Shopmade Primer Feed Cap

I made a cap for the primer feed on my Hornady Lock-N-Load press. Pretty exciting. By my standards.

I took a piece of aluminum bar stock and turned it down to 0.875″, within a thousandth or two. I used the lathe to drill a 0.316″ hole down the length of the stock. I parted 2″ off and put it in my rotab. I used a 1/4″ mill to bore it out to 0.625″ inside, to a depth of about 3/8″. Then I stuck it back on the lathe, faced it down to size, and put a nice bevelly surface on the top. After that I stuck it on the drill press and used the slide table to put two holes in it for set screws. Now I have to tap the holes and get two screws.

Problem: my tap handle won’t deal with taps as small as the one I need to use, so I have to go to the hardware store and see if they have a cheapo I can get.

This should be pretty sweet. The set screws are a little bit of a risk, since one of them could deform the primer tube, but I think that’s incredibly unlikely. It’s pretty sturdy, and the screws don’t have to be very tight.

If this works, it should solve a lot of the problems caused by Hornady’s cheap plastic primer feed cap and the lack of any meaningful attachment at the lower end of the tube.

Photos eventually.

More

Here’s a photo of the part I made. The blue thing is a coat hanger segment I put in there to keep track of the number of primers in the tube (and to supply the force to push primers into the slide–another thing Hornady didn’t provide for).

If you make one of these for yourself, make the outer diameter about 0.850″. This one is 0.875″, and it almost touches the powder measure on the way up.

The hex screws are not a problem, and they never will be. The amount of force needed to hold this part in place is tiny, so it will never be necessary to tighten the screws to the point where they damage anything.

This thing is infinitely superior to the one that came with the press. It even has more area up top so you can easily feed primers by hand when you need to.

Half of Success is Being Willing to Do Other People’s Jobs

I think I’m going to go out in the garage and start fixing the problems with my Hornady Lock-N-Load press. Stabilizing the primer feed tube should be pretty easy; Hornady supplied a very flimsy piece of plastic–about as sturdy as those tiny tables that hold pizza boxes off the cheese–to do the job, but I should be able to produce a more realistic part on the lathe or my rotab. I may open up the slot the primer slide rides in. It’s so tight, a few tiny grains of No. 7 can shut it down, causing even more powder to spill.

The press comes with one primer-feed assembly with two interchangeable feed tubes in different sizes. I think it would have been smarter to make two separate assemblies. They would have been more rigid, and there would be no flimsy plastic involved.

It’s too bad there is no easy way to determine whether a case is primed before sending it to be filled with powder. You can stop the press, lift the case, examine it, and put it back, but that takes a long time, and if you’re making 200 rounds, it takes 200 times a long time.

I am wondering if I should remove the wood I used to shore up the bench under the press and replace it with 5/16″ angle iron. Anything that reduces flex will help. And it would be great to have a lever handle that works, so I can take the existing plastic ball to the gun range and punish it for making me suffer. Some guy makes an ergonomic handle, but I think I can manage to make one for myself.

I don’t know why the dies spin in their sockets. I’m going to look the press over. I hope I didn’t misplace an O-ring or some other part that stabilizes the dies. The set screws are tight, so they’re not the problem. It’s not that the dies turn on their threads. The whole mess turns in the press.

It’s strange that .38 Super causes so many problems, while .45 ACP works pretty well. One problem is that the powder is much finer. I use Unique for .45, and the grains are so big, they take longer to get into the works and cause jams. And the shape of the cases and the level of the powder are such that powder is harder to spill. I use fine-grained No. 7 for .38 Super, and the cases are tall, and the powder fills them pretty far, so spills are much more likely.

Maybe I should start using case lube. It’s supposed to be unnecessary with carbide dies, but “supposed to be” isn’t “is.” I wanted to be able to dye my .38 Super brass, and case lube will make that hard to do, but I should be using a brass catcher instead of relying on paint.

It would be nice to have a steel hub in the press to replace the existing hub, which appears to be pot metal. I’m not positive it’s pot metal, but whatever it is, it’s weak. My first hub broke like cheese, the same way pot metal does. I think the hub will be okay, though. The loss of the first one appears to have been a fluke. I don’t remember what caused it. Maybe a round caught on the old ejection wire and stopped the plate.

The way the plates attach to the press is very primitive. There is a screw which goes down through the plate into the hub, and the plate rests directly on the press table. The amount of pressure between the table and plate depends solely on the torque you put on the screw, and users are advised not to tighten the screw too much, because when the pressure is high, the plate and bed will act like a disk brake. If the screw isn’t tight enough, it can back out. There is nothing to prevent it. There are better ways to do this. In fact, the way Hornady did it is the crudest way possible, apart from relying on gravity and happy thoughts to hold the plate down. It would be nice to have a bearing under the plate and some sort of attachment which can’t be tightened or loosened by the action of the press.

I don’t know if the retainer spring is as good as it should be. They tend to snap after a few hundred rounds, unless you get lucky and get a press that doesn’t pinch the spring too much. I’m wondering why a nitrile O-ring wasn’t used. Maybe they break even more easily. But the existing spring is maybe five thousandths of an inch in diameter (across the wire, not the coil), so there isn’t much metal there to resist wear.

I’m going to look at the press as a fixer-upper, not a failed purchase. I don’t think the problems are fatal. It’s like buying a Harbor Freight lathe; you don’t expect it to work right out of the box. You take it apart, replace the bad stuff, put it back together, adjust it, and THEN it works.

You know what? Grizzly needs to start making ammo presses. Shiraz Balolia is a match shooter, and he developed their gunsmith lathes. I’ll bet they could come up with a superior product for a lot less than what the US makers charge. I’ll bet he already considered it and decided there was no money in it.

I know of no way to fix the wear under the primer-insertion piston. It’s in a location a drill won’t reach, without some sort of exotic 90° adapter. Maybe I can mount the press sideways in my mill and use a Woodruff cutter to gouge out a hole so I can put a sacrificial shim in there. I have to wonder what Hornady’s plan was. I guess you just throw out the press once the hole gets too deep. It’s not a problem yet, but someday it will be.

Spend the Savings on Tagamet and Band-Aids

I just made a bunch of .38 Super rounds on my Hornady Lock-N-Load progressive ammo press.

I have concluded that “progressive” ammo presses are a myth, much like “progressive” politics. If you want the LNL to work, you pretty much have to prime the cases in a separate operation, which takes the “progressive” out of the job. A progressive press should size, deprime, prime, and reload cases, all in one circuit. If you try to do that with the LNL, you will suffer.

The press’s functionality seems to depend largely on the brass and caliber. I do okay with .45 ACP and old brass. Today, sadly, I’m using new Starline .38 Super brass. I don’t know if the primer pockets are tight or what, but you have to smack the lever pretty good to get the primers seated. That causes all sorts of problems. The dies move. Powder spills. The flimsy primer feed apparatus gets shaken out of whack.

When power starts spilling, it creates a cascade of issues. It lodges in the little thing that inserts primers, causing it to stick in the extended position and block the primer-feed slide. It obstructs the slide directly, by getting in the too-tight groove in which it rides. It gets in the threads of every screw, making them hard to remove and insert, and you WILL be removing and inserting them often, as the powder problems escalate.

When powder screws up the primer-feed system, guess what happens? Primers fail to seat. Then you get cases that are open at the bottom when they’re filled with powder. What happens then? More powder gets on the press. It’s a vicious cycle.

I learned some new things about the press’s deficiencies today. Guess how the little piston that inserts primers is activated? The rear end of it–hardened steel–bangs into the cast-iron frame of the press every time you make a round. They made it this way intentionally, if you can believe it. This means a hole gradually opens up in the frame, so the piston doesn’t get pushed as far up as it used to. And how do you fill the hole? Beats me. There is no way to get it under a drill press or mill, so I have no idea how I would open it up enough to put a sacrificial insert in it.

The primer-feed tube has an aluminum inner tube held in by…wait for it…friction. I’m completely serious. A set screw would have been the obvious move. When the press bangs around, an aging primer tube which is looser than it used to be (due to wear on the parts that press together) comes loose at the bottom, creating a cavity where primers pile up. Guess what happens then? Primers don’t seat…and POWDER POURS ONTO THE PRESS.

If someone drew a comprehensive flow chart describing every problem this press can have, I think every path would eventually lead to a box labeled “POWDER POURS ONTO THE PRESS.”

People have told me my press needs to be mounted more securely. It’s on a workbench made from two-by-sixes and two-by-eights. It’s held in by big lag bolts seated in lead retainers. I reinforced the wood directly under the press. You could literally rest a car on this bench without stressing it. The only things that would be sturdier would be concrete, stone, or solid metal. The mounting is not the problem. If the press needs to be mounted more rigidly than this, it’s not fit for consumer use.

Here’s another fun issue: it looks like the spring that lifts the press’s table back into position after every round is too short. It probably got that way after being whacked so hard, thousands of times, to seat primers. When the table doesn’t rise high enough, the primer insertion piston remains raised, obstructing the primer feed slide. Guess what this does? It prevents primers from feeding. No primer, powder in case: POWDER POURS ONTO THE PRESS.

I took the spring out and stretched it a sixteenth of an inch. May be helping a little, but there are so many other problems, it doesn’t matter. I tried putting a washer under it before stretching it, but the table wouldn’t lower enough to seat the primers. The washer raised it too high.

I removed every die except the sizing die, and I tried to run the cases through just to size and prime them. Didn’t work. I had to adjust it over and over. I should have been able to process one case every two seconds, but I got a failure rate of maybe 40%, resulting in many minutes lost while I sorted out the unprimed cases and fiddled with the machine.

Once you get past the nightmare of case priming, the other operations go pretty smoothly, although the press still spills a little powder.

People defend this thing as if their kids made it in shop class for Mother’s Day, but it’s pretty crude. Let’s just admit it; it’s not an insult. There is no shame in making a somewhat less-than-slick product, when you’re a small company in a niche market.

I have lots of Chinese machinery which is made to much higher standards. My Northern Tool band saw is the cheesiest machine I own, and it’s considerably more reliable than the Lock-N-Load. Once the press is set up, I should be able to make fifteen cartridges a minute. I’m lucky if I can make one .38 Super round in that amount of time, although .45 is not nearly as bad.

I think I can fix it. I’m going to put a set screw in the primer feed system, the way Hornady should have. If I don’t do that, I’m going to make a better device at the top of the feed tube, to replace the cheap plastic deal Hornady put up there. One way or the other, I’m going to make that tube stay in place. I’m going to polish the primer slide groove so the slide won’t freeze when three grains of Accurate No. 7 fall behind it. I may even put Loc-Tite on the dies so they quit rotating on me. I’m also going to make a T-handle to replace the horrible ball at the top of the lever. The ball screws on, so every time you pull the lever, you have to be careful not to apply counterclockwise torque, or it starts to come off. The necessary effort can actually cause blisters. I’ve had enough of that. I should go ahead and WELD a handle on it. I’m also going to make a weighted rod to rest on top of the primers in the tube. They don’t move reliably under their own weight, and my old reliable coat-hanger segment is not doing the job.

This thing is just not engineered well. There are too many obvious flaws. I know nothing about engineering, but I am easily able to spot the weak points of the press. A good engineer would have seen these things and fixed them before putting the press on the market.

The new EZ-Ject system works great; I’ll say that. I have had no problems with it. And I think the press is a fine platform to start with, PROVIDED you have a lot of spare time and a garage full of machine tools and scrap metal.

I should make new parts and patent them. But how big is the market? Probably wouldn’t cover the cost of the patents.

I wonder if I could make my own press. I guess it’s a viable project. I have no end of scrap metal. I could not cast the frame the way Hornady does, but with all the metal I have, I ought to be able to build a rigid frame without casting anything. Then I could stick the Hornady parts in it and make it work. Maybe I could machine it from aluminum and then add steel parts in areas where wear is an issue.

I had what I think is a clever idea today. I don’t have a brass catcher, and I’m tired of losing .38 Super brass, so today I sprayed 100 bullets with Dykem. Now I should be able to spot my blue cases a mile away. I was worried that it might cause feeding issues, but then I realized, Dykem is so thin it doesn’t worry machinists, who have to worry about tiny tolerances. If it’s okay for them, it should be okay for me.

We’ll see. Worst-case scenario, I have to wipe it off with rubbing alcohol.

Some day I have to get a brass catcher.

Israel’s Enemies Poison Their Own Harvest

Busy day yesterday. Laid out 6 dozen garlic rolls, baked 4 dozen, and had to discard the rest. Made lots of pizza. Put brownies out in clear boxes for the customers to see. Fortunately, I had some help. The 11-year-old son of our church’s head servant leader showed up and worked with me. This kid is going to be a CEO some day. Show him something twice, and the third time, he’ll start without you.

Needs to realize that cleaning up is part of the job, however.

The guy who runs the church’s cafe during the week says the building’s business tenants go nuts over the brownies. The congregation isn’t as crazy about them. I decided to bake tons of brownies and store them in the walk-in cooler, so the weekday team can get them out as needed. Brownies keep for eternity, so I should be able to bake 6 half-sheets a month and cover our needs pretty efficiently.

The Armorbearers ended up talking in the parking lot. Unfortunately, one of the younger guys brought up paintball. So now I may have to participate in that. They say those paintballs sting pretty good. I may have to hide a sheet of MDF in my Depends.

We also talked about the need for martial arts training. I suggested krav maga. One of the top instructors lives in Miami. It would be pretty cool, defending God’s house with a system developed by God’s people, in God’s country. And you don’t have to be in great shape to do it, which is a plus for me. I contacted the instructor, and he’s available.

Speaking of God’s people, Israel is in the news. A “peace flotilla” including one ship full of armed hooligans approached her coast, and the IDF boarded the problem vessel, and Israel’s soldiers were attacked. Naturally, Israel’s enemies are portraying her as the aggressor. Pray that God will humiliate and abase the liars, and that Israel will emerge unscathed.

The Bible uses the terms “flood” and “waters” to describe the waves of slander and lies the enemy uses to afflict God’s people. You can see it over and over in the Psalms. False witness is a great evil, and it brings suffering on those who utter it. The Psalms tell us God protects the righteous from it.

The Old Testament uses the term “leprosy” (“tzara’at”) to describe the curse that comes from slander. It doesn’t mean the disease we think of as leprosy; that illness probably did not exist in the Middle East in the time of Moses. It refers to other disfiguring illnesses, as well as a type of rot that attacks a person’s house. God used to make the walls of the homes of liars rot, in order to publicly expose them as people who lied in private. If you routinely lie about people, and your home is falling apart, and your plans always seem to come to nothing, you might want to ask yourself if you’re causing your own problems.

I know a person who spews a never-ending flow of slander and accusation, and this person is a complete failure and outcast (like a leper) and lives in a home which is literally rotting. I know another who behaves the same way, and that person has a miserable life which has amounted to nothing. I believe tzara’at, in one form or another, is still with us. It reminds me of what Wiccans believe: if you try to curse a righteous person, the curse comes back to you. They’re probably right. Some slanderers have supernatural protection from the enemy, but that protection goes away when the righteous attack it in prayer or the enemy no longer finds the slanderers useful. My guess is that the delayed payback carries interest.

Since learning about tzara’at, I’ve been much more careful about what I say. Israel’s enemies could benefit from the same lesson. God spoke the world into existence, and he spoke the eternal blessing on his people into existence, and he speaks curses into existence, and everything he speaks eventually comes to pass, except for punishments which he decides to withhold. Our words have power, too.

I think that when a believer prays in tongues, he speaks God’s blessings and power into his life and the lives of those around him. That’s like having a fountain that waters your crops and drowns your rats and bugs (like a flood) every day. The words come from the Holy Spirit, which is God, so what you say is God’s word, as much as the Bible. Pouring that “living water” into the world has to be a good thing.

It’s surprising how much power words have, even in the natural sense. Think about it. Our laws are words, so when a criminal is imprisoned or put to death, in actuality, he is jailed or killed by words. When you spend a dollar, you are relying on the words printed on it, which say our government backs it up. The words, not the paper, buy the goods you need. A declaration of war is words. A marriage is made by pronouncing words. All contracts are made of words. When you face foreclosure, words take away your house. The Bible even tells us God dispatches his angels using words, and we know that one angel killed 185,000 Assyrians in one night.

When Edward Bulwer-Lytton said the pen was mightier than the sword, he was not kidding. A hydrogen bomb is useless without someone to write the words allowing its deployment.

Even computers are powered by words. How do you tell a computer what to do? How do you create an application? You use a programming “language.”

Understanding the power of words should help us grasp the importance of prayer. It is literally more powerful than anything you do with your mind or your hands. Everything is established in prayer, or in blessings and curses. The work we do in the natural is just execution.

Israel will never go under. God’s flood is deeper than Satan’s. It’s sad that her soldiers were hurt, but in the end, Israel will be buoyed up like the Ark.

10mm Looking Better All the Time

Here is some possibly useless news.

1. Midway USA has all sorts of pistol primers. I just got a cascade of product-arrival emails. Stock up, I guess.

2. Charlie Crist has suspended the fishing license requirement for the State of Florida, through the long weekend. Hooray for all concerned.

I may run by the gun shop today to talk about 10mm and an AK47 pistol. My big concern about the AK is that it may be impossible to find a place where I can shoot it. Trail Glades doesn’t allow people to shoot rifles with the stocks folded, and this is essentially the same thing. I better call.

A 10mm Glock looks like a really good defense choice. You can get ammunition that expands to about 1″ in diameter. That’s not bad for a pistol round. And it penetrates way better than a 9mm.

I keep reading up on this stuff. It’s very confusing. Back when I chose my first Glock, in .40 S&W, my understanding was that heavy rounds could work against you, because of conservation of momentum. I won’t go into the physics, but it works like this: the heavier a bullet is, the farther it can penetrate. There is more to it than that, and I am not going to publish distracting wise-guy comments about sectional density. Type them if you want, just for the finger exercise. Comments like that lead to boring comment threads that annoy everyone and don’t shed any light on anything. People who are interested in splitting hairs can always go to Stoppingpower.net.

Anyway, the theory was this: a round that penetrates too far before expanding won’t achieve much. You get a tunnel about the same diameter as the bullet, plus two small entry and exit wounds.

Now I’m reading stuff claiming that you want the deepest penetration possible, because handgun bullets don’t expand reliably, and that tunnel is all you can count on. If the bullet doesn’t expand, you want it to go all the way through the perp, to do as much harm as possible.

I’m also reading that there are 10mm rounds out there that reliably expand to about 1″ in diameter.

Putting all the BS together in a bag and shaking it, I tentatively conclude that 10mm is a very good choice, when you are limited to a sad little pistol instead of a long gun. If it doesn’t expand, you get good penetration, and if it does, you get lots of damage from the expansion. And it should do a nice job penetrating car doors and such.

I know I can shoot this round very well, because I shoot the .50 AE very well. I am not going to faint because of a little recoil. I shot the .50 AE well while the shells were coming back and hitting me in the middle of the forehead hard enough to cause bleeding, so I think I can deal with a gun that has half as much muzzle energy.

If you think you’ve done things at the range that made you feel stupid, wait until you find out you’ve been shooting yourself in the head over and over with spent cartridges. You don’t feel it until you quit shooting, and by then, you’re already bleeding.

I am convinced that worries about bullets exiting perps and hitting babies and Boy Scouts and visiting Popes and so on are the stuff of Internet-forum hysteria, and the FBI, in an internal document, has taken pretty much the same position. The odds of hitting an innocent person with a spent round are incredibly slim, while the odds of being killed by someone who wasn’t hurt badly enough by your wimpy pistol ammunition are very high. And if you shoot at a criminal and kill someone else, guess who gets charged with the crime? The criminal. It’s called felony murder. Look it up. I got confused and called it “capital murder” the other day. Hey, I’m not a criminal lawyer, plus I’m old. I’m sure there are exceptions for negligence and so on, but the solution is simple: don’t be negligent.

Felony murder is wonderful. Criminals can be charged with the murders of the accomplices the cops shoot. I think.

The idea that there is a wonderful bullet out there, which goes into a perp exactly the right distance, does exactly the right things, and stops without hitting your kids seems facially farcical to me. It’s a lot to ask from a mindless piece of metal. I say power up, shoot to kill, and use common sense. One of the cardinal rules of shooting is, “Be sure of your backstop.” I don’t care how nerve-wracking a shooting situation is; you ought to be able to make some minimal effort not to shoot toward a crowded playground or a session of Congress. If you can’t, then the perp has taken that option away, and he, not you, bears the legal responsibility.

I am not giving legal advice here; I’m just blathering on a blog. If it turns out the laws in your state are different, it’s your problem, not mine. I don’t see the “I read it on a blog” defense as highly viable. Even Tim Geithner had a better excuse than that.

The idea that all calibers are equally effective is also silly. Some do more damage than others, and more damage means a better chance of your survival, especially if your shot placement isn’t perfect. If a 10mm is 10% better than a 9mm, it seems like a smart move to me.

You could say that the extra bullet you get by staying at 9mm gives you at least a 10% advantage. But how likely are you to get to the point where you use that bullet? Besides, extra Glock magazines are small and light.

The stuff about expansion and penetration makes me wonder if I’ve underestimated the .50 AE as a defensive round. The big problems with it are the high likelihood of misfeeds, the low magazine capacity, and the distinct possibility that a stray round will enter your garage and kill one of your vehicles. And then there’s that bleeding-forehead thing.

There is no perfect solution, but trying to work it out is too much fun to quit.

Little Plastic Boxes Filling Up

I finally got my ammunition press going. Last night I produced 100 rounds of .38 Super.

Every time I start the press, I find a new way for it to screw up. Last night I had to remove debris from inside the little spring-loaded primer-insertion doodad. It was sticking up about half a millimeter, blocking the primer slide. What a pain. It’s almost as if Hornady worked on finding ways to make this press break down. I guess there is a limit to the R&D a small company can do.

I’m down to two shell plate retainer springs. This is a weird item. They break all the time, so you have to keep spares on hand. Midway sells them for $2 each or…$6.69 for three.

Buy in volume and lose money! What a concept!

Hornady advises people to smooth out the rough edges the spring contacts. Unfortunately, they don’t tell you this until you call them up and ask them why the spring keeps breaking. I don’t know of a good tool for removing a knife edge from a curved slot. Is a deburring tool the right thing? I don’t know. Hornady says to use sandpaper. If I had a tiny ball end mill, I could mount this thing in the rotary table and have at it.

In order to get 100 rounds of .38 Super, I had to run 105 cases through. Five times, the primer system failed, leaving the primer pockets open so powder escaped onto the press. I also had to guide the rounds into the sizing die. That may be a pawl-adjustment issue, but I don’t think so. I think the plate doesn’t grip the brass well enough to align it reliably. Maybe Hornady made the shell pocket too wide. As I recall, the .45 plate and die work much better.

I plan to make as much .38 Super as I can stand to produce. I think I have about 400 bullets left, and maybe 300 cases. Might as well crank it all out now so I don’t have to set the press up more often than necessary.

I may get a Hornady Powder Cop die, to make sure the charges are uniform. Seems like cheap insurance against death and mayhem.

I was upset because my powder measure, which has an expensive pistol micrometer thing on it, was throwing charges that were off by up to 0.2 grains. I started looking for a better powder measure. I read that the Lyman #55 was better, and I considered ordering one. Then I read that the accuracy I was getting was actually about as good as I could hope for without using a trickler, so I decided to forget about it. Now I’d like to do some super-accurate charges and see if it affects my shooting. If it did, I would be the king of the gun range. Then, of course, I would be obligated to lie and say I was reloading the same way everyone else does.

I did some research on 7.62x39mm ammunition last night. I learned something interesting. Most of the cheap Russian hollowpoints don’t expand too well. I have read that they do fall apart and yaw, and that’s good, but expansion is what you hope for when you buy hollowpoints. It turns out two brands expand: Wolf Military Classic and Silver Bear match ammunition. So if you, like me, like cheap Russian ammunition, this may be helpful to you. Now I have to shoot all my second-rate ammunition and make room for the good stuff!

Hornady makes V-Max bullets in this size (for reloading), and they’re supposed to be great, but the bullets alone run like 20 cents each, so the cost is not low.

Increasingly, I am drawn to the idea of getting an AK pistol for the truck. A truck allows for bigger weapons than concealed carry, but it’s not as big and roomy as a house, so there is good reason to look for a short gun. The AK pistol should give much better accuracy in real-world situations than a pistol, plus higher capacity and infinitely better ballistics. And you can even put a laser on it. I mean a real laser, not a dinky red one you can barely see ten feet away.

The more I think about the shortcomings of pistols, the more convinced I am that I should avoid depending on one. They are absolutely pathetic compared to long guns. Not even in the same ball park. I feel like Tom Selleck in Quigley Down Under. “Never had much use for one.” I’m a very good pistol shot and just an okay rifle shot, but an okay rifle shot is still many times more lethal than a world-class pistol shot.

I had another fun tool experience. My Sears Craftsman mechanic’s stool busted. It has two tubes under it which receive the supports for the backrest. One of the tubes popped off. It had been welded in place, but two welds were bad, and the third was mostly imaginary.

I considered calling Sears to see if their tool warranty applied, but their site says it only applies to hand tools. I decided to try to fix it. I got out my little Proxxon grinder and cleaned up the metal, and then I fastened the tube in place as well as possible with magnets. I fired up the welder and either welded or glued the part in place. I was working in a tiny area, and I can’t tell whether I achieved a real weld, but I stuffed lots of melted steel in there, so if it’s not a weld, it’s acting like glue, and that should be good enough. The part turned a little on its axis while I welded, but it’s straight. The little knob that goes into the tube to fasten the backrest in place now goes in at a slight angle, but no one will ever notice. This sure beats paying $80 for a new stool.

I wonder why Lincoln doesn’t make a skinny nozzle for tight places. Maybe they do. I would love to have a tiny TIG or MIG welder that only goes up to 20 gauge steel.

Tools are life. A man with no tools is wretched, indeed.

Time for 9mm to Go?

I wanted to write the third installment in the story of my trip to Washington for the National Day of Prayer, but I’m not feeling it right now. I got my reloading press working last night, I have piles of brass and powder and primers, and I want to crank out some .38 Super ammunition.

Yesterday while giving the birds some out time, I watched one of those reality shows featuring security videos and such. They showed a nutcase shooting up a tow yard office with an AK and a 9mm pistol. Learned a few things.

First of all, outer walls are really bad cover. I knew that already, from people yammering at me about it in comments, but it was really something to see it proven on video.

The tow yard was in a place called Lake City. I can’t find a Lake City Towing in Florida, using the web. There’s one in Wisconsin. If it’s the one in Florida, the walls are probably concrete. In any case, the rounds went through with no problem, nailing a lady in the rear end.

They had some kind of clear barrier between the office and the waiting area, and I guess it blocked bullets. But the wall below it was worthless. They probably didn’t think about reinforcing it when they added the plastic barrier. And the nut was able to shoot through the little hole where they passed papers and money back and forth.

If this character had been a good shot, he would have killed several people.

When the cops came, one pretty much emptied a pistol into him, but he kept making trouble until an employee came out and shot him some more. The shooter still lived to be jailed.

I’ve seen more than one video like this. Some criminal forces the cops to shoot, and it takes seconds or minutes for him to go down, even with multiple hits. During that time, the criminal can kill.

It makes me wonder if 9mm is a good idea. I like my Glock because it’s portable, super-accurate, and reliable, and it holds 11 rounds. But will it save me in a pinch?

I carry nice Cor-Bon ammunition, which is supposed to cause all sorts of damage inside perps, even in 9mm. If you can make someone bleed internally to a degree that it causes them to lose consciousness, you can put them down in a hurry. That’s the theory. But does it work? I feel like I ought to go hog-hunting and find out.

I have considered carrying a 1911, in either .38 Super or .45. The .38 Super is nearly as deadly as .357 Magnum, and the .45 is also excellent. But a big 1911 is a little showy for church, and the rest of the time, it’s just plain heavy. Maybe a compact Glock in .45 is where I need to be. Or the dreaded and disrespected .40, which is definitely better than the 9mm and has a similar capacity. I wonder if Glock does 10mm. That would be just about perfect. People moan about the recoil and controllability, but I have not had any problems handling high-recoil pistols.

Should I keep a shotgun in the truck? A short gun loaded with 00 buckshot would be much better than a pistol, if I got caught in one of Miami’s famous traffic-accident altercations.

An AK pistol would be hard to beat. Cheap and effective. Short, legal barrel. Lots of rounds. And if you lose it to a thief, you won’t lie awake weeping.

I’m also rethinking my ideas on pistol-grip shotguns. I have read that they’re impossible to control, but if you check out Youtube, you’ll see people firing them with very good accuracy, for short-range purposes. A reasonably talented shooter should be able to hit a perp reliably at fifty feet or less, over and over, unless the videos are rigged. With a shotgun, you don’t necessarily have to put the center of the pattern in a vital place. The pellets will go in different directions in the body, so presumably, you can expect probability to be on your side. If nine pellets enter and separate, one or two are likely to hit something important. At least you would think so. And the entry wound should be huge and bloody compared to the entry would made by a pistol round, which tends to make a little tear that closes up on its own.

Pistols are easier to control in theory, but that doesn’t seem to pan out in actual encounters caught on video. I can shoot a man in the eye at 7 yards, over and over, IF he’s not moving and the light is good. In a problem situation, I’ll be shooting 6″ groups, at best. With a shotgun, that might open up to 12″, but again, you have more lead, bigger wounds, and more trajectories, so aren’t you still way ahead?

So maybe a pistol-grip shotgun is a good thing to have in a vehicle. It’s compact, it’s lethal, it’s as accurate in practice as a pistol…what’s not to love? The Box o’ Truth says 00 will penetrate cars, so it sounds like it ought to go through any cover you are likely to have to worry about on the street.

I need to take the Saiga to a range and shoot it without using the buttstock so I can find out. If it works, forget pistols.

I have to get over the idea that pistols are okay for self-defense. They’re a whole lot better than nothing, but most pistol shots miss, and the ballistics are generally pathetic. I have to make myself think of pistols as what they are: something to keep me alive until I can get to a long gun (paraphrasing Col. Jeff Cooper).

Carbide is the Bomb

I found the AC adapter and lithium battery for my camcorder. I therefore present THIS:

I machined something successfully! This is a pivotal moment in American history!

Saved Fifty Bucks!

I had some fun yesterday. I managed to modify my Hornady Lock-N-Load shell plates to fit the new EZ-Ject kit I put on my press.

This involved cutting a slot underneath each plate, going all the way around the bottom. The EZ-Ject base has a nub sticking up from it, and the nub fits into the slot. As the plate turns, the nub enters the shell pocket and pushes the shell out. You need a slot about 1/4″ wide and 0.060″ deep to make it work. The newer shell plates come with the slot, and Hornady will fix shell plates for ten bucks each, but I was determined to do the job on my milling machine.

A while back, I put my enormous rotary table on the mill and mounted a shell plate in it. I tried to cut the slot with a 3/8″ HSS cutter, but the hard shell plate just giggled when the cutter hit it. Enco put carbide cutters on sale, so I got a couple of 1/4″ jobs. Yesterday I stuck one in the collet and gave the shell plate another try. It was like cutting through wax. It wasn’t even necessary to take multiple passes. Not for depth, anyway. I had to move the plate over 0.010″ and run the cutter around it again to make the slot slightly wider than 1/4″, but the depth worked fine on the first try.

I have two shell plates that work now. I can fix the rest in about half an hour. I love it when machining works.

Carbide is really something. The difference between the utter FAIL of the HSS and the ease and speed of the carbide is incredible.

If you have Hornady shell plates, I highly recommend you not do this. I did it because I’m crazy, and it’s very easy when you have the right cutter, but for sane people, it’s simpler to spend ten bucks and get it over with.

I’ll try to take photos of the next plate as I machine it.

Thought I Felt a Bump

I’m having a fun day.

I had an accident in the church parking lot after the revival. It was after eleven, and I was dying to get home. I saw a car parked next to my truck, and I looked at it as I passed, and then I got in the truck, turned the wheel, and ran my tire into the car’s left front corner. I was exhausted, I guess. I can’t explain it any other way.

My truck had a flat tire, a scratch, and a gouged-up rim. The car…ouch. No bumper. Two headlights gone. One fender mashed beyond hope.

While I was in the parking lot, at the edge of the ghetto, struggling to change a tire in the dark, two of my friends came out and helped. One of them refused to let me tighten the lug nuts, which was a real job. Very nice of him to do it for me. I was about to drop.

I was so tired, I forgot I was carrying, and I took off my flannel shirt. I guess I looked pretty weird out there, wallowing around on the pavement with a Glock on my hip.

It turned out the car belonged to another security guy. Being a big Christian, he was all worried about me and my problems. He didn’t want me to get a ticket or have insurance aggravation. We decided to handle it ourselves. Today I had to go to a body shop in Opa-Locka to hand over a 50% deposit on the work.

It wasn’t all that much. I was surprised.

I felt really bad for him. I told him to make sure he went to a place that would do a good job. He went to three places, trying to get a good price, but I told him not to worry about that, because I wanted it done right.

It turned out there were a couple of things I could do for him. He’s having midterm exams, and he said he had had “bad luck” all month. Someone borrowed his scooter and didn’t bring it back. So I’m putting in time, praying for him. And I found something else I could do for him. I had something lying around which he can use.

When the accident happened, I told him not to worry, because it was going to turn out to be a blessing for both of us. I was sure of it. God was not going to let us leave a 3-day revival, where we worked long hours without pay, only to be punished for it. Something good will come of it. I’m not worried at all.

I got a tour of Opa-Locka today. What a weird area. There are a lot of big lots up there. It’s surprising. There are homes that should be very nice, but because of the area, they’re not exactly in demand.

The body guy is named Conroy. I found the shop where he works, and I gave him the check and got a receipt. He tried to help me with my wheel. He got in the truck, and he took me to a few places, but nobody had the right wheel. Says he’s from Jamaica. I invited him to come to church this Sunday, and he may show up.

He gave me an estimate on fixing the bad paint and the new scratch on my truck. If he does a good job on the car, I may let him do it. I also need some Moto Guzzi side covers painted, and he says he can do that.

I ended up driving to Hub Cap Heaven, near the county line. The road was under repair, so I had to wait in a long line of cars. No wheel, naturally. But they’ll call me if they find one.

Came home and tried to get my new chuck working so I could put it on my new rotary table. The gears were balking. I emailed the seller, and he said it was probably dried oil. I knew that wasn’t true, but I opened it up one more time to make sure there was nothing I could fix, and while I was opening the jaws, the chuck balked, and it twisted out of my hand and tore up my left thumb. It is surprising how well a 90° edge can cut, when it hasn’t been deburred.

Pouring hydrogen peroxide under the big loose bloody flap of skin was most enjoyable. I hope I get to do that more often in the future. I got it bandaged up and went back to work. When I tightened up the bolts holding the pinions in place, the chuck started working. Thank God.

I put the chuck on the rotab and tried to dial it in on the mill table, but the silly thing doesn’t want to move on the rotab. I don’t know if it sits in a recess or what. I don’t feel like taking it apart to see. My 8″ chuck moved around fine when I hit it with a deadblow hammer, but this one doesn’t want to go anywhere. I abandoned it. Now I’m thinking about ice cream.

I wish I had some super glue so I could try to glue my thumb back together. Sometimes that works.

This is the hidden price for a Chinese bargain.

On the religious front, things are going great. This morning, as usual, I woke up and started praying in the Spirit, but now there is a melody to it. This happened to me a couple of weeks ago, and now it’s back. So I was actually singing in the Spirit, although I was praying silently. This is much better than plain old prayer. It adds a dimension of musical worship.

Robert Morris suggests people sing to God when they spend time in private prayer. It’s a good idea, but it’s not that engaging. It’s very different when the song is part of prayer.

Naturally, I am all freaked out. Again.

It’s like I said. The revival took existing believers to a new level. It’s no joke.

The garlic rolls came out great, although I was too lazy to get real garlic. I used powder, which was still very good. I melted provolone over two rolls. Really sick. Here are photos:

I think this is a fantastic idea. If I added another cheese with more flavor, these would kill. They could be an optional dish at church, with little side containers of pizza sauce and pesto.

Here’s hoping I make it to bedtime with no more lacerations.

Needs Wheels

Here is some good news. It turns out Plano makes a good, economical case that will hold an AR10 with a scope. Unfortunately, it’s so huge, you really need to put two rifles in it. Fortunately, the case that came with my PSL was pretty bad. So…

Ultimately, Imitation is Praise

I feel like I’m going though life on God’s horizontal escalator. You know those moving walkways at airports? That’s what it’s like. I get on and wait, and stuff happens while I do very little.

Last night the leader of my prayer group texted me to ask if I could lead the group today. That was just perfect, because I had a lot to tell everyone. Last week, I went to DC for the National Day of Prayer, a tour of the Holocaust Memorial, and a meeting with the Israeli ambassador, and the whole time, God pretty much buried me in favor. It took me quite a while to download the information to my group today, but I covered the essentials.

God always tells you more than you can tell everyone else. Frustrating. He isn’t kidding when he says your cup will run over. It happens over and over, in different areas of life.

I had a new insight today, while I was talking about the Holocaust Memorial. You may recall what I wrote about the pile of desecrated Torah scrolls I saw there. You can read about it at this link. The Holy Spirit rose up in me and made me feel his outrage and disgust, or at least that’s how it seemed.

Today I was talking about it to my friends, and I said it seemed to me that the sheepskin construction of the Torah was intended by God to show us that the Mosaic law, though priceless and vital, was external to human beings. Skin is an outer covering, and sheep represent people. The letters of the Torah are written on the outsides of sheep, and the Mosaic law was a system of commandments originating outside the person. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, bubbles up within us and motivates and guides us so we come to share God’s nature. It is God’s law, written on our hearts, as predicted in the Old Testament. “I delight to do thy will, O my God. Yea, thy law is within my heart.”

One of my friends mentioned the lampshades and other articles the Nazis made from the skins of Jews. I remembered seeing photos of these things. Some pieces of skin were used as parchment for propaganda and crude cartoons.

I know that Satan has no new ideas. God is the creator; Satan is the imitator. I started to see how the Holocaust was a weak, clumsy, profane mimicry of things precious to God.

God wrote his law on the hides of sheep, to show that the law was to be upon his people. His use of sheep in this fashion is similar to his use of sheep and other animals at the Temple. Only a human sacrifice could take away the sins of the world, but sheep were put in their place until the real sacrifice was prepared two thousand years ago.

Similarly, when the Nazis wrote and drew on the skins of Jews, they were creating Satan’s Torah. His insult. Through these revolting articles, Satan was lampooning the sacred scrolls. I firmly believe that. It was just like the pig sacrifice Antiochus performed in the Temple. It was an extremely pure revelation of the barren and putrified state of Satan’s heart.

I believe the crematoria were mockeries of the Temple itself. The Temple was a place where animals were burned all day, to please God. In the camps, people were burned in obedience to his enemy, and their ashes rained down like manna. And how did the Nazis get people to enter the gas chambers? They convinced them they were going to be given showers. They were going to be bathed and purified. Perhaps this was Satan’s attempt to ridicule ritual immersion, which the Jewish high priests had to undergo before and after entering the Holy of Holies.

Nazi killed the Jews with gas, which is inhaled. What does “spirit” mean? It means “breath.” Look it up. God breathed into Adam to give him life. Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit onto the disciples. God gives charismatic Christians new life, from inside, by breathing the Holy Spirit into them. Hitler, on the other hand, caused Jews and other death camp victims to breathe in death.

The Temple priests ate of the sacrifices, and they lived on the gold and other things offered by the people. The Nazis mined Jewish bodies for gold and hair. Even the Sonderkommando, who were like temple officials, were unwilling participants in the twisted harvest. They lived in special rooms stocked with food and other goods taken from those murdered in the gas chambers. Improbably and inexplicably (as with so many things that have a supernatural cause), the Nazis shared the goods with them, as though mocking the commandment to refrain from muzzling the ox that treads out the grain.

Finally, the forced stripping seems to be a Satanic allusion to the requirement that priests cover themselves with appropriate attire, including linen shorts that came between their nakedness and the Temple structures beneath them. God covered the priests. Satan stripped people naked when he sent them into his version of the Temple.

Satan loves cruel sacrifices. In the days of idolatry, it was easy to get people to perform the rites willingly. They even provided their children as fodder. During the Holocaust, Satan had to deal with people who either believed in God or had no beliefs at all, so no one was willing. He still got his way.

These things seem obvious today, but a month ago, they were not apparent to me.

I could go on. The prophets talk of baldness (even baldness of the body), sackcloth, and ashes. The Nazis shaved their victims from head to toe, dressed them in coarse cloth uniforms (I saw them at the Memorial), and turned them into ashes. The prophets talk of bodies littering the ground, and this is one of the horrors that recur regularly in the photographic record of the Holocaust. I just don’t have enough time to write everything that comes to mind.

Anyway, the prayer group meeting was wonderful. And afterward, a couple of us went to a gun show. I was disturbed to see an object that appeared to be a swastika belt buckle, on a table of items for sale. I guess the murderous nuts–the embarrassing few–are trying to blend in with the sheep. Very sad. I should have complained to the show’s promoters.

My church is having a conference that starts tomorrow, and I have to help out. I may blow off pizza in the morning. People will survive without it.

That’s how it’s going today. I have to wonder what the coming week will bring.

No Reloading for Me

I am a machining genius. I’m so grateful for the humility which keeps me from getting conceited about it.

I wanted to machine a slot in a Hornady shell plate which was supposedly hardened to about Rockwell 33. I put my rotary table on my mill and tried to mount the plate in the 3-jaw chuck. The plate wouldn’t fit. It has five pockets around the edge, and the pointed inner faces of the chuck jaws wouldn’t line up with them in a way that would make the plate concentric with the chuck.

I posted a message on a machining forum, and I thought about possible solutions, including machining a round piece of scrap to hold it, with clamps attached. Then I tried to put it in my lathe, which has an 8″ 4-jaw chuck. And it fit. I wondered why it was so easy. Then I noticed…the 4-jaw chuck’s jaws had long concave surfaces facing inward. And guess what? The jaws on my rotab chuck were removable. They’re two-piece jaws. When you turn them around, they have concave surfaces, too. I switched the jaws, and the plate fit perfectly.

Anyone else would have figured it out in about thirty seconds, but I managed to do it over the course of several days.

Now I was all excited. I had a cutting tool which should have been at least Rockwell 62. I had oil. I had the workpiece mounted. It should work, right?

I found a seemingly applicable chart in Machinery’s Handbook, with BRINELL hardness figures. Okay, fine. This is what the Internet is for. I found an online calculator, determined that I was dealing with Brinell 311, and came up with a figure of 30 FPM. I found another online calculator, put the data in, and came up with about 600 RPM. I reduced that to 450 out of caution, and I went back to the garage.

I applied Ridgid pipe cutting oil and tried to take a cut. When the cutter went up onto the workpiece, it did nothing whatsoever, as far as I can tell. It rubbed the metal in a way I can only describe as friendly. I assume the $2 cutter is ruined. There is no way this thing will cut the metal.

Now I have grave doubts about my highly reliable Internet-derived hardness figure.

Anyway, nothing is going to happen until I get carbide. Maybe not even then. But I solved all the other problems, and it was fun until the moment of FAIL.

I could try a carbide lathe tool, but with the interrupted cuts I would expect a busted insert in about a hundredth of a second.

At least now I know my chuck has two-piece jaws.

I Thought I Heard Hank Williams Coming From his Garage

I am fed up with Midway USA. I had reminders set for large pistol primers; when they came in, Midway would email me and let me know so I could order them. Twice, the silly things have come in, and they sold out before I could place an order. Today I put them in my cart and then looked for a soft case for my AR10, and by the time I was ready to check out, the primers were gone! Right out of my cart!

Here’s a tip. Powder Valley has lots of Wolf primers. Some people don’t like Wolf products, but I find their ammunition reliable, very accurate, readily available, and CHEAP. You can get large pistol primers for about $25 a box, which is cheaper than the American brands. They are said to be fairly soft, which I like. Powder Valley also has a good selection of powder right now, so you can load up and save on hazmat fees.

They sell Zero bullets. I have not tried these, but the price is very good, and I have read very good things about them. I usually use Laser-Cast bullets, but Zeroes are much cheaper, so I’m going to give them a try.

I use Unique for .45 loads, and I was considering getting something else, because my cases and my gun are so dirty after a day at the range. Two things I read changed my mind. First, I read that Alliant has changed Unique to make it cleaner. Second, I read that the greasy lube Laser-Cast uses is dirty, so it may be the reason I had problems with filth.

I am trying to face the following fact: if you reload, you should always shop big. Buy 10,000 primers at a time, minimum. Buy the big jugs of powder. Buy lots of bullets. You’re going to end up using it, so why lose bulk discounts and pay UPS for extra shipments? It’s moronic. But it sure hurts to see those jumbo charges on a credit card bill.

I tried putting my .40 S&W shell plate in the chuck on my rotab today, and it turned out it was not possible. The shell pockets interfere with the chuck jaws. Bummer. I guess I should try to make some soft jaws, or maybe I could mount the plate on a shaft held in the jaws. I broke down and ordered some carbide cutters, so I should be able to fix the shell plates eventually.

I used my drill press today to put countersunk screw holes in an aluminum door guide I made for some sliding doors in a closet. It goes on the floor, and the doors pass through it. I noticed a few things.

1. Spray Dykem may seem like a good idea, and I know it has its uses, but it’s very hard to use it without turning your fingers blue.

2. Spray Dykem remover appears to be a waste of money, since rubbing alcohol works fine. I bought this stuff a while back by accident. I have not needed to use it yet.

3. Everyone who told me drill presses were not for precision work was exactly right. My drill press is an industrial 17″ Rockwell, so it should be sturdy, but I can see it flexing when the pressure is applied. Small drill presses are apparently totally inferior to mills. If I ever get enough space, I could see buying an old Millrite or a beat-up Bridgeport for drilling. I would expect a Bridgeport in bad shape to be more accurate and rigid than a new drill press.

4. Drill holes have to be a lot larger than the screws that go in them. I measured some screws at 0.132″ diameter, and I had to use a 0.173″ (I think) bit to make them work. I started at 0.15-something, but the screws wouldn’t go in.

I’m getting a tiny Phase II rotab because I have decided I don’t want to rupture myself moving the 10″ job all the time. I looked at Little Machine Shop, Lathemaster, and Vertex, but it seemed like Phase II was the best combination of value and quality. Little Machine Shop sells them, but their price is not the best.

Soft jaws. Is there any hope I can make those? Guess I’ll find out.

I Know This Will Save me Money Once I Buy Enough Tools

I got my reloading press put back together yesterday. Now I need new shell plates. The new ejection system works off a projection on the lower hub, which projects up into a groove going around the bottom of the shell plate. When the plate advances, a shell’s bottom hits the projection, and it knocks the shell out of the plate. My old plates don’t have the groove into which the projection fits.

I can send the plates to Hornady and pay ten bucks each to get them machined. But where is the danger immaturity terror in that? I have a lathe and a mill. I should be able to do this.

I need to make a quarter-inch slot 0.052″ deep, around the bottom of the plate. I know of two ways to do it. First, I can use the lathe. Second, I can put the plate in my rotary table and do the job on the mill with a center-cutting end mill.

Here is the rub: the plate tests out at about 33 on the Rockwell scale, and I don’t have any small cutters in carbide. I have 8% cobalt, but I don’t know if that’s hard enough. It’s definitely harder than the plate, but I would assume the difference between the plate’s hardness and the cutter’s hardness has to exceed a certain figure in order for the cutter to work well.

I don’t think they cover this in Machinery’s Handbook. They list metal types and cutter types. I don’t think they list cutter choices paired with ranges of metal hardness. I guess I can dig it out and check.

Enco is having a nice sale on carbide cutters, so I may get a few. I can spend less than the cost of a Hornady refit and end up with some nice tooling to keep. The danger is that I’ll utterly destroy my shell plates.

I sold my .40 S&W pistol, so I have a shell plate I will never need. I may try to machine that one first.

I guess I could make my own shell plates, if I had any idea how to make a ball-bearing detent.

The lathe would be good, but how do you make a rectangular slot in the face of a disk, with an interrupted cut? I can’t even guess what kind of tool I’d use. I suppose I could make a rectangular tool from cobalt steel and push it directly into the disk, but I have never seen that done in a video.

I may go ahead and fire up the mill with a cobalt cutter and see what happens. A total disaster will cost me about two bucks.

Mounting the rotary table on the mill reminded me that I need a second rotary table. Mine weighs something like 120 pounds with the chuck installed, so in order to get it on and off the mill without risk of dropping it or chipping the mill, I take the chuck off every time. This means a tedious procedure of dialing in the chuck, whenever I want to use the rotab. I have been planning to get a 4″ rotab and mount it in my vise when I need it. This should kill about 95% of the 10″-table moves.

Finding the right rotab is not easy. Little Machine Shop sells a nice one with dividing plates and a chuck and a tailstock for $300. I can get a Vertex with nothing on it for $139. Then there is Lathemaster. But I don’t know what the specs on the Lathemaster product are.

It looks like Phase II has the best specs in the Chaiwanese market.

Some of these things are hard to mount, because you can’t just use your usual studs and nuts. That’s a consideration. I am planning to put the table on a piece of aluminum and put it in my vise, but sometimes (probably), I’ll want it on the mill table surface.

I guess I’ll figure it out.

Someone asked for a link to a Youtube about upgrading the Hornady Lock-N-Load press to the EZ-Ject system. Here you go.