The Witness will mainly be 200gr plated LRN over 5.5gr W231, with a few stray batches up to 230gr and down to 5.2gr - don't know if I'll chrono that today. Heading up there about 11:00. -And the rain hits before I even start loading the car. Porch thermometer says 56°F.

Arrived about 11:30, Sharpshooter match was over, so I got no newsletter pics of that, but others there did. However I did get these photos of an ordinary-looking '03A3 with a weird front sight cover (the owner was also curious about the pins in the stock):

Anybody know about this?

Yuri was there, having stayed after for pistol practice - it seems he has his 22/45 fixed with a new extractor. Noonish the weather was still dismal - I took the .308 loads into the RSO shack to keep the cold off them. The rain came and went constantly:

Eventually I leisurely started with the GP100, to see if the sights got up and walked since the last time I adjusted them. Using the same load as last time, 158gr plated over 7.0gr W231 - good enough, after tweaking the windage a bit. Bench, 14yds:

Now the Witness, with the 200RN load. Ooookay:

From there on it's all up to me. Now different loads - 200SWC, 230RN, 200XTP, mainly for function - all fixed by the Lee crimp die. The hand tremor started to return after 60 rounds or so but not as bad as last time. The Witness is fixed and ready to race, and I'm (nearly) ready to race with it. Like the Queen, it hits what it's pointed at. When approaching the pace of firing that's required for plates, I started shooting low, just like with rifles. Hence, the 1911 - which shoots high with the rear sight bottomed - might do rather well on plates or pins, but I'm finally starting to get comfortable with the Witness, which has less recoil and flip anyway with the extra length and porting, so I'll go with that for now.

Weather remains discouraging:

While at the range Yuri was commenting that it was the only place where he could imagine leaving several hundred dollars' worth of handgun and accourtrements on the bench while he went inside to warm up or use the restroom, expecting it all to be there when he got back. As I've told others many times, "We're at the gun club. This is the only place in a hundred miles where you don't have to lock your car." And for many years I've had this stuck on the hovel's 'fridge:

Heinlein was right. (-Duh.)

Then, having been paid this morning by direct deposit, I lived up to my handle in one aspect - the spendthrift - and shopped some, hitting a Suncoast store for DVDs of A Fistful of Dollars (a reader donated For a Few Dollars More, and GB&U was the first DVD I ever bought) and the original Death Wish. I also hit Brightwater for more bricks of below-market-value primers (one each WLR and WLP, 'cause every rifle I own works fine with the former and I expect to be going through a lot of the latter with the Witness), and a box of Federal XM762D M80-equivalent - actually AFAICT it is M80, possibly delinked and repackaged:

(One of the keys to successful digital photography is enough light, especially where the autofocus is concerned.) (Speaking of light, the primer sealant here looks reddish-purple, while to my eyes it's far more bluish. Weird. Probably something to do with the flash and the autofocus LED beam.)

While at Brightwater I also fondled a CZ97, discovering that the grip seems larger than my Witness, and the CZ's safety locks the slide, which the Witness' doesn't. Reportedly CZ97 and .45 Witness magazines are interchangeable; this particular CZ's magazine was marked Mec-Gar, and aside from maybe a slight difference in the floorplate it looked exactly like the ones I have. Price was $600; I got my semi-custom Witness used for $450. :)

Read this. And get practice.

In the June 1958 issue of Guns magazine, I found this:

Elmer Keith is my master,
I shall not flinch.
He leadeth me to larger calibers.
He suggesteth hotter hand-loads.
Yea, though I load with 2400,
I fear not failure
For my S&W is with me.
Recessed chambers comfort me.
I hunt chipmunks with my .458;
Verily, I slay cans with my .44 magnum.
Yea, though I load maximum with a pinch for luck,
Yea, though I implore Lyman to design a heavier bullet,
I shall not he satisfied.
Surely, someone will bring forth a hotter magnum;
Then, shall my heart be gladdened
And powder-smoke shall surround me all the days of my life.

So I'm shopping for Witness parts - want extended safety, and while I'm at it I might as well go ambidextrous - and EAA wants eighty-five dollars! Gak! -One thing, it appears to use a pin or set screw to secure the starboard half, unlike the tongue-in-groove of the 1911, held only by the grip panel and friction. Numrich doesn't list it, nor Brownell's; I found another supplier in Colorado asking the same price as EAA; Tanfoglio's Italian site wants 68 Euro, which converts to even more in US bucks. Dang. Well, more dry practice.

Just finished watching the original Death Wish for the first time in years. When's the last time you saw it? One man stops cringing whenever a parasite leers at him and the city's crime rate drops by half. The police don't dare arrest him, and instead drive him out of town so the peasants don't figure out that cops are useless. The crusty old inspector, Ochoa, even gets it, asking the police commissioner if he wants Kersey gone "So the mugging rate can go back up?" This was 1974, but even then you can see the Red State/Blue State divide, where the Arizona developer talks about the quality of life in flyover country vs. the "toilet" of a big city.

I hate Portland.

1855 - Sunday, 8 June 2008: Zzz.

Quote o' the Day: "If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves." - Thomas Sowell (1992)

Seeing way too many Obama stickers on cars around here. The Cult of Set is rising and there's nothing to stop it. -Meanwhile, as long and variously predicted, Hillary sniffs over the VP slot. Here's another prediction: If the Obama/Clinton ticket wins, Hussein will get Fostered, that will be blamed on Our Kind, and there I am out in the sticks aiming and squeezing and scratching me bum with the rest of you, those of us who don't get rounded up in the first wave. :( (Considering some of her comments the Fostering might even happen before the election - but no, that decision point has passed and she'll want to be in position to step up first.) And in opposition to this I'm supposed to rationalize voting for McCain, who has introduced legislation to cripple both 1st and 2nd Amendments, who pushes amnesty for illegal aliens, and who subscribes to the scientifically insupportable cult of human-caused climate change? It's been a long time since I skipped an election....

Chat. Only a few die-hard Elves left, and host Tom Gresham sticking up for badgeboys against L. Neil Smith's rant against Kimber. Who does TomG think will be going door-to-door? Who does he think did exactly that in his own backyard? "Who do you think is coming to wipe out your little command, the Grenadier Guards?" Gresham even interviewed the authors of that book on that same show, which inspired me to buy it. Talk about a mental disconnect!

Another difference I noticed, in the CZ97 vs. the .45 Witness, is that the Witness uses ribbed lugs like a 1911 or P35, while the new CZ uses the Taurus/Glock/SIG style of incorporating one big locking lug in the ejection port. -Hey, would a CZ ambidextrous extended safety fit a post-1993 large-frame Witness? And would it cost less? -I can't tell 'cause CZ-USA's online store is down! :-/ EAA wants $65 for a single-side extended safety, or $70 for the even bigger Gold Team single-side.

1856 - Monday, 9 June 2008: Blech. Got a bug Saturday. Drugs. Some of that dollar-store stuff actually works, at least psychosomatically.

Local ARCO Regular $4.13 yesterday, only a couple stray stations of other brands only a couple cents less. The Corolla still goes a whole week, daily commute and a Saturday range trip, for less than forty bucks.

Trying to finish Eifelheim, getting distracted at work by... work; and at the hovel by dry practice, most lately with the Witness, by handloading, and by the recent video loot from a reader (going through For a Few Dollars More again). Other books stacking up. Email behind too but you-all should be used to that by now.

Today after laundry I did a bit of wardriving with the ancient NEC and downloaded these 1942 M1 training videos. Yes, the Queen needs a new sling - the post-war GI nylon doesn't stay put on my arm.

1857 - Tuesday, 10 June 2008: Encore l'blech, but the bug should be gone in another day or two.

Now I'm getting static from the supervisors. I had a case where the product was replaced and the replacement arrived damaged. That case had already been escalated to Case Management long before I got it, so I, as a Front Line Agent, should simply hand it off to that higher department. So I call the next level... and they're not grokking. Ya know? Didn't have their Bawls this morning or something. And then they complain about me actually expecting them to be awake and competent and getting impatient when they aren't. Government schools, man. Trained to not think. Free-market education now! -In fairness the particular supervisor was from a different product line and the ones in my actual department are generally on the ball (or they know I can walk down there and glare at them...).

Eyeing those M1 videos. Match shooting is different from field fighting, surely, and some of the things I do in the former would likely get me in trouble in the latter. Studying and dry practicing. These videos are structured such that they apply in most aspects to most rifles and most riflery, with few M1-specific techniques, with simple and obvious adjustments to the course of instruction as necessary. 65 years later, there seems to be no significant room for improvement.

Might have to buy this DVD. Eh, probably not - it's a decent film but not one I can imagine watching over and over; the socialist/pacifist/heads-in-the-sand-ers would give me indigestion - but it's an interesting article.

Hey - how can any man with a spine marry a pacifist? How can anyone mentally equipped for self-defense be attracted to someone who wouldn't lift a finger to save her own life, and likely wouldn't lift same finger to save said husband's children? -Sure, she did at the end, but that's not what I'm asking. Example: Sam is variously hawt. I dunno what Damon sees in Jan - looks count, but looks ain't enough. I've no desire to breed, quite the opposite, but if I did I'd damn sure want a woman who would go fangs-out to defend our chilluns!

Continuing the stream of consciousness: Ambivalence... being part libertarian I grok the desire for isolationism and not mucking with people. The difficulty is that other people refuse to not muck with us. My head is not in the sand. Or at least not as deep.

Vanderboegh. Yep - need more rifle practice. And pistols too: "A handgun is for fighting your way to a rifle." ...They're not used to people fighting back. They cannot conceive of anyone resisting their "lawful" decrees. And as Mike says, they're in for a helluva shock. Sure, they'll destroy some of us, many of us - but there are a lot of us, and we have the deadliest weapon in the universe: the human will to resist. Which fits! With the above! Stream-of-consciousness pacifist-bashing!

Watching the second M1 video, going over elevation and windage - this training film was aimed at very raw recruits who, even in 1943, may never have handled a rifle before. I am learning some tricks about wind doping though, something I've been lacking - drinking it up now with an eye toward the upcoming Plotner match (and less-recreational field work). Good stuff, wouldn't change it. And .PDFs including a 39Mb tome that is worth the bandwidth. Legend has it, according to that document, that after 2nd Marne, ...a letter was found on the body of a German officer. It read: "God save us from these Americans. They shoot like devils. They kill us like animals with their rifles. They are the best marksmen in the world." I fear my nation no longer meets that standard; but I expect we can still claim the title.

1858 - Wednesday, 11 June 2008: Sinus blech.

Ha-ha. Oh they are going to be so screwed when the festivities start and our "law abiding" shackles come off. Our peaceable natures and respect for order are the only things keeping the lawless enforcement community alive at this point. I can hit a human torso, from prone, at 200 yards, every time - and that's lame, by more than half, by the standards of the time the rifle was built. A 53-year-old rifle surplused from two nations, with original metallic sights, and I know the rifle can reach even farther with accuracy. I haven't even started working with my scoped rifle yet.

Canada sucks, redux. "Insane" is too gentle a word. America really is Alone.

Customers with RatsNestOS! All day! Dammit!

Retrieving the Vaio, still not functional. Might find an eBay derelict and go FrankenLaptop.

Vanderboegh gets concise.

Misroutes. India. (And not just India but also domestically-indoctrinated products of public education.) Dammit!

Radio news item about unemployment benefits not getting extended, and about the "high" 5.5% unemployment rate. Didn't Clinton get his second term by bragging about a similar rate? Didn't some economist once declare that anything below 10% was impossible? I have a job, and if it falls through I can get another, heaving boxes again if I have to (I'd probably lose weight) but I can find work. What's all this whining for handouts?

Reader sends, Dial 911 and Die.

1859 - Thursday, 12 June 2008: Blech.

Finished Eifelheim, good read. It makes one wonder what has been lost to history. Starting Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky, 1950, one of his (young-)man-conquering-adversity pieces. Not a thick book, won't last long.

What! Blocked! *&^%$ bureaucrats! I want my kittehs!

You-all are reading WoG every day, right? Too Smart to be a Cop; England Sucks; Blatant Witness Intimidation. Badges and blue shirts are no better than gang colors.

Effing! Damn! Misroutes! And NO ONE on the other end has the slightest CLUE what they're doing! NUKE INDIA NOW!!

Another mess to clean up, another case Escalated before I got it - and the escalation agent sent the wrong bloody model of product as a replacement. I swear they route these kinds of calls directly to me, somehow.

Looks like we'll finally have good weather this weekend and I can get started on the rifle science.

Heh.

Mm-hm.

Quote o' the Day, from Heinlein's Starship Troopers, 1959: "Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms."

And another: "Congress is spending us into a hole. We hear about the cost of earmarks and the Iraq war. But what about 'entitlements'? That's the government's ironic term for programs that transfer money from people who earned it to people who didn't. Entitlement? How can you be entitled to someone else's money?" - John Stossel

1860 - Friday, 13 June 2008: Blech. -Spreads now the blech throughout the call center. Buying more drugs to refill my drawer Monday.

Contemplating rifle science tomorrow - I'll start with the Queen's latest primer experiment (time and gumption after the show may not suffice to include the M100, and I want more Witness practice too), since she's my fighting rifle and I have three more CMP matches, and the open-sight division of the Plotner match, and the AvA and maybe the Turkey Shoot (COF TBD), still coming up; if one of the eight new loads performs particularly well I'll make much, then I'll have to get my sight settings all over again, including 300 yards. And if I go past 200, I'm going to really want a more powerful spotting scope - 60x will find a .30 hole in the black at 300, but only if the light is perfect. The black on a match target at that range is pretty big, and the Queen has gone well under 2MOA at that distance before; it's important to know where in the black I'm hitting, and besides that I will be working with the M100 'way out there. Shopping, yay internet. -Alas Natchez, where I got the current 60x for a low-low clearance price, is blocked from work.... How 'bout this one? Or better, this?

These eight 10-round test batches - 50.0gr BL-C(2) under 150gr - have been exposed, not necessarily to Cold but to Less Warm, but they've been stored in the hovel mostly, which, while not exactly climate-controlled, ain't entirely flapping in the breeze neither. Not expecting any cumulative effects; with temperatures forecast for 70s F tomorrow I expect to get good data. Probably I'll warm up with some 49.0gr rounds first - I was saving those for the next Garand match in July but if I'm going up a grain anyway I might as well just make more.

Software tool crashes again and we're back to quill pens and coal-oil lanterns, uh huh.

Internal vs. external ballistics.... Force equals mass times velocity. Suppose I have something like a .358 Winchester or .338 Federal (I don't, and don't expect to, but one still buys lottery tickets). As stated, I'm recoil sensitive, but I can handle a .308 150gr with a LimbSaver pad (or in an M1's cushy-soft gas system). (Col. Cooper, in The Art of the Rifle, says that a Good Trigger goes a long way toward addressing flinching - and I ain't gonna argue. The VZ has a Good Trigger, so does the M100; the Queen less so and I suck in standing stages, though I'm really pretty good in prone.) So - you have a 150gr bullet departing at, let's say, 2,700fps. That has a certain muzzle energy in ft/lbs, sure - there's an equation somewhere and there are charts in the back of my old Lyman manual, the exact number isn't important for this question. If I were to develop a handload with a larger cartridge, which had the same energy as the .30/150 (which to some extent defeats the purpose of having a larger bore but that's not what I'm asking), with a greater bullet weight and a lower velocity, would recoil in a similarly-weighted rifle be the same? Under Newton's equal and opposite reactions? There are equations for calculating ft/lbs of recoil too, I'll look them up.

Voter apathy. I has it.

Effing ecofreaks.

Britain sucks, still.

Japan sucks, also. -First time I've said that here, I even put some in my story. Any word on Islam in Japan? They're invading everywhere else.

[thought=random] Actually, calling him Thulsa is kind of an insult to Set. The character played by James Earl Jones was at least competent and experienced.

Lest we forget, here is the infamous Twenty Nine Palms Combat Arms Survey, issued barely one year into Clinton's first term, asking US Marines to "Consider the following statement: I would fire upon U.S. citizens who refuse or resist confiscation of firearms banned by the U.S. government." And now you have a link.

Changing Corolla's oil, rotating Corolla's tires.

Want.

1861 - Saturday, 14 June 2008: ZZzzzz. Zzz. Late to the show, therefore later to the range. Hey, I have a day job here! And my sinuses are still a train wreck. Show first - nothing particularly leaping out at me that I haven't mentioned before, except the AutoMag vendor walked up to me deliberately to report that it had been sold at the asking price. Yay for somebody, too bad for me. Well, there are another 10,000-odd in circulation. Cruffler gifted me with an aftermarket grip for the GP100 which, as he usually does, he got absurdly dirt cheap; checkered & finger grooved, maybe a little smaller than factory, I'll try it. Yuri was there and eventually we went to the range.

LET THERE BE
SCIENCE!

Didn't get anything done with the M100 today but already planning another range day next Saturday - furthermore I might get Wednesday and/or Friday off from work due to forecast low call volume, and the range is open regularly those days, which means the Fudds might be there waving things around but most of them have day jobs too, and more significantly the badgeboys won't be there acting like they own the place while also waving things around and putting new ventilation ports in the RSO shack door (that was a couple years ago; it happened on just such an off day IIRC) and the storage shed behind the handgun line where the plates for my match are kept (and they won't be messing with the plates on such a day either - a few months ago we found one rack left out with the reset rope deliberately cut; since then I've been keeping before-and-after pictures of every month's match; we're considering chaining them up). (Now think about that. A gun club is the safest place in the country, the least likely to see theft or irresponsibility or vandalism or damnfoolishness - except when cops are there. What does that tell you?)

So: Garand, bench (sandbags), SLED, 100 yards, inch-grid. Yuri has complained about those targets before; they're fine for the Fudds to adjust their scopes but far less good for metallic sights, and I'm having to agree with him. I've certainly turned in better groups. But here is the long-awaited data for eight 10-round batches of Garand fodder, with another batch, the same as used to good effect in the last CMP match, for control. The loads are:

In table below, "H" indicates a noticeable hangfire (clickBANG), while "?" indicates a possible hangfire I wasn't sure about. "n/a" indicates that the chronograph did not record that shot - more on that below.

.30-06 test loads

\/ Round# Load#->	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
1	2763	2705	2681	2771	2441	2660 H	2641	2593	2721
2	2708	2716	2740	2663	2611	2741	2669	2714	2565 H
3	2781	2749	2660	2657	2380	2702 H	2711	2654	2716
4	2723	2723	2659	2666	n/a	2681 H	2704	2708	2671
5	2666	2710	n/a	2676	2685	2713	2703	2743	2702
6	2580	2701	2643	2683	n/a	2698 ?	2655	2719	2630 H
7	2669	2672	2726	2713	n/a	2665 H	2672	2720	2711
8	2762	2636	2632	2626	2593	2702 H	2646	2663	2608 H
9	2746	2735	2742	2688	2668	2625 H	2725	2700	2761
10	2639	2688	2829	2647	2676	2669 H	2636	2734	2741 ?
Averages:	2704	2704	2668	2679	2579	2685	2676	2671	2683

Notice that I got hangfires with both old and new batches of CCI200 primers at 50.0gr BL-C(2). I did not with CCI250 Magnum primers. Also notice that #1, the old 49.0gr load, has a slightly higher average velocity than #7, with all the same components but an additional grain of powder by weight. #5, the Nosler, is slower, as expected from the last time I tried; definitely something to that bearing-surface stuff. And note that #8, with CCI Magnum primers, shows an insignificant difference from #9, with CCI standard primers. Ditto #4 and #7, with WLRM and WLR. #1 was made several moons ago; #s 2-9 fewer moons ago but all in the same sitting.

Not the results I was expecting. Not the groups I was expecting either but that may have been the targets, which were difficult to see over open sights - in previous testing I had similarly lousy groups, then in a match the next weekend or two, with the same rifle and the same batch of rounds, I did Rather Well, so I think I can actually blame the targets for this:

1: 2: 3:
4: 5: 6:
7: 8: 9:

More information on the conditions - here is the chronograph's distance from the rifle:

The line of fire's distance above the chronograph's sensors:

When I started losing data I noticed that one sensor was in shade and the other wasn't - note shadow position on the ground:

So. Scratching head again. I do submit that different primers make no meaningful difference in velocity, but CCI200 is not reliable with ball powder. (Way back when, I started with IMR4895 and did not have ignition problems with the same old brick of CCI200.)

After, to the handgun line - fired only 30 rounds through my Witness, not dissatisfied there - three batches, all handloads, all 200gr projectiles over 5.5gr W231: Hornady XTP, Xtreme RN and Xtreme SWC. No malfunctions, accuracy good - hits what it's pointed at.

Then, Sportsman's Warehouse, where I bought only a Lee case length gauge for the Lee cutter, for .308 Winchester (already have .30-06 and, via a reader donation, .223). Got my name on the list to be called if more Xtreme plated bullets come in. Two boxes of .41 on the shelf! See, I need a .41!

1862 - Sunday, 15 June 2008: Zzzz.

Upgraded to Opera v9.5, seems to be working, but some of the trick features appear to have changed.

Not many in Chat this week.

Britain Sucks, more.

Another installment. Looking forward to this story being completed.

If Hussein wins, expect mouseguns to be banned. If McManchurian wins, expect mouseguns to be banned... a little later. Get yer mousegun fixin's while you can (and in this particular instance help out an outfit that's been BATFU'd). Of course I have an M1, so I don't feel any itching need for an Evil Black Rifle, but I have been sniffing over the concept, not least 'cause They don't want me to have one. This is a stripped synthetic lower with integral buttstock - and here are some pretty good instructions for building it up.

Installing the replacement GP100 grip (Uncle Mike's #59004). Fits good, feels all right; definitely smaller, might take some getting used to the different feel. I'll try it on plates this month, in addition to the Witness. I've been pleased with the Uncle Mike's grips on my P35, 1911, and now this - the checkering, and just the right amount of both squishy and sticky, for my taste. Alas it appears UM has got out of this product line altogether:

However I prefer the looks of the original, with the wood panel inserts.

Finished Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky, skimmed over scientific afterword by Dr. Woosley. Our knowledge of the Jovian system has changed greatly since Heinlein wrote the story, but the gizmos and gadgets are not the primary reason for reading a Heinlein book. Next is Flynn's The Forest of Time and Other Stories.

Contemplating a broadband solution - getting tired of dialup. Cricket maybe? Nah, not until I get a hotter laptop running. The Vaio sits forlornly in a bag, alas.

1863 - Monday, 16 June 2008: Blech Monday.

At least some of Flynn's Forest I've read before, in some anthology or other, particularly the title story. His introduction to the volume shows a Stossell-esque curmodgeonliness, heh.

Stopped irresponsibly at the other $W yesterday - no plated, again. Grabbed another couple Lee case length gauges, for the Lee cutter. Didn't sign up to be called for plated at that store since the other one is conveniently between hovel and club.

Friday off! No pay, but sleep, and what should be a relatively relaxing range day when most folks are at their jobs. M100 accuracy and .308 chronograph work, and more Witness practice - maybe GP100 too. I'm beginning to see evidence of forcing cone erosion, which may be responsible for the loss of accuracy I've seen vs. the Witness. And maybe the Queen again on different targets.

Adding "The Ballad of the Clampherdown" to my Kipling page. No particular socio-political message - except, of course, that men should be Men - I just like the poem. Particularly the 14th stanza.

Unions... today at the supermarket I saw a guy in a machinists' union t-shirt and I thought, why does any skilled worker need a union? Are unions now simply refuges for one-trick workers incapable of improving themselves and making themselves more desirable to an employer? There may have been a time when unions served a useful purpose, but that time is past. Now they just get in the way of getting things done.

...Time to read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress again. No, that's not related to the union rant - or is it?

1864 - Tuesday, 17 June 2008: Kittehs still blocked at work. Dammit.

Flynn's stuff is good. But I knew that. -Actually I may have read several of these before, somewhere - possibly this entire volume. Odd that I remember the stories but not the book I read them in. Skipping some - lined up I have Yeager's second biography and a MilHist volume sent by a reader.

Attention law enforcement officers: Read the comments. And look in a mirror. You really are going to make us execute you for your crimes, aren't you? Not unrelated, Quote o' the Day: "A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." - Thomas Jefferson (Rights of British America, 1774) - Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., 1:209

1865 - Wednesday, 18 June 2008: Ugh, up late finishing the last story in The Forest of Time, "Melodies of the Heart". Which I had read before. With that ringing in my mind, not ready to read about, well, old guy Yeager (Press On published 1988); therefore starting Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power by Victor Davis Hanson, studying the how and why of Western Culture's military whuppage of everyone else for the last 2,500 years or so.

Ye gods! Who'd'a thunk such an old-guy customer could be so hyper! Yakkity-clickety-yak! But I got the thingie working.

And then I get the Old Dude and his wife, neither of which has a firm grasp of basic computer operation and that took another 3/4 hour much of which was spent phonetically spelling and respelling the URL for remote access and eventually I had lunch.

Gak.

Get. Rifle. Practice. Now. -And it's starting to worry me that I'm so out of shape. Sedentary job here.

So I'm reading the latest Shotgun News (v62#18) and on page 15 is a photo of the CounterSniper Crusader riflescope - marked MILITARY & LAW ENFORCEMENT ONLY. For a telescope? That company won't be getting this would-be-free-man's business. More palatable, on page 22, part 3 of building the SGN-9 9mm carbine, using simple milling operations and off-the-shelf parts like AR-15 trigger bits.

Quotes o' the Day:

Ahem. Wunnerful thing, that 1st Amendment.

Aaand speaking of Freedom of Speech, in radio news something about Clark County's sheriff requiring all "biased incidents" involving "hate speech" to be reported and investigated. Would that include the tax-paid defense attorney who called me a racist for having the nerve to be burglarized by a worthless social parasite whose skin happens to be dark?

1866 - Thursday, 19 June 2008: ...Huh? Layoffs? The heck? Thanks for the warning guys! >:-[ The team managers found out only minutes before we did. This job is ending, presently, business decision based on call volume, consolidating to Canada. The company which runs the call center has several other contracts and departments - my options are two, for straight PC support (as opposed to the peripherals I've been working with) or, boiled down, proofreading for web advertisements. Leaning toward the PC job but they need a decision today.

Bloody hell. The PC job would keep my pay, the other is a half-dollar cut, and neither can guarantee me the same schedule and I need my weekends. The gods, again, are out to get me. See, I shouldn't'a talked about how I can get another job, a couple days ago.

Going for the PC job. Grunt. I expect I'll be learning more than I really want to know about Vista. Total flux now - packing up my cube decorations and snacks; still have tomorrow off AFAIK but not even sure if I'm coming back Monday or will actually be laid off while things get sorted out and retraining gets scheduled. Pay Saturday morning, that covers rent, but savings have been hurting a while. I can handle a week off, probably two if necessary, but I'd better not take any money to the next show unless I get more pay in the pipeline starting Monday.

Now watch the Corolla catch fire in the parking lot like an Me163. (That ethanol is alleged to eat the fuel system....)

Meanwhile, NASA sucks. Free-enterprise space exploration now! Rutan & Branson are on the way, though I wouldn't have picked Branson if it was me choosing - what's needed now is competition.

Comes then another offer to maybe keep my current schedule, and at least some of the current coworkers and management, by getting cross-trained on a somewhat different peripheral. I'll take it if it's available, otherwise I'll report... somewhere... sometime... Monday for PC support training. Better charge the cellphone.

Look at this screenshot. The "Authorized Journalists" are subliterate. But us 'bloggers have no credibility?

That picture of the Witness sucked. Camera too close, fisheye effect. Took a new one.

1867 - Friday, 20 June 2008: ZZZ!

[wake up, roll over]

Zzzzz.

No email or phone message from work yet. I was told to just show up Monday at the regular time otherwise.

Eventually up to the range about noon.

...Finally set up at 100 yards about 1pm. Did not bring the Queen; maybe tomorrow, maybe next weekend after plates. M100, sandbags, scope at 10x. Starting with Federal red-box AE308D, 150gr FMJBT in civilian brass.

Forgot my camera! And there was a small lizard I could've got cool pics of too. Well, I'll just have to bring the targets back to the hovel to photograph.

Resistance opening bolt - known excessive headspace. Flattened primers but I've seen that before with Federal factory rounds. Front scope cover coming off in recoil, ahem. Not encouraging accuracy - since these are the first shots since I reassembled the rifle, soft-of re-sighting-in, though I did start out on the paper. Velocity consistent in the mid-to-high 2,800s. Recoil heavier than the M1, but managable.

Skinny sporter barrel getting hot quick, pausing often to let it cool (and hunt for bonus brass, of which there wasn't much).

BTW, the duplex reticle in my Tasco 2.5-10x shows right at 12MOA between the steps at 10x, and way more than is useful at lower powers.

Poor cheek weld - the donated cheekpiece is, perhaps, meant for an M1D with the scope offset to the left. Might just tape something to the Fajen, saw a .17HMR done up that way today.

This time I set the chronograph fully in the shade to start, therefore a bit closer to the rifle - but getting good data. The tripod seems to have shifted in the muzzle blast though, so I started losing data when the line of fire was no longer over the sensors - fixed that. The scope's reticle may not be quite square to the bore, and the various mount screws might be working loose, but eventualy I did get some encouraging results with one load.

Next was Federal XM762D, which is somewhat grungy and looks like real surplus M80. This had less perceived recoil, I think, than the red-box; velocity about the same. Flattened primers again. No sight adjustments for this string of ten, and lousy accuracy, hm.

The third load was Sierra 110gr Varminter flat-base JHP over 46.8gr BL-C(2). These had Winchester magnum primers because I had run out of standard at that time. Recoil about the same as the M1 - low and right with the same point of aim as the 150 FMJs. Here's where I started losing data because the sensors weren't aligned with the bore - I sandbagged the tripod at that point. About as fast as expected. Better accuracy than either Federal factory load, but still not great.

Next is the Hornady 150gr, same bullet I use in the Queen's M2-equivalent loads, over 46.0gr BL-C(2), with standard primers. Perceived recoil a little less than the factory loads - since I didn't want to stop and change targets I just used a different POA on the same paper as the 110. The average POI for these two loads, relative to POA, was about the same. Velocity lower than the book said, which was kind of expected from way back when I first started chrono'ing loads. Accuracy poor.

Nosler 150gr Ballistic Tip, otherwise the same as the FMJ. Better accuracy but still not what I was hoping for. These were much faster than expected, yet with a much lower POI. Weird, considering the results I got with the same Hornady-vs.-Nosler experiment with the Queen last weekend.

Sierra 165gr GameKing HPBT over 40.5gr. Milder recoil than expected; odd velocity figures. I'm morally certain I didn't mix the 40.5 and 42.0gr loads with this bullet and got each batch marked right - weird again. Way way low compared to the other loads, about a 15MOA drop - cranking the scope's elevation to get back on the intended piece of paper. But finally some encouraging accuracy, except for those weird flyers. The M100 has a good trigger and I'm firing off sandbags - I couldn't be flinching that much.

Finally the 165s again, this time over 42.0gr. Again with the weird flyers. Perceived recoil not significantly greater than the 40.5gr load, POI about the same for the same POA. Velocity figures support my certainty that I did not mix the two 165gr loads.

Scratching head again.

Also brought Witness and GP100 for possible further testing but wimped on that; had to get back to the hovel against Friday afternoon traffic so left the range about 3:15, got lost trying an alternate route, and started typing sometime after 4pm. Here's the pics and numbers:

All handloads in Federal civilian brass using BL-C(2) powder; all except #3 using WLR primers:

.308 Winchester test loads

\/ Round# Load#->	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
1	2884	2834	2928	2576	2641	2380	2180
2	2845	2875	2886	2508	2804	2371	2351
3	2865	2857	2820	2611	2776	2335	2477
4	2888	2850	2845	2533	2782	2273	2498
5	2893	2873	n/a	2594	2798	2047	2488
6	2884	2864	2855	2614	2796	2318	2530
7	2886	2867	n/a	2690	2518	2074	2481
8	2875	2865	n/a	2584	2463	2097	2385
9	2878	2865	n/a	2725	2473	2060	2483
10	2820	2814	n/a	2712	2488	2079	2488
Averages:	2872	2865	2867	2615	2654	2203	2436

Take a look at #6 specifically. Wild velocities... but the best group. And I was watching - the flyers you see in the photo do not correspond to the stray numbers. Weird! Anyway the M100 seems to like Sierra #2140, at least at a certain speed. I'll remember that.

Meanwhile: Uh huh and Mm-hm.

Heh.

Yes!

1868 - Saturday, 21 June 2008: Zzzz. "All the way back to Operation Bughouse."

So: Income uncertain (still no message from work), fuel prices high, rifle science concluded for the moment. I could go back to the range for handgun practice and even handgun science - I have several .357 and .45 loads I could chronograph - but what I really ought to do now is some laundry, and find more photo paper to print up next weekend's plate match awards.

And maybe catch up on email. :)

Finally comes word that I will be transferred to the other peripheral with somewhat the same crew. Training first, 9am-6pm Monday through Thursday, then maybe some actual work Friday - crappy traffic probably - but I still have a job, okay.

Continuing Carnage and Culture at the laundromat - the author's premise is that Europeans, and us spinoff Americans, whupped everyone else - even when those others had essentially identical, or even superior, natural resources, climate, etc - because our way of doing business is enormously superior. Individuality and disciplined teamwork; large-scale planning and free enterprise innovation; keeping old ideas which work while not being afraid to try new advantages. Interesting read.

While at the supermarket, the 2009 Guns annual jumped off the rack. Featured: Sphinx 2000 .45, yet another CZ derivative. I think I'm adequately equipped in that department; also the SIG P220 SAO, with a Browning-type safety finally - but again, I'm well equipped for large-bore fighting pistols. (Also wasn't SIG suffering a lack of ideological purity by looking into "smart guns"?)

Reader sends free disk encryption. I expect it will work on USB drives and memory cards too.

Reader sends that not all is goodness and light in Montana.

Reader seconds the notion of Konus products, hmm. Lemme get through this employment disruption first....

Since I've ordered a couple DVDs over the net, I'm now on spamlists for more. They remade The Andromeda Strain? As a miniseries? Okay, the original film was pretty good, and I read the book once too - but I sure don't trust anything coming out of Hollywood (by which I mean the entire entertainment industry and not just a particular location) these days - lemme guess, Haliburton created the virus to kill blacks.

European reader sends, Islam is incompatible with free speech. And the aforementioned Western Culture. It's starting to look like the "moderate muslim" is indeed a mythical creature.

Reader sends more handloading science.

Cruffler and another reader point out new Hornady Garand fodder. Eh, I can make my own a lot cheaper....

1869 - Sunday, 22 June 2008: Zzz- znrk? Oh yeah, OAC show. Not much there - reloading and cartridge-collecting theme this month, bought nothing; most of the tools were vintage collectibles, or I aleady have them.

Comes again the rain. October in June. Global Warming My Ass.

Chat every Sunday.

Yuri says that the new Andromeda Strain is, as expected, a humans-are-eee-vill hit piece, wherein the Deadly Organism can only be countered by some naturally occurring thingie which we've thoughtlessly wiped out by mining the ocean floor. Uh huh.

Hey - something that came up in chat - my understanding of federal law is that an unrestricted private citizen can build an unrestricted type of firearm for private use, not for resale, without government permission or notification. Like this for example. Right? -I would hope (get it?) that a lot of that is going on already.

Contemplating power trimming, now that I have the three-jaw chuck. Tweaked the rifle reloading page accordingly. I think I need another chamfer-deburr tool; that way, with a case chucked in, I can trim, then mount the two chamfer/deburr tools - opposite ends - and just touch the spinning case to the fixed tools without shifting grip or setting one tool down to pick up another. Therbligs! The bottleneck then becomes the time and energy spent getting one case out of the three-jaw and another in.

Cleaning the M100 and, at reader inquiry, doublechecking the rifling twist - 1:10", as expected. Another reader suggests that the poor accuracy - quite different from what was seen with factory rounds in the original 3-shot rifle - might be from the magazine box touching the action, and that metal might need to be removed - investigating. First, take caliper measurement from bottom of floorplate to top of portside receiver wall, and a couple other places. Then remove action from stock, then reattach magazine box to bare action and measure again - no significant difference in measurement, hm, looks like there is too much metal-to-metal contact, including some on the bottom of the Bold trigger's box against the trigger guard. That's gonna be a lot of Dremel work - later, after more research.

So I'm on Wikipedia looking up something completely unrelated and In the News, a typhoon hits the Philippines and sinks a ferry with "hundreds of passengers missing." ...How in all the hells of all the religions in the world can any 21st Century society capable of operating such a vessel not be capable of warning its crew about a storm that must have been tracked by fifty different satellites since before it was even a storm? Yes, let's look a little deeper into this, using Wikipedia's own pages for both storm and vessel - uh huh, they started tracking it six days ago, called it a typhoon three days ago, yet the ship actually set out from Manila yesterday. I get the Great Human Tragedy but come on! Look out the bloody window once in a while! -Ship built in 1984, not exactly a decrepit antique - looks like she was making regular inter-island runs so I would expect her to have been constantly updated by her owners with the latest gadgets and gizmos to prevent just this sort of thing. Again! A natural disaster hits anywhere else in the world and thousands die; a similar disaster hits here and the death toll, if any, is a shockingly low percentage of anyone else's. (Look at our own current midwest flooding - our citizens are in greater danger from their own "public servants" than from Mom Nature herself.) What does that tell you about Western Culture generally and Americanism particularly?

1870 - Monday, 23 June 2008: I had a really good sleep on. Dammit. Must buy more lottery tickets.

Off to training. Lousy traffic and worse parking, grump. Different peripherals with more and different functions, but some have the exact same problems and the same known-faulty components, except now with even more opportunities for customers to be dim bulbs, sigh. And Nothing Bloody Works in the other department either, naturlich.

Election... as stated, it's been a long time since I haven't voted, but this time there's nothing to vote for and no point in voting against. The differences between Obama and McCain are of degree rather than of kind. Dammit. -What's that? "McCain's wife owns a Budweiser distributorship, hyuk hyuk"? Bud is getting sold to a Belgian outfit (and remember what a Belgin outfit did to Winchester, somehow managing to kill the M1894 after 112 years of nonstop production). And I don't use the stuff anyway. On the drive back, Glenn Beck's guest host was quoting poll numbers while bemoaning that the nation was "lost" and there was no one to "lead us out of the wilderness". I can't disagree.

Prediction: If Obama wins, blacks will riot, attacking and looting whites and white establishments, because they will think Whitey will finally get what's coming to him. If McCain wins, blacks will riot, attacking and looting whites and white establishments, because eee-vill Whitey kept the brotha down. In either case those who actually defend themselves against the mob, if they survive, will be prosecuted for hate crimes. I'd love to be proven wrong but I don't have much hope.

1871 - Tuesday, 24 June 2008: Traffic parking blech.

Training continues, and again I say we should abduct a direct descendant of JMB and raise it from infancy as a software engineer for the greater good of humanity. But that way lies collectivist justification for any other violation of individual rights. Dammit.

"...it has been generally admitted that the police today cannot be trained to shoot well...."

Bob Barr? Not until he does some 'splainin'.

Speaking of voting....

Uh huh. It is really freaking me out that so many people appear to be so gullible as to vote for that... that... that lying bumbling incompetent inexperienced conceited bigot.

Dig the comments. Cop arrogance is rapidly approaching cop self-destructiveness. You have been destroying our lives out of petty spite, simple greed, and gross incompetence for too long. We will react. You'll wreck our lives anyway, by whatever excuse you find it necessary to fabricate - what have we got to lose?

Training continues... I'm listening to other agents' calls with a splitter cable for my headset and it's beginning to freak me a little that the regular agents in this other product line - with the exact same software tools and the same annoying bureaucratic repetitive logging processes - are not... as smooth, as in control of the call and the customer as I and my erstwhile colleagues have become accustomed to being. Then the trainer tells me that one of the agents I listened in with was targeted specifically so I would point out "go here" and "try that", which is just what I naturally did as my Teutonic sense of efficiency became offended. So again I'll be expected to clean up after others. On a different scale now. The refugees from the former product line are apparently expected to serve as an injection of competence. (Public education. Sigh.)

As for building one's own firearms, reader responds:

Shim it first. Preferably with some metal. Use a pair of snips and get several layers of pop can available, then shim below the magazine box (between box and stock) where the action screws go through. You are STILL drawing the action down into the stock, you are just padding the magazine box away from the bottom metal of the action and stock.

1872 - Wednesday, 25 June 2008: Carnage and Culture, Salamis, pg47: The moral drawn by Herodotus... is unmistakable: free citizens are better warriors, since they fight for themselves, their families and property, not for kings, aristocrats, or priests. They accept a greater degree of discipline than either coerced or hired soldiers. ...[I]n the past "they battled less than their best because they were working for a master; but as free men each individual person wanted to achieve something for himself[.]"

So I'm splitting in on another call... and it's more of the same. Grossly unprofessional and apathetic, not communicating with the customer, not familiar with the workarounds my group has been using for months when the transfer system fails - yech. I am told that management is "aware of the problem". Now watch us refugees from the other group blow the other incompetents out of the water with process adherence and customer satisfaction, and then watch the incompetents slash our tires in the parking lot. 'Cause that's how the world works. And the poor trainer is getting depressed 'cause she told those agents to do this with that product and to record that with this process and no one is doing a fraction of it despite being repeatedly trained on exactly that.

Maybe I should go back to building widgets. Widgets require far less human interaction. Widgets wouldn't constantly rub my nose in the fact that the republic is doomed.

History of the New York Times' willful blindness and active complicity in tyranny and genocide.

Hey blueshirts: read the comments again. And the comments on the original MSM article linked from the title. Are you insane, is that your problem? Do you want us to start killing you on sight on general principle like the diseased vermin you are constantly proving yourselves to be? That is where you're heading. And your unstable-freaks-in-black-robes cohorts too. Don't say you weren't warned.

Quote o' the Day: "The United States leads the world in too many areas for us to start imitating those who are trailing behind." - Thomas Sowell

...Meanwhile a reader has pointed out that the History Channel's "Dogfights" have been YouTubed, and I've been using SaveTube.com to download them (saving as .FLV for VideoLAN). Starting to truly hate dialup. Even on YouTube's tiny little resolution, that's some damn good CGI they've got there, and the Dramatic Life-or-Death Struggles are well-delivered. Naturally the library doesn't have the DVDs....

Since WinXP SP3 and Opera v9.5, the HP box has been just a little bit sluggish, and just a little bit sluggisher (and my wireless adhoc with the old NEC has for some reason stopped working though it says it's connected). Well, if I have to I can re-OS again.

1873 - Thursday, 26 June 2008: Effing train derailment causing the blueshirts to - evidently unnecessarily, judging by the line of gawkers on the very same overpass after the drive back over that very same overpass - shut down my usual freeway onramp. Gotta justify the taxes they steal from us somehow. Maybe they're substance-dependent on road-flare fumes.

Morning news... Heller decision. It's... looking good unbad. No civil war this weekend, eh? But maybe soon as the control freaks refuse to read simple words as they are. We already have the Philadelphia mayor violating state law, Bloomberg violating federal law, local bosses and bureaucrats (and their badge-wearing muscleboys) ignorant of the law - this will come to blows someday.

Even more freak-out-y-ness from the appalling inexperience and lack of skill from my new coworkers. One I listened in on today - the agent was having more trouble navigating through Windows than some customers I've had! It was like a Dubya speech, one wants to elbow him out of the way, turn the teleprompter up a couple notches and take over! -Except I don't have the product-specific knowledge yet.

That's right.

Quote o' the Day: "Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war." - Ernest Hemingway

National Health Care My Ass.

1874 - Friday, 27 June 2008: Heller talk all over the net. Wailing and gnashing of teeth from the rape enablers, uh huh.

Taking my first live calls on the other products. Building new mental database of product knowledge. Shrug. Grunt.

Okay, Heller has affirmed an individual RKBA. Good. The way the decision was worded left far too much room for infringement, for us absolutists' taste - but we've put a chink in the totalitarians' armor. Already there's a suit being filed against Chicago (the other homicide capital of the nation due to the other most draconian anti-self-defense laws in said nation). Here is an angle to press: "A state may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the federal constitution." "...[A] person cannot be compelled 'to purchase, through a license fee or a license tax, the privilege freely granted by the constitution.'" Eh?

Holy Crapping Crap. Sticking fingers in their ears and going "LaLaLa". Literally!

Meanwhile, Disney goes totally eco-freak. That is blatant Huxleyesque indoctrination of youth.

Callfromhell. But deductive reasoning and analytical capacity - i.e. functioning brain cells, a sadly rare commodity in these degenerate times - trumped my lack of product knowledge and the thingie obeyed. Horrendous return commute.

Busy weekend! Plates, and sis is coming down, then the club picnic Sunday, and forecast hot all weekend.

Dry practice with GP100 and Witness. The Uncle Mike's grips have a different point to them, hm. Don't know if they'll handle recoil as well as the original - I suspect not. Also the seam in the front, where the two halves meet, might annoy. Besides that the recent lack of accuracy, even from the bench in single-action, troubles me.

1875 - Saturday, 28 June 2008: Match daaayyy! Up early to partly de-clutter the apartment in expectation of sis' visit - turns out she only had time to daytrip and didn't even enter Oregon but it's just as well I had an excuse to tidy up a bit. (Bear-with-furniture bachelor.) Off to plates with the GP100 and Witness.

Very hot day. Took a flat of bottled water to hand out to the shooters, and usual winner Jim Breen brought a cooler of actually-cold lemonade. Good thing we bought a couple sunshades with the match fees last year. 20 shooters, 33 entries, adequate turnout. Only four revolvers! My previous rival, with the Mateba, whose single-action trigger gives an advantage, has given way to my new rival, who usually uses a scoped GP100 but today used a scoped M625 with moon clips. Anyway I took 1st Revolver and it's been some time since I managed that.

A perfect field of 16 Autoloaders (tournament-tree-wise) - I was, by a small fraction, top qualifier there (and by a smaller one second overall), but got whupped in head-to-head. Nothing wrong with the pistol, zero malfunctions and a couple perfect no-miss runs - I'm just not used to it.

In the semifinal round, between division winners, I beat Breen and his CZ85 with my GP100, but got whupped by one of my assistant directors with his scoped 22/45 in the final. I had the overall within my grasp! But those scoped rimfires are very hard to beat with anything but another such. Yuri's 22/45 is fixed but the stars did not align for him today.

Kinda busy, running the match and two entries of my own, but I have able assistants and all went well. Sighting: today I saw two Kimber 1911 rimfires - either conversions or built that way, dunno - and neither of them was locking back when empty. Is that supposed to happen?

1876 - Sunday, 29 June 2008: Club picnic! Scored surplus pie & cake, and in the door prize/raffle drawing, scored a $25 SW gift certificate, and also a Magpul synthetic 30rnd 5.56mm AR magazine bundled with a .22 BoreSnake, for the eee-vill black mousegun I might have to get around to buying or building before McBama bans them. No Garand bayonet for sale this year at the swap meet - besides, I didn't have much money left - but I did sight an operational Snider, with cartridges even:

And a couple other desirable big-bores:

$omeday. $igh. I did buy 37 Garand clips for $20, which I really didn't need since I have near a hundred of them from previous buys and reader donations, but these appear new and were below market value (typically $1 each). Also bought an MTM plastic pistol rest, $5, which will help preserve my chronograph when I do Handgun Science.

After, with gift certs and store coupons in hand, went to SW with Yuri and spent money I shouldn't have on stuff I don't really need, specifically a pair of two-way radios for when I convoy with someone, and for the M100 Project, a Shooters Ridge bipod with a mail-in thingie for a free multitool.

Garands next weekend - got no practice after plates yesterday but I know the Queen, and my handloads, only need the usual sighting shots and a couple clicks elevation one way or the other. The following Saturday is the Big Bore match - and there is no muzzleloader division as there was in February and I don't have a large-bore period breechloader. But, one of the Big Bore committee suggested I bring my Hawken anyway in case they have a low turnout, hm. Better get Hawken practice after Garands, both Minié and PRB. Probably I'll just stick with Pyrodex RS because it's easy to find and less expensive - but I might have enough 777 for both practice and match. CoF so far looks like 10 shots each at 100 and 200, on a buffalo-shape target. Also there's word of an actual muzzleloader shoot in August, no details yet.

1877 - Monday, 30 June 2008: Bleeeaaahhh.

More busy weekends. My schedule is showing I get Independence Day off, good - not much money for fireworks this year, been buying arms and munitions instead. Club calendar shows the range open that day, and hosting a military cast bullet match, hm. If I make a range day I could practice with both Queen and Hawken, hm, starting with the latter on the upper 100yd range while the match is underway on the lower 200, then switching. If I'm going to compete with the Hawken I'll need sight settings - hope to get emailed about which projectile I should choose, might have to make more Miniés. Probably using up my reserve rounds, in the cartridge belt, for the CMP match Saturday - and Yuri might be sharing the Queen if he doesn't get a club rifle.

Need taller progressive press for .30-06. Considering Lee Loadmaster as least expensive (a Dillon or Hornady would end up costing about as much as my Corolla) - reckon I'll stick with my usual procedure of sizing/decapping/tumbling/trimming/repriming the cases first, then running the finished cases back through, so I'm not too worried about whether Lee's primer system works (though it would save even more Therbligs if they really did fix it compared to the Pro 1000). So: Any experience with the Loadmaster, specifically for full-size rifle cases? -And has anyone tried that Honda Red Label motorcycle chain lube as an economical substitute for Hornady One Shot case lube?

Longer calls on these products, more things to test, more things to go wrong.

Big Bore CoF:

Scopes and open sights shoot 100 and 200 only; tang sights (not the Hawken) also 300. So that's 24 total rounds, hm. Lots of PRB on hand... over 50 Miniés, okay.

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