Look Out

Mike is in town, so the overeating started last night. Someone please intervene.

Today we have a number of options. Costco. Gordon Food Supply. And he was so impressed with my trash pile mahogany boards, he wants to make one. Go figure. He also wants to bust out the motorcycles.

I’m trying to get him to hang out long enough to visit church.

With a reader’s help, I think I figured out what I need to do about my router fence. All I need is something that extends out from the back side of the Biesemeyer. The parallelism is outstanding, and the precision is hard to beat. I could add a DRO to the Biesemeyer system, too, or I could must mount a dial indicator and some sort of screw adjustment on the router part. Anyway, this should be very easy compared to the harder solutions I found, and it should be much cheaper than the expensive ones.

I also have 3,000 pistol primers on the way! Do you care? Probably not. But I’m ecstatic. These things have been hard to find. And these are Federals, which may solve the problems I’ve had with .357 ammunition failing to fire properly. Federals are soft, and the new spring in my 27-2 is weak, so this should be a good combination. I also broke down and got a chronograph. There is just no way to avoid it. I can’t keep putzing around, taking a face shield to the range and praying the first shot doesn’t blow my 1911 apart. That is not the right way to work up a load. And I would very much like to create loads for Wolf primers, because they’re dirt, DIRT cheap.

Mike wants to make a video teaching people how to make 10-minute pizza. We ought to do it. I’d pay ten bucks for something like that, wouldn’t you?

Life is sweet

Keep This Quiet

Midway USA has Federal small pistol primers in stock.

It Shoots Itself

Last year for Father’s Day, I decided to give my dad a concealed weapons class. And we put it off until today. I took him to Ace’s Indoor Gun Range in Hialeah and got him fixed up. This is probably a better present than cigars or brandy.

While he was taking the two-hour class, I put in some range time. Trail Glades is where I usually shoot, and they won’t let you use buckshot, and I needed to try out the Saiga 12 and laser with my new police loads.

In a word, this gun is fantastic. The recoil is negligible compared to a high-powered rifle. And sighting the laser in took about three shots. At 50 feet, the pellets go right where the green dot is, and they make a pattern you can cover with your fist. How can you top that? This has to be the ultimate in semi-automatic home protection. A halfway decent shot will put all nine pellets inside your burglar, and after that, they all go in different directions. And you have eight shots in the magazine, plus one in the pipe. And you can replace a magazine in three seconds! Once you get it fitted right, I mean. The magazines are plastic, and sometimes they need a little filing.

I only shot it 9 times. I apparently dropped a shell into the bag I took with me, and I didn’t see it until later. You don’t really need to practice with this gun. At household distances, missing is nearly impossible. I just needed to be sure it cycled okay, and I had to adjust the laser. Now I’m ready to cut it up and turn it back into an AK.

The Vz 58 is hard to discount. It has the same easy short-range accuracy, the recoil is even lower, and it holds 30 rounds. Maybe when you add in all the factors, it’s the better choice. You can shoot it folded; that’s a big deal. It will also shoot through both sides of a car, and it will defeat some bulletproof vests. Although those qualities probably won’t be required in a home invasion defense.

Either gun will make your house one of the worst places a criminal can imagine being.

I don’t know which is best. I’m just glad my biggest home defense problem is deciding which gun to grab.

My next project should be a nice safe.

I’m glad my dad will have a permit. The biggest benefit for him, in my opinion, will be having to worry less about being hassled by the cops for violating Florida’s bizarre firearms laws. We have strange rules about how you can carry in your car and so on. You can’t leave it on the seat, the way you can in Kentucky. You can put it in your glove compartment, but only if you do it a certain way. It’s a pain. Once you have a permit, all you have to remember is concealment plus the list of places where you’re not allowed to take a gun.

Rasmussen Proves It

My Chinese (of course) carbide indexed cutting tools arrived yesterday. The price was great. But the lid on the little plastic case was smashed. The seller took the whole mess and shoved it in a Priority Mail envelope instead of a box, and naturally, something got crushed. He didn’t even sandwich it in bubble wrap.

I complained. Carbide tools are brittle, and you’re supposed to store them in a way that keeps them from touching other tools. One way to do that might be…a plastic case! It’s important. Granted, I can throw out the case lid and rig something up. But I shouldn’t have to.

What do you think? Am I being too picky? This guy could just as easily have used a box. Priority Mail boxes exist.

No response to my complaint yet. I can’t see giving someone a negative over this, but a neutral might be in order. If you’re going to ship people things, you should make some effort to pack them correctly.

Yesterday, unfortunately, I found something interesting on Craigslist. Another lathe. Wait! It’s not as bad as you think. It’s a little bitty lathe. Like Otisburg. The company that makes it goes as small as 4″ by 8″, and I think their biggest model has a 10″ swing. I’m not sure which model it is, but the description makes it sound really small. It’s a good lathe, too; not Chinese. And it has tooling. And the price is too good to pass up. Dang it.

It would be pretty cool to have a tiny lathe I could store in the closet, for very small parts. I could teach Marv to run it.

He’d make a lot of bells, I suppose. Bells are his bag.

Two disturbing items in the news today. First, only 53% of Americans told the Rasmussen pollsters that capitalism is better than socialism. And 30% of Democrats think socialism is better. Big surprise there.

It looks like the liberals have won the education battle. Socialism has caused the deaths of tens of millions of people, and it has never produced a good standard of living anywhere, and it is the greatest evil mankind has ever encountered. But a fair number of Americans, especially those who were “educated” after our school system was destroyed by liberals, think socialism is…pretty rad. No work! Free beers! Che T-shirts! If you want to be a lazy, flabby slouch all your life, socialism is the bomb. A lot of people are content to live that way. Clip your own wings and belly up to the trough.

This is how the killing fields in Cambodia happened. People didn’t know, or ignored, the clear and obvious lessons of history. They thought they could take something that had never worked anywhere and somehow make it succeed. And they ended up rounding up educated people, lining them up beside big holes, and machine-gunning them to death.

Here is the lesson conservatives should have learned from the last three elections, especially after seeing the impact of swing voters. The stupid are incredibly dangerous. The stupid make totalitarianism possible. Our kids are stupid, and they’re getting more stupid every decade. Look out.

The poisonous harvest of our most toxic decade, the Sixties, is a bizarre notion that the young are smart. In truth, the young are generally fools. I certainly was. But back in the Sixties, the left managed to seize on one or two things the old had been wrong about–things like racism and reckless pollution–and convince the young that the old were wrong about EVERYTHING. Since then we have been producing insolent, unprincipled, overconfident, weak children who think their tiny brains hold the keys to a bright and happy future where everyone eats tofu and and smokes free dope and has sex with no consequences.

It’s amazing; a human being will generally get smarter with age. But our nation, composed entirely of human beings, has gotten dumber. And we’re going to pay. Stupidity is an extremely expensive luxury.

I wasn’t raised very well. To some extent, I am part of the problem. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to my parents, and I don’t blame them for my failings, but they made mistakes. When you have kids, you should give them the same kind of effort you put into your job, at the very least. There should be a plan. There should be discipline and oversight. I didn’t get everything I needed. Thank God, I am able to perceive the existence of the problem, so I can work to improve myself. But many people are not as lucky as I am. They think the neglect they experienced as kids was freedom. They’re grateful for it. They think it allowed them to grow up without the “backward” ideas that made their grandparents so silly. They don’t understand that restrictions can be great blessings. Rules aren’t like shackles, intended purely to deprive you of liberty. They’re like frames that guide tomato plants and help them produce more fruit.

Presumably, every book of the Bible has a purpose. I believe that one purpose of the book of Proverbs is to help people like me. There are lessons my parents failed to teach me. And I’ve absorbed a lot of counterproductive ideas throughout my life. Where do people like me go for guidance? Pastors don’t have the time to provide it. You can’t expect your friends to fill the need. You can’t just think it up on your own. The book of Proverbs can be very helpful. It’s like a frozen bone marrow transplant, waiting to be infused into lost generations, to heal them of the cancer of savagery. Wisdom is supposed to reside in human beings, but sometimes it misses generations, and it has to be stored somewhere so people raised without exposure to it can be reinoculated.

I went through this book systematically. I found that I already believed and applied a lot of it, so I deleted those portions. I put the rest in a Word file. Now I have it to use as a reference. The deletions left me with a targeted version that focuses on my specific gaps. I don’t look at it often enough, but I keep a printout handy. You might give this a try. Wisdom really is power, and it will take care of you.

Sometimes I look at that printout and alight on passages I wish I had read twenty years ago. I think of specific mistakes I have made, and the pain they have caused me, and I wince. That’s the kind of experience parents are trying to spare you when they tell you to pull up your pants, get a real haircut, stop watching MTV, and get your butt to church.

In case any kids are reading this, let me say this. Socialism is a horror, and it will bring only misery and death. And there is no such thing as safe sex. And piercings are generally disgusting.

The other thing that disturbed me today was a ridiculous essay by Juan Williams. Someone sent me a link to it. He comes out and admits he thinks gun ownership should be banned. Like it was in Washington D.C., that peaceful haven where crime is unknown. Unbelievable.

Here’s an incredible quotation:

In fact, in Nebraska there is a big argument in the legislature about guns. It is not about banning them. The debate is whether to allow security guards to bring guns into churches. To my mind the debate should be about how to keep all guns out of churches.

If Mr. Williams had had his way, Jean Assam would not have been able to shoot the man who murdered two people in the parking lot of New Life Church. If, on the other hand, Ted Nugent had had his way, that murderer would probably have been killed much earlier in the day, when he opened fire at another church. A churchgoer packing heat would have laid him out on the pavement. Whose way do you prefer? I prefer Ted’s. When I go to church, I keep a switchblade in my pocket and a pistol in my glove compartment. I’d carry inside, if I had the clothes for it.

Why is there any doubt about a church’s right to have armed guards? We don’t prevent stores and banks from using guns to assure security. Explain why churches should be different. Provide the basis for the state’s right to discriminate against any institution in this matter, based purely on that institution’s status as a religious entity. The disciples would not have been allowed inside a church run by Mr. Williams. They carried swords, on orders from Jesus himself. If Juan Williams ran the Vatican, the Swiss Guard would be ejected from the premises. They carry MACHINE GUNS. Not semi-automatic. Automatic. Most people in the Williams faction don’t know the difference. Their writings prove it every day.

Quite frankly, I find it odd that the Pope isn’t armed. If you require other people to bear arms for you, you are fully responsible for what they do, and you should be willing to do the same thing. If you’re not willing to do that, how are you different from Rosie O’Donnell, who preaches against guns yet pays armed bodyguards? If John Paul II had been armed when Mehmet Ali Agca attacked, he might have spared himself some surgery and prolonged his life.

Says Mr. Williams:

The roll call of death and suffering from guns continued earlier this month with the tragic mass shooting in Binghamton, N.Y. That followed one man killing ten people in Alabama before taking his own life. And that preceded the murders of eight people in a North Carolina nursing home, as well as one parolee shooting four policemen to death in Oakland, Calif.

Excuse me, but how is that “suffering from guns”? Isn’t it actually “suffering from criminals”? And which of these murderers would have obeyed a law banning gun ownership? The laws against murder, which have steeper penalties, didn’t bother them at all. And what do you think would have happened had the first three killers encountered armed civilians? Same thing that happened in New Life Church.

Reading this column, I learn two things. First, Juan Williams is never going to make it as a professional logician. Second, he’s a great target for violent crime. He chooses to be defenseless, and he makes good money. I think that if I were opposed to allowing civilians the means to defend themselves, I’d be smart enough to avoid bragging about it on national television, while working in a city known for street crime. It’s like begging to be mugged.

Williams says no change is in sight. I sure hope that’s true. Barack Obama and his awful Attorney General have done more to arm Americans in the last six months than the NRA could have done in ten years. I’d hate to see that wonderful progress reversed.

Can we Think of Anything MORE Tangential?

“Cop Killer Feared Obama Gun Ban.”

Have you ever seen a dumber headline?

I just read up on Richard Poplawski, the guy who gunned down three cops after his mother threatened to throw him out of her house. To look at the stupid, misleading headlines, you would think this poor fool shot three innocent people because he was upset about Obama’s gun-grabbing ways. The stories show that isn’t true. He was just a jerk. His mom was angry because his dog was urinating in her house, and there was an argument, and when she called the police, he decided to suit up in body armor and shoot them. Explain what that has to do with gun control. This nut was just trying to show his mommy she couldn’t push him around.

The stories say he didn’t like Obama’s gun-control policies. Show me a gun-owning civilian who does. You know the Vietnamese guy who shot up the immigration center? He didn’t like those policies, either. How do I know? I don’t, to be honest. But it’s a safe bet. Did objections to gun control have anything to do with either set of shootings? Clearly not. These men didn’t shoot up the Brady Center. They didn’t shoot up the offices of Democrat politicians or the BATF. One shot cops, and the other shot former coworkers at a business where he was systematically humiliated. These killers had problems completely unrelated to gun control, and there is no reason to believe that gun control was on their minds when they decided to commit murder.

I’m angry about Obama’s indisputable disregard for the Bill of Rights. No doubt about it. But I’m not going to shoot anyone over it. I’m not crazy, for one thing. For another, how is committing a massacre supposed to advance your civil rights as a gun owner? I can’t see the logical connection, and I think most rational, law-abiding gun owners, and even most homicidal loonies–including Richard Poplawski–would agree with me.

It’s disgusting that the press is making an obvious push to use this pathetic worm of a man as justification for banning guns. He is utterly atypical. And the harm done by banning guns far outweighs the good. Admittedly, privately owned guns could not have prevented or mitigated this slaughter. But that’s unusual. They could have put a stop to Jiverly Wong in a New York minute. He went into a place where he knew he would be the only armed person, and the results were exactly what you would expect. Contrast him with the idiot Jean Assam shot at New Life Church. Matthew Murray killed four people and shot three others, but the first armed citizen he encountered put him on the ground and rendered him helpless, and his only recourse was to shoot himself. And what about Charles Whitman, the famous University of Texas shooter who was pinned down by civilian fire until the police blew his brains out? What about the millions of gun crimes that are prevented every year by civilians? Finally, what about the fact that the cops are JUST TOO SLOW? In the time it takes to get a 911 operator on the line, a civilian with a gun can kill several criminals.

Do you know how long a Jiverly Wong would last in my presence? Exactly as long as I permitted him to last, and not one minute more. That’s the difference between me and an unarmed person, and it is a precious difference.

Get yourself a copy of the NRA’s monthly magazine, America’s First Freedom, and read the Armed Citizen feature. Our lying press buries these stories, but every month, several make it to print. Criminals try to take on armed civilians, and they end up wounded or dead. It happens over and over and over in America, and in order to hear about it, you have to look at an obscure magazine published by a nonprofit organization. Meanwhile, a man who shot three cops for reasons utterly unrelated to gun control is portrayed in headlines as a second amendment crusader.

If Richard Poplawski were a Buddhist, would we see “New York Buddhist Kills Three”? If he were a vegetarian, would we see “Cops Slaughtered by Angry Vegan”? Of course not. Those things are irrelevant to his crime. And so is his support for the right to bear arms. It was not part of his motivation for committing this crime. He’s just an immature, underdeveloped, gutless half-man who blames the world for his glaring inadequacy and can’t stand to be told what to do. Just like Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski and Lee Harvey Oswald.

The issue of whether the laws preventing nuts like this from getting guns are adequate is a separate matter. The press tells us he was dishonorably discharged from the military. That’s one of the things they ask you about during a background check. So why did he have guns? A dishonorable discharge makes you ineligible to buy guns; presumably, it makes you ineligible to possess them. Sounds like the laws needed to protect his victims were already in place. If we don’t apply the laws we already have, what is the point of passing new ones? Wouldn’t enforcement of existing laws make more sense? How many laws do we need to NOT enforce before we’ll be safe?

Here’s a headline for you. “COPS MASSACRED DUE TO FAILURE TO ENFORCE EXISTING GUN LAWS.” You won’t see that one any time soon.

I don’t think Obama has the muscle to take our guns, but it’s still important to support the NRA and speak out against dishonest reporting. We are going to be buried in new taxes soon. The seeds of socialism are in the ground, and they are so big, there is probably no way to keep them from growing to maturity. Our lifestyle is never going to be what it used to be, except perhaps for temporary respites paid for by selling out generations yet to be born. If the US is going to shrivel and pucker until it resembles Europe, we should at least try to retain the ability to defend ourselves.

You Can be an Expert Marksman for $40

If you’re serious about protecting your house from Obama Depression Zombies, as I am, get yourself a laser immediately.

No, not the big kind that vaporizes zombies with a satisfying “pop.” The kind you use to aim your gun.

Today George Moneo of Babalublog went with me, and I took the Vz 58 and its re-fastened bright green laser with us, along with other pleasing implements of destruction. It was amazing. I had low expectations because a lot of “experts” criticize lasers as gimmicks, but the shooting speaks for itself. You simply cannot miss unless you are a complete idiot. And if you are a complete idiot, you can’t hit anything without a laser, either, so it won’t hurt.

I’m not kidding. We shot at 50 feet because the laser is hard to see on the paper at 75 (bright sunshine, scattered clouds). George is not what you would call an experienced rifle shooter. For all I know this was his first time. He popped round after round into the same small area, over and over. Most of the shots went into a region the size of a golf ball. I realize big-time rifle shooters will not be impressed, and you might feel like pointing out that it’s not news when someone shoots that well at this distance. But before you make a fool of yourself, let me point something out. At fifty feet, in bright sunshine, it’s hard to see the dot well enough to keep it in an area smaller than a golf ball. It wasn’t possible to do much better. If we had been shooting at dusk, he would have put a lot of these shots literally in the same hole. In a dark house a burglar would be dead meat. No chance of survival.

I should have photographed the target. It was wonderful.

You can claim iron sights are more reliable in a gunfight, but you would be crazy. I watched George shoot, and at fifty feet, the bullet goes exactly where the dot was when the trigger was pulled. It’s a hell of a lot easier and faster to put a dot on someone’s chest than it is to squint through a peep sight. You can actually raise your head and come up completely off the sights, which gives you the ability to look around without interference. And you don’t have to sweat about trigger pull and sight picture or any of that other challenging BS. Jerk the trigger all you want. You’re still going to hit the burglar. My guess is that your biggest problems will be muzzle flash and target reacquisition, and the Vz 58 doesn’t jump much.

Man, it was a thing of beauty. I can’t recommend it highly enough. The lasered Vz 58 appears to be a phenomenal home defense gun. It has so little recoil you can fire it folded, which makes it fast and convenient. It’s small and light. It’s super reliable. It holds 30 rounds of ammunition, and you can get deadly, accurate Wolf hollowpoints for five bucks a box. All it needs is a strobe flashlight, and I have one on the way.

I guess there’s a reason why the Czechs chose this gun for combat.

I don’t know why people knock Wolf ammunition. I have always found it accurate and completely reliable. I can’t say that about PMC or some other American brands I’ve used.

One thing I love about using a rifle is that I don’t have to make the study of ammunition my life’s work in order to get the desired result. Pistols–even the much-worshiped .45 ACP–are inherently flawed; the bullets are slow, and some are also small. You have to put in a lot of effort finding a brand of ammunition that gives you half a chance of putting a criminal down with a center-mass shot. Rifles and shotguns are another story. Every brand of 12 gauge buckshot is a killer, and so is any 7.62x39mm hollowpoint. On top of that, the ease of aiming a long gun makes you much more likely to place shots correctly.

The shotgun has the advantage of better stopping power, and I’m pretty sure it’s less likely to pass through exterior walls. But the recoil and flash are a lot worse, and you can’t get a 30-round magazine. If such a thing exists, it’s a toy you can’t trust with your life. The Saiga nuts all recommend 8-round jobs. A Vz magazine gives you 30 projectiles, and a Saiga magazine gives you 72, but shotgun pellets stay very close together at self-defense distances, so the larger number of pellets doesn’t buy you a better chance of placing a shot well.

I’d still like to try an M1 carbine with the same laser on it. I think it would be very good for home defense. But the M1 round isn’t as nasty as the 7.62×39, which goes 25% faster. The M1 is about like a .357 Magnum. Very effective, but not AK-effective. The M1 might be a little easier to shoot, and that would be a slight advantage.

On the whole, I think the Vz would probably come out way ahead, since one hit to the torso can turn a criminal into a bag of warm meat sauce.

Unfortunately, the laser came loose AGAIN. The screws that attach the mount to the gun are okay, but the screws that tighten the mount around the laser refuse to hold, even with blue Loc-tite. I guess red Loc-tite is in order.

I give the laser a big thumbs-up. If I hear something go bump in the night, and the Vz or the laserized Saiga is ready to go, I won’t even think about picking up a pistol.

Try a lasered rifle before you knock lasers. I was surprised, and you may be, too.

Clausing!

I just got back from the gun range.

Aaron’s trap-shooting exploits made me want to take the Sweet Sixteen, but I had other things to do today, so I let it drop. I focused on two jobs that had to be done. I needed to test the laser with the Vz 58, and I needed to see how well my new Hornady .45 bullets worked.

The Vz seems to be working out. I didn’t shoot much, but with the iron sights and no rest, I made a group as big as a baseball at 75 feet. Good enough. Sooner or later I have to get proficient with iron sights, but this is not the gun to do it with, since it’s very hard to use a rest. At burglar distances, you can’t miss with this gun, so I’m not worried.

The laser was worthless. Two reasons. First, in bright sun, it takes a while to pick it up at 75 feet. If you’re shooting from ambush (not too likely in a self-defense situation) I suppose that’s okay, but when you’re popping a bad guy in a hurry, it’s no good. At dusk or later, however, it would be fantastic. The other reason it was a waste of time today is that the mount loosened while I shot. Looks like another job for Loc-Tite. When I realized the mount was sliding around, I put the gun away and moved to the pistol side of the range.

The Hornady XTC bullets gave me great results. Tighter than Laser-Cast, but that’s almost certainly because I shot last week and benefitted from the practice. The recoil seems a bit sharp. Maybe that’s the additional powder. Anyway, nothing blew up, and the bullets fed perfectly, so I guess the bullets are fine.

I did have one failure to fire. However, I think I can rule out the bullets as the cause. Because it happened after took the magazine out, reloaded it, and began shooting…without reinserting the magazine. A bullet is very unlikely to fire when it’s two feet from the firing pin.

I’m considering making up 50 bullets, all with powder charges that are identical to within 0.1 grains. Right now, even with the pistol micrometer thing on the press, the charges vary within about a 0.2-grain range. I’m sure some charges are even farther out of spec. Maybe Unique’s coarseness makes it hard to meter. Whatever the story is, I suspect it is stupid to expect the Lock-N-Load to give you really accurate charges. You probably have to size the cartridges, prime them, take them out, fill them in a tray, and then run them through again to seat the bullets.

I’d like to take the XTC bullets and make up 50 “perfect” rounds and see if it makes any difference. I would estimate that apart from a couple of flyers, I shot within a 5/8″-3/4″ radius at 7 yards today, and I know my trigger pull and sight picture are far from perfect, so I very much doubt that uniform charges will matter at all. But it would still be fun, and fun is crucial.

I am not quite totally done dithering about the lathe. Today for a few minutes I seriously considered getting a 7 x 12 Grizzly lathe so I could learn how to use it and then approach big-lathe shopping with some degree of knowledge.

I wish I could justify getting the Clausing. It may be in wonderful shape, and however good a Grizzly may be, getting a used Clausing in good shape is like getting a used Rolls-Royce in good shape. I think that’s literally true. The quality of older American machine tools is so far above the quality of new Chicoms, it’s probably fair to say it’s like comparing a Rolls to a Ford. Even if the performance is the same, the love and care that went into the assembly of the old production lathe will surely show. And the Clausing already has variable speed, which would be a $300 upgrade to the Grizzly.

Insert One-Hour Pause Here

Okay, call me crazy, but I decided to try the Clausing. I kept thinking about it, and I finally decided that the pluses were too big to ignore. I lose the gap bed. But I get variable speed, lower RPMs on the bottom, higher RPMs on the top, better potential for precision, all-around better parts and construction, and a much cooler machine.

Now let’s pray it doesn’t fall off a truck.

Cured Press Runs Well

Reloading went so well today I ran out of .45 brass.

Or so I thought.

I have something like 400 rounds ready to go. I finished filling an empty Sellier & Bellot box, and I figured that was the end of the brass. I looked around and found a few cases, but I couldn’t find any boxes to put them in. Last time this happened, I put loose ammunition into a Laser-Cast box and scooped it out as needed, but I didn’t feel like it this time, so I took the .45 things off the press and put the .38 Super things on. I have a new box of Starline brass I want to fill.

Horror of horrors; I was out of the small pistol primers required for .38 Super. But while I was looking I found a bunch of ammunition boxes full of empty cases. So I had taken the .45 stuff off the press for nothing, when I could have kept on reloading.

Bright side of the situation: last time I went to the nearest gun dealer, they had Winchester primers. That just happens to be the brand I use for .38 Super. So I think I’ll roll by tomorrow and buy three thousand or so. That should keep me in .38 Super and .357 for quite some time.

It’s extremely important to load up on primers and powder locally whenever possible, because you avoid the obscene hazmat fees they charge when you order online. Also, primers have been hard to find lately, so you should probably grab them while you can.

I still have almost 100 .357 rounds I have to take apart. Last year I tried to shoot them, and some of them were so weak the bullets literally fell on the ground before hitting the targets. I can’t figure out what caused that. The recipe said to use small pistol primers, not magnum primers, so I don’t think that was the problem.

I really have to get a gun safe. I’m not really worried that people will steal my milsurps or my .22 or my Sweet Sixteen and start holding up liquor stores; these are weapons only desperate and unfashionable criminals would use. But the pistols would definitely be useful to a crook, and maybe the Saiga and the Vz 58 would be, too.

I suppose it’s conceivable that a real loser would saw up a Sweet Sixteen for a holdup gun, but I think it’s extremely unlikely. I can just picture some 65-IQ street doofus trying to shove 12 gauge shells into the magazine.

The Hornady is nearly problem-free now, but I have realized that its chief design defect exacerbates my own errors. When the eject wire pins a round against the shell plate and obstructs the press (completely Hornady’s fault, as their redesign shows), I sometimes fail to push the lever firmly after I clear the round (my fault). That means the primer doesn’t seat, so I end up with a bad round that has to be taken apart. Happened four times today.

Maybe I should go ahead and order the redesigned parts.

Relief

Today I blue-Loc-tited the left pawl screw on the Hornady LNL, and then I pounded out a couple of hundred rounds of .45 ACP. I had maybe eight bad rounds, none of which were related to the left pawl problem. My own stupidity was clearly the cause of maybe four, and it was a strong suspect in a couple of others. This is acceptable performance. From the press, I mean.

You really have to shove the lever hard to make sure the primers go into the cases. I had several rounds that ended up without primers (I am not including the ones I tried to prime after the primer tube emptied), and I suspect that I either forgot to shove the lever, or I didn’t shove it hard enough. Also, I have gotten lazy about cleaning cases, and I have taken the advice of people who say not to bother with lube, so it’s possible that dirty primer pockets have caused a problem or two.

In case anyone is Googling “Hornady Lock-N-Load AP” and trying to solve an indexing problem, I’ll spell the name of the product out.

I put Loc-tite on the left pawl screw, screwed it in, and ran the press in order to adjust it before the Loc-tite cured. Unbelievably, it was dead-on. I don’t know if you realize how weird that is. You can throw the indexing off with an eighth of a turn of that screw. I would say the odds of hitting the right spot by blind luck are something like 1:50. Maybe six full turns to set the screw. That’s roughly 50 eighths of a turn. In practice, maybe that estimate is high, since you can narrow it down to fewer turns before trying the press.

Sorry. Former physics grad student thinking out loud. I can’t help doing things like that.

I let it set up for about half an hour. I figured it didn’t need an all-night cure for a problem this undemanding, and I guess I was right, because I didn’t have to touch it after that.

Someone said I should not put a weight on top of the primers in the feed tube. I researched this a year or so ago, and I came to the conclusion that it was not a problem. Some guy on a forum responded to the same suggestion, and he seemed to know what he was talking about. He discussed what it takes to set a primer off, and how little that resembled the weight of a light iron rod. I think he was right. You can put a huge amount of pressure on a primer by stupidly trying to prime a primed case (not that I would know this from first-hand knowledge), and it doesn’t even begin to crush the primer.

If I blow up, you will have the satisfaction of saying you told me so.

Whenever you end up with powder in an unprimed cartridge, the powder spills onto the press. Eventually it may accumulate in the slide thing that feeds primers, and although I don’t think it caused me any problems today, it could conceivably stop the press by making a primer obstruct the little primer ram deal that pushes primers into cases. I don’t know; maybe it depends on how low the ram goes. Probably not. Anyway, I went in with a Q-Tip soaked in Hornady One Shot after a while, to make sure no gummy crud was in there.

I need to make a little alarm to tell me when I’m out of primers, especially since my primers and bullets are out of phase. I use 100-round boxes of bullets, and primers come in 100-round trays, but for one reason and another, I am starting every 100-round box of bullets with a primer tray that is already down to 80. That means there’s a pretty good chance that I won’t notice when I’m on bullet #81 and there are no primers left in the tube.

The design of a buzzer alarm would be simple. Put a contact on top of the tube. Put another one on the rod that sits on the primers. When the primers are gone, the rod drops and puts the contacts together. BZZZZZ.

I have the dumbest goals and dreams. I really do. A lot of men dream of riches and Ferraris and power and endless sex. I’m pretty excited because I have this:

I guess I should be pleased that I am capable of being satisfied. A lot of men are not.

Hollow Points

I finally got started on my free Hornady .45 ammunition. And the press is getting on my nerves again.

You can do about 40 rounds before the left pawl goes out of alignment. So you have to stare at the shell plate while you run the press and make sure it lines up, and when it doesn’t, you have to compensate by hand and run through the shells already on the plate. That empties it so you can adjust the pawl without screwing up any cartridges.

On top of that, the slide that feeds the primers stopped on me, so I had to knock it loose and hit it with dry lube. I don’t think the dry lube makes any difference at all. The slide is either out of spec or not designed well, because it has never been reliable. It’s clean and undamaged, and so are the parts around it, and it still stops up every so often. I added a steel rod that sits on top of the primers in the primer tube. That presses them down into the slide and makes it less likely to jam, and I put a little mark on the rod that tells me when I’m out of primers.

Irritating, but probably a whole lot faster than a basic press that does one cartridge at a time.

I’m going to have to Loc-Tite the pawl screw. That will solve one problem. Of course, I have no Loc-Tite on hand. Going to the store kills half an hour of loading time.

If you got 230-grain XTC .45 bullets free from Hornady (#45160) and you like Unique, here’s a recipe from the Hornady manual.

LOA: 1.230″
WLP primer
5.1-6.1 grains Unique

I’m using 5.8. That is supposed to give 800 fps, I think.

I can’t believe how many .45 cases I have. If you go to the range and let people know you reload, they’ll actually bring them to you. Aren’t gun people nice? Proves what they say about an armed society. Hippies, on the other hand, are among the nastiest creatures imaginable.

One nice thing about jacketed bullets is that they don’t have grease or wax or whatever it is all over them. That stuff probably doesn’t make the press run any better.

Confusion Mounts

I’ll tell you what I need. I need someone to show up in my driveway with a lathe on a truck, and I need him to put it in my garage and drive away.

I cannot come to a conclusion concerning which lathe I should get. It is impossible.

At first, I thought all lathes were about the same. Then I thought it was a good idea to buy a 40-year-old American lathe. Then I found out a lot of them are beat up to the point where they’re not accurate. And Og complicated things by asserting that the Chinese stuff (not just Taiwanese) is now up to American standards.

Today things got worse. I realized that a lathe will utterly ruin and consume my life by allowing me to make CUSTOM GUN PARTS.

That’s just too much. I know it’s stupid that I didn’t think about this more in the past. It’s so obvious. But that’s how my brain works (or fails to work). Now I realize that whatever I get should be usable for gunsmithing.

Right now I have a Saiga-12 shotgun. It’s fundamentally a great weapon, but it was made in Russia, so that means virtually everyone who touched it was full of cheap vodka at the time, and aside from that, AK-based guns are always loaded with cheap parts that can stand upgrading.

Example: it has a stupid plug up front that controls the gas. To remove the plug, you’re supposed to use two metal tools. I managed it with a screwdriver and my fingers, I think. Most people say “coin and a key.” But it’s unacceptable. An AK you can’t strip without tools? Unthinkable.

Look what one of the guys at Tromix just did. I’m stealing his photos from the Saiga-12 forum, but I doubt he’ll care, since it will only serve to convince people they should give him money to fix their guns.

He started with a Home Depot flashlight. I am not kidding.

He turned the bezel or whatever it’s called, to make it less monstrous.

He installed it in front of his gas tube, and that meant he had to modify the plug. So he made a new one.

I can’t stand it. I would almost sell my admittedly worthless and undersized soul to be able to do stuff like that.

He’s going to make something to replace that thumbscrew, but even as it is, it’s great.

Okay, I realize this has nothing to do with gunsmithing lathes. You could do this on a Taig. But work with me here. Once you’ve started puttering with guns on machine tools, you’re not going to stop. Sooner or later you’ll want to make a barrel, and then you’ll need 36″ and a big spindle bore. And if you don’t have them when that time comes, you’ll have to kill yourself.

Arrgh. GET THE TOOLS OUT OF MY HEAD.

I already want to make furniture for my Vz 58. I have a beautiful piece of untouched walnut sitting on the floor, waiting. And the stock furniture is definitely cheesy. Aside from that, it heats up. A better design and all-wood construction should solve that problem. I already have the tools to handle that. Man, they would hate me at the range. Me and my tricked-out Vz 58 furniture.

I wonder if there’s a business opportunity in this. I suppose there is. It takes years to become a real gunsmith, but a total doofus can confine himself to a limited number of simple jobs and do everything exactly right. You don’t have to be a genius to make a pistol grip or a flash suppressor. And nothing is easier than improving existing products. Manufacturers do all sorts of stupid things for ease of assembly or to save two cents or for NIH reasons. The opportunities are endless.

You probably have to be proctoscoped by Nancy Pelosi herself to get a gunsmithing license.

Doesn’t matter. I’d be perfectly happy even if I could only do this stuff for my own guns.

Why, oh why did I ever let myself get interested in tools?

She’s Hot

I took the new Vz 58 to the gun range today. I also took a bunch of new .45 reloads, some Cor-Bon defensive .38 Super ammunition, and two 1911s.

The range people would not let me shoot the gun folded. This is because the range is public, and that means government stooges are actively working to make it less fun, because they resent having to maintain a facility where bad old guns are used. That’s my theory, anyway. This range bans lots of fun but safe things, like using silhouette targets, shooting at Xeroxes of Fidel Castro, firing more than once every five seconds, and using buckshot.

It’s my understanding that the county has to forfeit the land if they stop running a gun range on it. If that’s true, it would explain why they run it so badly.

I shot at 25 yards; anything longer than that is pointless. If I’m defending against garden-variety home invaders, they’ll be less than 50 feet away when I plug them. If we have a post-Obama meltdown and it becomes necessary to shoot people who want to steal my food and beer, I think a maximum range would be 50 yards. You don’t need to train to hit people at that distance.

The gun is very nice. Everything works smoothly, much unlike an AK. The safety is better. The bolt slides nicely. Very pleasant.

I started out standing, and I did okay. Here you see my first shots, at a 5-inch bullseye. Not good, but certainly deadly.

I then shot sitting down. I didn’t use a rest, because I think it’s stupid to train with a rest when you’re using a gun you plan to use for self-defense. “Wait, Mr. Burglar, while I go get my rifle rest.” No, I don’t think I’ll do that.

The results were a little better.

I was pretty lazy; this gun has a smooth but extremely long trigger pull, and I wasn’t working hard enough to cope with it. And I forgot to focus on the front sight.

Here’s how it ended up shooting. I thought this was more than adequate. I need to practice more and remember to deal with that crazy trigger. At the end, I was aiming at the bottom of the bullseye, and you can see it shot high. I had the rear sight all the way down. I may be the problem, or maybe the gun just isn’t designed so you can put it dead-on at 75 feet. I am too lazy to look at the manual.

Here is Ivanka resting on the podium.

I can’t wait to try it with a laser. I’ll have to go to a different range so I can shoot the gun folded. This is how I hope to use it if I ever need to defend the house.

It is my nature to irritate gun nuts, so I guess I’ll go ahead and get started. The other day I was reloading, and the plastic cylinder came off my powder measure, and Unique went all over the place. I was so mad, I couldn’t stand it. I decided there was no way I was going to throw out all that powder. I didn’t care if it had dust and bits of sawdust in it. I could not accept the thought of dumping maybe four ounces of this stuff. So I gathered it and put it back in the press!

I know I’ll get lecturing comments. I don’t care. What’s the worst thing that could happen? I could lose 2% of the power of a charge because of dilution.

Here is how it shot.

It’s funny how much better I shoot a pistol after shooting a rifle. I have been away from the range for maybe two months, and I should be all over the place. And I haven’t been exercising my hands. But I did pretty well!

And of course, the last 6 shots opened the target up by like 30%. I hate that.

I had a flyer that went high, but that actually pleased me, because I could tell it was crap shot right before I took it. Very often, when you have a flyer, you can’t figure out why it happened, and that’s bad, because it means you’re doing something wrong which you can’t identify.

Next target:

The stuff at top left is .38 Super. I shot at the little cross. I wanted to see if the Cor-Bon I bought would cycle. It doesn’t cycle well when I rack the gun by hand, but it was flawless at the range. I would have shot better, but because I was off the best part of the target, I couldn’t really tell where the shots were going.

I no longer worry that my expensive Cor-Bons won’t work in the Colt. I would feel safe carrying it on formal occasions when a Glock would be declasse. And the gun didn’t explode, so I guess the pressure is okay.

I had never shot 7.62x39mm before today. It’s a very nice round. The recoil is mild, but it puts a pistol to shame when it comes to dissolving internal organs. I can see why the Commies liked it. At Wolf prices, I can afford to shoot a fair amount of it.

I can report that the Vz does, indeed, get hot. Others have said it, and I can confirm it. The metal parts of the handguard warmed up nicely, so you have to watch where you hold it. Other than that, no issues I noticed.

I am trying to deal with the fact that I am still not a good rifle shot. It seemed so easy when I was a kid.

Beauty, Eh?

I finished machining the laser mount for the Saiga 12. It came out perfectly. It could not have been much better had I paid a machine shop. I’ll show you the crappy cell photos of the jig, plus the after photos.

Here are three photos of the jig I put together.

Here is the basic idea. The miter gauge makes it run parallel to the saw blade. I moved it to the other miter slot and measured the gap with calipers to make sure both ends of the mount were the same distance from the blade. The wooden strap on top screws into the scrap on the bottom. It doesn’t mar the mount, and it holds it firmly.

Here’s how it looks on the gun. I don’t have stuff to blacken the aluminum yet, so…I used a Sharpie.

I can’t believe how well this worked out. A true anal retentive would put a better finish on the mount. Maybe I’ll do that.

I lubed the blade with WD40 (it sprays real nice when the blade starts spinning), and I blew the lube off with Gumout.

I’m thrilled. I think it looks great.

Powermatic 66 = Gunsmithing Tool

Since the weather is questionable today, instead of going to the gun range, I am going to try to modify the laser mount I got for my Saiga 12.

I suppose the relative newness and rarity of the Saiga are the reasons I can’t find a good laser mount. If you have an ordinary AK, and you want to stick aiming aids on your gun, you probably want some kind of scope. That means you need a mount directly above the receiver. You may not care if it blocks the sights. A shotgun is different. Those open sights are the only sights you are likely to use. You’ll want the top of your gun unobstructed by mounts. At least, that’s how I see it. Tromix mounts Tritium night sights on Saigas. You can’t do that if you have a mount in the way.

I want my laser fairly far back on the gun. I could put a laser and a light on the barrel, but I don’t want a ton of crap hanging off of it. A light seems like more than enough weight. And I want the light as far forward as possible, so it won’t shine on the gun. Add it all up, and you get laser in the back, light in the front. So it seems to me that there is a need for a side rail mount that holds a laser to the left of the receiver. Line it up so it’s in the center of the buckshot pattern at 50 feet, and you should be all set. If it’s a little off at 100 feet, it won’t matter. Under 50 feet, you can’t be off more than the offset between the muzzle and laser. Who cares? It’s a shotgun.

These are my theories.

Because it’s impossible to get a side mount for a laser, I decided to get the next best thing. I got a mount with two bases. One goes to the left, and one goes over the barrel. I’m going to take the top mount off…with my table saw.

I know it sounds insane. But it will work. If I put the mount in a jig and use the miter slot, I’ll be able to get a very nice cut. I can find some way to blacken it later. I hear a product called Aluma-Hyde is good. If I’m desperate, I can use grill paint.

Here are a couple of photos of the mount. The little arrow shows where I plan to saw it up. If I fail, I’ll discard the parts and consider it an experiment.

I see no reason why it wont work.

In a few days, my strobe flashlight and mount will arrive, and I’ll stick them on the barrel. Then I’ll be the happiest man alive.

It’s incredible how cheap this stuff is. Stuff that costs $120 from snazzy big-name companies costs $45 from China, and the quality is excellent. It’s too bad it’s illegal to use an imported kit to convert a Saiga to the proper configuration; on that score, I’m stuck with American goods.

Say what you want about the Chinese. They are doing a marvelous job of supplying Americans with weapon accessories.

Range Calls

I’m headed for the range. It has been too long, and Ivanka needs the air. I’m assuming it’s not raining out there; the farther you go to the west, the more likely that seems. If, indeed, it’s raining to the west, I will come home and pout.

I can test the hot Cor-Bon .38 Super rounds I bought and burn off a few dozen .45 reloads, so even though I won’t be using a laser, it should be a worthwhile outing.

Geez. I better print out a Vz 58 manual. I am still fairly clueless about how to strip Ivanka and clean her.

More

I came home to pout. Dang it. Wouldn’t you know the dry spell would end the night before I need to go to the range.

Positive note: my second “Rambo” brand laser arrived from Hong Kong, and I also received a laser mount for the Saiga.