Heading Into Spring

It got warm enough this afternoon to have to run the air conditioning for a couple of hours. It's nice to know that it still blows cold.

It's been an interesting few days, that tooth that was killing me fell out with nothing left inside. This after I paid a ton of money to the dentist in advance, only to have him not return my phone calls. Grump.

Saturday was a Cowboy Action Shoot, it almost didn't happen as it was raining a little. Our range is built on that black gumbo soil, a cloud in Oklahoma sinks trucks. But it looked like the rain was just about over so we set up three sets of targets and shot six stages on those with just different courses of fire on the same targets.

There were only eight of us so we were mostly just bangin' and clangin'. As soon as the rain stopped the wind came up, blowing harder and harder. By the sixth stage the wind was gusting well over forty MPH, I know it hit fifty a few times. Driving home the wind had blown the overhang from over the pumps at a gas station on the way.

In other news I bought the posts and wire for a five foot tall fence to go around my backyard, Wednesday is my "payday" so I will buy the gate, main posts and concrete for the job. Then it is just waiting for my bud to find the time between jobs to help me put it up. Once I get the fence up I'll start looking for another German Shepherd.

Today was Delivery Day. Linda Lou had a Doctor's appointment and then wanted to visit her sister over in Fort Worth so I went and filled her car with gas, coming home I stopped at the mail box and there was my new six cavity bullet mold for the 250 grain Pigeon Roost Slim .45 Boolit. This is a Big Lube Boolit (tm) design, it carries some five times the amount of lube that conventional bullets do, very important for black powder shooting. The extra lube keeps the powder fouling soft so we don't lose accuracy shooting a lot of rounds. I am told that modern black powder is not near the quality of the stuff of the late 19th Century so the old time bullets don't carry near the lube they need. The skinny grease grooves of ordinary bullets carry plenty of lube for a few gunfulls in handguns. The same bullet runs out in a rifle barrel or all day handgun shooting.

This new mold is from Blogdaddy Harvey's neck of the woods, Hartford Wisconsin. I think they only have five more months of winter. The I think they have three days of summer and then comes winter again. The people at Lee Precision make these molds for Dick Dastardly, a riverboat gambler and midnight rambler from Sun Prarie, WI. Dick spent his pension fund building this little home based business. Anyone insterested in BP should click on Big Lube for molds and lubes.

I also got my year's supply of Black Powder off the FedEx truck today. I'm trying a new kind of BP, Graf and Son's house brand. This is supposed to be made by the Schutzen people in Germany. They use a different kind of wood for the charcoal, Alder, I believe.

The finest BP known today is Swiss, the folks shooting the long range buffalo gun matches swear by it. At the close ranges and big targets we use in CAS it is not worth the extra money, it is near twice as expensive as GOEX or Graf's. I'm told that Graf's and Schuetzen are just under Swiss. I am trying Graf's because of the free shipping. So I have ten pounds of BP for $135.00, tax, title license, dealer and destination charges. That will make a lot of .45 Colt and 12 gauge loads. Mo Smoke!

Now I have to buy a twenty pound lead furnace, the little ten pounder I have is fine for a two cavity mold. Trouble is a six cavity takes a lot of lead every time and the ten pounder can't keep the melt hot enough. Still, buying the Big Lube Boolits(tm) is such that I will save money casting after spending a hundred and fifty+ bucks for the mold, furnace and sizer die. They are over thirty bucks+ for 250 bullets.

So, that is what I'm up to, digging postholes, buying fencing materiel and getting ready to cast bullets.

I just hope I don't have have a fire in the house until I shoot off most of this BP.