RIFLEMAN'S JOURNAL - DECEMBER 2008

Up late finishing Fortune's Stroke. Next is Flint & Dave Freer's Slow Train to Arcturus, a slowboat story.

Post-election analysis continues, with conservatives, neo or otherwise, dividing over Palin. Lemme tell ya, she was the only reason I bothered filling out the ballot this time - I sure didn't vote for McCain.

Reader sends Garand accessory. Which I could make myself (big fabric store not far from library).... If I'm looking at this right it's an insert for standard 3/30 AR pouches, so when I finally run out of '06 for the Queen the same gear could be used for a picked-up JBT mousegun, hm. I do already have assorted LC2 bits including USGI AR pouches....

Der Schwarzfürher.

NSSF videos. Bandwidth.... -Some of these will no doubt raise factional-ideological hackles - some of mine rise just looking at the filenames - but there they are.

December 1958 Guns magazine, featuring article on the worth of the rifle in an atomic war. Excerpt: A common misconception in judging man-rifle performance is to think solely in terms of accuracy. Given a few months to a year, and with plenty of ammo, it is probably possible to teach a healthy person acceptable accuracy with a rifle; for example, to group shots within five minutes of angle at fixed targets. It is hard to realize that accuracy is not the only thing, perhaps not even the main thing, required in live target shooting. Anyone who's even thinking of going to an Appleseed should, IMO, read this article.

Reader sends science.

Reader sends more data on 9mm vs .40 in the P35:

The .40 slide is four ounces heavier, both taller and thicker than the 9mm slide (if you look closely at the left side of a .40 slide you will see a relief cut parallel to the frame rails for the left side of the slide stop, absent from the 9mm slide), and the .40 comes with a 20 pound recoil spring as standard. The 9mm recoil spring is 17 pounds, by contrast. Both calibers also come with an extremely stout 34 pound mainspring (prior to around 1985, or so I have read, a 22 pound mainspring was used) which is rather more than is needed for reliability with most ammunition, even surplus SMG ammo with hard primers. The heavier mainspring requires greater force to cock the hammer, further retarding unlocking. The 34 pound mainspring, I have read, was introduced several years prior to the .40 version, to improve the BHP's reliability and longevity with extremely hot European 9mm SMG ammo.

2032 - Tuesday, 2 December 2008: Still nothing from the temp service, but I haven't called them either.

Helped Yuri load some .45 rounds for his Witness, and in conversation I was reminded again of my vaporware plan to make a consolidated page for book & film reviews. The reminder was Yuri's interest in Martin's The Lost Constitution, which I reviewed, unfavorably, starting back here (scroll). It's going to be laborious, picking through over six years of 'blog, but what the heck. ...Aaand here's the first.

Reader sends Sowell column.

Codrea reports that Remington is showing spine on the HS Precision/Horiuchi issue (there's at least one company that learned from the Zumbo incident).

Reader sez my .45 loads are too light for the 1911, causing less than full cycling, which might also be causing the misfeeds. Could be - geometry and recoil spring are indeed different between 1911 and Witness (these loads work perfectly in the Tanfoglio), and what works in one mightn't in the other. I still have some factory FMJ, I'll run that through the 1911 sometime and see what happens. Definitely needs the sights addressed though.

John Lott.

Marines. "...what Marines can accomplish when they’re given the opportunity to fight...." We have the best troops in the world, we always have. All the way back to Lexington, 'cause they choose to go - every other military in the world, at some time or other, has had the equivalent of commissars with PPShs chivvying the conscripts forward, but never us. It's the thrice-cursed bureaucrats who lose wars, never the American fighting men in the field. Case in point.

Speaking of HS Precision, OFF chimes in.

2033 - Wednesday, 3 December 2008: Wallowing in blissful zzz.

Sign of the times. Morons.

2034 - Thursday, 4 December 2008: Last night I watched Flags of our Fathers. The effects and realistic technical portrayal of warfare were excellent, but the story was dissatisfying, bemoaning eee-vill racist America (hey - I've been to Browning, MT, and I'm told I am part Injun - and during the road trip I came right out and 'blogged "Quit drinking and get a job") and cheapening the Battle of Iwo Jima into a war-bond-selling stunt. I'm seeing a disturbing trend in films these past years (and I can't be the first to notice), deconstructing what have always been societal ideals, like fictional superheroes and the real ones in our military. Remember the Bugs Bunny cartoon with the super carrot, and at the end there was a job calling for "a real superman"? We've gone from that to films like Jarhead and Hancock (click for third-party reviews supporting my point). Even the latest Superman film has him siring an illegitimate child. Now I'm no bible-thumping moralist, but society needs something to look up to, something to strive to emulate, something to point at and say "That is Good and True". There is a habit lately, most especially in motion pictures but in many other artistic fields, of tearing down these ideals and leaving us with... what? A society that has nothing to look up to will get out of the habit of looking up at all. They become dispirited, unquestioning, hopeless, dreamless - less than men.

And that is what some people want.

Speaking of Hancock, I haven't actually seen it but I think Yuri netflixd it - how 'bout a review dude? (And you haven't 'blogged about the reloading thing....)

Nearing the end of Slow Train to Arcturus by Flint & Dave Freer. With Paul Chafe's disappointing Genesis still in memory I was apprehensive, but the Baen stable delivered a thoughtful piece exploring, as science fiction often does, a variety of technical and societal What Ifs. In this book the sublight colony ship is a string of ships, with the "locomotive" cruising at .3c and dropping "cars" around likely-looking suns - the train never slows, thus conserving fuel and reaching more stars in less time. Each habitat has its own society, some of which have degenerated as in the archetypal slowboat story, Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky (which I suppose I'll have to re-read now), and some of which have not. Communication between habitats was supposed to be forbidden by the designers and Social Planners but Flint & Freer's message (every book has a message!) is that spoken eloquently by David Scott of Apollo XV: "...there's a fundamental truth to our nature: Man must explore." Good read, and better than I feared it would be when I started it.

2035 - Friday, 5 December 2008: Up late finishing STtA, recommended - trust me, read the whole thing through, it ends well for Our Kind. Back to Belisarius, The Tide of Victory.

Also on library disc, going through the Sharpe's series, which I've viewed before but last time the library didn't seem to have the entire series - now they do, through #15 (#16 originally aired about a month ago and isn't disced yet). I have not read the books but word is the adaptations have the author's blessing, and I certainly think they're good. -The actors sure don't know the rules though - but who did, 200 years ago?

(Not really concerned about the digital changeover in February. Ya know?)

Laboriously scrolling through 6+ years of my own 'blog to pick out the various reviews, cutting and pasting. This Will Take Some Time.

Codrea personally confirms that Remington is standing up on the HS Precision/Horiuchi thing.

Another Appleseed review.

Mm-hm.

Want. 'Cause have. Personal lights came up in chat last Sunday. My jeans-pocket stuff is a folding knife clipped into my right front, a Leatherman SideClip in the left, and next to the multitool a AAA Mini Maglite which happens to have a pen-style pocket clip. Thing is, AAA batteries don't last near as long as AA (I read a study somewhere, and I see it's true from personal experience), and the LED conversion for AA is not only brighter but multiplies battery life. When I stay up late for hours finishing a book, it's by the light of my Niteize-converted AA Mini. (I feed it NiMH now too.) I also have a SureFire G2 (the $40 plastic one that working stiffs can actually afford) in the man-purse and that is bright enough to be a weapon, but it's a little too big for pocket carry, doesn't have a clip, and has far more expensive batteries. Okay, what I actually want is just the clip - I have the light. There's supposed to be an accessory pack available separately, someone should have it somewhere....

Busy tomorrow - sis coming down for the Turkey Shoot. But, eyeing more .44 test loads - have some 240gr Laser Cast LSWC from Yuri, hm. Lyman #45 says 4.0 to 6.5 Bullseye for 232gr, hm. Well, won't have time to chrono anything tomorrow anyway. But here's the theory:

Left, Laser Cast 240gr LSWC; right, Silver State 200gr LRN. Note the difference in seating depth (note the crimp grove in each), and therefore the different use of case capacity. (Note also different OAL.) Perhaps a mild load might be made with the 240 which would not have that cursed first-round effect I've been fighting since I discovered it with my first chrono session. -Ya know, methinks some of the people publishing these loads are not aware of this. I'm seeing it in two different cartridges, different revolvers, several different loads, different powders and primers, different bullet weights. I can't be the first handloader to have discovered this...? A few people, readers and others, have suggested using some kind of filler, but for the volume of handgun rounds I make that's therblig-prohibitive (unless I get more shellplates for the Load-Master).

2036 - Saturday, 6 December 2008: Turkey Shoot! Win! 1st open-sight rifle (of three) (sis got third!) (Mr. E., #68 nationally, got second, which under the circumstances makes me feel pretty good) (the targets were very difficult without optics) (really must get back to work on the M100), whole smoked turkey, and a couple door prizes. Got whupped in 2x4s by great big revolvers and by the plates regulars. Quite good turnout for both formats. Unfortunately, running around checking this and overseeing that and such, I missed most of the food. And there was some really good ham, which may actually have been turkey, like I care. :-/

And I'm pooped.

Quotes o' the Day.

Boycott HS Precision.

2037 - Sunday, Pearl Harbor Day, 7 December 2008: Chat & show every Sunday 1100 PT. Interview with Gun Facts honcho Guy Smith, who also mentions FIJA, who are working to rein in the unstable freaks in black robes.

Codrea points out a real Culture Warrior. May his tribe increase!

Reader seems to be right about my mild .45 loads - I actually had one stovepipe during the 2x4 shoot.

Yuri scores.

Reader sends report from the border.

2038 - Tuesday, 9 December 2008: Zz. I don't post every day.

In the news, Illinois governor Blagowhosis indicted for, among other things, threatening to take money away from a childrens' hospital if he didn't get his $50k kickback. Also trying to sell Hussein's vacant Senate seat. And he's out on $4,500 bail. Guess which party he's in, and guess where he stands on RKBA. -This does not meet the Constitutional definition of treason (Art. III Sec. 3) but it certainly deserves the traditional punishment. Chicago caller to the Savage show reports that a GOP campaign sign in a business' window is the surest and quickest way to get shut down by building or health inspectors. Al Qaeda nuking Chi-town would be a Good Thing, in the larger picture. -Furthermore, Hussein's staff and handlers are contradicting themselves about whether Hussein had any communication with the governor at all. Impeach now, avoid the rush! Bumper sticker in process.

Oh fer cryin' out loud, not again.

2039 - Wednesday, 10 December 2008: Not making it to the Castle Rock Appleseed, can't afford fuel, fee, and ammunition. There will be others.

Still nothing from temp service. Still not calling them either. Going back through this journal to pick out the book reviews I see my own constant complaints about production workers and general workforce stupidity. Do not want.

Cops are stupid. British cops are stupider.

I'm up to #38!

Via Cruffler and lists, prohibition doesn't work.

2040 - Friday, 12 December 2008: So there's another week shot. Up way late finishing The Tide of Victory and getting sucked in as though by a singularity to Ringo & Taylor's Claws That Catch, fourth in the Dreen War series. Featuring überkitteh.

Mm-hm.

OTOH, heh.

Two readers warn of ammunition accountability (that's the enemy's site - the gist is outrageous taxation and Orwellian registration of ammunition sales). Ya know, in the worst case, a flintlock rifle would be completely off the grid. Make your own powder, knapp your own flints, cast your own lead. My Hawken is not convertible to flint, the percussion nipple is on a big bolster integral to the breech, but I've seen convertibles listed. I do have one functioning flintlock pistol (with a threaded flash-hole liner suggesting convertibility) and another which could be repaired - either would be good enough for, ah, aesthetic deletion distance. In the worst case. -Those two pistols are both .45-ish, though there might be several hundredths between them, I'm too lazy to dig and measure now - but if they are of a size I'm sure someone makes a mold for a hollow-base .45 Minié.

2041 - Saturday, 13 December 2008: Up way late again finishing Claws That Catch, which was really quite weird in spots, and I was hoping for more with the überkitteh - but still a fun read. Back to Belisarius, last volume, The Dance of Time.

Normally I'd be at the show today - and maybe liquidating something, at present - but there isn't one this December. No pins in December either, plates on the 27th. Big Expo show next weekend but the crowds are off-putting; Vancouver show after Christmas, that shouldn't be as crowded.

Constantly tweaking my Constitution, added a bit to Article VIII Section 6. L. Neil Smith got that right, IMO. But these things have to be spelled out for some people.

Britain sucks. Look at these - first you have rampant crime, predictable as gravity in a disarmed populace - and what does that populace beg for? More government spying on THEIR lives. Sink. The. Island.

2042 - Sunday, 14 December 2008: Zzz.

Chat & show every Sunday 1100 PT.

First snow at the hovel.

4th Amendment does not apply in Oregon. >:-[ How much longer until these highway robbers and carjackers-with-badges are dealt with as they deserve?

HA-HA.

From readers and all over the 'blogs, "weaponized Borats". Specifically, the Americans love to have them around because Lithuanians love to fight, and when you need backup, you can count on them. That contrasts starkly with many of the NATO "partners."

Much chat about casting this week - firing up the Lee with the pick-up alloy and trying the 4-cavity .38 wadcutter mold I got at the August OAC show. ...More rejects than bullets, probably temperature/timing, but I got some keepers. They weigh in the neighborhood of 148gr, the traditional weight for this type so there'll be plenty of load data; raw size is .36something. They should seat deep enough to address the constant ignition problems I have when trying to make light loads in magnum brass. Tumble-lubing with Lee liquid alox and sizing with Lee .358 die later, then I'll make some test batches and chronograph.

If This Goes On we'll all need all the ammunition we can get. Years from now we may look back on this and laugh - but far more likely we'll be too busy reloading aiming and squeezing and wishing we'd bought less chocolate chip cookie dough and more primers.

Not unrelated, Ireland Sucks.

Contemplating 148gr WC loads - one concern is leading, which I saw a lot of the last time I tried my own castings. I didn't use much alox with this batch but they sized easily - I'm still learning. Wadcutters aren't supposed to go fast anyway, so with 39 (out of 100...) acceptable pieces, I'll make four batches: Speer #10 says 3.4 W231 (Winchester 1999 .PDF agrees) and 3.0 Bullseye; Hodgdon 2007 shows 4.8 Universal for 135gr Cowboy, I'll chop that to 4.0; and Lyman #45 shows 4.0 Unique for 141gr (also 3.0 Bullseye). I'll not bother listing the books' velocities 'cause they're usually wrong, that's why I have a $90 chronograph.

2043 - Monday, Bill of Rights Day, 15 December 2008: Cursed cold, under 60F inside the hovel. Windy outside too.

Codrea's column on Authorized Journalists.

Radio news, traffic accidents, closures, public transit disrupted - morons! INCOMPETENTS! -Well, in fairness, it seems to be well below freezing outside, so any moisture at all will create ice. But I've driven in it before, with and without chains. -Public schools again, sez me. No analytical capacity, no problem-solving instinct, no adaptation to changing circumstances.

Starrett on Lars about the 4th Amendment being repealed (see also comments). TOURIST WARNING: DO NOT COME TO OREGON! THE RULE OF LAW HAS FAILED IN THIS STATE! YOUR FREEDOM AND PROPERTY ARE NOT SAFE HERE! Spend your tourist bucks in, say, Wyoming instead. Montana's good too. -Researching, I see that Art. I Sec. 9 of the Oregon state constitution is nearly identical to the federal 4th (which overrides it under the federal 14th anyway, right?), and the state RKBA provision is far less ambiguous. Not that anyone in power cares. This will lead to blood. As it did before.

-You badgeboys who rummage through citizens' private property - is this why you put on the uniform every morning? Do you get out of bed and think "Today I'm going to violate someone's civil rights, fabricating whatever excuse I can to steal things from them and throw them in jail, and maybe I'll get to electrocute them too"? Is that what you are?

Called temp service - got voicemail. Maybe they got snowed out too.

Hm, also considering mild 240gr .44 loads. The four handgun powders I have on hand are Universal Clays, Unique, Bullseye, and W231 - I have some Trail Boss too but it does smell and it's more expensive. Alliant .PDF's Cowboy section shows 6.0 Unique for under 800fps, no Bullseye for this weight; Winchester .PDF has only an anti-velociraptor load which might leave more lead in the rifling than in the target. Speer #10 shows 5.5 Bullseye, 6.0 W231, and 6.5 Unique, all supposedly below 900fps but with the heavier bullet there'd likely be high recoil anyway. Hodgdon 2007 shows 6.5 Universal crowding 900. Lyman #45 shows 4.0 Bullseye for 232gr cast. Hmm.

2044 - Tuesday, 16 December 2008: Driving around for errands (in sunshine), most streets I saw were dry and clear, but the radio was constantly squawking about wrecks all over the city. Encore l'morons. Tomorrow's forecast is quite bad though.

As last winter, the Corolla loses its clutch fluid in extreme cold - but I already carry spare fluid.

Radio news about record state unemployment. Talk radio pointing out how socialist state government is doing... the expected, never cutting state budget and the bureaucrats' salaries (whining instead about having to reduce their rate of increase), raising taxes and fees, driving companies out of Oregon and jobs with them. (Predicting $500 traffic tickets, uh huh. The only tool in the socialists' box is theft.)

I view with alarm. Note the first comment. Talk about the rule of law failing....

American Rifleman, article on Witness, describing the Lego-ness I can't afford, sigh. -Thought: a Witness in 7.62x25mm! The current production large frame will take .38 Super, 10x25mm, and .45 ACP... COtW says the Tokarev's rim diameter is .390, 9x19mm .393, .38 Super .405, so I guess one would use a 9x19mm slide and breechface - but the real obstacle is COAL, 1.35 for Tokarev while 10mm is 1.26, .38 Super is 1.28, and .45ACP is listed at 1.17 (TM-43-0001-27 says 1.275, and I've found that the Witness' magazines like a bit shorter cartridge). So it might not work with Sov-surplus FMJ. Handloading though, hm, increasing bullet choices in that size with these new .32 magnum revolvers coming out.... If the OAL issue could be addressed I guess you'd just need a custom barrel and an appropriate recoil spring. But, without the dimensional ability to use cheap surplus rounds, kinda pointless except for the coolness.

Casting more bullets, learning more. I have four molds. Three are aluminum Lee: 358-150-1R single .38 RN; 540-415-M single .54 Minié; #90384 double .45 RN, meant for the Ruger Old Army percussion revolver according to the catalog ("456-220-R" - recall the Old Army specifies .457" round ball as opposed to the usual .451 or .454 in most other ".44" reproductions). The fourth mold is the (probably decades-)old Ideal #317 four-cavity .38 wadcutter, and this is steel - it behaves differently, and temperature and timing are different, as is the quality of results. In my limited experience, I prefer the Lee molds - it seems to me the properties of aluminum make for better results in less time with less work. (The bullets don't stick in the aluminum molds like they do in this steel one, either - but that could be just this one mold. I've done the soot thing.) As I emailed to a beginning reloader not long ago, Lee makes good stuff, and while not all of their stuff is good (the Perfect powder measure comes to mind, and the primer systems on their progressive presses), it's affordable and I do use a lot of it.

The Ideal 317 is the largest I have, and one learns tricks for multi-cavity molds that don't apply to singles. For better results, you want the metal to pour fast and uninterrupted into each cavity, and you don't want any to slop over into the next fill hole because then you have, yes, even in that fraction of a second, a temperature difference and a wrinkled doody-looking bullet. So, when using a good bottom-spout pot like the Lee Production IV, you angle the multi-cavity mold so that when pouring the first cavity any excess spills away from the hole for the next cavity, and you work your way through the mold likewise, so any spill from the current cavity goes into the by-this-time-already-hardened spill from the previous. (Also, I've read - there are books of course, particularly Lyman, but I don't have them - you pour a bit off-center from the hole so it swirls in, instead of splashing straight down the cavity. In my experience there is something to this.) Thus you get better bullets and fewer doody-looking effects. In future, once I figure out this lube stuff (and there was a recent thread on the handloading list about Lee Liquid Alox which I must read more thoroughly), I'd kinda like to get some of the big Lee six-cavity molds for .45 and .38. I can't use cast bullets in the Witness' polygonal bore but I have a 1911 with a conventional barrel dammit.

And another thing - the steel mold is heavy dammit! Fatiguing! But I think I'm starting to get useful bullets from it. In the Lee catalog I see the 4-20 pot has an adjustable rest for the mold, nice. -Ah, and Lee does have .45 hollow-base Minié molds. Someday I'll get that second flint pistol running, and get a rifle to match.

...Going over the instructions again, you're supposed to use a small amount of LLA, and Lee recommends re-lubing after sizing to re-cover the parts scraped nekkid by the sizer, which may be what caused the leading last time I tried my own bullets.

...This may just be an old tired mold. It's not leaking, I'm not getting big flash, the two halves mate nicely - they're just not filling completely. Still a large portion are what I would call rejects, compared to the much better results I'm used to in all three of my Lee molds.

Reader sends DIY gas mask from 1942 PopSci. I have a surplus mask, using the standard NATO canister filters, from before Y2K, back when they were $15 - now some cities are banning sales because they don't want the peasants to be able to resist the JBTs' CS.

2045 - Wednesday, 17 December 2008: Just a little bitty bit of snow at the hovel last night but I'm sure the whole city is panicking. Not even as cold, mid-70s F inside despite all the hovel's holes. (Radio sez "blizzard" on west side, higher elevation.) AND OF COURSE, police will write ticket$ if the pants-soiling bureaucrats mandate tire chains and you don't have them. "Public safety" my ass, you're all THIEVES!

Done with the six-volume Belisarius series, go read it. Starting Worlds of Weber: Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington and Other Stories, and the library got the "Deluxe Cloth-bound Hardcover $45.00" edition signed by Weber himself with an actual pen. This is a quarter-million-word "career retrospective collection" of novelettes and occasional shorts (he doesn't do "short", you know), many of which I many have read in other collections so I might skip some.

What do you do when you run out? I really must get back to work on my BOB - I'm actually a bit ahead on tooling, with the Lee Hand Press, which takes standard dies and shellholders and will do full-length sizing on .30-06 with enough case lube. Except I'm about out of money now. -I might liquidate something at Expo this weekend after all, I dunno. Then OAC on the 21st and Vancouver the following weekend. I have two items I bought solely for such a case, half-donated at the price by a very kind and generous reader.

The Fudds can't say we didn't warn them. There it is, right out in front o' God 'n' ever'buddy. How's that crocodile-feeding working out for y'all?

More vintage nifty: Build your own basement target range. I don't have a basement, and there aren't many 75-foot basements around these days, but with just a few more feet one could make a 25-meter Appleseed setup. -Appleseed is a tool to develop basic riflery, right? Last time I noticed lots of 10/22s and that was on purpose: the LTR, Liberty Training Rifle, is a 10/22 fitted with aperture sights like these, or these for example. Build yer own. -On the Tech Sights site you'll models for other rifles too - looks like their new Marlin version will fit most standard "tip-off" .22 scope rails, needing only an appropriately-taller front sight, which any 'smith with a mill can whip out in short order - if so you could convert lots of old .22s, even ancient bolt-action single-shots, into LTRs.

More MSM garbage. Instructions included.

Defense Scrap Yard Handbook. Scrounge!

2046 - Thursday, 18 December 2008: More snow today. Errands, laundry, library, groceries - I don't have trouble driving in it.

Money running out. $8 admission to the big Expo show this weekend, I can make that, and if I sell the one item I'll have rent - if I sell the second as well I'll have the utilities - but I am getting concerned. Might go to Expo tomorrow, or might not at all.

Got more bullets than rejects from the last batch of wadcutters. After sorting, lube, then size, then lube again, leaving overnight to dry each time - and you can see the LLA filling the conventional lube grooves, somewhat:

Lee offers "TL" tumble-lube molds with multiple small grooves specifically for their Liquid Alox. This isn't one, but LLA is supposed to work on conventional types too. Note the very top groove, much shallower, which I will be using as a crimp groove. These are alloy "X", mixed scrap and range pick-ups - it's the hardest batch I have, compared to "Lyman #2" bought at a show, straight wheelweights, and pure (or near enough - the Hawken likes it) lead bartered from a reader. I have no hardness tester, so some time ago I cast bullets from each batch and smashed them against each other in the bench vise - "X" deformed the least. The hardness, the double application of LLA, and the low velocities I plan for these wadcutters, should keep the leading down - dunno when I'll be able to test them though, Frugal Mode includes fuel to drive to the range, and it is winter (or will be officially in a couple days). Anyway, if this works I should save money on bullets in future.

Bad cop. No donut. And there's entirely too much of that going around.

2047 - Friday, 19 December 2008: Well. Overoptimistic in my asking prices, but I did make enough for rent, which is a large emotional load off. The utilities can slide a bit I think, I've been caught up. If I get a couple weeks' pay in the next month or so, I should be good into the following month. Special thanks to the reader who sold those two at shockingly-low prices for just such an eventuality.

The show was not as crowded as I would have expected, but it was still working hours on a weekday. Not as many blueshirts creeping along the aisles either, but the same explanation applies - I expect it will be a madhouse tomorrow and Sunday.

If anyone can get there - forecast for 6" snow by tomorrow evening (oh like they know). These dimbulb cityfolk - if we get half what's predicted they'll be demanding free helicopter rides from Hussein. And who pays for that? $500 traffic tickets, uh huh. Wyoming... has Even More Snow of course but a lot less whining.

As for prices, even the higher-end Witness models are $499 (including a 10mm exactly like the one in the latest American Rifleman, also in .38 Super, .40, and .45 at the same price from that vendor) (and I want the terribly-expensive extended safety for my own, now, 'cause these had them and it's better). FEG and FM P35s, $400. The least-expensive Simonov I saw was $275 for a Yugo. The CMP M1 remains The Best Deal in a Real Fighting Rifle - get yours before they're melted down!

I'm ambivalent about show size - the big ones have Selection, but they also have Not Our Kind Really, sigh. YouknowwhatImean. While the small ones have the same Old Farts^TM swapping the same things back and forth - but you know them.

Remember this? I do.

I am skipping over most of Worlds of Weber, having read most of it before. Next is 1635: The Dreeson Affair, more ensuing hijinks from the 1632verse. Cover art, heh.

2048 - Saturday, 20 December 2008: Zzz.

Maybe two inches' snow by 3PM.

The clock. Now how can I embed this on my front page?

Maybe three or four inches by evening, drifted higher in places. OAC show tomorrow, theme "Rimfires, Kids' Guns & Airguns" - but I've already sold what I could bear to part with - sleeping in, digging out the Corolla some other day.

2049 - Sunday, Winter Solstice, 21 December 2008: Zzz. Everything outside is glazed. Ambivalence: whiny incompetent cityfolk who can't handle a little snow & ice, vs. GWMA. Flag (inverted) caked with ice, weight tearing out the bracket - fixed, had spare.

Chat & show every Sunday 1100 PT.

In case you missed it, not all Brits are stupid.

With Yuri's help, got the clock working on the front page. -As long as I have the code I'll slap it onto the bottom of the current month's journal too.

Hey- does anyone have a clean, crisp clipart of just the big "O" logo? 'Cause you know what we can do with it.

2050 - Monday, 22 December 2008: Zzz.

In fairness, this is More Snow Than Usual for the hovel:

My part of the hovelplex is in an odd pocket for both sound and wind, and it drifts peculiarly. It's not all that deep everywhere else, it just happens to swirl up on the Corolla....

From the handloading list, video on using Lee Liquid Alox. Not exactly how I do it, but informative. Dunno about the post-tumbling, though I acknowledge the guy's reasoning. On the list it prompted more discussion of the use of LLA, also informative.

"Usurper" I said, and usurper I mean.

Hey - does anyone have a .PDF manual for the British L85/SA80? 'Cause, ya know, we might have to know how to use those, when the Usurper calls out the Regulars to put down us uppity Colonials. -And how about the G36 too (Hessian mercenaries, eh? Everything old is new again)? Ah, Steve has one for the SL8, should be close enough. (Tediously SaveTubeing the G36 videos from Wiki.) Here's some as well. Most of these appear to be the same as Steve's collection. Ah, this should suffice. Yay internets.

Radio news, all city offices closed due to weather. Probably the temp service is closed too. Well, I have the rent money. Probably just not getting any more income until 2009. Simplifies the taxtheft anyway.

Help Olofson. I ¢an't, at present.

2051 - Tuesday, 23 December 2008: Errands to run, digging out the Corolla. Fortunately Veteran neighbor has been driving daily, so I only have to excavate the car itself, then clear a path to his part of the driveway. -Which is a lot of work and I'm out of shape.

And I get the car out and drive to the bank at the shopping center to get a new Tracfone card and deposit the cash from the show for rent and I walk out to the parking lot and I get in the Corolla and turn the key and

Click.

Because, ya know, the gods hate me. So now my car is stranded with yet another electrical problem of some kind and I am super-pooped from hiking back to the hovel across several miles of ice and snow. (Well, I did need the exercise.) Might not make the plate match, for the first time in - how long have I been running it? Two years?

...Meanwhile, was Patton assassinated?

Reader sends news items - the headline feature is also noteworthy, illuminating the inner nature of the elitist collectivists, but if you scroll down to "Please Salt the Pass" you'll see how the eco-freak agenda very nearly got several dozen people killed.

Examining that SAR SA80 article. I've fondled bullpups at shows and never liked their balance, far too tail-heavy (and how in the heck are you supposed to do bayonet drill with one of those? Where do you put your hands?); now I see the controls on the L85 are kinda... stupidly placed. I have my complaints about the AR, but most of the knobs and such are logically located, particularly the magazine release, which on an AR can be operated by the strong hand while the support hand is already reaching for the reload - or, if you have your support arm slung up, you can still drop the empty without shifting grip. The L85? Ergonomically incorrect. The safety is reasonably positioned I guess, not too unlike a 10/22 or Remington 870, but the selector is a) separate (shrug, the Thompson had that) and b) way the heck back toward the butt where you can't change modes without getting out of a proper two-handed firing grip! And another thing, it is mechanically Difficult to get a decent trigger on a bullpup, with that long lever or transfer bar between trigger and sear, inches apart.

There is a three-piece video on the G36 on Youtube and that (eventually...) was educational. Plastic, yes, and Ridiculously Tall Sights^TM (which the L85 also has), grump, but... Teutonic thoroughness, ya know? Controls properly placed, mostly ambidextrous (except for the ejection port), easy disassembly with places in the stock to store the takedown pins, modular add-ons - alles in ordnung, hmm. No built-in backup sights when the optic fails on either rifle, except crude fixed pistol-types atop the G36's carry handle (I think) and the L85's SUSAT (okay, the SUSAT has an "aperture" - I guess).

2052 - Wednesday, Christmas Eve, 24 December 2008: Oww. Hiking on snow and ice is much harder work than just hiking. Earlier I may have implied conceited contempt where harsh weather was concerned - not so now. Another inch or two last night besides. It might be days before I can get any help with the car, or even recover sufficiently to hike back up there myself. (One of the management staff at the shopping center's primary store said there were several cars stranded in similar straits, and leaving it for some days would be acceptable.)

Not unrelated, GWMA. Timestamp in the upper-right corner, evidently updating every hour in Zulu time. -Yeaaaah, Wyoming's bloody-damn-cold.

Uh huh. Come 2012, the place will have to be burned to the ground to get rid of the stink. -That of course presumes there will ever be another "election" in this country without a Restoration War.

And here I am broke again and with a sick car again. Some other things I can liquidate if necessary but I don't want to. I might need them.

Codrea ties in with yesterday's eco-freakiness.

More SAR articles.

From John Wayne's The Alamo, MGM 1960: "'Republic'. I like the sound of the word. It means people can live free. Talk free. Go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose. Some words give you a feeling. 'Republic' is one of those words that makes me tight in the throat. The same tightness a man gets when his baby takes his first step, or his first baby shaves, or makes his first sound like a man. Some words can give you a feeling that makes your heart warm. 'Republic' is one of those words."

"Live free"? "Talk free"? "Come or go, buy or sell"? We've fallen quite a ways - just look at a 4473 form, or the 1040 of course, or workplace and campus speech codes, or "random" "sobriety" roadblocks, or....

And as for pacifists:

Crockett: "Talkin' about whose ox gets gored, figure this: A fella gets in the habit o' gorin' oxes, it whets his appetite. He may come up north next and gore yours."

'Nother segment. I've had it for years, just posting it now. ...I know what I want to write, but getting it down in words is the hard part. Kipling, for example - cited as a major influence by several of my favorite modern authors - he could draw word-pictures so vivid you can taste the dust and smell the horses.

2053 - Thursday, Christmas Day, 25 December 2008: Merry Christmas!

Even More Snow.

Preparations - I have one of those Drager M65 German gas masks which take the standard 40mm filters. As I said earlier, I got it long before Y2K, when it was $15 in the wrapper with one filter - you may have seen prices spike just before Y2K, and again after 9/11, same with filters. Now, in the latest SGN, Numrich is advertising some (other models too), unissued in carrying cases, for $20, and this place is listing a three-pack of unissued, sealed filters for $15. -These filters, even if they're not "used", if they've been unsealed they're only good for a few hours. I suppose a used filter would still give some benefit against smoke, or maybe CS, but my understanding is they'd no longer be good against real chemwar agents. I have exactly one unopened filter for mine.

Which is in my car. Which is stranded a few miles from the hovel. I'll hike up there tomorrow maybe. There's some kind of short in the electrical system, probably caused by some hard bumps I hit Tuesday. Last time I had a problem like this, the car started, once, the next day - maybe I'll get lucky and at least get the thing back to the hovel to work on.

Speaking of Wisconsin (and I have a reader from there, coincidentally, who also reports it's bloody-damn-cold), I see that, at last legislation, she's to be kept in readiness for reactivation, as is her sister Iowa. 'Cause, like the Browning M2, no one's come up with a decent replacement.

2054 - Friday, 26 December 2008: On this day in 1776, George Washington and the Continental Army kicked ass. Contrary to all expectations but their own.

Hiked to shopping center - car not stolen or towed, not broken into or vandalized (and judging by accumulated snow, not the only car stranded there)... but still not starting. Symptoms changing, not a dead battery, definitely some cursed electrical gremlin. Sigh.

Mailed rent check. Bought lottery tickets. Sigh.

Assistant plate match director emails, weather-stranded in Seattle; Yuri says he can't get out of his driveway; club's chief RSO cancelled RSOs and closed the club today; club secretary, residing near the range, can barely get out of his driveway either. As match director I am therefore cancelling the plate match.

Main thoroughfares are quite clear, but drifted and plowed snow is hip-high at roadside and very difficult to walk in. Parking lots are slushy, chunky messes. Some is starting to melt though.

And the library was closed Tuesday and, judging by the website's status of the items I returned when I hiked there after the Corolla died (hoping to pick up another DVD), they haven't reopened yet. Grump! My tax dollars.... Anyway 1635: The Dreeson Affair is difficult to follow, very convoluted, too many characters (not to mention at least three females, all intertwined with the- um- lead? I think? -characters, all with initials V.H. - IIRC Heinlein critiqued one of his own stories for something like that), a bazillion subplots - confusing. Not helped by the lag between this volume's release and the last one, 'cause, ya know, we read other stuff while we're waiting. I'm also wondering if some of what I see here has been covered in the Grantville Gazette e-books, of which there will be no more hardcopy editions as the e-book is several volumes ahead of publishing lag.

Mm-hm.

2055 - Saturday, 27 December 2008: Zzz.

Temperature rising, snow melting. Hiking back to the Corolla tomorrow, maybe I can roll-start it.

2056 - Sunday, 28 December 2008: Rerun show, left chat early to hike to the car again. And the gods still hate me. I at least got it pushed to the edge of the parking lot so it's less likely to be towed. -Most of the solid water reverted to liquid within the last 48 hours. This part of the world - both sisters reporting similar conditions in Washington - only gets hit with something like this once or twice a decade, and the city services are not competent to deal with it.

Pointless to call temp service until I'm re-motorized, and I did pay the rent. Besides there's another Big Holiday Weekend. Shrug, unpaid hiatus. Concerning work, need does not equal want. (Alas, CuteHTML won't accept the does-not-equal symbol from MSWord.)

"A soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains." - Eisenhower

While I was on that side of the gravity well I hiked down to the library, and got Good Training on the way back with a pack full of groceries. Come the Restoration, I won't be the first to drop out of the march.

Maybe the third or fourth.

Done with The Dreeson Affair and I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the end, which the authors may have felt justified their fictional means, and that is a slippery slope indeed. Srsly, shades - pale ones, but still - of Khmer Rouge. If perhaps inverted. Next, Rocketship Galileo, which I haven't read for years. Heinlein was, as usual, Way Ahead, writing about Real Rocketry in 1947, a decade before Sputnik. And there's Garands!

Yuri links article on long-term arms storage. I note they didn't actually test the Mini-14 and ammunition after 15 years of burial....

2057 - Monday, 29 December 2008: Zzz. As long as I can't go anywhere anyway.

Britain sucks so very bad. -Why does this one particularly make my skin crawl? Something about yellow stars? Or Jim Crow laws if you prefer.

1st Amendment? You don't need no steenkeeng 1st Amendment.

Justice? You don't get no steenkeeng justice. As I have personally seen. Never trust a cop of any kind. DAs and DDAs count as "cops" - they don't care about guilt or innocence and seek only to run up their own personal scores, no matter how much they have to lie, cheat, and steal. If you, as a victim of a crime, call the authorities, you're very likely to be investigated as a matter of course to find or fabricate any reason at all to charge you with a crime. Tony Martin is a graphic example.

From The Liberty Sphere and on talk radio, Oregon proposes mileage tax. With GPS tracking naturlich. Dig comments.

Free muzzleloader and Cowboy-type exploded diagrams from DGW.

Last night on library disc I watched The Incredible Hulk and was not very impressed. There wasn't much continuity with the first film - Hollywood counts on the masses' short attention spans. Wiki says it's not even supposed to be continuous. The story did not flow as smoothly either ("flow" - I remember that from the one writing class I took in my largely-wasted college years). Liv Tyler a) sounded mildly stoned and b) looked like a survivor of a Terrible Facelift Accident, both contrasting sharply with her performance as Arwen in LOtR (and with Jennifer Connelly). Likewise, William Hurt ain't no Sam Elliott. But sequels usually stink, I think that's listed next to Planck's Constant or somesuch.

2058 - Tuesday, 30 December 2008: Car is fixed, with Blacksmith's & Woodworker's help. Simple, petroleum jelly to prevent corrosion on the brushed-clean battery terminals, a step skipped last time, d'oh.

Then I drove to Bi-Mart to check my membership card against their Fabulous Tuesday Prizes (bag of Twizzlers!) and it wouldn't start again, likely because I hadn't run it long enough to recharge the battery. So - yay Tracfone - called them back... and it started right up after "resting" some minutes. They followed me back to the hovel just to be sure, and at the hovel I have a charger if necessary.

D'oh.

Finished Rocketship Galileo - rather more simplistic than I recalled, but it was one of his Juveniles and anyway one can't go far wrong with Heinlein. Now starting Jeffry D. Wert's Cavalryman of the Lost Cause: A Biography of J.E.B. Stuart, this having leapt off the new books shelf a few library stops ago.

Go Israel.

Now that I'm freaking out less about mobility, poking at the backed-up email. Reader sends article on quenching cast bullets to increase hardness - I've been dropping them from the mold into tap water, and once the rythym is established they do sizzle.

Kipling.... For some time I've had the idea to make videos - like music-videos - of particular Kipling poems. This one for example - third verse, second line, you can see Gary Cooper's Howard Roark wrassling the drill in the granite quarry, then standing atop the Wynand Building. Fourth verse - those guys who tend super-high-power lines from a helicopter, clips of power plants and foundries throughout the ages. Fifth verse, a before-and-after of, say, the totally-artificial irrigation of Los Angeles; sixth, a utility-company employee or a technician of some kind answering his pager, putting on his hardhat and orange vest, and leaving his family at home - or just a firefighter for example. Prospectors drilling for oil in the middle of nowhere. Work, work your thoughts, and in them see....

Reader sends Garand KB. Waiting on dialup for eight pages of responses to display, it looks like no one knows the load data, and it also looks like the owner was kinda doofusy. You don't use unidentified handloads in a Garand! (Note also the mixed headstamps. I have hundreds of pieces each of matching HXP, LC, and LC NM brass, much donated by readers - and I keep them separate!) Not feeling much sympathy for someone who would cram something like that into a Queen. I've been tweaking my Garand load for two and a half years, consulting with people who have been shooting matches longer than I've been alive. -At least it was SA Inc. and not a vintage specimen.

Tucson Tom sends link to Whiskey & Gunpowder (I wonder if they know about the song?). I can't afford gold, alas, but I have been stockpiling as much as I can of the New Precious Metals: Steel, Brass and Lead.

-I met Leslie, not knowing who she was, at Orycon 11, and recently learned she is One Of Us - performing at Oleg Volk's birthday party with an L-frame on one's hip counts in my book.

2059 - Wednesday, New Year's Eve, 31 December 2008: Zzz. This hiatus will have to end soon, I need income - $100 by the end of January to renew club membership, money for reloading components, and all those trivial things like food and rent.

Quiz.

Found it! Back up here, with the "Years from now we may look back on this and laugh", I was thinking of this image, or one much like it. Which I think dates from the Clinton era - Oleg's been at it a while.

Ideological purity! Add them to the list with Barrett and STI.

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