Still Here.

I have been writing a lot, and then deleting, I just haven't had much to say. I've been somewhat depressed.

Last Saturday was another Cowboy Action Shoot, smaller than usual as there were a couple of really big shoots happening within a couple hundred miles. A lot of our better shooters were traveling to those. I did unusually poorly, I just kept getting "Procedurals" over and over for messing up the target order. A "P" is a ten second penalty, over and above the five second penalty for each miss. I had more misses than I should have, plus one of my revolvers kept seizing up. Oddly, with all those troubles, I won my Frontier Cartridge Class. I would be happier with the certificate had there been, oh I don't know, one or two others shooting black powder cartridges.

I am not sure exactly why my performance was so bad, I slept very poorly the night before, I guess that is as good a reason as any. At any rate, the revolver that was giving me trouble is back in the Gunsmith's shop. This is it's last chance, if it isn't fixed this time I am getting a new shootin' iron. My 'smith is putting a bushing on the front of the cylinder to hold it back where it belongs and is recutting the forcing cone. It seems that as I shoot the revolver the fouling builds up on the front of the cylinder and then drags against the back end of the barrel.

This is the second time this revolver has been in the shop for the same problem. Now, with smokeless powder loads it does not give any trouble, just with The Holy Black. Both my revolvers are Italian clones of the famed Colt Single Action Army, one is the Cimarron. This is the one that has never given me any trouble one that gives me the trouble is the Millennium revolver. Both revolvers are made by the Uberti outfit, the Cimarron is assembled in Fredicksburg, Texas, it seems there is much more attention to detail there. The Cimarron is some hundred and fifty bucks more expensive than the Millennium, trouble is I have spent some eighty bucks on the millennium at the Gunsmith already and now I have this new bill coming up.

On the positive front, I bought a pair of Brownells Colt Single Action Hammer Spring spacers installed them, one per gun. In the old days cowboys would put a piece of leather between the mainspring and the frame, this lightened the trigger, a lot. The trouble is that leather absorbs moisture for the air and the mainspring and frame rust, eventually the mainspring breaks. Considering that Murphy was an opimist, that mainspring would only break when a cowboy really needed his shootin' iron to go BANG. Brownells has updated the concept and is using neoprene instead of leather. Since neoprene is not hydroscopic, nothing rusts because of it.

I bought the pair of spacers for $4.97 and a Wolff Spring kit for $23.99. The plan was to take the revolver that was least improved by the spacer and put the spring kit in. After running both revolvers through a match, the new plan is to wait until something breaks and use the new spring kit for a spare when it does. Those spacers really work, and they're real cheap. I fired the whole match and I used ammo that I had loaded with PMC primers and some with Winchester primers, plus a few with Remington primers, they all went BANG. I had planned on backing the mainspring set screw out some after this match to further lighten the trigger, I am not sure I am going to bother. The triggers are both very light, now. I may just leave them be. I don't need a loud noise from breathin' on 'em.

I also had the rear sight on the millennium opened up so, I could not see any light on each side of the front sight against the black-paited targets. After opening that rear sight up a few thou, the front sight was easy to see.

Assuming that Koenig, my 'smith, is able to fix that millennium, my revolvers are done. Race ready.

I worked on my shotgun chambers some, my empty cartridge cases did not fall out. I got on the SASS Wire and asked the Pards about that, there were all kinds of recommendations, from sandpaper to toothpaste to smooth the chambers out. The least radical seemed to be putting toothpaste on a bore mop, chucking the bore mop in a drill and just polishing. I regret to say that the toothpaste trick did not work with my black pwder shells in brass cases. So, on the way home I bought some automotive rubbing compound, smeared some of that on a bore mop and ran that in the chambers. Then I fired a couple rounds out the back door and the empties fell right out. I shall see how it does in a match. If it nneds more I'll do it. Thing is, though, the first law of gunsmithing is that it is easy to remove metal, very difficult to add metal. I suspect that I will have more to do, if ony because the black powder fouling builds up so fast. I also put a Marble's 5/16 "ivory" bead on the front of my shotgun, it is a lot faster than the brass pinhead-sized bead it had.

So, my rifle is done, my shotgun is either there or almost there as is one revolver. The other one, we'll see. At any rate, within a couple more matches I will have removed all the equipment problems and if I have any more trouble at a match it will be because of the loose nut behind the buttplate.

In other news, it is one month and counting until Linda Lou and I are on our way out to the Gold Rush country of California. One of my neices is getting married. We will spend about a month out there. If anyone cares we will be mainly in Sutter Creek, that is just a little south of due east of Sacramento, about fifty miles. I am also going to be meeting a couple of Cowboy Action Shooters and hope to get a couple of matches in out there. I'm going to meet Springfield Slim, a bulletmaker and leathersmith. He is going to use my rifle as a pattern for a leather recoil pad and I am going to try a batch of the Big Lube Boolits, a cast bullet with an extra large grease groove. This is supposed to eliminate the need for a grease wad to keep the gun from tying up due to fouling. This would give more room in the case for powder if I want some T. Rex loads and for mild loads I can fill the empty space with dry grits or that fancy Puff Lon stuff. I have a can of Puff Lon, I haven't tried it yet but the folks that make it say it works fine with Black Powder.

Anyhow, I am loading a bunch of extra ammo in hopes of getting to a match or two out there.

George, RIP

Saturday started out as a beautiful day, I woke up in plenty of time to go to the cowboy action shoot. Halfway there I realized that I had forgot to take my morning pills but then I often don't take those until afternoon, anyway. I even had time to eat a little something on the way to the shoot, two of Mickey D's sausage egg and cheese biscuits. More fat than I'm supposed to have but I get more exercise at a shoot than anywhere else.

I shot another personal best match, the poor old Range Officer is still having to drag an eight day grandfather clock from stage to stage to keep my time but my accuracy is improving. I just wonder how I would have done had I remembered to take my "shakey pills", the two capsules I take to control the tremors. Those are morning meds since I don't much care if my hands shake in my sleep.

I actually won a certificate for finishing second in my class, I guess I would be real proud if there had been more shooters in my class, a third one would have been nice. I got back to town and called home, Linda Lou told me about the shooting and yelling from down the street and said that George was missing. I got home and went looking, I found him in a nearby field, unable to rise, unable to move his feet. He was still breathing, though.

I rushed back home and cleared the crap out of the back of the car and got a sheet, I rolled him on to the sheet and got him in the back of the van, I didn't quite rupture myself but it was close. While I was doing that, Linda had called our Vet, unfortunately it was too late on a Saturday and I had to take him some forty+ miles to the emergency Vet. I made that run at well over the speed limit with my emergency flashers on the whole way, not that they do much good. Maybe one driver out of ten knows to pull out of the way for somebody with the flashers going.

We got George inside and they hit him up with a shot for the pain while I filled out the paperwork, they then looked him over and cleaned him up a little. Because of George's size he needed multiple X-rays, he is too big for just one to cover his whole spinal column. The Vet, before the X-rays had to tell me that George either had a broken spine or just a severe shock to his spine. It would take X-rays at a hundred bucks a pop to find out. While everyone, including me, knew that the odds were against him, I ordered the X-rays. Then I waited. Eventually the Vet came out with the X-rays, they were a death sentence. We could see the displacement in his spine, along with the bunch of birdshot.

The Vet told me about the eight thousand dollar surgery that had a one in a thousand chance of letting George walk again. I opted for the shot.

They put George in a cardboard coffin and I brought him home. By then it was well past dark so I just left him in the car until morning. I got up early and started digging his grave. Between my back and that stroke it took me until late afternoon to dig a German Shepherd sized grave. Dig it I did, with a certain amount of rude comments from the boss about why I didn't spend the fifty dollars to have him cremated. The bottom line, though was that it would have cost more than double that to have him cremated alone and for us to get the ashes back.

I didn't want George to be cremated with a bunch of other critters and then thrown in the trash. Nobody cared about him when he was a puppy. He had about six months or so with me and then he had to lay in that field for five or six hours, with his mouth full of dirt before I found him. Most of his life he had no human contact. I did get to scratch his ears as he died and I buried him in the spot where he liked to lay in the sun. He has his favorite plush chew toy with him. My heart is a cinder.

For some reason my service is so slow today that I cannot upload any pictures of George. There are a few good ones in the archive, October and November and earlier.

Before anyone asks, yes, I know who did this. It is a long story, the person has a plausible explanation, it does not matter that it would be a lie, I'm stuck with not being allowed to fill him with birdshot, break his spine and leave him laying in mud. Damned Democrats.

Stress!

My Cardiac Doc had me busy yesterday, with an MRI and a stress test. Stress was easy as the whole thing was in Dallas, starting in the morning. Which means that I had to GET to Dallas, in the morning. With no coffee allowed. Details like no coffee allowed explains why hospitals don't allow guns.

I had my work done at Medical City, in north Dallas, there are a lot of places closer, none better. We started with the MRI, my Doc wanted a look at the clot in my aorta. He has me on this rat poison stuff, Coumadin, that is a fancy name for Warfarin. In large doses it makes a rat, or a person, bleed to death with no holes in him. The dose I take is not that strong, the hope is that the clot dissolve without the Docs having to go in with a vacuum cleaner and wire brushes or whatever they use. I am rooting for the rat poison, the carotid artery that they opened up in the hooraw after that stroke is still sore.

The MRI was the standard thing, they put me in this very skinny "bed" and slid me in to this big white sewer pipe and then had a crew of blacksmiths beat on the outside of it with humongous hammers and sound giant buzzers, somehow this gives a picture of my innards. This is the fourth or fifth time I've had that done, every other time has been my head and neck, though. The breathing instructions were different, otherwise I found no other difference. Oh, and this time, instead of earplugs they gave me headphones. The woman running the test got mad when I asked her to change the radio station, for some odd reason. It's weird, we've been going to Med City for years, this is only the second unpleasant experience I've ever had with the people there. The other one was back in the early '90s when some Intern couldn't find a vein on Linda Lou, I was looking around for a stick. I know interns have to learn, give me a Nurse who knows how to make a stick, anyhow. Let the Interns learn on each other.

The it was time for the stress test, as if I wasn't already stressed enough, just from driving into Dallas. With no coffee. In the morning. Here they put me on another skinny bed and shot me full of some kind of radioactive juice. Later that night I turned off the light in the bathroom, my pee did not glow in the dark, that was disappointing. Then they slid me in to this other kind of camera that rotated around shooting pics of my innards from a hundred different angles one was done with no giant blacksmiths with humongous hammers and buzzers.

Then we went to the treadmill and I had to run like a gazelle, trying to get my heart rate to 137. Unfortunately my sciatica kicked in and we could only get my heart rate to 105 before my left leg gave out. So, instead, we had to do a chemical stress test, they injected two giant batches of some kind of chemical in, no one told me what they were. They did give me all kinds of warnings about what the meds might do, all they did to me was make the inside of my arm cold. Well, they did something to the way the EKG worked but I know nothing about that, it's just a bunch of squiggley lines to me. The not smoking was a big deal, I was not particularly winded.

After the treadmill I was supposed to have a repeat of the series of pictures in the rotating camera, since we couldn't do the treadmill well enough I had to go eat and wait an hour. There is some kind of medical reason, though, that I was told to eat something with a lot of fat. It was to help absorb the stuff they shot in to me. So I had fried chicken, french fries and two, count them, two donuts, plus my morning coffee, six hours or so late. I am going to have to ponder on whether being allowed to eat fat is worth the delay in coffee. Ahh, the copay on a fake heart attack would probably make it not worthwhile just for donuts and fries.

Anyway, that was it, then into my car and start the drive home. I made a stop at Wally World and then, home. Speaking of Wally World, they are opening a new Wal Mart in Quinlen, the nearest town. Only ten miles to do the shopping, instead of twenty-five. Hooray!

Have We Found The Secret.?

Blogdaddy Harvey has been investigationg why my links won't work and claims to have found the secret.
A post or so back I was discussing my new rear sight on my Navy Arms '92 Winchester clone. If the link works you should see an article for the Marble's Tang Sight. If this link works it will give us a link to an article about the sight.

Hurray! It works. Oddly, I have to click on the link widget, the thing Harvey calls Kermit's head because it look's kinda like Kermit the Frog's head if one has had enough vodka, go and type the http:// behind the http:// that is already there, then after I publish the post, go back and edit out the extra http://. Otherwise the durned computer puts the addy of this website in and won't let me edit that out. Please don't ask why. What is even stranger, when I have my site's addy in the link, that I didn't want, I can hover my curser over the broken link and see it in the bottom left corner of my screen, I click on "edit html" and my site's addy doesn't show. Don't ask.

Oh well, it works. Hey, I'm for bed. I loaded some .45 Colt ammo for my '92, a box of fifty rounds of the Hornaday 250 grain XTP hollowpoint in front of a heavy load of Hodgdon's Lil Gun Powder. I also loaded a batch of that same bullet in front of a heavy load of Hodgdon's H110.These loads should clock 1300 and 1400 feet per second out of a revolver and should hit a solid 1750-1850, maybe a bit more out of the 24 inch tube in the rifle. The question is, how will my body react to that crescent shaped steel butt plate. I might just lose some fillings but I'm going to the range. I swear, the greatest invention of 20th century riflery was not the scope sight or improved metalurgy but those flat shotgun buttplates. Those skinny, curved steel crescent buttplates can flat jar you silly.

To heck with it, I am taking plenty of soft lead black powder loads, too. If the hot loads are too bothersome I'll shoot the real thing. I have plenty of BP shotshells for my mule ear double,too. If air travel is cancled in Oklahoma and Kanas tomorrow it is because of the south wind blowing my powder smoke north.

Overslept And Missed The Shoot.

I overslept this morning, I woke up about the time of the mandatory safety meeting. Since I am about an hour's drive from the shoot I said shucks, plus several other colorful expletives and comments. There is something wrong with a world that requires a retired guy to buy an alarm clock but it seems we need a new one.

I really wanted to make this shoot, too. New boots, new rear sight on my rifle, even a new stampede string on my hat. I'm tired of my hat flying downrange in the mild Texas breeze. The rule is that the Pards are allowed to shoot holes in a hat that goes downrange. Fortunately they missed. I went to Shepler's for the stampede String. I got it home and found that it too was made in China. Seems that it's damned hard to find American made cowboy gear. I haven't been to that part of the world since the late sixties. Maybe I'll bleg some to see if my multitude of readers will send me back to check out the Chinese Cowboys.

Oh well, now that I'm here, let me tell you about the trip to Arkansas. The main reason for the trip was to go to Powder, Inc. We got there just fine, I drove right past it because there is no sign but we doubled back and found it. There is no sign because the feller that runs the place runs it as a wholesale business and not a store. Oh well, we found it and I got my thirty-five pounds of FFG.

On the way there we stopped for lunch at a diner in Hugo, Oklahoma. I don't bemember the name but it was a little bitty place across the street from the Ford Dealership. Linda Lou wants to go back, the cheeseburgers were real good. There were like ten stools and no booths or tables. Still, if you ever get to Hugo, the cheesburger and fries at the Busy Bee Cafe, Linda Lou remembers the name.

We stopped in Sallisaw, Oklahoma to go to this Indian store. It was too late in the afternoon to go to Sequoyah's Home, that is the feller that came up with a written language for the Cherokee Nation. Good thing, too. A lot of the Indian languages are already lost, more are in danger of being lost. Note to the Politically Correct: I don't care if you want to call them "Native Americans". I'm native American, too, only I'm not an Indian. Anyway, don't bother me, I have a gun. Several guns. Anyhow, we didn't buy much, they had some real pretty watches but, since we hardly ever leave the house we have enough watches.

We spent the night in Fort Smith, I would like to go back and spend a couple days there. The town is the old stomping grounds of Judge Parker who was in the business of hangin' outlaws back when Oklahoma was the Indian Nation. Deputy US marshals would ride out of Fort Smith and return with the outlaws either in handcuffs or slung over their saddles and nobody much cared which. John Wayne played the role of Rooster Cogburn in two movies where he was a Deputy Marshall out of Fort Smith.

Anyhow, George the German Shepherd behaved in the motel so he gets to go to Arizona and California with us. He got bored riding in the van, though, and chewed on Linda Lou's umbrella handle. And he is eating the couch, too. I am begging for the day he reaches two years old and stops eating the whole house.

This brings us up to the trip to Powder, Inc. Jerry, the feller that runs the place, had a few acres, maybe more, just outside Clarksville, Arkansas. While he went to his house to process my Visa Card I talked with the man who started the Black Dawge Cartridge Co, who was visiting. He sold the company to Goex but still messes with loading black powder cartridges. Anyhow we talked loading BP rounds for a while. He convinced me to avoid shooting the "Big Lube" bullets and just keep on loading my ammo with a grease cookie, instead. Seems that the Big Lube bullets, with that one huge lube groove are balanced wrong and at longer ranges, tend to tumble in flight. That does not matter much for the vast majority of cowboy action shooting, the ranges are too close. There is the odd stage, though, that ends with taking shots at a hundred yard gong. Actually, let me rephrase that. I am not going to buy the mold for the Big Lube bullets before I order a couple hundred of the bullets and give them a thorough test on paper at a hundred and two hundred yards. The Feller that warned me about them was in competion with the Big Lube bullet folks, and, if he kept stock in in the new company, may still be in competition.

What is a Big Lube Bullet? It is a bullet cast with one huge lube groove, it holds about ten or so times the lube that ordinary cast bullets carry. I have been looking at buying a batch to test. What has held me back so far is that the bullet molds only come in six cavity. I use a two cavity mold, normally. My little ten pound melting furnace is fine for a two cavity mold. A six cavity takes so much metal that it won't melt the ingots fast enough to keep up. It sounds odd but I can get a faster rate of 'keeper' bullets with a two cavity mold than a six cavity. The melt gets cold, while waiting for the melt to heat up, the mold gets cold. Then I run maybe ten cycles heating the mold up to make good bullets, run about three cycles of good bullets, then I need to add more ingots and the whole process starts over. Dang! So, in addition to buying a seventy plus dollar mold, I have to buy a twenty pound furnace, too. Too much money. What I can do is spend $18.00 for 250 of the bullets. Since I am going out to my niece's wedding in June to the California branch of the family, I'll drop into San Jose and buy a batch from a feller that does that, in addition to making gunbelts and holsters. Anyhow, if the 250 shoot well I start bombarding my pal Dick Dastardly with E-mails demanding that he order two cavity molds as well as six cavity. If the other guys are right, then I just stick with my two groove Lee bullets.

Fortunately, the 35 pounds of Black Powder fit very well in the space under the floorboards of the van for the drive back. Linda lou still smokes like a defective chimney. We would STILL be on the road trying to make it home what with stopping every three miles for her to smoke. The middle row seats fit under the floorboards when folded down. Good spot to hide stuff when the seats are up.

Ooops, it's time to get off the net, I need a nap and then it's time for the NASCAR race.

Busy Week.

I've been busy last week on non-blogging stuff. I got myself a couple big heavy lead bricks from a defunct hospital, they were used to shield the X-Ray Department and were pure lead. I had to melt them down and add a little tin to make my ingots to cast bullets for my black powder loads. That done, I then had to spend hours hunched over my little electric furnace casting a bazillion bullets. The melted lead can cause fumes, and a spill ruins everything it lands on so this work is done outside, on the deck. Since it is way to hot to be cuddled up to a furnace full of melted lead six months out of the year I try to get all my casting done in the late fall to late spring.

Casting bullets is pure drudgery and this is why there are lots and lots of commercial casters out there, I use a lot of them myself, plus a ton of those swaged Remington 255 grain bullets, too. Now that we're both retired and sittin' on very skinny wallets, though, I am trying to save some cash when I can.

I got my last order of Beewax in, from a new supplier I found on the internet,
Southeast Texas Honey Co. Their filtered yellow beeswax is only $8.00 for a two pound block which is the best price I've found. So far, all I've used beeswax for is my wax wads to keep the gobs of commercial black powder lube from contaminating my powder charges. Of course, that was when I only knew of ten buck a pound beeswax. Now I am trying to use one of the big blocks to make my own lube, the simplest recipe I have found yet is a mix of beeswax and olive oil. The recipes vary, it seems that every Soot Lord, or Soot Lady, has his, or her, own. The olive oil and beewax recipes vary, too, as to the mix. Seems the hotter the weather, the less olive oil. Since I live where the summers are just a little hotter than the back gate of Hell I expect to run about 35-40% oil in the summer and maybe 50-50 during the rest of the year. The nice thing is that it ain't rocket science, if my lube is too thin I can add more wax, too thick, more oil.

In other news, my boots came in the UPS truck. I got those Durango Range Boots in tan. Actually after lookin' at them they're darker than tan and lighter than brown. I had to drive all over Hell's half acre to find the right color polish, I finally found some Justin Cognac boot cream that is perfect. I needed a new pair of walk-around, everyday boots, too so I bought a pair of Justin 'basic' ropers. These are the ones to replace the set that George, the German Shepherd puppy ate. I got them home and discovered that the new Justin Basics are made in China. It is a heck of a world when we discover that our own illegal alien Mexican labor is too expensive for the world market. Well, anyway, my next pair of everyday boots will be some other brand. Anyhow, both sets of new kickers are carefully covered in mink oil and then polished. I'm not sure when it became standard to not polish shoes or boots before first wearing them. I also don't know when the full shelves of boot and shoe polish at drugstores went. As expensive as shoes have gotten, I don't understand the lack of polish. Just a coat of polish every couple of weeks will double the life of a pair of kicks. Anyway, Linda Lou is giving me funny looks for wearing seventeen inch tall mule ear boots in my briefs. Who's briefs am I supposed to wear? I'm just tryin' to get 'em broke in before the next shoot.

We're leaving town for a short trip, tomorrow. We've never been to Fort Smith Arkansas and there is a lot of history, there. Just as important, Powder, Inc. is an hour out of Ft. Smith. I pay over $18.00 plus tax a pound for black powder, locally. Powder Inc is a supplier and charges ten bucks a pound, plus a $20.00 Hazmat fee for the shipper, a $20.00 fee for a ten pound order still makes it a lot cheaper. There is no good reason to make the drive instead of sending an E-mail except that as long as we've lived in the area we haven't seen that neck o' the woods. Plus, George has never spent a night in a motel. This trip is an experiment for later vacations. This trip is also making me popular in my home cowboy action club, I bringing back a case of 25 pounds for the other Soot Lords.

The last big deal last week was the arrival of my Marble's Tang Sight for my Navy Arms clone of the '92 Winchester. I don't know why but Midway had it for $25.00 off. The price of $99.99 is better than $125.00. Anyhow I got it on Thursday and installed it that night. I went Friday and shot the rifle off the bench. Group sized was cut in half over the semi-buckhorn factory site. My next match is March 14. I plan on shooting the rifle targets clean. With black powder. In new boots. Yee-haw.

A Cloud Of Smoke, A Storm Of Shot

It is time to visit the Coach Gun or, as the Mafiosos call it, the Lupara. Mine is a 12 gauge with the mule ear exposed hammers, the very first of the cartridge shotguns. While it only has two shots at a time, in a shotgun that is a heck of a lot of shot. One might wonder why a double barrel instead of a pump or autoloader. The key reason is that with a mule ear double the shotgun can be loaded, for years, with all springs being relaxed. Put a layer of tape, or a condom, over the muzzles and you are loaded and ready, for years or decades. The bottom line is that if two rounds of buckshot won't at least calm things down enough to reload, run away. Fast.

Because I am a traditionalist I like the all brass shells and black powder. In rifles and pistols I give up some ballistic power with the original fodder, not so with the shotgun. One gives up nothing with black in the shotgun. Nitro or Black, the nature of the shotshell means that we don't get much past supersonic velocity anyhow and the round shot does not do much past the normal shotshell ranges, no matter the propellant.

I buy the brass shotshells from Midway. They are right there on the sidebar. My wads come from Circle Fly, that is http://circlefly.com. I don't know why I can't link anything anymore, I seem to have broken something in the confuser.

The nifty thing about the all brass shotshells is that one does not need a slew of tools to load them. When I first got into them I ordered a set of hand tools from the Rocky Mountain Cartridge Company and I discovered that they don't seem to keep them in stock. So, I got my cartridge cases from Midway and my wads from Circle Fly, my shot and my one-piece plastic wads locally, I had no set of tools, yet. So, I improvised used a six inch socket extension and a 7/16 socket along with my small plastic mallet. It worked fine. Linda Lou does not need to be reminded that I simply threw that fifty dollars away. The adjustable dipper, though, is a work of art.

Let's load a few shells up and shoot somethin'. Start with an empty case, set a primer on a piece od scrap metal, or that expensive steel square from Rocky Mountain. Got your safety glasses on? Well, go get them, you want to lose an eye? I'll wait.

Good, don't come in the gun room without your glasses. Now, place the shell casing over the primer and put that socket extension in and tap it down over the primer. Start with itty-bitty taps and increase gradually, you will feet the case slide over the primer. You will get to where you can rap the primer in with only a couple-three whacks.

Now it's time for the powder. The normal powder for shotshells is FFG. I'm using Goex, it is what I can get locally. It is best to start with what we call a square load, we will use the same dipper for the powder and the shot. Three drams of black powder, by measure is right about an ounce and a quarter of shot. Because the shotgun targets in a cowboy action match are so close I have cut down a bit on my powder charges while staying at about an ounce and a quarter of shot. Start with the square load, deduct powder a bit at a time and let the patterns tell you when to quit. Generally speaking adding powder will spread a pattern while dropping a bight will tighten them up. We know we have too much powder when the patterns have holes in them.

After the powder comes the overpowder wad. This is an eleven gauge, eighth inch nitro wad. Black powder must be compressed some to work right, there are all kinds of scientific ways to compress it. Me, I put the wad down on the powder, put my socket extension back in and whack it good with the hammer. This is much faster than setting the base of the shell on the bathroom scale and pushing the wad until the scale says forty pounds. I measured the amount of compression that forty pounds gave me and that amount is three whacks with my hammer.

Now comes the rest of the wad column. I have a bazzillion half inch thick, 11 gauge fiber wads, I only use them on special occasions and with buckshot. Just for the heck of it I tried a batch of shells with the Winchester red plastic AA wads and my shotgun patterned so well I pretty much use them all the time for matches. The plastic is soft enough that the powder gases spread it out to fit the thin brass shell. With buckshot I can go either way, I prefer the half inch wads because that way there is more room for shot and powder. Once the overpowder wad is set with the right compression, the plastic or fiber wads just need to be set in, no compression needed. Just push them in until we feel them bottom out. Now for the shot, just pour the dipperful in and give the shell a shake to level it off.

Now add the overshot wad, it is a ten gauge thin card wad. Glue it in, I use Duco Cement. I tried using Elmer's, the wads came out and the shot ran all over everywhere. A lot of folks swear by Waterglass or sodium silicate. I can't get that stuff without going online and buying it by the gallon. Other folks like the hot glue guns, I thought about buying one. Then I thought about how many tubes of Duco I can buy at 97 cents each at Wally World.

I have a five pound box of number 00 buckshot so I loaded a few of those for fun, there is room for the magnum charge of twelve per shell. These rounds seem to be more effective than the Remchester low recoil buckshot loads I can buy. Note. Unless you know what your DA will do, never load your home defense guns with handloads. Fortunately mine doesn't care. My loads give me twelve blue whistlers per shell and a big cloud of smoke to hide in, too. Mainly, though, most of my black powder shotguns loads are for fun, a cloud of smoke with bright flashes of orange flame and an ounce and a quarter of birdshot, it will take down any of our knockdown targets and buy me lots of style points, too.

With birdshot and the plastic shot cup wads my gun shoots on the tight side of improved cylinder and modified pattern if I have the charge right. If I add just a. tad of extra powder, they open up to normal percentages. Using the fiber wads my patterns start with a loose IC/Mod pattern and by increasing the charge I get a cylinder/IC pattern. Of course if I increase the charge too much my patterns end up with big holes.

Ann And The Ragheads

I am not as exercised of Ann Coulter's comments at that conference as many other people seem to be.

I am totally uninterested at the reactions of those on the Left, after all I have seen what they have called Clarence Thomas and Michelle Malkin. I am not particular excited about what those of my rightwing brethren ans sisteren have to say about her, either. Ann is what she is. She is pretty well grown, grown ups don't usually change a whole lot. I don't have to vote for her, she isn't running for anything.

I do wish she hadn't used the raghead statement, not because it is wrong, but because I am not sure that the timing is right. My parents generation used the terms Japs and Nips for the Japanese, and Krauts for the Germans. They did it on purpose because they were involved in the slaughter of vast numbers of those people. My mother was involved in that slaughter just as the men in the military were, just in an indirect way. She worked for the railroad here in the States, anybody remember how the bombs and bullets got to the ports? Then thirty+ later my mother loved her Japanese American son in law. The time for killing was long over and so was the time to dehumanize our late opponents.

When we are involved in the slaughter of vast numbers of an enemy, we tend to use words that dehumanize that enemy. That is a good thing, assuming that we believe that such killing is the right thing to be doing and I believe that it was.

Are we going to have to kill vast numbers of the world's Muslims in order to survive as a civilization? Ann thinks so. I am not sure, but each day I wait for these "moderate Muslims" to shut up those chanting "Death To America!" I'm still waiting.

Are the world's Muslims making any more noise after Ann's comments than before? Now George W. Bush is still trying to keep this war on the small size, I am not sure that it is possible. I do not blame Dubya for trying, if we can get through this war killing thousands instead of millions it will be easier on our souls. By the same token, I don't blame Ann for believing we're past that point.

Make no mistake, if Dubya's attempt to keep this war small is unsuccessful we will have to dehumanize Islam. Without such dehumanisation we will lose this war.

Moose Milk And Other Oddities.

I tried some new cleaning methods that I have read about on the Cowboy Action Shooting websites for cleaning my shootin' irons after shooting thirty rounds each in the revolvers and fifty-seven in the rifle, plus twenty-three 12 gauge blackpowder shotshells. To say that the shootin' irons were dirty would be an understatement. The last stage of the match my revolver's cylinders were getting difficult to turn. Had this been a big match with ten or more stages I would have had to pull my cylinder base pins and wipe the pins and front of the cylinders down with moose milk.

My shotgun, of course, is easy. It being a double barrel I just take the barrels off and it's an easy job. Especially by using Windex with vinegar. There are sever different formulations of Windex, try the kind with vinegar. My shotgun is rather difficult to clean after using black powder because I cheat and use modern plastic shotcup wads, the loads pattern better. At any rate the combination of the plastic and black powder residues react poorly together. The old fashioned soap and water scrub took a long time, the Windex took three patches in each barrel two wet and one dry, plus a patch to oil each barrel. When the patch is pushed out a huge amount of the plastic and powder residue comes sliding out like a discarded snake skin. Everything else was done with moose milk.

Moose milk is something that I am just now learning anything about. There is a compound from Germany called Ballistol. It is advertised as a multi-purpose sportsman's oil. It is billed to lubricate, penetrate, cleans, protects and preserve firearms, leather, knives, wood, marine, camping and fishing equipment. This Ballistol is mixed with water to clean black powder. The can says it should be a fifty-fifty mix with a note that we may increase the water. In looking at the websites the most common ratio seems to be seven to one with the seven being water. The oil does not dissolve in the water, it emulsifies into a white liquid.

To clean my revolvers I sent some very wet patches through the bore and cylinder chambers, then started scrubbing the exteriors with a toothbrush wet with the seven to one moose milk. By the time I had finished the exterior the insides of the bores and cylinders were ready, that took a dry patch through each chamber and the bore. Then the irons went into a two hundred degree oven while I did my Model '92 clone. This was a little harder as I didn't feel like taking the rifle apart, it is not as simple as a Marlin. So it took five wet patches and six dry. One of the beautiful things about this moose milk stuff is that when the water evaporates the oil is left in a very thin coat, the iron is cleaned and oiled at the same time.

When I was a boy, foolin' with Black Powder, cleaning the irons was a long and complicated affair. We'd scrub the irons with boiling water and soap, oil them up and then repeat the operation two more times a day apart.

Assuming that we pick the right bullet alloy and lubricant there is seldom any barrel leading with black powder. With this moose milk, there is no trouble cleaning the powder residue and the shootin' iron is already oiled.

Ballistol is not found in every sporting good store, if you can not find it locally my pals at Midway stock it.

Update: 2/15/06 Those who would like to buy some of this Ballistoil and can't find it locally should look on my left sidebar and click Midway USA. They will be happy to sell it to you.

Update:2/17/06 It just occurred to me that some folks still shoot that corrosive foreign military ammo. I don't bother, seein' as how I make my own, but those who do can use a more diluted moose milk to clean the rust causing salts from their bores. The Ballistoil people say to run one part Ballistoil to ten parts water. Truth be told, the water is what makes the difference with corrosive ammo.
Those who aren't sure if the primers are corrosive or not should run some moose milk, or plain water through the barrel, just in case. Water is cheap. The main advantage of the moose milk over plain water is that when the water dries, the oil remains.

The Best Shoot Ever.

Had our twice-monthly Cowboy Action Shoot today. I did better than Dick Cheney, I did not pepper anyone with birdshot, nor with 255 grain soft lead bullets, either. Dick had a Bad Day. It's always bad when one pops a hunting buddy although these things do happen. Worse was his choice of hunting partners. Poor Dick, had to shoot a lawyer. That will cost him. Ah, maybe not. Seems that those guys don't hunt together enough where they all know what each other are doin'.

Our shoot wasn't quite so exciting, the down side was everyone freezing their hineys off. We mostly buy clothes for the ten months of warm to beastly hot weather we get down here, then I get up and it's below freezing with a strong wind. It was EIGHTY DEGREES last week but the morning of the shoot it was below freezing. I went anyway, the last shoot got rained out. The range we shoot at is on that slick black gumbo soil, once it rains trucks sink to their floorpans.

The very first thing I managed to do at the range was to break my butt. Scroll down a couple of posts and see the (fake) ivory grips I put on one of my revolvers. While I was getting my gunbelt on, and my gunbelt suspenders on, I broke my new gunbutt. It is not a tragedy, I bumped it and the glue broke. These grips have to be shaped to fit, then glued together making the three pieces into a one piece grip. I shall stick it back on with different glue. The good news is that I still had the old walnut grips in my range box, unscewed the three screws holding the grip frame on and switched out. Rule number one of competition is that when trying something new, take the old with you.

This beminds me, I must put stampede strings on my hats. I almost put a charge of birdshot through my hat when it blew off and headed downrange. Then I remembered an old Western Movie I saw, I believe it was Glen Ford that tied his hat on with his bandana, so I tried that, the ends blew in my eyes while I was tryin' to shoot. Maybe I'll take on the persona of a French gunfighter and get me a beret. Ah, maybe better a coonskin cap, are we still mad at the French? I know that I'm not real mad at Tennessee. I just have to hold on to Captain Fatbob, Linda Lou's Black Pug of Doom, when we blow through there so he doesn't get blended.

Anyway, once I gave up on the hat, things improved. Well, somewhat. I hadn't done any practice shooting in my new gloves, I just didn't feel comfortable tryin' to handle the irons with two gloves on so I kept the right one off. Even wearin' one glove made it hard to load the irons. Mainly the rifle, the rounds pop right out of the loading gate if I don't watch it.

Today's match was a six stage affair. The way it was set up today was a hundred and seventeen rounds of pistol and rifle ammo and a minimum of twenty-two rounds of shotgun ammo. Handgun and rifle targets are scored as hits or misses, shotgun targets are knockdown targets and we shoot as many shots as we must until they go down. I only had to pop two shotgun targets a second time. The best news is that I managed the whole match without a single procedural penalty for screwing up the order in which we engaged the targets. I don't know if every newcomer gets procedurals as he (or she) learns the game or if I am still having a little trouble from the stroke. Anyhow, no procedural penalties and only three missed targets, two of those were when I was fighting with my hat in the hurricane. I've never had a match with only three misses. Not that I have had all that many matches. This was my forth, if I counted right.

Anyhow, I won my class today. It was easy, I was the only guy shootin' Black Powder Cartridges. That is a class called frontier cartridge. So I came in first. I seem to be one of the few warthogs out there, too. For the uninitiated, a warthog is someone who shoots cartridges with a first digit of 4 and full charge loads. Of course I am also a soot burner in that I shoot the Holy Black instead of that newfangled heathen smokeless. I do believe that makes me a soot hog. Most everybody else shoots light loads in small cartridges. There are a lot of people shooting .38s with 125 grain, or lighter, bullets at low velocity. Some time back they had a rule in cowboy action with a minimum velocity of 650 fps, then they quit enforcing that rule. Some of the Pards run such light loads that we can actually see the bullets in the air. Then a soot hog hits the firing line. Everyone has got used to the pop pop pop and all of a sudden it's boom boom boom! Of course since the game puts a premium on spped so we warthogs will never win the International Championship at the End Of Trail Shoot but that is okay, I couldn't afford the range fee to even attend that shoot. I swear takin' up long legged redheads would be just as cheap a hobby as this sport. By the time I finish loadin my next match worth of ammo I will have over a half pound of powder loaded behind a lot more lead. Maybe I should have bought me some .32-20s instead of these pumpkin rollers. Too late now. I'm stuck with being a warthog.

The War Over The Danish Cartoons.

Am I the only person that wishes Western governments would answer these screaming mobs of the violent yahoos of Islam with a bit of the same action? A modest proposal, how about we, of the West, pick a series of numbers, between one and ten. We keep those numbers secret and just quietly count down the number of riots, when we get to that secret number, send the Air Force. See how these clowns like the answer of Death From America, (or Denmark) in reply to their chants of Death To America.

A load of cluster bombs from a half dozen FA-18s would be a good start. Those sites too far away can be visited by B-52s or B-2s, depending on the state of the anti-air in the vicinity. I would be very interested to find out just how many of these clowns would be demonstrating and burning embassies if they knew that the next one might bring a bunch of loud noises.

The biggest mistake we ever made was to quit making napalm.

The .45 Colt.

In honor of the 45th edition of the Carnival of Cordite let us discuss my favorite big bore cartridge, the .45 Colt. I am lucky enough to own three .45 Colts, two clones of the Colt Single Action Army and a stainless steel version of the Winchester Model 92 rifle, the Navy Arms clone made by the Rossi people down in Brazil.

Those interested are invited to check out my new grips on the longer barreled revolver. This set is from the Buffalo Brothers in Mesa, Arizona. The materiel is supposed to look like old ivory. I am interested in shooting the gun with the new grips and see how the checkering helps the grip. Putting these grips on was quite a little job, they are cast oversized and in three pieces. Once we sanded them down to fit we then had to glue the three pieces together to make them into one piece grips. The next set I get will be the same color but, perhaps, a different design.

Shooters and, especially handloaders should bear in mind that their are two levels of .45 ammo, the old stuff, loaded to black powder pressures and modern, loaded to much higher pressures for Ruger revolvers and Marlin and Model 92 clones. Black powder level pressures are about 14,000 PSI, the modern stuff is loaded to above 30,000 psi. Do not ever put that hot stuff into a Single Action Army or Remington clone, nor a clone of the '73 Winchester rifle or carbine. Doing so is building a grenade with an instantaneous fuse. I, having both do not load much to the higher pressures level, when I do it is always with jacketed bullets, rather than cast lead. I really want to avoid putting one, or more, of the hot loads into one of my Colt Clones.

The Smith and Wesson Model 625 double action revolver is stronger than the old Colts and new clones, but not so strong as the Rugers. Nobody bothers to load ammo specifically for the S&W. I would not try pushing a 250 grain bullet much over 1000 fps with the S&W.

Do not fall under the impression that the black powder loads are wimpy, though. It is no great trick to push a 250 grain bullet out of the muzzle of a revolver at over 900 feet per second. Until the .357 Magnum was developed the most powerful handgun cartridge made in America was the old black powder .45 Colt. A handloader can match those old ballistics with nine and a half grains of Unique behind a 250 cast or swaged lead bullet. With 12.9 grains of Alliant's Blue Dot one easily beats the old ballistics, at the old pressures, too.

Because of changes in the cartridge cases we can no longer pack 40 grains of fffg black powder behind a 250 grain lead bullet, it simply won't fit. I have managed to pack a tad over 35 grains, that is quite a load. We can almost match the old ballistics by loading 35 grains of that expensive Swiss brand powder behind the 250 grain bullets. The average one grease groove bullet will work in a revolver with good black powder lube, not so well in a rifle, there simply is not enough lube for the longer barrel. That requires one of the more heavily lubed "big lube" bullets or a grease cookie. The grease cookie takes up about three grains worth of powder room. The longer tube of the rifle will more than make up for the loss of powder. Of course we then get into the two different load thing again, too. I am saving my nickels and dimes for a "big lube boolit" mold. I would probably already have one except the guy that contracted the Lee people to make them only had them make six cavity molds instead of the less expensive two cavity type.

The shooter who has a Ruger revolver instead of the Colt or Colt clone has a revolver that will beat factory .44 Magnum loads. A handloader can 26.5 grains of Hodgdon's H110 behind a 250 grain Hornaday JHP for 1450 fps. Or try 20.2 grains of Hodgdon's Lil'Gun behind the 300 grain Speer JFP for 1200 fps a Marlin or Winchester '92 Rifle clone one can plan on a three to four hundred fps increase in velocity. Within their range limitations these ballistics will drop deer and black bear easily and more than a few elk have fallen to them, too.

When reading the gun magazines we sometimes still see the rumor of thin, weak cartridge cases in the .45 Colt. That may be true of some foreign brands of case, do not believe those rumors in modern American cases, though buy a few bags of Star Line brass and forget about weak cases.

Speaking of the .45 Colt cases, another change in them since 1873 is that the rims are a little bigger, the modern cases have rim enough to work in the lever action carbines and rifles. The shooter with very old handloading gear may need to splurge on a new shell holder.The new cartridges just barely fit in the first generation Colts.

Non handloading shooters have the full range of ammo available, provided their pockets are deep enough. There are a lot of standard pressure loads available. The shooter who wants a standard pressure round that is a good one for defensive use would be well advised to try the Federal or Remington 225 grain lead hollow point. It runs about 900 to 960 fps from a revolver. If I used one of my .45s for a primary defense gun it would be stuffed with those. If one is a fan of the .45 ACP autopistol round this is a near twin of the more effective JHP rounds. Other possibilities are the Winchester 225 grain Silvertip JHP round or the Speer 250 grain Gold Dot Hollow Point. The Speer would be my choice for a defensive round in a revolver with nonadjustable sights. The lighter bullets would shoot low in most cases.

Hunters with Ruger revolvers would be well armed with one of the loads from Buffalo Bore or Grizzly Ammunition's choices. These loads run from 260 grain bonded core JHPs at around 1350-1450 fps to those monster 325 to 335 grain lead semiwadcutter slugs at 1250 fps. Bear in mind that these rounds cost more than a dollar each. If ever there is a good reason for handloading, these rounds embody those reasons.

There is one more level of power, the loads for the custom five shot revolvers. These loads are very much like the .454 Casull and I don't quote them. Speaking of the .454 Casull, The folks that made my .45 Colt rifle teamed up with Legacy Sports and are making a clone of the '92 Winchester in .454. I would suspect that shooting one is like shooting standard .45-70 loads in a very light carbine. I have loaded some fairly hot .45 ammo and set it off in my rifle and that crescent butt plate backs right up. Fortunately the Legacy has a more modern flat butt plate, with the old-time crescent butt plate one would have to examine his teeth carefully after shooting. The crescent butt plate would knock my fillings out. I am not interested in buying that new rifle though eventually I am sure I shall shoot one. Someone in one of my clubs will buy one. I shall give a review when I shoot it. The only other differences are that the magazine tube is a little different and that they have those newfangled fire sights, the sights holding those colored plastic inserts that gather light. The fancy name for these is fiber optic. Since these sights are verboten in cowboy action shooting I ignore them. I would put a Marble's tang sight on this.

Random Pictures

A few random pictures from our last trip. The top picture is Captain Fatbob, the Black Pug of Doom. Also known as Bentley, we don't go very many places without him. He is the prince of Linda Lou's heart and the owner of anything edible within about five hundred meters or so. It is amazing how he chases George off the food. I am told that there is a doggie psychology reason for this. A big dog sees a critter Captain Fatbob's size and thinks "puppy" but then the little dog does not act like a puppy. Dogs, being only marginally smarter than Teddy Kennedy or Algore, can not make that work in their little doggie brains, this enables most little dogs to get away with actions that would cause a fight to the death among two dogs of equal size. Kind of like why it is illegal to shoot Dems. Damn shame.

The next picture down is a crowd of the usual suspects out off Bloody Basin Road north of Phoenix. Our oldest boy, Andy, and our oldest grandson are in that crowd, as well as myself and Andy's bro-in-law and a pal. Then the batteries in the camera died as I got everyone lined up and shooting real black powder rounds. Another shame. Someday I shall get a picture both revolvers, the shotgun and the .45 Colt rifle all shooting at once, the smoke and flame out of those old time rounds is impressive.

The next two shots down are of the grandkids in San Antonio. They both love Captain Fatbob. He is not quite sure about that stick horse, yet. The boy is MJ, the girl is Alexandra. Dunno how many granddaughters we are going to have, the family history seems to long long on boys and short on cash. Like seven grandkids and only one girl.

Update, 1/21/06: I was going to finish this yesterday, a good pal of mine has had some kind of heart event and instead was kind of busy. We are not real sure if it was an actual heart attack or just something scary like a muscle cramp of some sort of the muscles around the area, he did not have the sense to go to the ER, instead he now is sitting at home waiting for a stress test. Another guy in his fifties, thinking he is still twenty years old. I need a large stick. And a twenty year old to swing it.

Iran And The Bomb.

All the real smart people are agonizing over what to do about Iran and their lust for nukes. Too many of these smart people, folks like Victor Davis Hanson, don't know what to do about Iraq. They are convinced that my man Dubya is tossin' and turnin' all night, unable to sleep because too many Lefties will cry if he blows Iran off the map. Right. Rule number one of Dubya watching is that he does not particularly care what Teddy Kennedy and Cindy Sheehan thinks. Sure, he would like it if everyone was happy but, ultimately he will do what he thinks is right. Look at how we on the Right, the one that elected him, have been screaming since about the fourth week of January, '01. Meanwhile Dubya just goes about his business.

Here is what will happen, probably while the Congresscritters are shut down on one of their ninety-leven holidays per year, even more probably after the mid-term elections, Dubya will call the Pentagon and tell them to let fly. The B-2 Spirits and F-117 Frisbees will lift off, the cruise missiles will fly from the Navy's boats and Iran's Air and Anti-Air will disappear. Then the hard work will start. The War Powers Act gives Dubya some sixty days before the Congresscritter have anything to say. Since I am in a generous mood I shall give the Iranian Air and Anti-Air three days before the last is gone. That leaves the Zoomies and Rotorheads fifty-seven days to fly around Iran blowing up anything larger than a Red Ryder Beebee Gun. Now, since Iran sits astride one of the world's more valuable bodies of water, their will also be a little work for the military's snake eaters and sneaky Petes, blowing up the various anti-ship capabilities. Dubya used to be an oilman, after all.

Now I am told that this is impractical, the anti-war types will have a field day. They will. There simply are not enough of them to matter. Dubya is not running, can not run for any office, he is through after this term. Nor will there be enough Donks to mount an impeachment. There are simply too many Americans that remember the end year and a half of the Carter Administration and the Beirut Barracks Bombing. If I wake up tomorrow and find that Iran is a smoking, glowing sheet of radioactive slag, I will regret the lost oil. Thing is, we don't have to destroy

Help!

For some strange reason Blogger is inserting my url into every url that I try to link to in a blog entry. It has always done that, I did not mind too much when I could edit that out. Now Blogger won't let me edit it out. When I roll over the url I can see my url before the one I want, when I click edit html, it does not show up so I can remove it. Any ideas?

Big Ed

One of my favorite places in the world to visit is Tombstone, Arizona, this last trip we made the drive down there. We drove down to Tombstone with my niece that lives in Casa Grande, her two kids and my sister. Oh, and Bentley the Pug. This was a general shopping and tourist trip for everyone but me, I had a specific reason for the trip, I wanted to meet Big Ed Douglas, the proprietor of San Pedro Saddlery one of the best makers of holsters for cowboy action shooting there is.

All of the gun and history buffs reading this site know that Tombstone is the site of that famous gunfight between the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday and the Clantons. Oddly in the 1880s wild west a gunfight with a body count of three was a real big deal, national news. Just a few days ago there were three people shot in a Dallas murder, it did not seem to make the national news. I love the ways the anti-gun folks always are yammering about how concealed carry permits will turn our cities into Tombstone or Dodge City when the crime rate is ten times (or more) what it was back then.

Oddly, the Gunfight At The O. K. Corral is poorly named, it was actually the gunfight in the vacant lot between the O. K. Corral and Fly's Boarding House. Does not trip off the tongue so well, though.

Anyhow, we walked down from the 'center' of the tombstone tourist area to San Pedro Saddlery having gotten directions from a feller selling tickets on the wagon tour...Rule # One, don't never believe how close the guy giving directions says something is. Don't walk, drive. I like to killed myself. Worse was walking back. Most worse was that I got there without my gun belt and shootin' irons, if most worst is the proper phrase.The whole purpose of that trip, for me anyway, was to pick out a better holster for my second revolver and to buy a pair of shooting gauntlets. Well, I met Big Ed, got the gloves and talked about that second holster. Big Ed is not particularly tall, he sure is broad, though. A friendly sort, thank the Lord, he has hands and arms that look as if he could crush anvils, barehanded. I suspect that it has been some time, decades perhaps, that he has seen his feet while standing. Ever see one of those guys with a great big belly that you just know that if you haul off and punch him in the belly you will break knuckles all the way to your elbow? That is Big Ed.
Anyhow, I have picked out my Christmas, Birthday and Aniversery gifts for the next five years, right there on Big Ed's site. If you have a desire for the old fashioned, hand made leathercraft, check out that website.

Udate...for some reason my server won't allow me to remove the wrong prefix from San Pedro Saddlery's web page. If you are interested in this website, just use the name and dot com.

William Is Three.

I have not had much to say over the last week or so. Everything I thought of writing a little something on, someone else wrote, and better. We did finally get the photos scanned in, so over the next few days I shall write something to go with the pics as I post them.

Here comes the first couple, of our grandson William's third birthday party. As y'all can plainly see, William is a sturdy lad, son of an engineer so he is pretty bright, too. His arm is developing nicely, when my squad in the Army of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is fully trained, William will probaby be the Grenadier.

Just so you know, William is not engaged yet, offers of dowry may be left in the comments.

Home At Last

I'm home. It was an adventure. Went and got George, the German Shepherd, that dog is still growing. He is still not lifting his leg to pee, I hope he figures that out. Many tales of the adventures of our dog sitters, not least is the eaten garden hose and his new habit of trying to grab a hand and lead his people around. Still lots of work to do with this dog.

I have a few photos that must go into the computer so I can post them.

Mainly, though, I am flat out tired. I shall take a couple of days off and then tell of our adventures.

Merry Christmas

I shall be off the 'net for the next few days as I spend some time with my family.

If you haven't seen it yet, check out Donald Sensing's One Hand Clapping,for a story on the next of kin notifications, be sure to click the links. Have some Kleenex handy. While we celebrate Christmas or other holidays, how about an extra prayer for those standing on the walls of civilization? Some are on the other side of the world, others will be pushing a cruiser up and down the streets and roads here in the States. And of course, an extra thanks to those who are horrifying the mainstream media by poking around with Geiger counters seeing that our major cities don't become mushroom clouds. Without warrants, at that. Forgive me, New York Times, for not peeing myself.

Another Meme. Five Random Facts

Home, thank the Lord. I have much to write about over the next couple of weeks.

Venomous Kate tagged me with yet another meme. Remind me to just shoot wildly out the windows the next time I drive through the KC area.

Five random facts about me...

My right leg is shorter than my left, following a bad break in 1967. I only limp when I am very tired, though. I have a large scar on that leg that breaks down when it is injured and it takes a month or more to heal. when it is broken down the area looks like strawberry jam.

I was in my late thirties before pieces of metal and Viet dirt stopped leaking out of nasty zits that appeared on my back and shoulders.

My speech and memory are still funky from that stroke in August but my Docs are bragging about how well I have recovered. I hate to think of what it would be like if they were not bragging. On the plus side I haven't smoked at all since I got out of the car to go into the Emergency Room.

Cleaning up my English on the Blog has helped clean up my conversational English. I still know the words, I simply use them somewhat less. Nowadays I mostly only curse at Democrats and drivers.

I usually have at least three books I am reading, one gun book, one history and one fiction. Right now I am reading Freedom Road, a novel about the black truck drivers of the Red Ball Express in the European Theatre in WW2, The Hell With Honor, a history of when Georgie Custer ran out of luck at the Little Big Horn, and Charly Gullett's book on Cowboy Action Shooting. I am also re-reading Dick Lee's Modern Reloading.

Udate: 1/7/06 I just now finished this and posted it.

Shootout at Bloody Basin

I took my oldest grandson and a friend of his shooting Tuesday. I am sure there are closer places but we drove out into the hills to a chunk of National Forest called Bloody Basin. I have spotted no one who knows where that name came from but it is a pretty fair spot for shooting.

There are enough hills for safe bullet impact, many points close to the roads. The boys mostly shot .22 rifles, my little Ruger 10/22 and the boy's Mossberg. They did try something a little hairyer, my .45s and two shots each from the 12 gauge. Oddly the friend of my grandson, who weighs a whopping 92 pounds, was the first to jump on the heavier recoiling shootin' irons, while my over six foot grandson held back. Once we get back home I will a have pictures.

In other news, my sister is flying out from the Gold Rush country and will stay a week or so with my niece in Casa Grande. We will be going to Tombstone and, perhaps, a few other places. We are seriously considering a drive up to Sedona. This is a hippy-dippy headquarters but is supposed to be a pretty drive. We are also considering a drive up to Flagstaff to see that white stuff that falls from the sky on our Yankee friends. I am not quite sure what that stuff is called, shoe, or sew or something. Harvey knows what it is.

Anyhow, all is well, I am just a tad busy. I shall be back to what I allege is normal after the first week in January.

Interesting Weekend

A very interesting weekend in politics. We had the Senate kill the Patriot Act and the New York Crimes, er Times, inform the world about the Evil Bush spying on Americans. What Americans? Those Americans communicating with known Al Q types.

Now I am no expert on the ways of espionage and counter espionage but what I belive is, or was, going on was when our guys and gals in the security business caught one of the Al Q types they would pass the cell phones and computers over to the NSA. President Bush, or his minions, would okay the NSA monitor those numbers and E-mail addys until the normal procedures of going to the FISA court caught up. It is my understanding that it can take up to SIX MONTHS to get a warrant to spy on communications. That is not real useful when we have a matter of only a matter of hours before the whole AlQ gang know that we have one of their gang in the bag. At that point everyone quits calling those numbers and writing those addys.

Wasn't the New York Crimes one of the media outlets moaning and groaning that the Bush Regime did not connect the dots prior to 9/11/01? One must also wonder about who, among the congresscritters crying tears the size of horse turds about Bush spying on 'Amercans' the last four years or so were among thosed briefed on the program.

I am not surprised that Dubya seemed rather unhappy during his speech last night.

What amazes me about all this is how the Left keeps screeching about how we on the Right have all these secret gulags spread all over. Trouble is, no Leftists ever end up them.

Caught A Meme

Phoenix

Machelle tagged me with this here meme about odd habits. I have none, of course. I am perfectly normal, it's all of you wierd folks that are worrisome. I do have a couple though that are different...

I do not drink liquids while I eat. I dunno why, I just don't.

I may have been loading the same handload for forty years or so, still I look it up before proceeding, even something like 3.0 grains of Bullseye behind a 158 grain lead bullet in .38 Special.

I have to take my glasses off to blow my nose. Linda Lou thinks that's strange but she wears those itty bitty glasses.

We only really fight when we go on long trips, Linda Lou and I, yet we go anyway. The fighting is a result of my increasing deafness, it makes it difficult to hear the directions. Sigh.

I never go anywhere without too much ammunition.

Since I am the last person in the universe to complete this I shall not try to pass it on. Well, that and the fact that I just don't like these things.

Fredericksburg, Texas

I spent yesterday up in the Texas hill country, specifically in Fredericksburg. One of Texas's German communities this town was Union during the War of Yankee Aggression, several of the townsmen were hanged over it.

That unpleasantness is long over, Fredericksburg is now a tourist destination. There were two places I wanted to see, the Admiral Nimitz Museum of the War in the Pacific and Texas Jack's. We hit Texas Jack's first, this is a store that is fairly well known among folks in cowboy action shooting. I have done a bit of business with them online and shall do so again. They are also the showroom of Cimarron Arms. I was mainly interested in boots, though. Anyhow, if interested they are http://www.texasjacks.com/

I could have easily spent the entire budget for this trip right there, instead I just bought a stick horse for the two-year old grandson and went about my business. The Nimitz Museum is quite a place, replete with uniforms, medals, guns and stuff and lots of maps.

Bentley the black Pug was the hit of several places, as usual.

Pictures

Okay, here are some pictures of the new rifle and a bonus picture of George's graduation from beginner's obedience school.

A look at the rifle in the gun cart shows just how much longer it is than the Marlin Carbine or the 20 inch barreled coach gun.

George could not keep his graduation cap on too well, doesn't matter though as he didn't learn much, either, but the socialization part worked.

Anyhow, this is my last post until San Antonio, unless something goes seriously wrong, then it is time to see Arizona. Y'all play nice. If anyone insists of trying a comment party while we are on the road, okay. Just bear in mind that my grandkids see this blog and make the puddin' rassellin' word pictures somewhat opaque, please. I hid the keys to the fabled Tequila Mines of Cuervo under the back door doormat, try not to overwork my poor Mexican miners or they, too, whill be sneakin' cross the border.

On the road, again....

BOOM! And A Giant Cloud Of Smoke.

I've been neglecting this blog, does not look it shall get much better until January. Between getting ready to spend December in Arizona, and learning cowboy action shooting I haven't had much time to even look at blogs, much less write in this one.

Saturday marked my third match and the first one with all black powder cartridges. Also the first match with my new rifle, a clone of the Winchester Model '92 in .45 Colt. I'll post a pic or two before the end of the week. Meanwhile, here in a word picture, it's the rifle version, meaning it has the 24 inch octagon barrel rather than the round barrel of the carbine or the short octagon tube of the short rifle. It has the full length magazine holding thirteen rounds, with one in the chamber it is one of those damn' yankee rifles that ye load on Sunday and shoot all week. And it is stainless steel, not period correct, of course, but then they didn't load .45 Colt into rifles or carbines back then, either. Since I am shooting black powder, with the propensity toward corrosion that it has, I'll just pretend it's nickel plated.

At any rate, Saturday's match got rained out, I only got to shoot one stage out of six. By the time it was my turn to shoot the rain was comin' down like a brown cow peein' on a flat rock. That was impressive, though, the more moisture in the air, the bigger the cloud of smoke. I didn't notice but the other folks said that the shotgun was shooting flame and sparks out some five feet. All I saw was big clouds of smoke, though. The recoil of those BP 12 Gauge loads pushes the muzzles up to where I don't see the shot strike until I haul the muzzles out of the sky.

We finished the match the next day, in a thirty plus mile an hour wind. The clouds of smoke aren't nearly so blinding in wind like that. The full charge black loads are still impressive, though. It seems that most folks in cowboy shoot very light loads in .38 or even .32 for the speed. It is much faster to shoot when one does not have to contend with recoil. There is a smaller subset of shooters who fire cartridges with numbers beginning in .40 or more. These folks are called 'warthogs'. And there is another smaller subset called Soot Lords, who shoot the original powder, black, or one of the replicas like Pyrodex or Triple Seven. I guess I'm workin' on becomin' a Soot Hog.

Well, I have to take Linda Lou's car to the shop, then her retirement party is tonight. Tomorrow night is Georges graduation from beginning obedience school and then we're leaving Friday for San Antonio. We'll shall spend a few days there and then off to Arizona for the rest of the year. I'll write some from the road, for now, though, I shall be lucky to post a few pictures. Anong with everything else I must load up every .38 and .357 case in the house so that Andy and his wife have sumpin to shoot. Plus a couple hundred more .45 and 12 gauge black powder loads so that I can go to a match or so out there. It is fast to load smokeless loads, the black loads are slow because I have yet to buy a powder measure that works with black. It is too explosive to use in a standard measure so I have to dip it out and weigh each charge. Then the grease cookies are a hand proposition, too. I can load a hundred smokeless in the time it takes to load ten BP.

Gunbelt Suspenders And Guncarts.

I forgot my camera yesterday so we snapped a few pictures when I got home from the cowboy action match. I almost had a top ten, until the eleventh person showed up. It was a smaller crowd, about thirty-five people.


My gunbelt suspenders worked. exactly as I'd hoped. Of course if I didn't have that giant gut pushing everything down it would be a different story.

Here is a picture of my guncart with my shotgun and my Marlin .357 Mag Carbine.

For some reason George has decided we need a giant hole in the yard, near the front steps. I swear I'm gonna break my leg stepping in that hole. Had to get a dog, couldn't get a nice guppy.

Anyhow my second cowboy match went a lot smoother, only two embarrassing mistakes. Somehow I loaded one of my revolvers with four, rather than five rounds on one stage and I forgot the sequence I was supposed to be shooting the rifle targets on another stage. I still have a lot to learn in this sport. The hard part is that each stage, or set of targets , has a different way that the targets are engaged.

Big Surprise.

I went out and voted yesterday, just like I had intended. I don't know how I got it into my head that the voting for the State Primaries was yesterday, that is in the Spring. By the way, the woman running against Perry for Governor is named Strahorn, not quite sure how she spells it. She was a Rylander a marriage or so back. I don't know who is advising her, the election is months away, each of her campaign commercials is more annoying than the last one. We've had months of her commercials already, each tells us that she is one tough granmaw and some alleged miscue by Perry, the Gov we have now. I could give a rat's patootie how tough a granmaw she is, it's been some decades since the Governor of a State has actually had to whup somebody.

Had some minor errands to run afterwards and during them I dropped into Koenig's Gunshop in Terrel to check on the progress on the action job of my new revolver. It was promised to be ready this coming Friday and I was going to jog their memory a little in hopes of having the job done in time to go to the Cowboy Action Shoot this coming Sunday.

Imagine my amazement when they told me that my shootin' iron was already finished. Even more amazing is that the job came through at the quoted cost! Now you non-gunnies or new gunnies out there might be going ho-hum over this, let me put this into perspective. A gunsmith is very much like an auto mechanic, no job ever happens on time or on budget, period. It's just an automatic assumption to add at least half of the quoted price and a week or more to the time period. I had actually no expectation to go the this Sunday's shoot unless I borrowed the second gun. I was only really hoping to make the shoot on the last Saturday of the month.

The creep is out of the trigger and the hammer is nice and smooth coming to full cock. He swears that he did nothing to the weight of the trigger pull, it sure does FEEL lighter.

In other good news my two pair of suspenders came in the mail. I ran some leather thongs through the buttonholes on one pair and now I have suspenders for my gunbelt. Now, Linda Lou offered to give me a few inches of her surplus hips and butt, trouble is, I don't think we can afford a whole wardrobe of new trousers, though. So, I'll just see how these work, if they work well I'll take the gunbelt to the Mesquite Saddle and Shoe Repair Shop and have the Chinaman sew some suspender buttons on the rig. I'm ordering some old west type trousers tomorrow and a duster coat, too. I want to order the coat before the sale is over.

I also have to see if my new guncart will fit into the back of my car, it fits easily into the back of Linda Lou's minivan, we'll see how it fits into the back of my PT Cruiser.

If anyone cares, it's Linda Lou and my anniversary tomorrow. Yes, we got married on the birthday of the US Marine Corps, she wanted an anniversary that I couldn't forget. Pray for war.

Not Much Going On

Not a heckuva lot going on right now, mostly just waiting for Linda Lou's last day at the Postal Service so we can start that loooong vacation. Tomorrow is primary election day down here, we'll be votin' on the Governor, I'm voting for Rick Perry. Carol Keating Rylander might have got my vote but her radio commercials have been so annoying.

The big deal is the marriage amendment in the State Constitution. I'm voting for it. Oddly, if there was a state constitutional amendment being voted on to allow some form of civil union, I'd most likely vote for that, too. What I don't want is some bunch of judges deciding for me based on some odd emanation of a penumbra in the constitution that nobody has seen in all these years. It's kind of like the sodomy statutes. When the Constitution was ratified there were still jurisdictions that executed gays, none of the framers said anything. Then a bit over two hundred years later, it's a right, there it is! Right there in the Constitution! Actually, the Constitution is written in fairly simple English, I'm rather tired of having some Judge having to interpret it for me.

My new revolver is at the gunsmith, having an action job. My other Single Action Army is in pieces on this very desk, getting the chambers of the cylinder polished. This is one of those deals that cost a bunch of money, for no good reason. All one has to do is chuck a cleaning brush into the electric drill, put a cleaning patch over the brush and put a dollop of Flitz metal polish on the patch. I also must do this on the double barrel 12 gauge so the cases fall free there, too. Actually, there is a good reason this operation costs money, when we hire a gunsmith we hire his whole shop for as long as that operation takes. It costs almost nothing to polish the chambers myself. Once that is done the empties just fall out, without using the ejector rod.

I've loaded some two hundred rounds of light .38 loads with a different bullet, a 158 grain round nosed flat point. Hopefully that will take care of my problems with my carbine. The semiwadcutters gave a lot of trouble feeding that last match.

The .45 loads are going to be the light Tite Group loads. I'll go back to the black powder once I'm a little more used to the course of fire.

I'm going to shoot factory shotshell loads my next couple of matches, I have a batch of black powder loads in the old-time brass cases, I'm gong to carry them around in my new guncart and see if this new glue holds the overshot wads in place. If it does, I'll try them, if not I'll figure something else out What I'm not going to do is stand there at the firing point looking at the birdshot running out the end of my barrels anymore.

With a little bit of luck I'll have everything together, with a little extra ammo, to carry out to Arizona in December. There are some clubs out there with some awfully good shooters, if I make it to some of those shoots I should be able to learn a lot.

Well, Linda Lou is too lazy to cook tonight, she wants a Sonic burger. So, off I go..

Cowboy Action Shoot

I went to my first ever Cowboy Action Shooting Match yesterday.
I've no idea why these pictures are below the text.

At any rate, I've a lengthy set of lessons learned, number one is to try to find some suspenders for my gunbelt. Since I have no hips or butt, it's difficult to keep a belt with two revolvers, thirty-five rounds of .45 ammo and six rounds of twelve gauge from pulling my trousers off.

Another lesson is that I need to redo the kind of glue that holds the top wad in my brass shotshells. There isn't much fun in shooting at a target when all the birdshot has run down the barrel and all over the floor. I lost the shot of ten of my shotshells, fortunately I caught some of those before I tried to shoot 'em. Fortunately, I wasn't quite sure about those shotshells so I had a box of factory rounds along. Unfortunately, I didn't think to try them until the last stage. Oh, well.

I also had no round nosed bullets for my little .357 Marlin Carbine. it's primary use is as a house defense gun and I'd neglected to buy some lead round nosed flat points. That little carbine does not feed the lead semi-wadcutter bullets at all well.

My old .45 shot just fine, the new one needs a little action job, the trigger pull is awful and it has a hich in the cocking.

The important thing, though is that I had no safety violations, I did not shoot myself or anyone else. I can build on that.

Anyone interested can see the smoke from the black powder in my loads. It was a beautiful day with the breeze directly behind so the smoke driffed free.

I do beleve that I'll shoot my next few matches with smokeless powder loads and do a little practice with black powder, until I'm used to the drill.

Doctor Visits And Gun Shops, An Expensive Day.

Fun days yesterday and today. I started the day this that next visit with Lucy, my young and quite pretty family practice Doc, actually a physician's Assistant. Note to self, try nt to schedule anymore ( fasting) bloodwork visits for one fifteen in the afternoon. Lucy confirms what everyone but me things is my quick recovery for this stroke and how well my speech is coming back. So I guess it's just me that notices that I can talk for sour owlsh, um sour apples anymore well, at least this doctor visit I got to keep my trousers up. I got all my mountain of prescriptions redone and the blood drawn and we were out the door. Time for something to eat and shopping for a new revolvers. We don't often eat at Taco Bueno anymore since doing so seems to annoy the medics but there was one right near, fast and cheap......

First stop was Academy Sports and Outdoors, just because it was close, they had nothing I was shopping for, in and out, away in less than five minutes.

Next stop was B and S Gunshop, they had a few that looked interesting including one of the new Taurus Revolvers for $373.00. I filed that one away in my head for a closer look if the one at Cabella's wasn't acceptable. The iron was a five and one half inch barrel, matching my other revolver and while not quite as pretty was a nice looking piece. Still, the $289 price of the one at Cabella's was calling.

The next stop was closed on Mondays, so off we went through North Dallas on the LBJ Freeway. This road is well known for it's constant state of being under repair and a rush hour that lasts about 22 hours per day. We've got kinfolk scattered around Fort Worth, we'd go see them once in a while except that Dallas is in the way. If the World ever needs an enema the Lord would stick the hose in Dallas. Anyhow we fought our way through there and, just north of D/FW Airport we stopped in the Bass Pro Shop, another place with some nice shootin' irons, but not what I was looking for. Back on the road. Somehow we got turned 'round and were heading for the wilds of North Central Texas, not exactly where we wanted to be. After a small amount of cussin' and a few comments about my IQ from the passenger seat, we got headed right.

Folks, we've never been to Cabella's, the place in huge. They've an interesting way of selling guns. There's a manager that wanders 'round not helping anyone, a few harried salespeople and a platoon of other employees that do little or less. Once one salesman gets a customer, that's his customer, no one else will do anything. That sounds fine but that one guy wanders off and seems have have five people at once. So we look at the shootin' iron we came to see, we look it over, try the action, everything is fine. Salesman says he'll get us one out of the back, we tell him to get several so we can try the triggers and suchlike. Salesman says we can't do that, he can only bring one. Since an action job is only forty bucks we just bought what he brung.

Then Linda Lou spent more that what I saved not buying another $419.00 Cimarron. Sigh.

Anyhow, I have the last bit of iron for getting into the Cowboy Action shoots, now. This morning I jumped into the car and went to the range with both the revolvers. They both go bang, that's a start. The new one definitely needs an action job, the trigger has some serious hitch in it's getalong. Still, it shoots to more or less where it looks, that's the important thing. Actually, with that trigger, I can't tell how well the sights are regulated. I think it's just a hair low which is alright. It's easy to file down the front sight.

Now, by Saturday I must join the Single Action Shooting Society and the local club so I can hit their last Saturday of the month shoot.

Going Shopping.

I'm going shopping today, we've a few bucks left and it's time for my next shootin' iron, the end of my shopping for a Cowboy Action Shootin' battery. We're going to the Doctor's first, it's time for our regular blood work and prescription update. (Be still, my beating heart)

I'm looking for the second revolver, it didn't occur to me that one would need two until I actually read the rules of the SASS bunch. Anyhow, I don't know that we'll actually buy the iron today, we're gonna have to go clean to Fort Worth to look at one at Cabella's. They have a very inexpensive copy of the old Colt Peacemaker, some $289.00 or so for the 4 and 3/8 inch in .45 Colt. It's got the dull blue job, no color case hardening on the frame and an unfinished brass frame on the grips. It's not the iron I'd really like, I personally like the balance of the 5 and 1/2 inch barrel and there aren't very many that wouldn't prefer good blue and nice color case hardening. Trouble is, that low price and that I already HAVE one nice primary gun. So, what we'll do is look 'round the used racks today and then, if we have the energy left, over to Fort Worth to Cabella's if there isn't a good used revolver for, say, $350.00 or so.

I do love me some gun shopping.

The Accidental 9mm Luger Load

In my last post I mentioned going to see my pal Steve, which beminds me of when he was learning to load a little handgun ammo. Steve isn't a shooter like I am, he is a hunter. That's kind of a shame, if he would really apply himself he'd be in the top one per cent of pure shooters and could possibly be in the elite few. He isn't all that interested, though, so he practices enough to be deadly on deer and dove.

Anyhow Steve got himself the 9mm Luger bug and bought himself a Beretta, the civilian version of the new Army gun. I bought a set of Lee dies for it and started cranking out a little ammo so he'd have some practice stuff and then a pard in the scrap metal biz came up with several five gallon bucketfuls of fully jacketed 125 grain bullets. The 9mm shooters in our little club won't EVER have do buy a 9mm bullet for practice again. Anyhow we came up with a real nice practice load, pretty much near the max load of Alliant's Herco powder for the lead bullet worked fine. The load is hot enough that every one of our nine shooters could use it but still low enough that we don't have to worry about having an overpressure event from a change in cartridge cases or primers. It's a load I still recommend to folks, 6.2 grains of Herco behind any 125 grain bullet. I've never seen a nine that wouldn't shoot it.

Then came the day we were short on Herco and, since Steve lives in town, I sent him out after some. Somehow he ended up with a big jug of Blue Dot, instead. Blue Dot is a nice powder for heavy shotshells and magnum revolvers but I've never seen it used in small capacity handgun rounds, it's just too bulky. Since the name of the game with buying powder is, you bought it, it's yours, I started looking for a way to use it. One after another of my manuals failed until I finally went on line and found that Alliant's website has a listing. This was back before we had a computer at home.

All these years later, Steve is still loading Blue Dot in the Nine. The downside is that the case is so full that we have to be real careful until the bullet is seated for fear of spilling powder all over Hell's half acre. The good news is that velocity is fine and there is no way that the bullet could ever be pushed deeper into the case, raising pressure, the powder is just too compressed.

The lesson learned is to not give up on a 'wrong' powder until we have checked every bit of information. Today, of course, that info is right at our fingertips, via the 'net. Under normal circumstances I would never run out and buy Blue Dot for loading the Nine. I kept some around for some decades, though, for loading my .357 revolver rounds and when Steve first bought that Nine I had some on my shelf, it never struck my mind to use it.

George and the Old Fart

It's past time you all meet George. World, this is George. George, meet the world.

George had his second night in the 'Beginner's Class' at dog training last night. I'm not sure how much he's really learning about 'sit' and 'stay'. He is the champ at 'come', though. Well, sort of. He comes to me just fine, he flat won't come to the woman running the class, or anybody else. He just looks at her and says something along the line of "who are you? I don't work for you."

Jackie, the woman running the class says that that's not entirely a bad thing, he'll be much harder to steal that way. She says that German Shepherds are very often one man dogs. Of course, the real reason for this class is basic socialization around both other dogs and people. He had none of that at all in his first five months. THAT part of the plan is really working. He is quite gentle around the other dogs in the class and, although he won't really approach the other people, when they come to him he allows them to do some petting and suchlike. Most important, he is very gentle around strange children.

Afterwards we drove over to meet my best friend and their dog, Roxy. Seein' as how Linda Lou absolutely refuses to bring George on our next vacation out to Arizona, over Christmas, this is important. Steve is pal enough to keep the mess-dog while we're out of the area, assuming that everybody gets along. I drove away thanking the good Lord that they did all get along. That's some five hundred bucks we won't have to spend in boarding.

Strange Happenings in Computerland

Seems that both our desktop computers have blown a gasket and we are unable to access the internet. I'm not quite sure what is up, I'm rather unhappy about it, though.

Blogging will be near-nonexistent while we figure it out.

Anyone interested will be pleased to know that Linda Lou is soon to retire from her job at the Post Office. November 30th will be her last day. The good news is that she absotively and posilutely hates the job. The bad news is that we are going to be stone-cold broke for the next couple of years, until her social security kicks in. Her Postal Service pension will be barely enough to pay our good medical insurance and a few bucks extra. Between her little bit and what I bring in, about $1100 per month. Then sometime after two years we'll be up to some $1700 or so, that's just about enough to live on. All grown children, young grandchildren and broke blogpappies should be warned that birthdays and Xmases will be slim to none.

Columbus Day

Well, another Columbus Day has come and is just about gone. I don't spend a whole lot of time worrying about that long-dead Italian but every once in a while I do thank him. If not for Columbus I'd be stuck in some Euro hole or other waiting for the next batch of Cossacks to charge trough the Ville, slaughtering everyone.

I'm sure glad not to be a Euro.

Range and Bench Report

Apologies to all of my few readers, been busy lately. Don't imagine it's gonna get better soon.

I do have an interesting range report. I took the Son-in-law to the range with the new .30-06. This being a range with a real set of concrete benches we set the rifle up on a Harris Bipod and rear bag. I suspect he would have done better in a regular sitting position, he is simply not used to the recoil of full charge .30-06 rounds. Fortunately I had fifty of Hodgdon's 'youth' loads' along.

Handloaders should know about Hodgdon's 'youth' loads, they are an interesting concept. The idea is to take any big game cartridge for which H4895 powder is used. Take the maximum charge of H4895 and multiply said charge by 60%. Then, as your 'youth' grows and gets adjusted to the recoil, add a grain or two of powder until we reach the full charge. By careful bullet selection we can hunt deer out to about two hundred yards or so with the very beginning of these. At any rate I had a supply of Hornaday's 130 grain Single Shot Pistol Bullets handy and loaded a batch of these in front of 40.0 grains of H4895. The velocity should be right around 2500 fps, almost what a .308 gives in those fancy one shot pistols. As Dean and Stephanie get used to the kick I can increase the charge.

The interesting thing, of course, is how these critters shoot? I did not shoot any, on purpose. I don't much want the kids trying to compare themselves with me. Dean, though, had several groups in the inch and a half to two inch range. Given the two hundred yard nature of the ammo, plenty good enough. My next step is to load up a half box, fifty round boxes, of 42 grains and 44 grains each. If I can get him to about 2800 fps or so by opening day, with that light bullet, he'll be good as far as he'll be able to see the critters on this particular ranch.

I don't know of any powder but H4895, except maybe IMR 4895 and Accurate's 2495 that has a range of pressure with good ignition wide enough for these 'youth' loads. They may be out there, I just haven't tried. These loads are much like the 'midrange' loads that were popular when I was a kid except with a hunting bullet instead of a target pill.

I've loaded a few of those all-brass shotshells, the Magtech 12 gauge that I asked about in my last post. Thank you, Tres Equis, that was exactly the information I was looking for. I'm loading one box of 25 with the old original type of wads from Circle Fly and one box of 25 with one on Winchester's shotcup wads on top of a regular overpowder wad., just to see how that works. The shotcup type wad will, if it works out okay, be just what I need to go hunting. I'll try these sometime soon. I'm using 80 grains of FFG Black Powder, GOEX if that matters. I've some room to grow the charge. On the standard 'old fashioned' wad column I shooting an ounce of shot, on the 'shotcup' wads 480 grains since that what it takes to fill them.

Not much else to talk about, boring doctor visits and therapy, messing with this puppy that eats anything. The creepy dog ate my eyeglasses, I had to get new ones. I would've killed the mutt if it weren't for the fact that I've been putting off new glasses for over a year. ARRRGH! Had to get a puppy.