public and searchable. The best necessarily cost twice what second best cost, so I ended up buying Goodyear Wrangler Silent Armor tires for all five locations. Not the most aggressive, not oversized, not the best rubber compound, but it looked like a decent compromise between tires I could use year around and tires to get me out for coffee in the six inches of unplowed snow outside this morning. And it seems now like it worked out well.

A few other mods I've made to the little farm truck specifically for this climate include: Optima battery (if the military specifies them, they're probably the best), engine block heater (keeps the engine toasty at night - the heater started putting out a block after starting the car when this was plugged in), and a tool box for the bed that carries around jumper cables, tire chains, tow strap, small shovel, receiver hitch ball, lug wrench, and various tools and spare parts. it also adds weight to the corner opposite the driver.

So that's what I'm driving now, not the Sami up top. The Ranger isn't perfect. Longer would be more stable in a straight line, solid front axle would be better off-road, Blizzak tires would be better for snow, crew cab would let me carry more stuff inside rather than in the box and red would probably be more noticeable on heavy snow days like today. But it works well enough.

Up top, the picture was taken by another guy in the San Diego Four Wheelers club. No one from the club would go down that particular hill. Going up was easy. I was showing off and was snapped just when the biggest risk of a forward roll-over was coming up. Front and rear diffs were locked and as I went down into that hole I had to accelerate rather than brake to avoid the roll-over. Counter-intuitive to the max. I didn't roll, but came bobbling down anti-climactically. Still, no one would follow in a Jeep.

2011-02-17T10:59:00.000-08:00

No picture today. Just got back from a road trip to Minnesota, where I managed to place a couple of special revolvers with a niece and nephew. My own kids aren't interested, but I didn't want these to end up at an estate auction eventually, so when these kids seemed happy at the prospect, it made me happy too. I'll also give my sister a redundant S&W Airweight .38 snubby, as she runs a lot in the countryside and said she'd feel better carrying something. It's great to be back among people who aren't hung up about guns one way or the other.

Drove up to the Borders Books and Music store this morning for coffee. It's one that's not on the closure list (though the Gaslamp Borders back in San Diego IS on that list) and opened up a guns website and found the local dealer had two very interesting pistols listed.

One was the Automag II, a .22 Magnum autoloader that had some interesting ideas in the design. This is a standard single-action automatic, but with a dimpled chamber to allow brass to flow a bit and keep the case stuck to it until pressure subsides, the brass contracts, the case can be extracted and the rest of the blow-back cycle continues. They had a pretty good reliability reputation back in the day, provided only Winchester ammo was used. Back in San Diego I'd bought a Grendel 30 .22 Magnum pistol once and couldn't ever get it to function. I took it back to the shop, slammed it onto their counter and got my money back. Kel-Tec has resurrected the old Grendel design and is producing a high-capacity .22 Magnum now, but I haven't yet seen one and am pretty sure I won't be interested anyway. The Automag II was already sold, so I looked at ...

...a Walther TPH. Back when I first got married I gave my blushing bride a wondrous old Walther PPK in .22 LR. It was one of the few pre-war ones I'd seen, had deep lustrous bluing and the typical brown plastic grips. While that one eventually was stolen from one of our cars, I've always had a thing for the little pistols that Bond, James Bond, made so famous. When I saw the TPH, an even smaller .22, listed, I couldn't tell if it was an earlier German-made one or one of those built on contract by Interarms. Turns out it was the latter, but it was still a nice pistol. It was stainless, and it's entirely possible that none of the German ones were even made in stainless, but my memory for that sort of trivia is limited. Anyway, looked but didn't buy.

I put an order in for what appears to be a very durable and stable target stand. Nothing locally available could take the wind and/or frozen ground, but the Target Meister Dirty Harry model looks great with it's 30" base as opposed to the 18" bases seen on all others of the type I could find online. This should arrive tomorrow, so once I've rounded up some furring strips and cardboard I'll take it up, shoot at it and write a review. The wind outside is near 30mph as I type, and isn't expected to subside soon. Even with the broad base it may take sandbags or big-ass nails for stakes to keep it in place. We'll see.

2011-01-26T13:06:00.000-08:00

A couple posts back I said, "Total energy-wise, it would be too close to call when comparing a .357 Magnum J-Frame to the Walther." Today, quite unexpectedly, I bought a J-Frame .357 Magnum, which allowed me to test that statement out.

The revolver is a Smith & Wesson Model 60-15 "Pro Series" with the 3" barrel. It carries five .357 Magnum rounds and weighs about 22 ounces, virtually the same as the Walther PPS. It is longer than PPS and a smidgen less concealable, though my thoughts on this one were that it would make a perfect back-packing and hiking handgun in lion country. Yes, more with the lions - a friend in Hill City woke to find one on his driveway last week.

Anyway, after taking the revolver home I decided not to use the swaged bullets that I generally use for .38 Special, but couldn't find any readily available 148 or 158-grain jacketed hollow point bullets, so I bought a couple boxes of PMC 158-grain jacketed soft point cartridges. They were on sale. After setting up the target and chronograph, ten rounds gave me an average velocity of 1084 fps, with a standard deviation of 40 fps. Average energy was 412 foot-pounds.

The PPS, loaded with Black Hills 115-grain EXP (extra power) JHP produced an average velocity of 1203 fps with an sd of 12 fps. Average energy was 369 foot-pounds.

(For comparison, I also shot up some old Uzi Israeli-made 115 -grain JSP ammo and got an average of 1151 fps, sd of 18 fps, with an average energy of 338 foot-pounds.)

So, let's see. With the seven available rounds of 9mm in the PPS I've got 7x369=2583 foot-pounds total in the pistol, and with five of .357 Magnum there's 5x412=2060 in the revolver. The Walther wins!

(There's a lot of fuss on the web about energy vs. momentum. Energy isn't really "foot-pounds" but more like "pound-feet squared per second squared." I've shortened that to the common usage. If we're talking momentum, the .357 produces 24 foot-pounds vs. the 9mm's 19 giving handgun total capacity numbers of 120 and 133 - the Walther still wins!. And for those who put faith in the Taylor Knock Down scale, they're 8 and 7 respectively, yielding sums of 40 and 49. Yep, the Walther wins that one too.)

Once I've started loading for this revolver, I'll let you know if there have been any improvements in the performance. I expect the PMC ammo was discounted for a reason.

The M60 shoots well and doesn't hurt too bad. As mentioned below I'd been considering a lightweight J-Frame .357, but the full stainless steel frame of this one does a lot to reduce recoil. The grip shape helps as well - I'll probably leave these alone. As usual the tiny J-Frame adjustable sights were tough for my old eyes to focus on. The group is slightly left, as that's where the light was coming from. I suspect in the evening at that place the group would be to the right. It cleaned up slick - stainless lets one use all the tricks, like Lead Away cloth.

I expect to be packing this one on the trail this Spring. Lions, you know.

Maybe I'll just carry a .44 Magnum...

Addendum - After working through a few loads using those swaged bullets I said I wasn't going to use, there's one that looks pretty consistent and a bit hotter than the PMC mentioned above. Using some Speer swaged 158 grainers and 16.2 grains of H110 powder, average velocity from the three-inch barrel is 1172 feet per second, with a standard deviation of 14 fps. Energy comes out to be 481 foot-pounds and total in the revolver is 5x481=2405. There are no signs of excessive pressure. The max load with this powder/bullet combination is shown in one reloading manual as 16.7 grains (others show 14 and 16.3), so I do have a bit more experimenting to go still. I'll load up five each at 16.4, 16.6 and 16.8, but will toss any loads left over if primers are flattened or the brass bases expand beyond elastic limits. Oh yes - this revolver has pretty much now ceased to be fun to shoot.

More addenda - The hotter loads had awfully wide standard deviations and didn't really add much velocity. I suspect that as H110 was originally developed for the .30 Carbine with a 16" barrel, I've reached the point (about 16.2 grains) where more powder is wasted, burning after the bullet has already exited the muzzle. There are probably better short-barrel powder choices like Unique or even 2400, but I've got this orphan can of H110 and decided to use it up. Still, that may take awhile because this isn't a revolver to shoot for the sheer pleasure of it. Maybe in a later post I'll talk about my irrational and morbid fear of mountain lions. And rattlesnakes.

Even more addenda. Found some 180-grain jacketed hollow point bullets, so will start again testing loads. Still using H110 powder. More when I have chrono data.

So it's Tuesday and ten degrees below zero, but it seemed like a good idea to go test some loads. Using those 180-grain JHP bullets, the top load of 12.8 grains of H110 powder yielded an average velocity of 956 feet per second. The standard deviation was pretty wide, but it was wide on all the test loads. I think the low temperature not only kept the velocity down, but probably kept the burn rate down to the point that there was more of that unburned powder. I'm reaching here - I do know the ammo and revolver were warm on starting, but even with all the shooting, cooled down during the test. Next thing is to do some more loads with this 12.8 grain one as the baseline and a few slightly hotter loads and shoot them when it warms up a bit so the data isn't skewed.

Wednesday now. 14.0 grains of H110 looks pretty good with a mean velocity of the 180-grain bullet of 967 fps, sd of 22 fps. Beyond this there be monsters. Tomorrow I'll be testing some loads using Hercules 2400. H110 is a spherical powder and depends on being under pressure to burn continuously. With a cylinder gap and only a three-inch barrel I think it may be the wrong choice. We'll see how 2400 behaves, and if it doesn't work well move on to the very fast-burning Unique - the stuff I use for .44 Special.

Thursday. 12.4 grains of 2400 behind the big 180 grain JHP yields an average velocity of 1028.2 fps with a standard deviation of 18.5 fps. This is decent for a 3" barrel. Tiniest bit of cratering on one of the five primers, but no case base expansion or extraction difficulties. Unless the muse calls again, I think I'm done with load testing for the .357 Magnum.

2011-01-11T12:58:00.000-08:00

The Walther's six-round magazine was delivered just now by the big brown truck. It makes a difference on the hip. Two differences. First, the toe of the butt, the part that prints first when there's a forward cant to the holster, is reduced significantly. Second, it weighs less. Or feels like it does. Maybe it all gets back to the toe being smaller and the pistol less psychologically there.

So here's a picture comparing the Walther PPS in my homemade holster (an El Paso Saddlery "Street Combat" is on order) and the S&W M442 (with "Street Combat" holster) that's been my primary first choice lately. I tried hard not to let perspective exaggerate anything. The stern of the PPS' slide is bulkier, obviously. And the muzzle is as well. So is the bottom of the butt. Overall length is about the same. The PPS is thinner than the J-Frame's cylinder, though the irregular shape of a cylinder camouflages well when tucked against the love handles. With the shorter magazine in the PPS, each pretty much disappears under the sweater I'm wearing now.

Performance-wise, seven rounds of 9mm flat-out beats five rounds of .38 Special, whether both are standard pressure or +P loads. (Total energy-wise, it would be too close to call when comparing a .357 Magnum J-Frame to the Walther.) Also performance-wise, that long sight radius on the PPS beats out the primitive fixed sights on the revolver and in my opinion would also beat out adjustable white dot sights with the short radius. And while the additional mass of the auto (21.3 ounces vs. 15 ounces for the M442, both empty) is a slight disadvantage for carrying, it makes the pistol stable for follow-up shots.

Today's bottom line (and this could change tomorrow) is that as a concealed carry handgun, the Walther PPS is a performance upgrade from the .38 Special J-Frame S&W, at a negligible cost in concealability. The exception might be when one wants to stuff a gun into a front pants pocket. With the Walther, Mae West might think you're really happy to see her.

2011-01-08T12:35:00.000-08:00

Something very new. Everything I've posted here has always been about traditional actions. I suspect none of the guns shown here before would have raised eyebrows in 1945. Traditional values - that's what I like. Well, now I'm starting to catch up to the rest of the world.

Bear with me now, because I'm not familiar with the terms used. This Walther PPS (Police Pistol Slim, in English) is a 9mm Luger handgun with a single stack magazine, striker fired and with the Glock-type trigger. This means that either chambering a round manually, or feeding one during shooting leaves the striker half-cocked. With the striker half-cocked already, the work that the trigger itself does during firing is to cam the striker the rest of the way and release it. The resulting trigger pull is short and sweet relative to normal double action pistols or revolvers. The specs say 6.5 pounds, though it feels lighter. You can't see it here, but the trigger itself has a central locking feature that prevents it from moving unless deliberately pulled. I believe Glock invented this, but most modern plastic handguns are using it, as is Savage on their rifles.

You can go find the specs on this elsewhere, so I won't get into them here. The backstory is that, as a S&W J-Frame enthusiast, I was looking for a bit more firepower to carry under a Hawaiian shirt next summer. Yes, wishful thinking given the current snow. Naturally the M&P 340 and 340 PD models became the primary candidates to replace the Model 442, my current most frequent daily carry. But man are they expensive, and when you come down to it, five shots is five shots, whether .357 Magnum or .38 Special +P. The PPS has fascinated me since I became aware of them. Part of that fascination was because they are unobtainable in California, and part is because they were designed to be really slim. I expect Walther/S&W didn't want to sacrifice several handguns for testing either because they didn't expect this to be a big seller, or because the striker system may not meet California drop standards. Either way, one finds what one cannot have to be most attractive. Slim is good too. Less than an inch thick except across the slide release, where it measures something like 1.04 inches.

So when I saw this under the glass at a gun shop I had the salesman haul it out. And put it back. And haul it out again. All over several days. The PPS is also made in .40 S&W, a marginally better though more expensive cartridge. But I had some 9mm ammo, as I'd dragged it around since selling my last Nine around 1984. The 9mm version of the PPS also holds one more round than the .40 in each of the three magazine lengths available. (The magazine shown here is the medium length and holds seven rounds of 9mm. A short 6-round magazine is on order - it conceals a bit better.) Anyway, I dragged out the wallet and bought it, plus some white box Winchester and cheap Remington ball ammo and some semi-hot Black Hills JHP stuff. Didn't go home. Nope - straight up into the Hills to see if it would shoot.

It shoots. Seems to hit the same place with 115 standard and semi-hot, and with 124 grain bullets. Anyway, discarded shards of clay pigeon were shattered about half the time at around 25 yards. The three-dot sights have a lot to do with that, assisting my old eyeballs. Shot a hundred rounds with no problems at all, even though one of the Remington rounds was noticeably weak. Actually, I think this is the easiest centerfire handgun to hit with that I've ever used, with the possible exception of my Kimber Ultra Carry II and some other 1911s.

Took it home, cleaned it up (it field strips easily) and built the holster. So I've been wearing it.

Some notes on carrying the PPS: While overall length, height and thickness are comparable to or better than a J-Frame S&W, it doesn't carry as neatly. The muzzle and butt are fat. The problem with a strong side carry on the hip or back is mostly in bending over. A large butt (the handgun's, not mine) will print through or make a tent of the clothing worn over it. With a J-Frame, one can skinny down the butt to minimize that, but you can't do that with this pistol. You CAN get a significantly smaller magazine though, shortening the butt by about half an inch. In making this holster, a blatant ripoff of the El Paso Saddlery "Street Combat" model, I left it unlined and used thin cowhide. The jury's not in yet - we'll see if it loosens up or stretches out any. I generally carry one speed loader when packing a revolver. Carrying a spare magazine for this won't be quite as neat. The magazine floor plates are just bizarre with an overhanging plastic lug that marries up to the back strap. Unless I can cut that off one magazine in order to neatly carry it around, I'll go without.

Now personally, this sort of action still spooks me. While I'm perfectly comfortable with the long double action pull of a J-Frame, handling this piece with its short, light pull and no other (obvious) safety gives me the willies. I'll probably get over that - hopefully before I put a hole in a wall or something.

Oh, it's also ugly. Try as I might, I can't find anything pretty about this pistol. No wood, no blued steel, no organic shape, nothing. Good thing it'll be carried concealed then, as that seems to be the best place for it. Out of sight.

2010-12-26T19:31:00.000-08:00

These can be fun. I wanted something to shoot at that wouldn't leave a mess and would tell me if I hit it. Picked this up at Cabelas, having forgotten that in December the ground around here is two Mohs points harder than synthetic sapphire. It took a trip out to shoot to figure that out though. It kept falling over when not stomped into the ground.

So I found a 2x4 in the garage, cut it up and augered some half-inch holes into it and pounded the steel legs in place.

It's still marginal. It's rated for 9mm and .30-06. If you think about it, that doesn't mean anything. I suppose there are a few rifle rounds that are hotter and could cause damage, but there can't be any handgun rounds hotter than .30-06. Anyway, it's great for .22 Magnum, but moves around some when hit with the hot .44 Special. Better than having to stand it back up every round.

Most of that lead splash is from the S&W Model 351 .22 Magnum with the 1 7/8" barrel. Most was made from about 10-15 yards shooting double action. I cut the hammer spur off that revolver, but it can be used single action if one is so inclined. I suppose I should include the dimensions of the two discs, but I don't want to go out to the truck in my stocking feet and measure them. I suppose I could also mention how many rounds it took to splash that much lead, but that would merely embarrass me.

It's a fun toy.

2010-12-20T11:29:00.000-08:00

"Good Friends, Good Guns, Good Whiskey" was actually the first of two books made up of his magazine articles and sold after his death for the benefit of his family. The review two posts down of "Hoglegs..." applies to this book as well as they're more or less two volumes of the same type of material.

Wonderful warm material. Stories for the fireplace on a cold day or for sitting by the campfire just before bedding down to fart out all those beans and jalapenos Skeeter made that you just scarfed down. Many stories are repeated from differing perspectives, sometimes with details changed. One time he pulled his issue 1921A1 Thompson submachine gun from the trunk and in another description of the same incident it was a Model 12 riot gun. Each makes a good story and neither is critical to the plot. What impresses me is his fascination with the hardware and the history behind it. What startles me sometimes is that things I've been doing forever seem to have been at the advice of Mr. Skelton back when I was a youngster. Not just .44 loads, but how I make my own Alox/beeswax bullet lube and, as I mentioned in the last post, the use of skirting leather for holsters. No one uses skirting leather these days - too expensive and too hard to work with. Skeeter did and I did too, probably because Skeeter mentioned it in a column I read a long time back.

Maybe one should question whether all these stories are true. I don't. Some of them are obviously very close to true. Some in this book, specifically his "Jug Johnson" stories are compiled of the foibles of many of his devoted fans into the single persona of Jug, the stereotypical pest. But true or not, or "based on true stories" or whatever, they are good yarns, worthy of reading. It would be better to hear them told by Skeeter himself I think.

Don't get me wrong - this isn't hero worship. Skeeter Skelton by his own telling was far from a hero. But he told good stories.

Afternote: I've ordered an old copy of a Col. Charles Askins book, "Texans, Guns and History," and should be getting it soon. Askins was another writer I used to like. He actually wrote a bunch of books and if this one's readable I may see which others of his I can dig up.

2010-12-17T09:35:00.000-08:00

Now this is a great holster! I'm a fan.

El Paso Saddlery is best known for continuing the line of the old S.D. Myres holsters, outfitters of the real old west. Currently they sell a lot to cowboy shooters and such. But they also carry a line of leather military, law enforcement and other modern holsters. Their famous "Tom Threepersons" holster is a huge favorite of hunters and rural law enforcement when used with the EPS river belt. (Quality of the Threepersons holster and river belt are outstanding, in fact thick and durable enough to be passed down for a few generations. An interesting sidelight here would be to google "Tom Threepersons" to see why he gets a holster named after him.) But my favorite, based on a single purchase a few years back, is their "Street Combat" holster.

I have a shitpot full of holsters. Some are good, some are trash. Eventually the trash gets tossed and the ones that work stick. My first was a Hunter holster for the bitty Ruger Bearcat. Still have it. It's a cheap holster made of oiled leather (not usually desirable) and it lets the little revolver move around too much. But it's got a strap that keeps it from actually falling out. Forty-four years later, it's still with me.

When I could afford better guns and better leather I bought a Jordan rig from Don Hume leather. They don't make that one anymore, but it fit my S&W Model 19 and I sometimes wore it while on duty in the Marines (with the permission of the CO). It went with the revolver when that was traded off. The Marines issued me both the standard flap holster for the pistol belt and, because I was an Armor officer, a tanker rig for the issue 1911A1 service pistol. Both worked and there's a lot to be said for mil-spec manufacturing. Copies I've seen have all been inferior.

I've built some holsters myself using skirting leather, and they're as durable and functional as can be, but are meant to be worn openly. Concealed carry requires different design and different qualities, so for the most part I've left it to the professionals. I've tried a bunch of ways to carry and holsters to do the carrying and now I think, at least for the winter, I've settled on one pattern and maker.

This is the "Street Combat" holster by El Paso. As I mentioned and have shown somewhere down below, I've used the pattern to carry J-Frame S&W revolvers for quite awhile now. With those bitty guns a Hawaiian shirt or t-shirt will completely cover and conceal the handgun. The one shown here, for the larger N-Frame revolver can't possibly be as unnoticeable. Duh.

But it works under a mackinaw just fine and I'd guess a longish sweatshirt would do it too. Where the smaller revolvers can be carried farther back on the hip, this one must be carried right over the hipbone. That's to keep the butt from printing through when crouching or bending. This butt is thinned about as much as practical, but it's still long enough to be a concern. Riding on the hip bone sounds painful, but it isn't at all. The holster molds to the body as much as to the gun and here the cylinder is right over the belt, which is just above the hipbone, so it feels exactly right. I've done a bit of walking with it now and it's not only the least visible way to carry the large revolver, but the most comfortable I've found. (I'm not sure that the same holster with a longer heavy barreled revolver would work as well.)

I didn't show a picture of the modified Crosshair holster mounted on the belt in this post (you can see it down below a few posts), but this one rides a bit lower. The bottom edge of the holster is a smidge lower than the top of the back pocket of the trousers, though worn forward so it doesn't interfere with getting out the wallet. Riding lower also means it doesn't want to lean out away from the body as readily. Now I've only had this one for a day, having previously received and returned it to get the length correct, but I expect this will become the daily walk around rig. I'll be sure to let you know if it doesn't meet my admittedly high expectations.

Belt notes: The belt is by a local maker named Wes Mastic. His carving is astoundingly good and not undervalued. I specified the width to be 1.5" and he got that right. What he got wrong were the original color and the method of mounting the buckle. I wanted dark brown, as in the picture, to work with some dark brown boots. He made it more or less natural to better show off his carving. My color choice doesn't do that as well but dammit, I'm the customer! I deglazed and re-dyed it myself. Second, as most belts Wes makes end up with trophy buckles, he uses snaps to hold the buckle. I use a standard plain brass buckle and leather keeper and intended it to carry a heavy revolver, so I needed more strength in tension rather than just in shear and had to replace the snaps with screw posts. I'm sure he would have built it with screw posts if I'd specified such. Color is still a contention. He also made a black one for me of the same dimensions but with basket weave stamping. I wear whichever matches my bottes du jour.

2010-12-15T12:05:00.000-08:00

Hoglegs, Hipshots & Jalapenos by Skeeter Skelton is sitting next to the library chair today. I started re-re-reading it a few days back after having fun with the .44 snubby. This is a collection of his magazine articles - Skeeter was near the top of my favorites list back when I soaked up gun magazines like other college students did coffee.

So this is a trip back in time. Reading the columns I find the origin of a lot of my personal preferences and tastes in firearms. In fact, almost anything you prefer will be confirmed by Ol' Skeeter. Like most humans, he is terribly inconsistent. Like fewer, he doesn't seem to care about reconciling the inconsistencies. In one article he complains about a .38 Special bullet bouncing off a prickly pear leaf. In another he brags about the number of one-inch pine boards it penetrates. He's the very model of the modern gun aficionado. This is best for that and the other is best for something else.

But overall, he likes revolvers, and overall, mostly Smith & Wesson revolvers. He likes the magnums, but sees them as mostly for hunting. He likes traditional calibers, but points out their shortcomings. And he does all this with the folksy good humor of the kind of guy you'd like to share a bottle of bourbon with after a cold day outside.

Personally Skelton wasn't completely successful. He skipped around from job to job a lot, though some of them were interesting work. He was the sheriff in Amarillo for awhile. And a deputy sheriff in Deaf Smith County, Texas, one of the more interestingly named counties. Border Patrol officer and DEA agent too. But also various menial jobs and an undercurrent of not quite getting how it's all supposed to work. A bit of gun myopia then. He died over twenty years ago, but his columns continue to entertain. And to confirm whatever closely held beliefs one might have about handguns.

2010-12-13T10:54:00.001-08:00

Those slightly hotter .44 Special loads I mentioned yesterday? I took some out to chronograph this morning. With one error message and eleven valid readings, the velocity of the 248 grain Keith bullet pushed by 8.0 grains of Hercules Unique came in at 913.0 feet per second mean, with a standard deviation of 11.4 feet per second. This is out of the three-inch Smith & Wesson Model 24-3. I'd estimate that out of either the four-inch Smith or the three-and-five-eighths-inch Forkin Blackhawk the velocity would be around 980 feet per second.

Muzzle energy of the round averages 459 foot pounds from the three-incher. Easily beaten by the .357 Magnum, but with bigger bores it's not all about energy. Among other things, it's about fun shooting and bigger holes. The snubby snaps more with this load, but doesn't punish the hand at all and is completely controllable. I know that these three .44 Specials could all take more, but I think if I want more power I'll just shoot one of the .44 Magnums.

After packing the chronograph up, I drove around a bit and found some truck tracks leading toward the summit of Boulder Hill. They didn't go all the way up of course, but one track ended in a loop and I parked to go sit on a rock and contemplate my navel. Or the universe. Same thing...

Tiring quickly of that pursuit I was going to leave - a first-gear, low-range, four-wheel-drive venture - but noticed a footpath leading toward the rocks. So I pulled my hi-tek walking stick from the box and climbed to the summit. OK, walked to the summit. Some treacherous footing, some vertigo moments, but this is what one can see from up there. Part of what one can see. On the other side one can see Highway 16 going down into Rapid. Can't actually see much of Rapid City itself though as it's masked by the Hills. This being South Dakota, I'm pretty sure I could see North Dakota from up there if I squinted hard enough.

The pix were made with the iPhone. The phone seems to do some sharpening internally, so my final products seem to look over-sharpened. Still, it's the camera I had with, so this is what I show.

2010-12-12T12:22:00.000-08:00

As I'd been promising for awhile, chronograph results are in for the Skeeter Skelton .44 Special load. That load is 7.5 grains of Unique powder behind a 245 grain (or 250 depending on who you ask - mine actually weigh in at 248 grains) Lyman 429421 bullet sized to .430.

It was about 30 F this morning at an elevation of about 4500 feet. Sky was blue with no noticeable wind. All ammo was loaded in July of this year with mixed brass and standard large pistol primers. The chronograph was about 15 feet from the muzzles.

From the S&W Model 21-4 with 4" barrel the mean velocity of one cylinder of six shots was 900.5 fps with a standard deviation (sd) of 20.8 fps.

From the Forkin Custom Ruger Blackhawk with a 3 5/8" barrel, the first cylinder produced a mean of 892.2 fps with sd of 22.8 fps. The second cylinder showed a mean of 918.1 and sd of 18.0.

The S&W Model 24-3 with 3" barrel produced a mean with the first cylinder of 838.9, sd of 30.8 and with the second, 843.2, sd 14.5.

The older loading manuals, the ones that always seem to work best, predict a velocity of about 900 fps with this load. This presumes a 4" barrel in manuals that even mention barrel length. Given that the low temperature would slow it down a bit and the high elevation would speed it up, it looks like the manuals are right on.

The S&W 4" and Ruger 3 5/8" show about the same results given the small sample size. It could be that Forkin's tight chambers make up for the slightly shorter barrel. Or it could just be the nature of the small sample size. Whatever - good enough.

The S&W 3" showed about a 60 fps velocity loss with the inch shorter barrel. Rule of thumb on this is about 50 fps of loss per inch of (handgun) barrel, so that too is on the money.

No signs of excessive pressure and all three of these revolvers are robust enough to take a hotter loading. My favorite old manual says that up to 9 grains of Unique can be used behind this bullet, but it doesn't specify overall cartridge length, so maybe a step up from 7.5 grains to 8 grains is in order. The brass from today's shoot is tumbling right now, so I'll load fifty of those up with 8 grains, see what the velocities look like and let you know in the next few days.

That chronograph is very portable, but a real hassle to set up. It will give error readings if things aren't received perfectly, so the data above ignores the two error readings I had this morning. It's not terribly important to know handgun velocities, much less sd's, but for rifle shooting, particularly at long ranges, it's important to know velocities in order to predict external ballistics and sd in order to determine most consistent loads.

2010-12-10T16:43:00.000-08:00

Anyone know what kind of bird lost this feather? Turkey? Seemed sort of pretty, so I snapped the picture. This was up on the short Boulder Hill Trail in the Hills. Just after finding this I stepped over an unmolested but dead field mouse, so I figure it might be from a predator that decided to leave until I passed by.

This morning I went up to scout out some of the trail heads and maybe take a short walk. The Black Hills is a huge place, so I was sorta keeping it to between Rapid City and Hill City north and west of Highway 16.

This is a bit of the Spring Creek Loop Trail. I thought it was the Boulder Hill Trail, but didn't have my map or compass handy. Figured it out, turned back and started up Boulder Hill only to tucker out. This is around 5000 feet elevation, a couple thousand above where I live now and all of 5000 above where I've lived for the last four decades. I may go back up tomorrow, weather permitting. It's been exceptionally warm here lately - in the 50' in Rapid and probably the 40's in the Hills.

Gun tie-in? Hmmm. Discovered today that with the holster in the last post and with my coat buttoned, it's damned near impossible to get out quickly because it rides so high. Not that I had to do any quick draw or anything. Another systems issue to deal with.

2010-12-09T14:18:00.000-08:00

After yesterday's post, I couldn't see any good reason to put off modifying the El Paso Saddlery "Crosshair" holster that I'd been so disappointed about. The holster was originally purchased to carry one of the Model 629-1 4" S&W .44 Magnums. It carried the revolvers well, but was ugly and the leather was crap. This was a big disappointment coming from El Paso Saddlery, as I've been very pleased with the rest of the holsters they've made for me.

Well, there is another semi-ongoing problem with El Paso. The Street Combat model I ordered for the revolver shown, the .44 Special 3" Model 24-3 came in very long. I sketched up the problem, emailed Don at EPSaddlery and he said to send it back. I waited about a month for the holster and figure it'll be another month before I see the holster again, hopefully shortened to the right length. In truth, the 3" .44 Special has a cylinder 1/4" shorter than most of the N-Frame Smiths, so that accounts for some of the problem. I'd hate to be guessing the right holster lengths from folks who order through their website, and erring on the side of too long is the right thing to do. The holster otherwise looked great, BTW.

So I took the Crosshair, which, being built for an N-Frame 6-shot was correct for the Model 24-3, except for length. I marked the correct length on the outside with a Sharpie and cut it. The front flap (floppy) I also marked and cut, Then I used a skiv knife to cut the stitching and rip the leather apart. Part of my complaint about the Crosshair was that though pictured on the website with stitching on the top and bottom edges, didn't have it in fact. So I cut, grooved, marked and punched them for stitching, hoping that would stiffen up the leather some. I also had to cut new borders on the bottom, fore and aft, groove, bevel, mark and punch them. Then before I started stitching it up, I dyed it all black again, let that dry and waxed the edges. The stitching took the longest.

After it was stitched I used some medium sandpaper to dress the edges, waxed them again and bottled them with a tool made for that. I also rolled a toothed wheel along the stitching, particularly the new parts. A bit of Kiwi boot wax and it was finished.

I carried it on a long walk today, and the weight of the package doesn't drag down on either the trousers or the hip bone. This holster actually carries the revolver's mass higher than the Street Combat model, so there's less leather down there threatening to peek out the bottom of the jacket. The holster is supposedly adjustable for retention with that screw behind the trigger. But because the leather is pretty bad, tightening that to the max merely stretches the leather. I find the holster to be excellent for carrying, but I wouldn't want to do any tumbling while wearing it. I figure a headstand would likely dislodge the revolver. But I seldom do headstands anymore.

2010-12-08T10:52:00.000-08:00

Not much to report lately. I've been back up in the Hills shooting quite a bit, but no new guns and nothing of note happened. Yesterday though, after hearing about them every time I've gone out into the sticks, rattlesnakes got my attention. I mean, there aren't any out and about right now, but everyone I've talked to about hiking, shooting or anything that takes one off pavement mentions the snake population. I hate snakes.

So I started looking around for snake shot capsules to load up in .44 Special. Didn't find much. Speer offers empty capsules which I'd have to load with #7 1/2 shot, then load in the cases, but they were pretty expensive. CCI, however, offers shot loads in .357 Magnum/.38 Special and in .44 Magnum/.44 Special. Also expensive, but it reminded me that I've got some .44 Magnum CCI shot cartridges floating around somewhere. And if their current offering fits both Magnum and Special, maybe their old ones would fit the .44 Specials as well.

They didn't fit the Forkin Blackhawk. He cuts the chambers pretty tight. But they did fit in the S&W Model 24-3 snubby. So the next step was to go shooting to see if they'd blow up the gun. Actually I was certain they wouldn't as they contain all of 150 grains of shot and there aren't many powders around that could build up scary pressures behind a light "bullet" like that.

Up to the Hills and back along Beretta Road. The shot worked fine, giving a pattern with few snake-sized holes at ten feet. I figure any snake beyond that isn't a problem anyway. In the summer I'll carry snake shot first in the queue when hiking.

An observation: CCI shot cartridges have significant quantities of shot in .44 and .38. Something like 150 and 105 grains respectively. The auto cartridges have much less, and they won't work the actions of auto pistols. Seems to me a revolver is the way to go if one is worried about snakes.

Another thing that one guy I talked to yesterday was concerned about is mountain lions. This weekend two pet miniature horses were killed by a lion at the city limits. Farther from town they've been taking a lot of livestock. Even though neither he nor I are aware of any attacks on humans around here, bold lions have attacked folks in California and probably other places. I'll be armed wherever I go, but keeping an eye out for lions as well as snakes seems prudent.

Up in the picture are two of the CCI .44 Magnum rounds. You can see the long crimp that allows them to fit the S&W .44 Special. I'll drop by Cabela's and get some of the new ones designated for .44 Special so I can use them in the Forkin Custom revolver. The three spent bullets are mine. They were cast by LeadHead Bullets and are the Keith pattern 250 grain semi-wadcutters - my normal choice. At least two of these went completely through an 18" piece of Ponderosa pine firewood lengthwise and lodged in the stump that was backing the target up. They don't deform much and penetrate more than I'd expected. Until I get the chronograph out there, I'll assume they're doing something like 850-900 feet per second from the 3" barrel. Not too far out I'll have the Lead Head stuff all shot up and will be using Montana Bullet Works bullets of the same design and weight, but with a known hardness. I'm guessing that there won't be any difference. I don't know if Lead Head is still in business, but I couldn't reach them last time I wanted to order some of these. They were much cheaper than MBW.

2010-11-27T10:49:00.000-08:00

The Springfield Armory "Socom 16" is a snubby version of their M1A, a civilianized M14 service rifle. It's chambered in .308 Winchester (or 7.62 NATO - same thing) and here mounts a 20-round magazine. The carbine weighs in at a hefty nine-and-a-half pounds and has a barrel just over 16 inches long. While the 7.62 NATO round wasn't designed to be used in a barrel this short, the bullet still comes a-honkin' out with more energy than is even approached by currently popular AK47 or M16 derivatives.

Back in the olden days (one of the benefits of being old is being able to say that with credibility), when a bunch of M-1 military rifles were being reimported to the US, mostly from Europe, a couple Italian firms bobbed them and some added the fittings for detachable magazines, re-chambered them in .308 and called them "tanker" rifles. The M14, with detachable magazine, had already been adopted by the US military, so the tankers became very popular civilian substitutes. The Socom 16 evolved a little differently, beginning life as the semi-automatic version of the M14, then being shortened to this length. There are some problems associated with shortening a barrel this much - the gas system doesn't have enough bullet dwell time to work the gas piston reliably. Springfield Armory has obviously overcome this, though I don't yet know the specifics of how they did it.

And SA added a short Picatinny rail on top, just forward of the action. This is mounted to the barrel and required that a hole be cut in the top hand guard, making it floppy. The position of the rail allows mounting of a "scout scope," a long eye relief, low power scope intended for those with bad vision or something. I've never liked scout scopes, and have no use for the rail, so I may remove it and replace the hand guard with a GI item.

The rifle came with two SA 20-round magazines and one 10-round Chinese magazine, which I immediately tossed. My experience with the M1A (standard) showed that the only magazines worth anything are Checkmate Industries or GI issue (made by Checkmate Industries). The SA magazines I've used have been mostly good, with one exception. Today the SA magazines both worked fine, though I've ordered a couple more from CMI anyway.

The rear peep sight on the Socom is of the "ghost ring" sort. It's basically an opened up standard military sight. It's been opened up to the point it doesn't work for any kind of precision shooting, nor for my old eyes. On the (standard) M1A I replaced the stock rear peep with a match orifice smaller in diameter. That effectively is a stopping down, which allows me to focus on the front sight much better. Here the aperture has been stopped up, making things worse for me, though perhaps better for the intent of the rifle, that of a handy, short-range weapon. If I can find the stock sight I removed from the standard rifle, I'll put it on this one. If not, I'll order another match sight and hand fit it. I expect that even a carbine like this should be accurate.

The front sight is standard width military, with glow-in-the-dark paint in a recess in its face. I prefer a flat square black surface, but will let this stay for the mean time. I adjusted the front sight a bit in order that the rear is normally centered. Five clicks up from the bottom worked out to a hundred yards, consistent with the standard rifle.

With the sights there was no problem consistently hitting an aluminum soda can at fifty to seventy-five yards from a rest. Off-hand I could pretty much hit anything (clumps of black dirt against the snow mostly) I was shooting at, at least half the time.

There were no malfunctions in fifty rounds. While I went out with some 300 rounds, it seemed a waste to shoot more as the rifle was doing fine and there wasn't much more to be gained by blasting away.

I actually was shopping for a Marlin 1894SS rifle in .44 Mag and Spec, when this thing caught my eye. It was priced too low, so I looked it over trying to find one of the known faults of SA rifles. Couldn't find any. It has the forged bolt and is recent production. There was some wear at the front edge of the muzzle brake and the bore was dirty, but it seemed like a good deal. And I still think it was. If I didn't know it would be stolen in a week, I'd mount this in the back window of the truck. As it is, it will probably spend a bit of time behind the seat when I go out exploring the countryside. But it will be in the safe the rest of the time.

2010-11-25T12:17:00.000-08:00

On the other blog I reviewed books regularly. Here, not so much. This will change. Hunters may be out hunting, but we other gun nuts sometimes find nothing better than to sit in the armchair with the cat on the lap and a handy vessel of Jack Daniels and read.

Most gun books are references of one sort or another. The most useful one I have is "The Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson." Reloading manuals, one-make references, how-to manuals are all well and good, but not usually terribly entertaining. Some others are entertaining though, and I'll get to more of them in later posts.

This one, "Hemingway's Guns," is even better than I'd imagined it. The book caught my eye at Borders Books. But it was, at $40, pretty expensive for a thin volume. When Borders offered its one-day 50% off coupon I used it and came home with this one. And have been reading it - not just looking at the pictures, but reading - ever since.

You know how some folks when asked about how to make coffee start with the creation of the universe, move through origin and evolution of plant life (with special emphasis on toxins), eventually getting to the geography, economics and culture of coffee before actually giving useful directions? That's how this book is. The authors could have just made a list with dates and serial numbers, but instead they go into the origin of the firms that manufactured the firearms, the history of Hemingway's acquisition, his bio and significant events at the time, documentation of where used, documentation from the factory or Abercrombie & Fitch order forms, accessories, favorite loads used, where the guns ended up if known, genealogy of the the current owner in one case and basically anything known about the gun, the times, which of his many wives did what with it and when, who was present at the event and so on and so on. And its fascinating!

I'm not a huge fan of Hemingway's writing. This is sort of a confession. I've read a bit of it, but couldn't get into it the way some of my friends do. Still, he's recognized as a great writer, a sportsman, a troubled human being, a family man and an American great. And a fellow gun nut, though more a user than collector. A connoisseur for sure.

Want to know about his Griffin and Howe '03 Springfield? First you read the history of U.S. Army rifle development. Want to know about his Winchester Model 12? First you learn the history of European shotguns and American industrial development. This is very good shit folks.

Back to the book and the bourbon.

P.S. I took the S&W N-Frame .44 Special snubby out to see how it compares to the Forkin Ruger .44 with gloves, and it's better hands down. No problems getting the fingers into the trigger guard, none shooting double or single action. S&W wins the cold weather competition.

P.P.S Received the SD Concealed Pistol Permit in the mail. Only one I have without my picture on it. For this I am Thankful.

2010-11-21T16:14:00.000-08:00

While it's not exactly new for me, I've spent the last 35 years in hot places so cold takes some getting re-used to. Mostly it's great. But glasses fogging up surprised me the first time it happened here. And I haven't really worn gloves except to ride the bike, so winter gloves seem pretty bulky and awkward. Wanting an excuse to go shooting this morning (no, I don't really need an excuse), I decided to see if I could handle the single action .44 Special shown here while wearing gloves.

My first revolver was a little single action .22. I don't remember shooting it with gloves - pretty sure I always took them off first. But I've been carrying this revolver around like an urban cowboy and wearing gloves like someone fresh from Southern California, so I wanted to know those things could work together.

Well, they don't work together very well. First off the trigger guard isn't made for really fat fingers. Putting the trigger finger in the guard before cocking the piece keeps it from going off, though stuffing that index sausage in after cocking might result in an unintended discharge. Shooting otherwise is good enough. Unloading is pretty simple, but fishing fresh cartridges from the box or pocket with disabled nails and desensitized fingertips is pretty tough.

I should have taken one of the S&Ws out too, just to see if there's a big difference. I think a double action would be safer to access, as it doesn't have to be cocked and putting a gloved finger in the trigger guard wouldn't move the trigger enough to matter, even in the worst circumstance.

I remember looking at the U.S. Firearms catalog and seeing one single action model with an enlarged trigger guard. I remember it not making sense at the time. Now it does.

The picture shows my Forkin Custom Ruger Blackhawk .44 Special with the Tour Master bike gloves I've been wearing everywhere lately. Yeah, I took the gloves off to take the iPhone picture, and put warm fingerprints and smudges all over the already dirty revolver.

2010-11-17T07:31:00.000-08:00

Now I'm home.

Just got back from a walk to the cafe. It's warm - the snow isn't staying on sidewalks or pavement. Fluffy snow filtering straight down with no wind to whip it around. But it's the first snow of the season that has stayed at all. The weather service is forecasting about an inch, with up to six inches in the Hills and east of here on the prairie. I suspect those who have been here longer have mixed feelings - it's beautiful, but it will eventually turn into real winter, with icy roads, snow plows, downed power lines, auto accidents and frozen toes.

But for me now, it's the first clear sign that I'm back home.

2010-11-16T09:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a big day. I found "Wool 'n Stuff" up in Hill City (web search for wool stores) and saw they had the Filson jacket in the size and color I wanted, so I decided to drive on up. But it was early, so I rummaged around in the gun safe and pulled out this Model 34 Kit Gun circa 1958. I've talked about this .22 before, of course. Down in the basement there were three remaining boxes of Remington "Thunderbolt" cheap-ass unreliable solid lead bullet ammo that should probably have been dumped in the trash a long time back. I bought a brick or two back in the '70s I guess.

Took the revolver and ammo up to Beretta Road (passing a flock{?} of turkeys feeding in the ditch) and over a couple of hours, perforated more 2x4 stubs and some cans that were already out there. Except for the duds, it did a pretty nice job under sunlight (when I could actually focus on the sights). I shot a bit more using the left hand and more importantly, the left eye. Man, but the sights were clear and sharp with the left one. I expect I'll be doing more of that off-eye shooting, as it seems to work great, except that I feel contorted and twisted around shooting that way. Having finished that bad ammo and a box of RWS standard velocity, and having finished the now cold coffee, I headed into Hill City (passing a herd/flock/covey/cluster of Bighorn Sheep) and it still being early, ate breakfast at the Hill City Cafe - highly recommended. Then back past the still-grazing sheep to the wool shop.

Bought the jacket and yet another Pendleton camp blanket (great value in a thick warm wool blanket) and drove back in to Rapid (passing one of those turkeys again, converted to roadkill).

My iPhone hadn't been working all day, so I missed the call from the realtor handling my house buying, telling me to show up with money at the title company. But I did see her car as I was leaving the house to go get some banking done, so we connected and off to the bank for the cashier's check, back to the title company, a bunch of signing and escrow has now closed. My wonderful realtor gave me a gift certificate for "Alternative Fuel," my favorite cafe here, so I parked the truck at home (MY home now), and walked downtown in the new comfy brown Filson Macintosh coat and ordered the farmer's quiche, proving once again that real men sometimes like quiche and aren't afraid to let the whole world know it.

Then I came home (MY home - and J.P.Morgan's) and played with the old cat and sat reading until I needed yet another cup of coffee.

It was a good day.

2010-11-13T12:49:00.000-08:00

It shoots, this big .44 snubby. After a longish drive this morning that took me to Sturgis, Spearfish, Deadwood, Lead and Silver City, I decided it was time to empty out the storage unit and find the .44 Special ammo that's been eluding me. When the remaining boxes failed to yield it, I ransacked the rest of the partially unpacked cartons and found some eight boxes of the precious stuff. So I drove up into the Hills to a place in the National Forest, set up some 2x4 stubs and shot until I raised a blister on the web of my hand, then ripped it bloody open. Then I shot a bit with the left hand (surprisingly well), called it a day and drove back out through the twinkling of snowfall.

The test wasn't complete. It shot a bit low at ten yards or so, and about on at twenty-five, but it was offhand so I also missed the vertical stub targets pretty often. I'll take a real target out next time, along with the chronograph so I can see the effects of the shorter barrel on velocity.

It's thirty-six degrees here in Rapid, and it was just below freezing up in the Hills. As I drove in, along the gravel road was a big SUV with two fathers taking their daughters out shooting. A little further on there were some other folks, including one guy shooting while his S/O stayed warm in the truck.

I love this place!

2010-11-06T15:18:00.000-07:00

Here's something you don't see too often anymore. It's a nickel plated S&W Model 10-5 with a six inch barrel. Thirty-Eight Special. I've been looking around for cheap old Smiths, but until this one came along they've all been priced like Wyatt Earp owned them. This one was a bit under $300 and has been shot a lot and seldom cleaned. Actually, I just reassembled it to take the picture - it goes back into the Hoppes as soon as I finish typing this.

The nicely color case hardened trigger and hammer both show some rust, which should come off with a bit of 000 steel wool. The nickel plate is solid except for the cylinder rod, where some is flaking off as I clean with an old toothbrush. There's a little clouding here and there too, but Flitz might clear it up. The bore is in excellent shape - the crud came out of that with some urging from a bronze brush.

Trigger pull, double and single, are excellent and the cylinder gap is fine with little fore-and-aft play, though there's some slop in the lock up. Nothing that will affect shootability or accuracy (which is limited by me, not the revolver). But I don't think I'll shoot it much, if any. What I think I'll do is put on that pair of elk antler grips I had on the M10-5 snubby for awhile, then someday make a fancy quick-draw rig for it and hang it over a bed post. I may boil the fresh grips in tea first and maybe see if I can find a worn out rig in a junk store somewhere.

In other news I applied for a Pennington County, South Dakota, concealed pistol permit yesterday. Three minutes worth of filling out a form and ten dollars cash. I should have a temporary permit in the mail next week and the permanent one in a month or so. South Dakota does the same background checks as all other states and has a couple of additional requirements. Personally, I think that some training requirement is a good idea, but here they've decided to trust the citizens to make good decisions. It seems to be working out - folks in my neighborhood don't even lock their doors when they leave and I'm the only one I've seen pull out keys to get into a car.

P.S. I don't have the S&W catalog handy, but I believe this revolver was made in the mid '60s. (Edit: '70s actually.) This photo added with the elk stag grips on November 9th.

2010-11-03T18:22:00.000-07:00

This is the one I'd mentioned earlier. Picked it up yesterday and haven't had a chance to shoot it yet. Frankly, I'm not real sure where my .44 Special ammo is in all the boxes.

This is a Smith & Wesson Model 24-3, Lew Horton special order. About 5000 were made with the specially ordered round butt and 3" barrel. Notice that the cylinder is the right length for .44 Special, so it doesn't completely fill the frame window as one chambered in .44 Magnum would. The barrel is also the thinner lightweight one, rather than the heavy barrel supplied with most .44 Magnums. This results in a lighter shorter revolver than usual for the frame size. It's still a big handgun however.

My personal interest in this revolver is that it's chambered in my all-time favorite handgun round, made by my all-time favorite manufacturer during a good period in their history (late '70s) and with the handy barrel length and round butt. It's almost exactly what I'd have requested if S&W would build a custom revolver just for me.

I have ordered a set of Ahrends cocobolo wood boot grips and an El Paso Saddlery "Street Combat" holster in black. The minimal grips will do away with tall the extra wood shown in the picture. They may also make it hurt to shoot - have to wait and see. The holster, the same model I use to carry an alloy J-frame around, should be concealable and comfortable. It might be that the increased weight of this revolver won't be quite as comfortable though. Have to try it to know too.

OK, I live in Rapid City, South Dakota now. But I haven't got an internet connection yet, so I'm typing from a Starbucks. The picture was taken of the revolver on one of the antique end tables I bought from a desperate friend some twenty years ago. He died last year or maybe I wouldn't have kept them. A little Pledge and they cleaned up pretty nicely, though they've also sorta forced me into a decorating decision for the living room of the new house. I'll be scrounging used and antique furniture shops looking for red mahogany and embroidered fabric couch and chairs. Today I paid a couple guys a silver eagle each to move the gun safe from the garage into the house - my back appreciates my mind's generosity.

More later. Gotta get connected...

Edit: This picture is with the first iteration of the Ahrends cocobolo grips. I've reshaped them considerably, but still have to get more relief behind the trigger guard or I'll have one bruised knuckle. The wood extending below the frame itself will probably be cut off too - my little finger was bent into a very strange shape with the standard toe and I've relieved it as much as I can without substantial gains. Being as everything is being done with sandpaper it may be awhile. Then I'll re-shoot a picture too.

2010-10-20T20:01:00.000-07:00

Finally got the Nevada concealed weapons permit. Actually it was right about sixty days, as they said it would be. And the picture is decent this time. That makes four permits, which cover something like 36 states. Soon I'll be getting my South Dakota residents' permit which will add Colorado, which only honors permits from their owners' home states. Looks like I pick up Maine too, according to HandgunLaw.US. At this point it's more of a game than anything else. The wallet is noticeably thicker.

I haven't done any shooting lately, as the move's been taking all my concentration. Escrow close date on the house fell through because of an administrative quirk, but it'll go through eventually. I'll be moving up to Rapid City at the end of the month, ~~but may have to move into a motel for a few weeks until I can take control of~~ and will be renting the house until escrow closes. At this point I expect to take along my inexpensive gun safe, but that will ultimately depend on how well I estimated packing the trailer for that final load up. I've always wanted one of those stunning Browning or other "name" safes, with a S&G combination lock on it. I've been inside those locks during DAME (defense against methods of entry) training at Ft. Huachuca, and I've got a lot of faith in them. The military locks (Group I) are just a tad better quality-wise, but are functionally the same as the civilian locks (Group II), while costing ten times as much. I can get through most key locks eventually, but I've never gotten through a S&G combo lock, even with expert coaching. "Fireproofing" would be nice too, so I have a place for some papers, which are becoming more important as I get older.

Yep, another rambling, pointless post. Sorry. I realized it's been awhile, so I thought I'd at least put up something to show I'm still alive. Distracted, but still here.

The Smith & Wesson Model 629-1 picture above was posted here awhile back. It, along with most of my guns, are packed and gone to South Dakota, while I'm still here in San Diego hanging around for another nine days. Those are some of my handloads.

2010-10-05T09:21:00.000-07:00

This morning was (relatively) cold. In San Diego it never really gets cold, so I seldom sleep under blankets. I woke in the wee hours and got one to see if I could get my body temperature back up to 95F. On the same shelf as the blanket were my old narrow-brimmed Stetson and, lying there separately, the hatband I'd made from a large, slow Mexican Red (crotalus ruber ruber) rattlesnake that alerted on me from a few yards away at shoulder height when I was peak-bagging twenty-some years ago.

My daughter had asked about the hat band just yesterday. When it was fresh, before years of sun and rain, it was glossy and reddish, with the brighter diamond pattern. I wore it on the Stetson that preceded this one, so it was awhile back - my daughter must have been about nine, but she remembered it. The snake itself, what was left after I shot it and hit, through pure luck, the head and rattle without hurting the writhing remains, produced 42 inches of skin. With necessary folding and stitching, not quite enough to cover a belt, but too big to just toss. Thus the hat band. I slit and peeled off the skin, rolled it up and put it in the back of the Samurai. At the general store in Jacumba, I got a box of iodized salt, and at the side of the road just outside of town, I unrolled the skin, salted the flesh side and rolled it back up.

A few days later I scraped all the remaining desiccated flesh off and scrubbed the scales to remove the loose transparent stuff. Then I soaked it in glycerin for a few days. Eventually I cut to double-wide size, and folded, glued and stitched it to fit that original hat I'd been wearing. Varnish made it pretty. That S&W .44 Magnum in the picture was the one that did the killing - overkill, but it's what I was carrying.

So this morning I pulled this Stetson's skinny leather band off and put the snake on. And remembered vividly the third rattlesnake I'd seen on that day of peak bagging. Then I put the elements together in this picture.

I never did get to the top of Jacumba peak.

2010-09-30T13:35:00.000-07:00

There have been a lot of reasons or excuses why I haven't posted any handgun targets on the blog. Mostly it was because none were worth posting. Today I got lucky. This target was perforated by two cylinder-fulls of .44 Special handloads fired from the Forkin Custom Blackhawk of which I've shown too many pictures already. It was at 25 yards and the revolver was fired off-hand with my right hand only.

Despite not being able to immediately reload the hulls due to lack of proper bullets and the equipment that's already been moved, I figured should the apocalypse visit I've got enough guns and ammo to keep the zombie hoards/ChiComs/toxic aliens at bay. So I took a box of 50 to the range and bought four of these standard 25 yard slow fire targets. The first I shot up at around 15 yards just to remind myself of the particular sight picture for this revolver (tight 6 o'clock). Then I moved out to 25 and shot this one. Six-ring diameter is 7.375". The two targets after this were larger, so it's probably a good thing I didn't trash this one right away, huh?

The loads are 7.5 grains of Unique behind 250 grain Keith semi-wadcutters cast by Leadhead Bullets. This is called the Skeeter Skelton load, after the gun writer/itinerant Texas LEO/good old boy that developed it. Out of the 3 5/8-inch barrel, the bullets should be stepping out around 900 feet per second. Because I'm a simple boy and am easily confused, that's about the only load I'll use for .44 Special. Other bullet brands are OK, provided they're thrown from the Lyman 429421 mold and sized to .431".

Being as humility is important, it should be noted that a decent military shooter would keep six or eight of ten touching the orange. I used to be a decent military shooter (whoops - out goes the humility).

2010-09-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

This was a disappointment. I have several El Paso Saddlery holsters and one river belt, but this one sorta sucks. If you look at their picture, you'll notice that they show stitching along the top and bottom edges and (if you should follow up further) will see they call this a "hand-boned finish." In truth it looks and feels unfinished and floppy.

What got me thinking about this "Crosshair" holster is that Lew Horton 3" .44 Special I'll be picking up in a few weeks. Of course I'd been going over in my mind the options for grips (the ones on it currently are bad aftermarket) and holsters. Putting out a bunch of money on a holster that could disappoint is more of a gamble than I'd like to take right now, so maybe I could make this one work.

First off I'd take it apart and shorten the bottom by an inch. I might reduce the flaps up top as well, because they only serve to make it tougher to put the revolver back in it. Then I'd bevel and groove the raw edges and stitch top and bottom, where the manufacturer forgot to do that. Adding a suede liner is a great way to stiffen up floppy leather, so that's a consideration. The edge stitching by itself will go a long way to taking the flop out. Then after dying it, I'd reassemble and do the "hand-boning" the right way. If the damned floppy leather can even hold a shape.

To be fair, the rest of the El Paso Saddlery line that I have are of excellent materials and workmanship. My favorite is the Street Combat that I pretty much always wear where legal, carrying one of several J-frame Smiths. And while their Threepersons rig is of solid construction and was one of the few holsters I've lusted after since childhood, I found it to be somewhat larger than the "minimum necessary," as touted by the tons of gun writers I'd trusted. Still, it is solid and looks pretty good. But with the stiff hammer strap and snap, and mounted on an equally stiff belt, I expect I'd have to actually use it for a few continuous years for it to conform to my anatomy and for me to figure out its particular quirks.

That's a sambar stag-handled 4" S&W Model 629 .44 Magnum up there in the floppy sub-standard holster.

P.S. No, I didn't ask for money back or a replacement. No excuses.

2010-09-26T12:05:00.000-07:00

Didn't feel much like reloading, as I've moved a bunch of the equipment and materials already, so I took the S&W Model 351PD to the range and put a hundred rounds through it. This is a .22 Magnum, seven-shot double action revolver. As you can see I've cut off the hammer spur, so it's effectively double action only.

The revolver weighs about twelve ounces, so it's the lightest revolver I own, probably including that teeny Freedom Arms four shot. It's a J-frame, so holsters for any two-inch J-frame carry it fine.

S&W revolvers have a semi-stepped double action trigger pull. You pull the trigger back cocking the hammer, and can feel as you approach the point where the hammer will fall and it will fire. That makes quick double action shooting about as accurate and easy as single action, but also allows for very fast follow-up rounds if wanted.

Twenty-two Magnum isn't perhaps the best self defense cartridge, but it's better than .22 Long Rifle, .25 ACP, .32 ACP and maybe even .380, as well as the old time pocket revolver .32s. It's certainly better than something you leave at home or can't shoot well. Modern solids or hollowpoints weighing about 40 grains exit around a thousand feet per second, or about the velocity and energy of a regular .22LR bullet out of a rifle. Seven shots. Works for me.

It's accurate enough too. I was shooting some crap Armscor ammo to get rid of it today. Had a few misfires as expected (and the reason I was shooting out that particular ammo). With a double action one could just pull the trigger again and go on to the next round, but I was at the range, so I removed the offending rounds, rotated them a bit and fired them in the next cylinder-full. In the black pretty consistently at 15 yards or less (25-yard slow fire target) using a 6 o'clock sight picture. That light gathering orange front sight works wonders for the old eyes. At 25 yards the usual happened - I couldn't see much and the groups opened up to fill the 10"x10" paper.

Anyway, that's the little 351PD (stands for "personal defense") up top, all covered with splattered Hoppes #9. Another fine feature about .22 Magnum is that because all the bullets are jacketed, cleaning up is a cinch.

2010-09-25T08:32:00.000-07:00

If you've been following my blogs, you know I'm a traditionalist and that I'm moving from sunny San Diego to Rapid City, South Dakota just in time for winter. I was raised in North Dakota, where it gets very cold, so Rapid will be pleasant compared to the days of my youth. Nevertheless, I've been here in SoCal since 1977 where I was stationed after a couple years in the real tropics, the Philippines. The move will be a climate change for me.

Grandpa, up 'til the end, milked his cows every day in northern Minnesota. He had this dark grey wool barn jacket he'd pull out of mothballs in October and wear through March. It had a corduroy collar and knit cuffs. Boys remember details like that. I always wanted the aura of dependability and hard work that grandpa endued upon the jacket. Yes, there's a little hero worship here.

Anyway, driving back from my latest foray up to Rapid to sign some bank papers and drop off another little truckload, I stopped at a ranch outfitter in Casper, Wyoming and bought the coat shown in the background of the picture. It's a Filson Double Mac, made right here in the U.S.A. of at least two thicknesses of 21-ounce virgin wool. The extra long version, one under my usual coat size, fit perfectly, with enough room to layer as well. And while it was only cool enough to wear the coat around 3AM the next morning, I also found that the Forkin Blackhawk .44 pictured was totally invisible when carried in the belt holster (not shown) underneath.

I've got a few other winter jackets and have been stocking up bit by bit on clothing that will keep me from freezing my nuts off, but I guess signing escrow papers brought home the immediacy of the move and of the coming winter.

BTW, I also put money down on a Lew Horton M24-3 S&W .44 Special with a round butt and 3" barrel. After I'm officially a SoDak resident it can be picked up, but residency is now inevitable. I know I paid too much for this one, but it's an adjustable sight, big frame S&W .44 Special snubby - everything good in one package. Pictures of that one in a month or so when things are a bit more settled.

2010-09-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I took a .44 Magnum to the range. Almost two years, according to the dates on the reloaded cartridge boxes. So after a mildly strenuous session of hauling trash out of the river bottom this morning, I packed up this S&W Model 629-1, an example of the finest revolver ever made, and headed to the P2K Range in El Cajon. And I took along about a hundred rounds of dubious origin to empty, so I could load and track the brass next time around.

I bought this revolver probably three years ago to sort of back up another of the same model and barrel length that I was about to rebuild after a long hard first life. With that one apart, I'd have no handy .44 Magnum for, you know, grizzlies and home breakers, so I felt compelled to get another one just in case. You know this rationale because you've used it to justify stuff you don't really need too. Anyway, I bought it while waiting for the appropriate internal parts for the other one.

At the range, the obscure ammo (which I trusted, as I'd loaded it but failed to keep records) sorta popped nicely out, putting clean sharp holes in the paper - mostly the black part. After a dozen rounds the web of my hand was warning me that much more abuse would make it bleed (yeah, I'm a wimp) so I put on a padded fingerless glove I got a few years back when that happened (the bleeding part) the first time. Back in the olden days, I could shoot two hunnert full-up elephant killers without my hand even getting pink, but time goes on and things change. Anyway, I put the glove on for the balance of the range session and finished up that particular obscure lot of ammo and moved on to some 240 grain JSP Remington that was produced sometime in the middle of the last century. That shit smacked! Same point of impact at 25 yards, but that's expensive stuff so I moved to the third lot of ammo, an unlabeled box of stuff I'd loaded up in '08 using a 250 gr Keith bullet and 20 grains of 2400. That load is a bit off Elmer Keith's favorite, but as Elmer was a real man and I'm a wimp I've loaded it down a bit. It still smacks good and is more accurate than my eyes. At 15 yards they stay in the black about five of six rounds, offhand. At 25 I can keep them on the paper pretty much, but that's the limit of my eyesight for handgun shooting.

In the picture I've done the first scrub of the bore. Then I de-primed and sized the 60 empty cases and they're in the tumbler getting cleaned up now and making a racket in the next room.

These older stainless steel Smiths clean up very well. They came with mirror finished bores and chambers, with smooth forcing cones and throats, and because they're stainless you can use Lead Away cloth for the front of the cylinder or any other place powder residue and lead are stubborn. I've started to round the butt on this one as I did on the original (pictures below), but didn't have the resolve to start re-cutting the grooves in the back strap using a triangular file - there's got to be an easier way short of buying a milling machine and making the right cutting tool. I have not yet bobbed the hammer spur or done any action work, but will probably get to that sometime.

Did I mention that I think this is the best revolver ever made? Oh yeah, it's up there. If another one ends up under glass somewhere I visit, I may buy it too. Not maybe the best thing to carry in a pocket - maybe not the first choice for anything one might want to do with a revolver - but this was made when Smith & Wesson was doing them right, using the best materials, and hand assembling and finishing. Some earlier Smiths will have more detail, like checkered sight tracks, but none are ultimately as strong and few as slick. I just wish they'd made a round butt large frame back then, but they didn't. So I have to do that part myself.

Some random notes. I was about to put money against a S&W pre-Model 34 Kit Gun with an aluminum frame yesterday, when I found out my gun safety card had expired. I guess they last five years. Not wanting to give the state gov't any more money, as they can't seem to do anything very well with what I've already given them, I tore up the card and left that .22 revolver at the shop. The 4" round-butt Kit Gun was impressively nice, with no holster wear and little if any shooting evident. It did not come with the factory box. The asking price was fair, if not a total bargain. Because I'll be a South Dakota resident soon, we talked about me paying for it, then having it shipped up to Rapid City. The only hang up with that is that I don't want to get the drivers license without having a permanent or semi-permanent residence address first, and I don't know how long that will take. If things get more sorted on my next trip up, I may go back to the shop here in San Diego and arrange something like that. Despite my protestations that I can't shoot the bitty Kit Guns anymore, they are still the prettiest little things, and ... well, you know ... what if I have to rebuild my other Kit Gun and have it out of service and all.

2010-08-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

Twenty-twos forever! On the right is a S&W 422 (not to be confused with the 442, a J-frame .38 Special) and on the left is the old S&W Kit Gun, Model 34. I fired about a hundred rounds today, mostly off-hand at 25 yards. The patches on the target were shot at about 15 yards, however.

First the Model 422. I'm not sure this one had ever been fired. I bought it years ago for Number One Son, who basically doesn't want it. We may have shot it back then, but that was a long time back, so it's hard to be sure. Anyway, it's clean, in the factory box, with the factory papers. This one has the six-inch barrel, adjustable sights (tiny ones) and a ten round magazine. The frame is aluminum, so it's very light weight. The trigger is pretty good too. Except for the fact that it's got tiny sights, this would be a decent plinker. With CCI hollow points, it was hitting point of aim at 15 yards and center of mass at 25. With 20+ year old cheapo "Thunderbolt" ammo, the groups opened up significantly and I could hear the differences in velocity between rounds. There were no failures to fire or feed during the session, though about half the time the slide closed after the magazine was emptied. I'll look into this after it's cleaned up.

The 422 has a bad reputation. It was based on the unsuccessful Escort pocket .22 that S&W tried to introduce to compete with Euro junk .25s decades back. The main problem was feeding, as I understand it. You can't see it clearly in this picture, but the actual barrel is at the bottom of that rectangular cross-section "barrel" assembly. This makes it harder to clean and troubleshoot, as nothing's out in the open like in most .22 autos. I'll google disassembly instructions (or maybe look at the factory book) and see what it takes to tear it down. These things are available pretty cheaply used, and wouldn't be a bad thing to have for plinking or informal target shooting. I'm sure they cost more to make than they go for these days. I won't buy another one, but for someone interested in learning how to shoot the right way (practice, practice, practice), one could do worse.

The revolver is a very early example of the classic S&W Kit Gun. I've recounted the history of this one before, so won't do it again here. I have shot this one, but as usual with me, if the sights aren't great I can't shoot it well. And the sights, typical J-frame adjustable (S&W calls them "target" sights), are just too small and dark for me to see indoors against the background of the target bullseye. But my first two-handed double-action group of five CCI rounds at about 10 yards was under two inches. That got me all excited. Then I loaded "Thunderbolts" in it and lost all hope. One-handed, two-handed, single action or double action, I couldn't get it to group. I'm pretty sure the ammo had something to do with that, but again, I couldn't see the tiny sights. Getting old's a bitch. From here on out, nothing but premium .22 ammo, for sure.

These two are soaking in Hoppes No. 9 now and I'll scrub them out and put them away again, probably for a few more years. I like owning them, but even that fine old revolver isn't a whole lot of fun to actually shoot. Right now I'm jonesing for that .44 Special Blackhawk again. Gotta go empty some brass with it and recover my self esteem.

2010-08-27T14:15:00.000-07:00

This is a 5.11 holster t-shirt. I picked it up a few weeks ago and wore it walking around, then wore it again during my recent road trip to Rapid City. So here's the review:

Online reviews always talk about itching. The shirt doesn't itch, unless it's wet and then it's about the same as wearing any tight wet thing. Skin rash.

Because it's a "compression shirt," it fits tight. I usually wear XL shirts because I like unlimited movement. But this one I bought in Large, as it's gonna stretch anyway. Truth is, that isn't me up there. I look more like a weisswurst. Because the shirt is elastic and squeezes, the two holster pockets do keep whatever's in them put. Wearing a shirt over this undershirt, I carried the Kimber .45 for awhile (but it was pretty bulky when added to my rib cage) and a J-frame S&W the rest of the time. The J-frame concealed well, didn't move around and it was easy to forget the revolver was there.

On the other hand, even when one does remember the gun's in the t-shirt, it's not real easy to get to. At a minimum the shirt on top would have to be pulled up or unbuttoned to retrieve the piece.

And finally, as with any other clothing, wearing this for too long is a bad idea. The material holds stink. But it washes nicely and dries in a machine quickly (read the laundering instructions on the tag). On the trip I washed it in a motel sink using bar soap. It got clean enough that way, but refused to dry hanging in the room. I figured to use my body heat, so when it seemed only damp I put it on. It was tight and wet. Remember the skin rash? Yep.

For a LEO backup gun, this is a pretty good idea and pretty good execution. For carrying a single handgun concealed, it's not terribly convenient. I may try a few other brands of this sort of thing, but am not nearly as excited about the concept as when a couple CCW instructors first mentioned it.

In other news, the Oregon concealed carry permit came in the mail. I look just as goofy in the picture on that one as on the others. I think it's a plot to prevent folks from flashing their carry permits all over. Still waiting on the Nevada license, then I'll get one in SoDak once I have a street address there.

I did learn while I was in Rapid City this week, that the National Guard rifle range is NOT open to the public, despite being listed as such on the NRA "Places to Shoot" page. In fact there are no formal shooting ranges in Rapid City at all. I am disappointed to hear that. The good news is that shooting is fine in any national forest or grassland, and there's plenty of that surrounding the place. But that sort of shooting doesn't replace formal hundred or twenty-five yard shooting.

2010-08-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

So today I took the Bearcat to the range. I still can't shoot the damned thing. Keeping on the paper at 25 yards offhand would be nice, but keeping it on the cardboard is about all I can do. No, not from a rest. But it was way fun to shoot anyway. At 10-15 yards it was a matter of holding a six o'clock sight picture (which I could not, despite my best efforts, focus on) and twitching. Generally the hole would be somewhere in the 9-ring of the standard 25 yard slow fire pistol target. Won't be popping many bunnies shooting like that. But still fun.

I also took out that 3" Freedom Arms Boot Gun, with the .22 LR cylinder. That one I can shoot, and used to take money off old guys from various pistol teams by scoring in the nineties over 25 yards. One-finger grip and shiny but otherwise square sights, and pull the spur trigger, and voila, a hole! Today I kept it on the paper, strung vertically a few inches left of center. No group size worth bragging about, but the guy with the scoped .308 Model 700 at the next booth wasn't on the paper at all at 25. We did walk him in before leaving the range though - hard to let someone like that flounder about without pitching in and helping.

Some really good things about .22s: Cheap to shoot; easy to clean; no flinching; little noise. Not sure a .22 would be the first choice for hunting elk or defending oneself, but for simple fun they're hard to beat.

There's a seldom-fired S&W 422 .22 auto in the safe that I should probably go shoot one of these days. Those don't have a great reputation and were patterned on the old S&W Escort action. The Escort was a tiny pocket .22 and the modification to the design didn't work particularly well. I bought it, thinking my #1 Son would like it someday, but he hasn't shown any interest and now lives in one of those prohibited zones anyway. Maybe I'll take it out next time.

2010-08-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

The Montana gunsmith wouldn't take the Bearcat, but it's been sitting ignored for too long anyway, so I decided to take it apart and clean it. I used to shoot it as a kid and have maybe put a cylinder a year through it for the last thirty years, so when the guys next door borrowed it to kill a barbecue pig last year and it didn't fire, I understood. It also had some real old CCI ammo it. I put it aside, figuring to look into it eventually.

So except for the ejector and ejector housing, the side gate and the firing pin, I stripped it down. This tiny thing is more complex than it looks, and there's a correct sequence to disassembly, and then there's my way. My way eventually worked, through trial and error. The right way would be to remove the grips, the hammer spring and guide, the trigger guard and lock spring, the hand spring, the trigger and cylinder lock, and the hammer and hand, all with other associated springs and such. Enough little springs that one must take care. I have a 500W tungsten photo light set up where I work just to find stuff that ends up on the floor.

There was gunk on the little parts. I cleaned everything pretty thoroughly in Hoppes #9 with a brush, Q-tips, and patches, cleaned the bore for the first time in forever (looked pretty good, actually) and tried to reassemble it. The tricky part was the sequence of events with the trigger and trigger guard after putting in the hammer and hand and hand spring. Despite looking impossible, the trigger and cylinder lock are put into the frame and secured with the trigger screw, then the trigger guard, with the lock spring, is pivoted into place. The trigger spring needs to be pushed way back into the guard to let it fit, but it will.

I noticed that the inside of the grips were still marked "Donley Nelson" on the left and "Jamestown, ND" on the right. I must have done that when I was 16, though the handwriting is such that it could have been yesterday.

Next is to go shoot it. I'm limited here to shooting at an indoor range unless I want to drive a hundred miles. Indoor ranges are darker than the sunlit outdoors and sights are harder to see. These are particularly hard to see. I'll find out what it shoots like on a rest, though I've never really shot handguns from rests before. (Gun bloggers seem to have some mandatory hoops to jump through and shooting handguns from rests is one of them. If I don't learn anything of interest I'll break from the herd and become a maverick gun blogger.) I'll also try some of that old ammo to see if the cleaning and touch of Break Free has fixed the revolver or if the ammo brass is merely too thick for this bitty old thing to handle. And I'll shoot it off-hand.

Remember, if handguns were meant to be shot using both hands, they'd be called "handsguns."

But no range today. Maybe tomorrow.

2010-08-18T15:53:00.001-07:00

8/15/2010

Meh. If it weren't for those two flyers, this would have been a 1.6" 20-shot group, from a hundred yards with the BSA Cadet single shot (.22 Magnum, iron sights). If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. Upset by those two mavericks, I decided to shoot one more group of 15, but it actually ended up worse. No flyers, but a larger cluster of holes. I guess my eyes were getting tired by then. Gauging the white around the black center through a couple of holes which should be concentric gets harder as the eyes start watering. Oh well - maybe next time. I'd really like to shoot a 10-rd, one inch group using iron sights some day, and I think this is the rifle to do it with.

Shot the Blackhawk (see the last post) again today, too. Twenty-five yards off-hand (one hand), shooting up the last of those oversized reloads I'd made for the S&W Model 21. I'm getting better. Missed the paper a few times, but when they felt like they were in, they were completely in, 10-ring and X-ring. Only my shaking or flinching can make that fine revolver shoot badly.

So I was standing there shooting the .44, thinking I really need another custom revolver project. And I realized that the old Ruger Bearcat, my first ever handgun, is sitting in the safe being ignored. Maybe if that were converted to .22 Magnum and decent adjustable sights added, and maybe the barrel shortened a tad, I might give it more attention again. It's the sights, really. I can't see fixed sights well at the indoor range. I think I've seen S&W J-Frame target sights put on a Bearcat - takes some milling and fitting and I'd have to find the sights, but they'd work. Ben could build a tiny version of that patridge front that I like on the Blackhawk and solder it in place. I'll bet this is gonna cost me a bundle, but I'll send him a note and see if he's interested. (Edit: Ben declined. Doesn't want to chamber an aluminum framed gun to .22 Magnum and doesn't put adjustable sights on fixed sight guns.)

The brass is sized, decapped and in the tumbler, and the bores are soaking and it's 2PM and I haven't had breakfast yet, so this is all I've got to say.

No. No, it's not. I bought and read Gene Wolfe's "An Evil Guest" yesterday and it rocked! Noir science fiction detective novel, with monsters. Wolfe is the science fiction writer's science fiction writer. That is, he's always held up as an example of the best writing in the genre. I've read some of his other work and liked it, but am not a fan of series books so I've also missed a lot. Maybe later I'll head down to the bookstore and get another.

2010-08-18T15:51:00.002-07:00

8/13/2010

Awhile back I showed a picture of a pancake holster made for the new Old Model Blackhawk .44 Special. I didn't like it much. Rode too high and allowed the butt to be too far to the rear when I sat down or bent over. I decided to build another one to address those issues and to prevent dragging of that tall patridge sight on the leather.

This design is about as simple as it gets. The same way one would build a belt holder for a much used pliers. In coming up with the pattern I left a lot of room along the front bend, intending to mold in a sight channel, then tacked the aft seam with a couple of stitches. I wet the leather and put the front bend in a vise between some leather scraps to get it tight. While it was still damp, I put the revolver in it and molded the leather to the barrel and the cylinder.

Somewhere along the way the straight line on the main seam was decided on - should it loosen up in use it can always be relocated tighter with re-casing of the holster. (If you look at the last post, you can see I usually cut that seam pretty close to the gun's profile.)

Then I unstitched it, shaped the fold-over belt loop to fit a 1.5" belt parallel with the top edge of the front (giving it all a forward cant) and awled the holes. Tacking a couple of holes with a stitch or two I refolded the body of the holster and awled the holes for the aft seam. (I should mention that the line for the stitching was grooved and the edges beveled as well.) Dyed the leather and left it overnight to dry.

Next morning I waxed the edges, then stitched the whole thing up, wetted it, and again molded it to the revolver in a bit more detail and let it sit. Pulled out the piece, let the holster dry completely (and hit the gun with a silicone cloth). Check fitted the gun, then went over it all with Kiwi boot polish.

The leather is 10-oz. shoulder and is pretty scarred up, but should hold the molding about forever. Later, if the spirit moves me, it would be no problem to change that seam, pull it apart and tool it or add decorative stitching, or add a hammer loop or strap across the top.

It's not pretty, but it's just the right amount of leather to securely carry the revolver on a trouser belt.

The revolver is that Ben Forkin Custom Old Model Blackhawk .44 Special I've been ranting about here since getting it recently. You might also be able to tell that I changed the grip shape, particularly thinning it near the bottom.

2010-08-18T15:51:00.001-07:00

8/7/2010

In response to Uncle Kenny's comment on the last post: Texas has a strange convoluted history with handguns. Back around the time the Republic of Texas became a state, individuals couldn't own handguns, but had to "lease" them from the government. Practically, it came down to the same thing, but probably had roots in keeping them out of the hands of undesirables such as Mexicans and Indians. Even now in Texas, a state with strong ties to the six-shooter, one can't carry a handgun unless it's concealed, and then only with a permit. Oklahoma and Arkansas seem to be the same way. Getting permits requires in-state training, but otherwise isn't difficult.

California too is interesting. In the vast majority of the state one can openly carry a loaded handgun. Just not in incorporated areas, on public roads, national, state or other parks, and some other places. This isn't all mapped out very well, so unless one plans to spend time inside a national forest (where it is permitted, all other restrictions being avoided), it's just too much work. And while getting a CCW in California near any metropolitan area is problematic, concealing a firearm is a misdemeanor and is often overlooked for the first offense. (Carrying a concealed knife over 3.5" is a felony - something else that smacks of racism or classism.) CCWs in more rural counties are regularly issued, and one of the guys in my Nevada class had just gotten his.

Back when I grew up in North Dakota, a handgun had all the legal red tape of a shovel. This was before the 1968 Gun Control Act. At 15 or 16 I walked in to a store, put down my $39.95 or so, and walked out with my first handgun (plus a holster). The law was silent on carrying, so I carried. Until someone complained to the sheriff and he called me in to tell me to keep it out of sight if I wanted to carry it around. Only after the '68 GCA did the state have any rules, and those were just flowed down federal ones. Times have changed and now a permit is required to carry, but it's based on a written test only. That permit is good for open or concealed carry, as the two aren't differentiated. Late entry - I remember something about ND having a two-tiered system now. One for residents for in-state carry and another for those wanting better reciprocity recognition from other states. The latter requires hands-on training.

Arizona is also interesting. When I ride through there I'm always caught short by bikers with .45s strapped on their hips. Open carry is permitted anywhere except, ironically, Tombstone. When I went to the Army Counterintelligence School down in Ft. Huachuca, I carried while off post almost all the time. Getting a CCW is also relatively easy, but includes in-state training. Late entry - Arizona no longer requires a CCW to carry concealed. Now anyone who may legally own a handgun may also legally carry it concealed. Restrictions apply and the CCW is still available for those who want reciprocity with other states.

I'm forced to conclude that the future of handguns is in concealed carry. The country is too divided between those that find security and responsibility in handguns and those that are uneasy around them. Concealed weapons, being "concealed," don't directly bother the latter (except in theory). In congested areas, open carrying of handguns will never fly - both because of the unease of many who populate such places and because of the actual safety concerns of guns being stolen when carried openly. But I do see the day coming when Congress, in the same interest of interstate commerce that forces all states to honor the drivers licenses of any state, will require all states to honor the concealed weapons permits of any state. Given that cars kill far more people than guns and CCWs at least require some competency and strict background checks, this should be a no-brainer. Such a bill gets introduced annually, and annually it gets shot down, but with the expected resurgence of the right ("right" in this case means a holding to the Second Amendment, if not the others), it might just make it.

That's a S&W Model 629-1 .44 Magnum up top, in a holster and belt I made a long time back. It's wearing "boot grips," like anyone's gonna tuck this hog into a boot top.

Disclaimer: I wrote this without any fact checking. Feel free to correct me and I'll make changes as necessary.

2010-08-18T15:50:00.001-07:00

8/7/2010

Last Monday my Western USA CCW map had four holes: California, Nevada, Oregon and Colorado. California, because I'm not a close friend of the SD Police Chief (actually, I haven't attempted to get the permit); Nevada, because, though it used to honor Utah permits, now requires in-state training on specific handguns; Oregon, because it's a "must issue" state where county sheriffs may issue to residents of contiguous states, and; Colorado, because they do not issue to non-residents and require out-of-state permittees to be residents of the issuing states. So last Monday I was sitting here thinking I needed a road trip. Thus began the Great 2010 CCW Tour!

I scheduled a class in Reno because I hate Las Vegas enough to drive the extra 200 miles each way to avoid it. I booked a couple nights in a Motel 6, packed up some handguns and drove up on Tuesday. Wednesday morning eight of us showed up at the instructor's home and were given a thorough class in concealed carry, handgun safety, some tactics, and lots of law. We were packed off to a hasty outdoor range on National Forest property where we were required to keep something like 35 rounds from each handgun we wanted on our permits within an 8.5x11 target at 21 feet. In Nevada each auto that will be carried must be listed by make, model and caliber, while qualifying with one revolver allows the carry of any revolver. I shot those above, then borrowed an instructor's Glock 9mm, just because I'd never shot one. Then a rather long CCW test (which I aced) and packed off to a pre-arranged appointment with the Washoe County Sheriff (not the sheriff personally - it's a big county).

Fingerprinted, photographed, handed them some cash, and the CCW will be in the mail in a few months.

The Nevada instructor mentioned that the Lake County Sheriff up in Oregon was a Second Amendment supporter and was willing to issue permits to those who qualify in another contiguous state, so I called for an appointment and on Thursday morning drove up to Lakeview taking along my certificate of completion, applied, was sent up to the jail on the second floor to be fingerprinted. One of the corrections officers up there had just gotten his permit (apparently they aren't armed on duty, so need to go the same route as civilians) and the other was considering it and asked some questions about training. After putting my left prints in the right-hand blocks, we did it again, I went back downstairs to have yet another terrible picture taken. More money changed hands and I'll be getting that permit in a month to six weeks.

Then I drove home, spending Thursday night at the Motel 6 in Carson City. U.S. Highway 395 is simply beautiful. I drove slowly both ways, enjoying the Sierras, the heat, the truck stop food.

Reno was hosting "Hot August Nights" while I was there. The streets were full of hot rods, customs and Corvettes. It was distracting and entertaining. It also meant Wednesday night at the Motel 6 in Reno cost about double what Tuesday night did.

So now, or very shortly, my western states CCW map will have only two holes. And Colorado will be filled in once I move to South Dakota and get my resident permit there.

Those handguns up there are still dirty. Gotta go clean them.

2010-08-18T15:49:00.001-07:00

7/31/2010

Thirty years or so back, I fancied myself quite the pistolero. A Marine captain, I'd been carrying and qualifying with, and sometimes competing with, the service pistol, then the 1911A1 .45ACP. While working in counterintelligence in Asia I'd carried other handguns, mostly J-frame S&W .38 Specials. Thrice I'd used handguns in earnest. Immediately upon returning to the world I placed an order for a LaFrance Nova, a severely chopped and channeled Star BKM, in 9mm Parabellum. Tim LaFrance was way fussy about who he'd sell them to and vetted his customers carefully (mostly so they wouldn't do something stupid like try to feed them anything but W-W Silvertips, or fail to clean and maintain their pistols). I carried that Nova on the few times I still worked the trade in the US and packed it along on the one hot amphibious deployment of my military career, but eventually sold it to finance another folly that I won't get into here. It was replaced by one of the very first Seecamp .32 prototypes (S/N 000X), which went its way as well.

About that time I bought this used .44 Magnum, a S&W 629-1, and started shooting it seriously. I cast bullets and reloaded and spent countless weekends out in the desert learning to shoot double-action, walking cans, doing the Elmer Keith long range knee-burning trick, punching targets, and yes, breaking bottles. It started as a standard square butt, rounded with hand tools, the backstrap grooving re-cut with triangular files. Hard arkansas stones made the double-action the slickest I've ever felt and created a glass-breaking crisp single-action trigger pull. Springs were replaced or polished, the trigger grooves were ground and polished away, the hammer spur truncated, and finally those cool stag grips were purchased. I don't know how many thousands of full-house Keith loads were emptied in this revolver, but I finally had to rebuild it last year.

(If we want to go deep background, I'd owned and adequately shot a 1911 - an Argentine Ballester-Molina actually - and a S&W Highway Patrolman while in college, and inadequately shot a Hi Standard on the college pistol team.)

So ... except for my very first handgun, the legendary Ruger Bearcat .22, I haven't done a whole lot of single action revolver shooting. Beyond that, I sorta scorned them for replica guns, slow to load, long hammer dwell time, stuff for wannabe cowboys. All that's changed now, of course.

If you look down a few posts you'll see pictures of the Ruger .44 Special that Ben Forkin built me on an Old Model Blackhawk .357 that I provided. This morning I took it (and the M1A/M14) out to the range and shot 25 yard slow fire about as well as I ever have. Left hand in front pocket, face 45 degrees left of the target, cock, raise the piece, breathe, sight and twitch - BANG! If I couldn't see the hole, I knew it was in the black. Forty-two rounds downrange, forty-two holes on paper (pulled and pasted every 6 rounds). That revolver up top is pretty sweet, but the Forkin is sweeter. And lighter. And frankly, easier to shoot well, what with the three-dot sights. I'm using the Skeeter Skelton load of a 250-grain Keith bullet in front of 7.5 grains of Unique, and as I'm still using up 25-year-old powder, the smoke and lube smell is intoxicating. Makes me feel like a pistolero again!

Just to round this out, I've been shooting the M1A (also shown below somewhere) off-hand for the last 520 rounds. It's paying off, albeit slowly. Generally I put 20 rounds into one 100-yard military target between cease fires and shoot two such targets per range day. The target scores each round as 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 or 0, with the X-ring inside the ten ring counted as a tie-breaker. A perfect score with ten rounds would be 100, 10X. Lately I've been scoring my targets, then dividing by two. The second target today so scored gave me a 74, 1X. No, you don't have to tell me this isn't perfect. But it's as well as I've done since the Seventies, shooting off-hand. Eventually I really will start doing sitting, kneeling and prone as well. Really. Then maybe I'll feel good enough about it to compete again. In the Old Farts category. In the Blind Old Farts category. Maybe.

Mostly I still think of myself as a pistolero.

2010-08-18T15:48:00.002-07:00

7/26/2010

This is what it looks like. A little Martini-Henry action in the original target stock with the original Parker Hale globe front and micrometer peep rear sights. The rear sight has the built-in choice of four apertures, the smallest of which works best for targets. The insert currently on the front is another hole, so the target is centered in the front sight hole, which is centered in the rear sight aperture. I haven't figured it out yet, but I think the rear sight has a click per quarter minute, roughly based on the dialing in I did yesterday.

From the other side. That front sand bag sprung a leak, so I gave it away - I have a better, though lighter, adjustable front stand that works fine for next time.

The stock has been refinished. Not a fussy job, but a few wood putty patches, some sanding and varnish. The wood itself is not remarkable. The color case hardened parts are bright and clear - they may have been refinished. The blued metal has some light rust and very light pitting on the outside. The bore looks pretty good, but as this thing's been shot since something like 1947, it's worn enough to handle the current .22 WMR chambering without any over-pressures.

And finally:

Today's best ten round group of three groups fired. The group size is 1.93" This isn't sub quarter minute of angle, but I suspect with a scope it might have been closer. With iron sights and my old eyes, I'm pretty proud of it anyway. Ammo was the Fiocchi I mentioned yesterday and the rifle was shot off the bench with bags as shown.

The downside was that I tried afterward to shoot some offhand, but the length of pull is at least two inches too short and with the heavy 29" barrel all the weight was way forward. It was very awkward. I think if I want to get off the bench with this rifle it'll have to be restocked with a longer butt. The long forearm is fine - it actually seemed useful on the bag and the pistol grip shape was also fine. Maybe someone makes a repro standard stock with a longer butt. I'll be researching that.

2010-08-18T15:48:00.001-07:00

7/25/2010

This is the first group at one hundred yards with the new (for me) BSA Cadet 12/15, re-chambered to .22 WMR by MT Guns in Santa Barbara. Twenty-two Magnum is a cartridge not known for accuracy, so my decision to chamber a rifle in it was more a folly than serious. Here's how it went today:

I showed up at the P2K Range in El Cajon late Sunday morning, when the range is typically crowded. It was crowded, and I was put on the waiting list for a 50-yard lane. Had to do the 50 first as I had no idea where the sights pointed or anything. After about an hour I got on the bench and laid out four brands of .22 Magnum ammo - CCI Maxi-Mags, Armscor, Remington and Fiocchi. Getting that many together was itself a chore, as the stuff remains pretty scarce due to the Obama gun round-up panic. Loaded with Fiocchi with the glorious micrometer peep sight bottomed, the bullets were hitting very low. After going up about 60 clicks and right about ten, we were popping the orange routinely.

I tried the Armscor next and it was hitting about the same elevation, but scattered badly. That stuff will get burned in the 2" S&W where its randomness won't do any harm. Then the CCI. I had high hopes for this stuff because of its good reputation, and it did group well, though lower than the Fiocchi. It strung out horizontally, so it was at least partly my input doing that. At this point I was curious about where it would hit at a hundred, because it could be that the bullet hadn't yet crossed the sight line - CCI might be on a par at 100. The Remington was also scattered, though not as bad as the Armscor, which went back in the shooting bag for good.

Moved to the 100 yard lane and started with the 2" group shown here - Fiocchi ammo. Moved to another bull on the paper and shot the CCI. It was once again about six inches lower than the Fiocchi, so I figure we've got a heavier bullet. Put the CCI away. Remington shot about the same elevation as the Fiocchi, but was still noticeably more scattered, so that went back in the bag. (Funny thing is that Fiocchi is manufactured in the Philippines, just like Armscor, and seems to use the same 40gr bullets. I'm guessing they're made in the same factory.)

Then I went to the counter and bought all the Fiocchi .22 WMR they had in the shop and shot another fifty rounds at fresh targets, confirming that the rifle is more accurate than I'd expected, even shooting through iron sights.

I'll post some rifle pictures here once it's been cleaned, and may talk more about the Parker Hale sights. Seems to me there's not a whole lot of advantage to a scope when it comes to hundred yard shooting.

2010-08-18T15:47:00.001-07:00

7/4/2010

In the last picture, the revolver was lying on a couple pieces of leather. Here's what that leather turned into. I'm wearing it now for the first time. Here in California, wearing a handgun around the house is about the length and breadth of the Second Amendment. Sigh. Hmmm, it works real good for sitting, something I do a lot of.

Anyway, I wanted a high ride strong side holster that would protect that tall square front sight. Pancake it is. There's a skived strip of leather along that forward seam that's been waxed to death, and it seems to be working alright so far to protect that sight. Bitch to stitch in though. The slight forward tilt is to center the weight above the midpoint between the belt slots. Being as my belt tilts more and more each year, it doesn't quite center it, but it does keep the butt tucked in several inches below the armpit.

There's a lot of stitching here. The leather is Tandy oak-tanned 9/10 ounce shoulder - stiff already - but the stitching stiffens it further, particularly as it flexes to follow my torso. Again, that keeps the revolver tucked in tight. This is two-needle stitching, so each and every stitch meant using pliers twice. Shoving blunt needles through awled holes in up to three layers of 10-ounce leather is nasty and my hands and wrists ache today.

I chose not to use any kind of strap to retain the revolver. The design is tight enough I could hang by my knees without fear of losing it. It's slightly cased to fit, but as I'd never built a holster for a single action before, I overlooked the seriously asymmetrical nature of the barrel with the ejector housing and the resulting twist of the holster to accommodate that would also make it almost impossible to remove the revolver. So it's only semi-cased.

The bottom is left open to allow trash to pass through. OK, that's rationalizing. It's a lot easier to make it that way and trim excess length off near the end of the build. It also results in a shorter and more easily concealed holster. The muzzle of the holster is above the top of my back pocket, letting me get out the wallet without a lot of fuss.

Yeah, I expect to carry this hog leg concealed eventually. Winter in South Dakota seems appropriate. I'll probably get tired of hauling it around after awhile, but in the meantime it seems like a cool idea.

More on the revolver. I took it to the range again yesterday and learned more about it. Though I'd forgotten (it's been awhile), I use a Lyman 410 nutcracker tool to reload .44 Special (and .38 Special). It sizes the neck, but not the body, of the case. Stuff that's been shot in a S&W therefore won't fit the minimum dimensions of Forkin's chambers. So from here on out I'll be full length resizing all brass so I can use it in any of my .44s. I also suspect that Forkin's square cut chambers are sized to prevent brass more than slightly over length from chambering. I've decided to just keep the case trimmer set up and use it on all brass after full length sizing. Then I'll continue the loading process with the 410 tool. Brass that's been used in this revolver won't really need full length sizing, but as long as I've got more than one handgun chambered in .44 Special, I've got to at least run my whole stock of loaded ammo through the full cycle (shoot, size, trim, reload) once. (I do have one set of .44S/.44M dies for a conventional press, but it's set up for .44 Magnum and I'd just as soon not be adjusting them as I switch back and forth. I may buy a second set to dedicate to .44 Special.)

No range today. All the patriots in the area are there today making loud celebratory noises, and I don't like standing in line. Besides, I still haven't gotten the bore clean enough - important to scrub out all the lead in order that the next lead contributes to burnishing the rifling. Shooting through a leaded bore simply prevents that bit of the steel from ever being polished.

Economy note. A week or so ago I posted that I'd bailed out of the market by rolling my 401K to an IRA with virtually no returns. It looks like my timing was pretty good, as that move saved enough to buy a few more custom guns or a couple or four Krugerrands. See how I think? I saved X amount, so now I can go spend X amount without guilt. More rationalizing. Nice to think about, but I can hold off at least until this revolver (and the .22 Magnum BSA Cadet that's on its way) no longer intrigue me.

(Edit: I've cleaned up the belt slots since the picture was made. Beeswax and boning with a Sharpie barrel. More rounded and slicker now.)

2010-08-18T15:46:00.001-07:00

7/2/2010

It came today! Two years after I dropped the Old Model Ruger Blackhawk .357 off with Ben Forkin, the notable Montana gunsmith, it's back and better than I expected.

The work I initially wanted done was to convert the revolver to .44 Special, a cartridge I reload already and enjoy shooting. Big bore, big bang, friendly shove and big resulting hole. In addition I asked for a shorter barrel and Ben told me that the limit with a working ejector was 3 5/8". I said yes. I also wanted a patridge front sight, not because they're pretty, but because they present a square black picture to the shooter - he agreed and suggested a Bowen indestructible but adjustable rear to go with it. I agreed.

The revolver, as I delivered it, had the Ruger safety mod done to the action, preventing it from firing if dropped, struck with a hammer or whatnot. Without it, convention says only five rounds should be carried, with an empty chamber under the hammer. I have no objection to the mod, but I'm not a purist. I had the original parts that the factory returned with the handgun, and it seems they're going for a premium now to purists who do want the old school clicks and trigger feel. I also had the optional 9mm cylinder. Those trigger parts and the cylinder I swapped to Ben for part of the work - a significant part.

Let's see, what else? New compact cylinder pin to work with the short barrel. I was thinking about some seriously nice grips, but decided I'd do that later if ever. The originals work fine, though they're ugly. Ah yes, a little chamfer on the front edge of the cylinder for that old-timey look. And white dots on the sights were a later request, which Ben was nice enough to include. They work very well at the underlit indoor range, by the way. As he set it up, the revolver shoots point of aim. I usually aim six o'clock, but will either adjust the sights or change how I shoot this one.

In the picture also are some leather tools and the beginnings of a high ride hip holster designed for CCW carry under a jacket. Woulda been nice if the sketch of the holster made it into the pic, but I had to give it a bit more exposure for the blued revolver and the paper washed out. Gotta get back and shoot it more, maybe tomorrow. Today I've got some leatherwork to do.

2010-08-18T15:43:00.001-07:00

6/5/2010

Three hundred and twenty rounds downrange with this rifle, so far. The stock has been replaced, the regular peep sight swapped for a National Match sight and the nasty Chinese magazine it came with replaced by four best quality American made mags. Approximately three hundred of those rounds have been fired off-hand, with me standing unsupported and not using sling, magazine rest, shooting glove or jacket. And I'm slowly, slowly, getting better. Today none of the forty rounds downrange escaped the confines of the paper, with about one of four rounds being in the black ("in" means at least touching - that's how it's scored).

That second target hanger from the right is mine. Actually, there's no target mounted yet - I took the picture before hanging the target during the next cease fire. The target is one hundred yards from the shooting bench. The not shown target used is the NRA SR-1, a standard military black bullseye target intended to simulate the standard 200-yard target for 100-yard practice. When I perforate one in a way that pleases me, I'll bring it home and scan it. That hasn't happened yet shooting off-hand.

I do clean the bore after shooting. Though it's a chrome lined GI barrel and doesn't need that much attention, it's what the drill instructor taught me and if I don't clean it I'd feel vaguely guilty and might get up in the middle of the night to do it. The bore's soaking now. And I wiped that new stock down with linseed oil again, bottling a little where the still-rough surface has irritated my thumbs. At some point the stock will get smooth enough or my thumbs tough enough that this won't be necessary.

And I bought another rifle soft case. Actually a Boyt shotgun case. I love the thick canvas and leather details and the sturdy zippers and brass hardware on Boyt bags. Damn, but they're expensive. But unlike the case I've been using, they won't rip, fray or break. I've also got my eye on a glove and jacket for when half the bullets are in the black. Giving myself that goal means I'll probably be able to put those things to productive use at that point, where now they'd just be hindrances to doing things the right (and hard) way.

The pictured rifle is a 2003 vintage Springfield Armory Inc. M1A standard model with a 1961-vintage Winchester chrome-lined military barrel, forged SAI bolt, National Match front sight and rear aperture, and a 1960's vintage military issue birch stock.

2010-08-18T15:36:00.001-07:00

5/14/2010

Time for a range report. So far, 210 rounds downrange. I still think that the rifle hadn't been fired before I got it, because I'm starting to see the bearing surfaces burnish, where there was just fresh parkerizing before.

Told you below about sighting it in. The last three range days have been all offhand shooting. The results boiled down are that the rifle shoots far better than I can, as I can't keep all the holes on the paper yet. More specifically, I'm using the service rifle 200 yard target at 100 yards and shooting from an unsupported standing offhand position. There is progress - today four of the first six rounds were in the black. Though to get the next four in the black I had to shoot 44 more times. Last time I was pulling low and right; today I corrected and was shooting left of center. Not that you'd call anything a group - more like a pattern. But less holes are missing at least.

Problems. The one magazine that came with the rifle is shit. The lips keep opening up, resulting in occasional feeding of two rounds, only one of which will fit into the chamber. Sometimes that means a jam, sometimes a live round is shoved out of the receiver and the second round chambered. When I bend the lips back in place it feeds fine for awhile. I'm getting so I can tell when the problem will happen by looking at the aft side of the magazine, then correct it first. Four good magazines made by the currently military supplier are on their way, so I'll be able to toss this one. In the mean time, it mostly works and that's good enough for me to get my practice in. Another problem I found was that the gas cylinder plug was over torqued. It took soaking in penetrating oil and a long handled box-end to get it off to clean the piston. It's right now though. Then there's the misaligned stock, the mismatched sights, etc. Eventually those things will be fixed, but for now the improvements needed are all in the shooter himself.

That picture up top is entitled "Rifle with Cat." My old kitty lying in the sun, hoping I don't make any loud machinery noises that startle her. Yes, that's how my workbench looks most of the time.

2010-08-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

5/8/2010

Range report:

Picked up the Springfield Armory M1A yesterday, a civilian version of the military M-14 battle rifle, then drove to my old company, which you might remember that I retired from due to a layoff. I noticed the irony of this on the way over, so I parked offsite, leaving the cased rifle in the locked pickup, before going to the front lot to man the San Diego River Park Foundation table for the company's Earth Day festivities. I don't remember folks there being so grey and stressed before. Spooky. Anyway, after returning home I field stripped the rifle, finding that my boot camp days had taught me well and permanently.

The rifle, a standard model, was built by SAI (Springfield Armory, Inc., to differentiate from the gov't armory of the same name) in early 2003. The walnut stock is USGI (gov't issue), as is the chrome lined barrel (made by Winchester in 1961) and maybe some other minor parts. The receiver, bolt and extractor are all SAI parts, meaning investment cast rather than forged as the Gov't parts were. The front sight is marked "NM," meaning a National Match sight - narrower than the standard one - while the rear is regular issue. There was no cleaning gear in the butt, but there was an allen wrench, which I haven't found a use for yet. (Edit: Looks like it's for the front sight.)

This morning I went slogging down by the river again, hauling trash. I figured I'd get out to the range tomorrow morning, but when I got home the urge hit me, so I packed up rifle, ammo, sandbags, spotting scope and off I went. First the fifty yard line. Having not shot this rifle, I wanted to see where it was hitting and get the sights adjusted. Putting three rounds downrange it was clustering about five inches high and left with the rear sight cranked almost all the way down. I put it the last two clicks down (which should be an inch at 50 yards) and started using the six o'clock position. That got me to about two inches high. Four clicks right put me directly over the bull. Ten rounds so far.

Then I changed to the hundred yard range. The establishment was out of suitable targets, so I paid too much for some of those paste-on things that make an orange ring around the hole and put two of them on the front of a pale orange silhouette and hung it at a hundred during the next cease fire.

Still holding at the six, the rifle was grouping nicely about three inches above the bull. The main trouble is with indoor lighting my pupils don't stop down enough to give me much depth of focus. I had a lot of trouble seeing the front sight. The target was clear though. Because of this, the group size of about four inches with iron sights was better than I'd expected. Anyway, thirty rounds later I decided that even without seeing the front sight clearly, grouping around four inches (the minimum mil spec requirement for the M-14) wasn't half bad.

The rifle functioned exactly as expected, hit where it was pointed better than expected and doesn't kick nearly as much as the little CZ 6.5 Swede. I remember that M-14 kick completely intimidating me in boot camp. Now I suppose the thousands of rounds shot from lightweight bolt guns have given me perspective. It's a sweet rifle to shoot.

Next? Well, I dunno. Shoot it outside at two or three hundred I guess. I've got a roll of the right targets here, but forgot to take them along today. Eventually I'll have a nice photo of the actual rifle, but right now the finish looks like someone gave it an uneven staining job. Might try to fix that by washing in Simple Green, drying, sanding a bit and using only boiled linseed oil. Or staining it darker to overwrite the mottling.

At this time I don't expect to accessorize it with scope, bipod, picatinny rails, lazers, flashlights or paint. There's no point either in accurizing or bedding it unless I can shoot better than it can, and that may never happen. I do have a GI canvas sling and GI cleaning kit on order. Be nice to have some decent 20-round magazines too, but that will wait for South Dakota.

2010-08-18T15:34:00.001-07:00

4/27/2010

In between errands yesterday, I dropped in to the old gun shop where I've spent many happy hours and many thousands of dollars. And spent an hour and a bit over a thousand once again.

Back in the olden days...the story always begins...I was first an ROTC cadet, then a Marine Officer Candidate. In ROTC we carried and qualified with WWII-vintage M1 battle rifles. Candidates were armed and qualified with the almost antique M14 battle rifle, which was still the standard issue of the Corps. This in 1970 and 1971, three and four years after manufacture of the M14 had ceased, and a few years after the Army and some Marines were getting the brand new M16 "Mattel" rifle. My Basic School class (B-73) may have been the last one that carried M14s throughout the six or seven months we studied there. And my first real command, 2nd Amtrac Battalion, still had the M14s, though we were armor and rifles were a secondary concern. So, for something like four years my issue rifles were M14s. Later, sometime around 1977, I was the captain of the Rifle and Pistol Teams of Marine Barracks, USNB Subic Bay. For the couple of months we trained and competed, it was with bone stock 1911A1 pistols and MTU (Marksmanship Training Unit) Quantico-accurized National Match M14s, a sweet and accurate rifle if there ever was one. Glass bedded, with half-minute-of-angle hooded iron sights, welded gas assemblies and trigger work, they were fine machines - certainly more inherently accurate than I or any member of my team could take advantage of.

Anyway, back at the gun shop. The racks had maybe a dozen new Springfield Armory M1A rifles in several of their offered configurations. The M1A is basically a civilianized M14, with no full auto ability, investment cast (and machined) receivers rather than forged (and machined) and, due to CA law, muzzle brakes rather than flash hiders. Nice quality, real nostalgic, heavy, and I wanted one. Actually, I wanted the short 16" version. But alas, alas, prices starting around $1750 for even the plastic-stocked standard rifle were prohibitive. While waxing poetic about them olden days, I was interrupted by the friendly salesman who mentioned the used yet new standard M1A that just came in. Standard, but with the walnut stock (another bitter-sweet nostalgic touch), and priced at $1250. I examined it, decided it had NEVER been fired, whipped out the plastic and put down a 50% deposit. And will pick it up on the 7th of May.

So what am I gonna do with this dinosaur? Notice I used "nostalgic" a lot up there. Well, shoot it, of course. I used to be pretty good with an M14, but don't expect that by any miracle I've retained the talent. I may find myself a glass aspirin bottle, get out the linseed oil, and see if I can still make the two-by-four of a stock all shiny. I'll probably photograph it (the picture up top is a manufacturer's picture, used here without direct permission, but with the understanding that any publicity is good publicity). I may figure out some way to mount it in the back window of the little farm truck, provided that such firearms display is still socially acceptable in South Dakota, my future home. Stuff like that. I won't accessorize it, trying to make it look modern with black plastic, bipods, glass sights, won't kit it for some imaginary mission scenario, all of which are seriously behind me now. I'll eventually find some old 20-round military magazines, as the tenner that comes stock in California doesn't look exactly right - can't do that until I leave CA though.

More and more lately I've been remembering that short ten years I was a Marine. It's a long time ago and really has little to do with my life since, but it was formative. I grew up there, got married as a captain, travelled seriously for the first time, and had many adventures of the sort that are usually described as "a stranger in trouble far, far away." Some of the effects from the service are that I still think first about the weight of anything I may have to carry around. I like olive drab, and it comprises a large part of my daily wardrobe. I sleep on a camp cot. Boots are preferred over shoes when there's a choice. Hair is only a bother.

Wow, the more I think about it, the more things pop up. Maybe it had more influence on me than I thought.

Heaven help me, I don't want to revert to one of those old guys who wear USMC baseball caps to highlight the only thing that ever mattered in their lives. I don't hardly wave flags. I DO have a USMC sticker in my truck window though, and a faded tattoo.

BTW, I don't want any comments about how those rifles are cheaper wherever you are. I know that. Unfortunately, buying guns in CA automatically boosts prices through the roof. And I wanted it now.

2010-08-18T15:33:00.001-07:00

4/4/2010

A friend is considering buying her first handgun. I've strongly recom-mended a Smith & Wesson J-Frame in .38 Special.

It's foolproof - no levers, safeties or magazines, just pull the trigger five times and five bullets will exit the muzzle about 750 fps.

It's light, compact, and easy to carry, stow and use. While lots of little autos look good on paper, even those with smaller external dimensions end up looking like handguns if you put them in the pocket. I recently wrote down the drill from empty handgun to firing the first round, comparing the 1911 pattern gov't automatic to a S&W revolver and the former took many times the number of pixels.

Thirty-Eight Special is a venerable old chambering that has been perfectly adequate for over a hundred years. Recoil is moderate depending on the weight of the handgun, external ballistics are only "special" when compared to the shorter and smaller cartridges of the turn of the last century, but they were once considered to be the meanest on the block and remain perfectly adequate.

Smith & Wesson makes quality stuff. Fanatics will argue all day long whether newer is better or worse, but few will argue that a J-Frame in good repair is unreliable. For the few that shoot enough to loosen up a Smith, they're easily repaired by anyone with moderate gunsmithing skills, or can be inexpensively tuned by real gunsmiths.

Of course there are downsides. Shooting well with a lightweight double-action belly gun is hard. It's not a target piece, does deliver a healthy smack to the shooting hand, and in this case is limited to five rounds before reloading.

My position on these is that the primary purpose of this type of revolver is to protect oneself or others from the imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm, and that means it won't be used seriously outside of ten or twelve feet. Range time and familiarity pay huge fast rewards. Recoil is meaningless unless your hand bleeds on the first discharge. Macho, huh? OK a range day and a couple hundred rounds of ammo from a revolver that doesn't fit the hand can be brutal, but swapping grips fixes that. And five rounds shot in self defense won't be felt or even heard by the shooter - take my word for it or ask around. Five rounds - how are you going to hold off the zombie hoards with only five rounds? If that's your threat, get something bigger that holds more bullets. I have personal knowledge of three defensive handgun incidents that used a total of five rounds.

My advice on ammo was also controversial. I suggested finding the cheapest .38 Special available, then shooting it at the range and using it for the bedside load. Sure, some loads are better than others, but 158 grains at 750 feet per second isn't going to expand and going to hotter ammo (Plus P) or lighter faster bullets aren't going to get you what shooting lots of ammo a the range will get you. Is cheaper ammo less reliable? Well, maybe. But if you run the probabilities of one or more misfires in five rounds, there isn't enough difference to measure. And with a double action revolver, you just pull the trigger again, unlike an auto where a misfire means clearing the round once you figure out where the round is and determine the best method (stovepipe, failure to ignite, misfeed, whatever) to get on with the next shot.

(Despite being a huge fan of S&W revolvers, truth in advertising sort of demands that I admit that the pistol I keep close at hand is a Kimber Ultra in .45 ACP. But I've used 1911s since I was eighteen including ten years of professional experience.)

The picture up top shows an alloy framed Smith & Wesson Model 637-2 .38 Special 5-shot on the left (with S&W laminated boot grips reduced further as I like them, the external safety lock removed and the hammer spur cut off - this one now has black plastic Barami waistband hook grips on it), and a Smith & Wesson Model 351PD, .22 Magnum 7-shot, alloy framed and cylindered revolver (hammer spur removed, external lock still in place) in an El Paso Saddlery "Street Combat" holster. My favorite of the current lot (not shown) is the Model 442 (No External Lock) model, a compact hammerless black alloy .38 that I finally bought when S&W did a foreign police overrun of revolvers without the lock, then sold that surplus off piecemeal.

Feel free to comment on this. Disagreement is invited.

2010-08-18T15:32:00.001-07:00

3/12/2010

Sometime back I tossed the topographic maps I'd used when peak-bagging in east county. I love topo maps, but once we settled in to a more urban domestic life, they were collecting dust. Tomorrow morning I'll be out with the San Diego River Park Foundation on Cedar Creek, a tributary of the mighty San Diego River, helping clean up the trails and stream bed, and it got me itching to have paper maps that I could lay the Silva compass on to really know where I am.

(Postscriptum: The thousand foot decent to Cedar Creek and the return nearly busted my ass totally. Notes to self - huge boots aren't made for walking, double-thickness Carhartt trousers are for welding not desert ascents, get in shape and lose weight.)

First I checked for a map store in San Diego. There used to be a great one on University Avenue, but it seems to be gone now. Then I thought of the A16 Outfitters, but remembered their stock as mostly incomplete. So I went to the source, the U.S. Geological Survey and shopped. Their service is very good for being government and all. One can download digital versions of anything, but as I don't have a printer, much less one that can print huge, I decided to order up five 7.5-minute grid maps of the SD River, beginning in the east with the one I'll be trekking tomorrow and meandering down to La Mesa. Eight bucks each - a bargain if you know what to do with them.

It used to be said that the most dangerous thing in the universe was a Marine second lieutenant with a map. I don't remember it that way. From Boy Scouts, through Army ROTC, through the Marine Corps schools, maps have always fascinated me. Even though my last road trip to Minnesota was guided only by one Rand-McNally plastic-coated US road map, the more detail the better. Magnetic north, declination diagrams, shooting azimuths and back azimuths, triangulation, orienteering. I was pretty good at all of that. Once in awhile I got lost, but not often when leading a platoon through the boondocks. Usually I got lost all by myself.

So the maps won't be here for tomorrow, but maybe by the next time there's a headwaters event.

The map up top is courtesy of the USGS and has been reduced severely for illustration purposes.

2010-08-18T15:31:00.001-07:00

3/5/2010

This was an experi-ment, sort of. I've never tried to photograph a long gun before, and as usual couldn't work out in my head how to do it. That's always been one of my problems, the knowing it can't be done interfering with simply giving it a try. So I gave it a try.

Staging. As this really is an elephant gun, I thought that the pith helmet would be good to use again. Actually it looked sort of funky, like a early 20th Century editorial cartoon about 19th Century British colonial policy. The burlap coffee bag has been sitting here looking for a use, so I tried it with the plain side up, but instead used the printed side to give the some more texture. Four 9.3x62 cartridges were a no-brainer, but the open box I tried first didn't work as the inside white cardboard was too bright. So a closed box then. The Coleman lantern I caught out of the corner of my eye as I walked past to get the camera and it seemed to cover an otherwise distracting patch of nothing.

Light was once again the hot spotlight with barn doors narrowing the beam to keep attention on the rifle. One thing I'd do differently now would be to allow more light on the butt. The reason I didn't was because to keep the picture interesting I needed to crop and didn't want to end up with a long, skinny frame. Wrong choice though. Similarly with the sling - I've got a classic leather military sling that would have looked nicer, but the black nylon one that's on the rifle is better for actual use (like I'm actually going to be using it a lot, you know).

I did a few pictures of the other side of the rifle, but it looked too much to me like intentional display - rifles laid on a flat surface should have the bolt open and be resting on the bolt handle - makes them less likely to slide around or be unintentionally loaded and dangerous. So I shot it as if I'd just laid it down (except for the pretty light and props - duh). And I'm not real happy with the picture because it doesn't actually show much of the rifle - but to do that the rest would have been too bright and distracting. I could have made the light even skinnier if I'd had the lamp closer to the subject and closed the doors a bit more. Ah well - next time maybe.

The rifle is a CZ 550 FS (means "full stock") in 9.3x62 Mauser caliber. The rear sight, though you can't see it, is a NECG aperture on the receiver and the front is a light-gathering red one of some sort. The stock front sight hood was discarded to allow light to that sight. It is punishing to shoot, but with those sights and my accelerating flinch while shooting this, it will still stay within about four inches at a hundred yards. Certainly good enough for any rogue elephants I may come across in San Diego.

2010-08-18T15:30:00.001-07:00

3/3/2010

Sitting sipping java this morning I remembered that there was at least one handgun I hadn't photographed, so I decided to do that today. After all that bike work I needed something to keep sorta busy with.

Being as the crappy Leica Digilux II is now fixed (which cost more than the thing is really worth), I thought I should put it to use - and I didn't much feel like souping film this morning. So out came the saw horses, the rusty steel sheet, a light stand and spot with barndoors, the Model 37 (dash nothing) revolver, and accessories including the pith helmet I was issued in the Philippines and the Gerber Mark II fighting knife that I mostly carried in the field back in them military daze.

The Model 37 is a five-shot aluminum-framed .38 Special revolver. One doesn't usually think of it in military terms, but they were issued to Marine air crews up 'til about '72 or '73. I remember overseeing the de-milling of hundreds of them at MCAS Futenma, Okinawa, Japan, in about 1974, and have always thought that was a huge waste of material and money, but the gov't wasn't allowing re-sale of old military weapons back then, so they got cut up.

This particular revolver is in pristine condition with the original box. It looks like it's been fired through only one chamber, so that may have been at the factory or maybe the original owner shot it once. These Airweights kick a mite, so the latter is possible. There are some tiny blemishes in the factory finish and one bitty nick on the edge of the trigger guard, but if I'd ordered it new and it showed up in the box just like this, I'd figure that was the way it should be.

The revolver was probably made in the early '60s, though I've packed up the reference book that would confirm the exact year. As I said, it's the base Model 37, so it's not one of the later or cheaper ones. That "flat" cylinder release is the sign of a very early example, so it could have been late '50s even.

My setting here is sort of a mixed bag. The pith helmet was issued to the Marine Barracks Guard (of which I was the commander, though I had no say in this particular matter) at Subic Bay Naval Base in '75. For the record we also had the last remaining Marine Corps issued khaki bermuda shorts as part of the daytime summer uniform, along with the short sleeved khaki shirt, combat boots, green boot socks and white deuce (or "782") gear - belt, holster, magazine carrier, gloves. This was, no doubt, the goofiest that any formation of U. S. Marines has ever looked. History of issued pith helmets, not to mention shorts, is unclear. (Edit: I'm told that pith helmets still in use on firing ranges, presumably in hot places.) You sometimes see them in Brit military historical photos, and they certainly are appropriate for standing in the sun for long periods. The Marines did issue them in other places (must have - they were in the Corps' inventory), but I'm not familiar with any more recent use than at the Barracks in P.I. (See note above.)

The knife is the most recent of several of this model I've owned. It was probably bought around 1977 or so, to replace the last one I probably gave to a foreign military counterpart somewhere along the way. Military officers all like nice knives. I bought my first Mark II in 1970 or so when I knew I was going to be commissioned, but have gone through several along the way. Notice the belt hooks - it was meant to be used with existing web gear of the day. This is a fighting knife - it has no other conceivable purpose - but I have shaved with it on occasion just to see if I could. I could. It's never been sharpened, but it was stropped before and after shaving, so it's ready next time I want to risk my neck to show off my shaving skills.

The revolver has no provenance. It's hardly used, still in the box, and as such isn't of any historical interest except as a fine example of that particular revolver and of Smith & Wesson's workmanship during that period. Still, it's a pretty piece.

2010-08-18T15:26:00.000-07:00

12/13/2009

This morning I walked downtown to the cafe. Because it was raining I pulled on the Vanson jacket and set a narrow-brimmed Stetson hat on my head. While Gibson makes little mention of hats beyond "mesh-backs" (used in a derogatory way), I started thinking about my own hat.

Stetson is an old American hat maker. One thinks cowboy hats first off, as that is probably the majority of what they make. Mine is a lower quality, 2 1/2" brimmed medium crown hat in an olive green that I bought years ago online, looking for that exact thing. Or it might be the replacement of the same one I bought online years back. I don't exactly remember. I'd owned a couple of real cowboy hats, felt and straw, one felt was a Stetson and the other a Resistol, and I have a Stetson straw now), but found that they weren't practical in my own way of living. Besides, they required pointy-toed boots be worn to avoid looking terminally goofy. I have a thirty-five year old pair of pointy-toed Tony Lamas that I got when I was a farrier, but don't wear them anymore for any reason. So I wanted a narrow brim, but with sun and rain protection for the glasses and collar. And it works fine for that.

When I traveled a whole lot, that hat came with. And frequently got crushed in the storage compartments of airplanes. It's not a "crushable" hat. It (we'll consider this to be one hat, whether or not it was) was with me in Hamburg, London, Tel Aviv, Ankara and Stockholm. In Frankfurt, in a line at the airport, it plus a brown horsehide Vanson M-2 jacket earned me some sniggers of "Indiana Jones" from some Euro-punks behind me. They were justified, and I sold the jacket to a German friend shortly thereafter. But kept the hat. I wore it in Buenos Aires in the summer to keep the sun off while working on their president's helicopter. And I wore it in Korea in the winter where it kept the snow from my face and the cold from my head. I've worn it through a couple of blizzards on the road and in quiet northern Minnesota frigidity. Does what it's supposed to do and looks pretty good, too.

But it's not an icon. It's no work of genius, not called up in anyone's mind as an "ideal," not of anything like top quality. It's a hat. And it keeps the rain off my glasses. Probably time to start looking for another like it soon as this one is showing sweat stains on the band and brim, and the lining is getting tattered and ugly. It's a good hat.

2010-08-18T15:25:00.000-07:00

12/10/2009

In his later books, Wm. Gibson pays close attention to iconic stuff. In "All Tomorrow's Parties" there exists a shop on the squatter-domain Oakland Bay Bridge called "Bad Sector" run by the ubiquitous Fontaine. His main obsession and wares are rare and historical watches, mostly military and aviation timepieces, but his stock also includes a Randall Aircrew combat knife (the edge as it came from Florida, not sharpened) and other bits of memory and lore. Fontaine carries a S&W .22/.32 in his pocket, the rather scarce "Kit Gun." Elsewhere I've mentioned Gibson's Buzz Rickson's jacket, from "Pattern Recognition" and maybe a few other things.

I sat back in the chair at Java Jones and put the book on the arm and started remembering things. That Randall #1 I thought I needed, but couldn't afford, when I was sure I'd be shipped to Viet Nam (I settled for a Gerber Mark II fighting knife.) The Rolex GMT Master that I could afford and bought for my left wrist, the right having to wait forever for the 22 Carat gold ID bracelet that would counterbalance the watch and make up the remainder of the well-outfitted young officer's personal combat gear. The S&W "Kit Gun" that I stumbled upon and snagged a couple decades back, having had to settle, for financial reasons again, on a Ruger Bearcat as a kid. I'd add that the Vanson Stadium Jacket with snap-in vest that I was wearing this morning is also iconic, though it may not be recognized as such for a few more years. Maybe the Viberg 151 Contractor boots, too. Or maybe both already are icons in cultures outside SoCal?

What makes something, a brand, iconic? Most brands are junk. Or they're ephemeral. They represent nothing at all, or planned obsolescence, or mere utility (like my beloved Carhartt).

I think I have a start of an answer: Iconic objects are made with best, not adequate, quality in mind, both in design and construction. Iconic objects are useful, more in the mind's eye than in objective space, but useful. And iconic objects are beautiful. The highest quality, most useful thing may be ugly, and therefore cannot be iconic. And it seems that iconic stuff must be expensive and labor intensive. Human hands must have been involved in the making and human genius in the design.

Anyway, back to reading "Parties." Behind that is "The Difference Engine," co-authored by Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

That's my Kit Gun, up top.