Watch Them Pop

Okay, let’s say a person wants to quit farting around with exotic rifles and get something cheap that will actually shoot well and not feel like a .22. What’s the best caliber? The choices are .223, .22-250, and .243.

No, Really

Does anyone know whether there are any Browning Buck Mark pistols a Tactical Solutions Trail-Lite barrel won’t work with?

Not that I am planning anything. Although that Buck Mark Plus with the nice wooden grip looks sweet.

Horrors

Bad news.

The worst part is thinking about all the hippies who will be overjoyed.

I Move That we Shoot the Burglar

Here’s a new edict for you. Please pass it on to the liberal press.

Henceforth, news organizations are to stop referring to people who defend themselves as “vigilantes.”

Here is Merriam-Webster’s definition of “vigilante”: “a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate); broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice.”

Okay, let’s think this through. If you break in my house, am I a member of a volunteer committee? ‘Fraid not. Unless you consider me a committee. I’m not that fat yet. Now let’s consider the broad definition. Am I “self-appointed”? Again, no. Under common law and, in my case, statutes, the government grants me the right to defend myself. In other words, the government appointed me.

I’ll tell you a funny consequence of the misuse of the term “vigilante.” It’s starting to give the word a positive sound. If shooting a rapist or burglar and saving someone from harm makes you a vigilante, then a vigilante is a person to admire.

I just saw a Drudge-linked story about storeowners defending their business from armed thieves. “Vigilante Justice,” the headline says. No, Northeastern wuss journalist. The correct term is “legal self-defense.”

So much of the friction between Red and Blue states comes from provincial city dwellers on the coasts, trying to impose their culturally inappropriate rules and values on the rest of us. Remember the 55 speed limit? Not much of a hardship if you live in New York, you’re 50 years old, and you’ve never had a driver’s license. What if you live in Montana and commute 75 miles to work? Quite a bit different.

The other day I saw Dagen McDowell, who works in Manhattan, preaching almost hysterically about how we needed eleven-dollar gasoline. I wonder how she’d feel about that if a) she wasn’t rich, and b) she lived sixty or eighty miles from her office. In a place where you can’t just jump on a commuter train.

It ought to be pretty obvious that we need one sort of laws in Manhattan and another in “Jesusland.”

Anyway, I have forbidden the inappropriate use of the term “vigilante,” and I would appreciate it if everyone in the world would begin complying immediately.

Orphan Gun?

There is no way, no how, that I would ever buy another pistol. Because that would just be wasteful and frivolous, and I think every one of you knows that I am not like that.

BUT

Do any of you know anything about the early Colt Special Combat models, with the carry sights? They don’t seem all that highly prized, but they should be sweet shooters. And what a hilarious carry piece. All that target crap and special Custom Shop assembly, but it has 3-dot sights so you can put it under a suit.

Fill in the Rest

I took the new old .357 to the range, along with some backup guns, in case my reloads failed. And fail they did, in a big way. I shot a total of 5 rounds, and all were undercharges. They left the gun barrels, and four actually managed to hit the target, but the holes weren’t clean. The target tore, as if the bullets were moving at BB velocity. I have no idea what I did wrong. I used about 8 grains of Unique, small pistol primers (not magnum), and 125-grain truncated cone Laser-Cast bullets. I am going to have to take 95 rounds apart and check them. The documentation said to use small pistol primers. Maybe there was a misprint, and it should have been small pistol magnum primers. Or maybe the powder measure acted up.

I bought two overpriced boxes of PMC .357 ammunition (158 grain) and put the reloads away.

The 27-2 is wonderful, but the grips have to GO. The front of the grips is so big, it pushes my middle finger against the trigger guard. I can’t get a good two-hand grip on this thing. Maybe it was never meant for two hands. I need to get some Pachmayrs or something. Too bad. I like the Eastwoody look of the original grips.

The trigger is remarkable. I thought the 686+ had a nice trigger, but this one is better. You can’t feel a thing until the bullet goes off.

Here are my first fifty shots, not counting the undercharges, which I covered. The shots in the center are from the 686+. The others are from the 27-2. The first three shots from the 27-2 went into the same hole. And I don’t mean a ragged hole. I mean the same HOLE. Kind of freaked me out. You can see that there is a small area where the bullets really like to go. But I still have a flawed trigger pull, so the bullets danced around it. These are all double-action shots.

Seems like I don’t shoot to the left as much as I used to. On the other hand, I’ve had the 686+ for 8 years, and I may have adjusted it.

Here are 25 shots at 50 feet. I adjusted the sights a little. I thought these would be better than they were, but the grips were starting to get to me. Maybe that was the problem. Still double action.

I decided to get out the SW1911. I seem to be turning into a 1911 man. The other day, one of the range guys watched me shoot it, and he said, “The gun shoots itself.” That was kind of insulting, but I am getting good results. Here I shot from 7 yards. I started with the 27-2 in the center of the target, single action, and then I moved to the 1911, which suddenly seemed very tame.

After that, I shot the 1911 at 50 feet. I was very happy with these shots, because while they make a big spread, they divide cleanly in two groups. I believe the crap on the left was caused by a trigger pull problem, and that if I can master it, I’ll start shooting more like the stuff on the right. Which is not bad at all.

Finally, I fired 50 shots with the Glock 22 (.40 S&W) at 50 feet. These were disappointing. I used to shoot this gun better than this. I’m wondering if it hates the ammunition I used.

Scored some free .45 brass. That’s always nice.

Am I turning into a 1911 nut? I love the 27-2, but man, those .45 reloads feel sweet.

Woe is Me

This is fricking upsetting.

I decided to make my own pita, because I was too lazy to go to the store. I figured I would be satisfied if it was edible. But it came out so well, from now on, I am going to be utterly bummed when I have to eat the store stuff. The taste was better. The texture was infinitely superior. It didn’t resist at all when I peeled it apart for dipping in hummus.

Damn it.

There was one small problem. I use my whole wheat flour so rarely, it went a a bit “off.” I think this is the reason white flour was invented. It lasts forever without spoiling. Not sure. Anyway, I need new flour, but the pita was still a thousand times better than any pita I’ve had outside of Israel.

Sometimes when things go right, you’re worse off than when they go wrong. I cook so many things well now, I am constantly surrounded by temptation. And I have the willpower of Amy Winehouse.

I guess you’ll want to know what I did.

I looked briefly at a web recipe, which you can find here. Then I ignored it, mostly. I stole the baking technique.

INGREDIENTS

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tbsp. gluten (my all-purpose flour is pretty weak)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. sugar
2 tbsp. olive oil
6 ounce water
1 tbsp. dry yeast

This is very much like my pizza dough. I dissolved the sugar in the water, which I had heated for 20 seconds in a microwave. I added the yeast, dissolved it, and waited for it to foam. I put the other ingredients in the food processor and blended them quickly. I set a timer for 3 minutes and turned it on. I turned on the food processor. I poured the yeast mixture in slowly, waiting for the flour to form a coherent glob. Turned out I needed more water; I think whole wheat flour is thirstier than all-purpose.

When it formed a glob, I quit adding water. This was at about 2:20. I blended until 1:20. Then I formed the dough into a ball and put it in an oiled dish to rise. I preheated the oven and baking stone to 400.

When the dough was nice and puffed up, I divided it into six pieces. I rolled three pieces into flat circles, using as little flour as I could. The circles were very thin; each one was around 6″ in diameter. I tossed them on the stone and baked for three minutes or so. I turned them to get them toastier on the top side, and they were out by five minutes. I baked the others the same way. They were perfect. They come out with a little flour on them, but you can knock it off.

This would be really good if you could sour the dough.

Reader sent me a funny photo. Remember me worrying about squibs in a revolver? This is apparently what happens, if you don’t notice that the bullets aren’t leaving the gun. I have to wonder what would happen if you had a few squibs in an automatic weapon.

Latest Plan

I have a crazy thought. I know that news will amaze you.

The other day I was Googling around, and I read about a Spanish .44 Magnum. I figured it had to be a piece of crap. Then I found a few more references to the company that made it, and they were very flattering. Now I’m thinking I might try to find one and buy it. The company is called Astra, and they made guns based on the Smith & Wesson design. I don’t know if the company is around today–I forgot–but it was a respected manufacturer with a long history.

Am I insane?

Press Still Hinky

I spent an hour making .357 ammunition for tomorrow, and I am super annoyed. I think I know why I had all those .38 Super squibs.

It turned out that the little sleevy thing on the powder measure occasionally hung on the way back down. So presumably, it wasn’t filling completely on the way up. I hosed it with One Shot and watched it carefully, and it seemed to work okay after that. I hope I didn’t miss any screwups.

I also had five or six cases which didn’t get primers. No idea what the explanation for that is. It has to be the feed. I used to think the press was rocking, causing things to align wrong or whatever, but it’s not rocking now.

In the past, spilled powder seemed to be the main problem with the primer feed. If I am remembering things right. But I’m not spilling much now.

I have a rod resting in the primer feed tube (coat hanger segment) to add weight and shove the primers on through. I thought that would solve the problem. No dice. Maybe I need to check the pawls and make sure everything is kosher.

I also have an occasional problem with the ejector wire. Sometimes a round will get stuck in it for no apparent reason.

Anyway, I have fifty rounds done, and I think I can crank out another fifty without losing my mind.

I’m a little nervous about shooting these. What happens when you have a squib in a revolver? I have this terrifying vision of a bullet stuck between the cylinder and forcing cone, refusing to come out.

Boudoir Photos

The new baby:

It’s Here

I have to hand it to Jim from Smoke on the Water. He has good taste in guns.

A while back, he found a Smith & Wesson 27-2, in 95%+ condition. This means it’s about what you would expect if someone took it to the range once, carried it in a holster for a couple of weeks, and then put it in a safe. He contacted me and told me about it, and I arranged to buy it. And I got a very nice price.

I used a kitchen-table dealer to make the dropoff. He’s a little hard to track down, but I found him today, and I just picked up the gun. Man, is it a beauty. Except for very light holster wear near the muzzle, and some evidence of firing, it looks new. It has the nice old Smith & Wesson bluing you can swim in. The chambers are recessed. The grips are heavy pieces of walnut. Very sweet. I especially like the common-sense 5″ barrel.

I have always liked my 686+, which was probably made in ’99 or 2000. It shoots well, and it’s nice to look at. And it holds 7 rounds. But I can see why people prefer the old guns. Smooth and well-finished as that gun is, this one just seems slicker. And it has nice touches, such as tiny checkering on the strap. The trigger and hammer are wider and more comfortable, too.

It just looks like they worked harder on it.

It’s heavy as hell; it has a big frame, and the cylinder is only hollowed out for 6 rounds. You could save ammunition by beating a robber to death with it.

If the old Pythons are nicer than this, they must be very nice indeed. But they aren’t as tough as this gun. And Dirty Harry didn’t shoot a Colt.

Speaking of Dirty Harry, I feel like I really need a Model 29, just like the one he shot. I guess Eastwood trivia nuts will point out that he actually used a different Smith & Wesson on camera, but he claimed it was a .44 Magnum, so shuddup.

Thanks for the help, Jim. Next time you’re in town, you’ll have to show me how to use this thing.

Don’t Forget the Oil

It’s amazing how helpful it is to write down your recipes.

On Saturday and Sunday, I made pizza, with hand-tossed crusts. And I had a couple of problems. The main problem was that the surface of the crusts dried out as I worked it, giving a peculiar texture and increasing the probability of holes. I also forgot to add vinegar to the first batch of sauce. It was still very good, but it’s hard to believe I forgot.

I generally like oil-free crusts. I think pizza should be a little leathery, and withholding oil does the trick. But I started making oil-free crusts back when I was rolling pies out with a pin. A pin won’t let the surface of the dough dry and break up. I guess it mashes the dry bits on the surface against the wetter bits inside, and you end up with a smooth crust. When you toss a crust, you don’t get that effect, so you can have problems. From now on, I’m putting oil in my tossed crusts. I think this information is in the book, but I didn’t remember it until the pies were made. The pizzas were still good, but they were not as pretty as they should have been. And I had one crust tear so badly, I gave up on it and made rolls out of it.

I think you absolutely have to have oil in your dough when you make rolls. A pizza has a lot of stuff on it that compensates for a lack of oil in the crust, but you don’t want to bite into a roll and taste oil-free dough.

Yesterday’s pie was experimental. I wanted to try part-skim mozzarella mixed with whole-milk provolone. I made a pizza on Saturday, using whole-milk cheeses, and it was a little oilier than I wanted, so I thought I’d see what cutting the oil in the mozzarella did. It wasn’t that great. The cheese burned in some areas because it lacked fat. And the texture was not as good as sliced whole-milk deli cheese. The mozzarella I used was bagged Sargento cheese, and the provolone was Land O’ Lakes sliced cheese.

Now I wonder: what if I put mozzarella on the pie and then covered it with a thin layer of provolone? The high-fat provolone should prevent the cheese from burning.

I can’t remember whether I tried different temperatures when I was writing the book. Some people seriously recommend 425 degrees, which would reduce burning, but maybe their recipes are no good. And maybe they recommend lower heat because they use bad cheese.

I don’t know. Sooner or later, you have to say a recipe is finished. You can’t keep working on it forever. I’ve made one great pie after another. That’s good enough.

I had some interesting thoughts about guns this weekend. Last week I realized that the notion that longer barrels were more accurate didn’t really make sense. At least, the idea that a longer barrel provides better guidance doesn’t make sense. You may not understand this if you don’t think like a physicist or an engineer, but it should be obvious to people with the right background. A bullet is in very tight contact with a barrel, right up to the muzzle. If there are directional deviations in the parts of the barrel before the bullet gets near the muzzle, they will be completely erased by the last inch or so. Think about it. Say a bullet is headed in a certain direction two inches before it reaches the muzzle, and then there is a bend in the barrel, amounting to a fraction of a degree. What’s the bullet going to do? It can’t keep moving in the original direction. It would have to go through the side of the barrel to do that. It will have to change direction and adopt the path forced on it by the last two inches. You would expect the last part of the barrel to determine the direction the bullet takes.

Again, this will be a tough thing for people who gave up science after high school to understand. I’m trying to make it as obvious as possible. Either you see it or you don’t. One of the great frustrations of physics is the difficulty of explaining things to stubborn lay people who are positive their wrong ideas are right. My mother went to high school with a girl who said it was possible to exceed the speed of light, because she was able to turn off her bedroom light and get in bed before the room got dark.

I Googled around, and sure enough, I found a page in which a gun expert said he shot very small groups at fifty yards, using 3/4″ of rifling. I suppose you still have to have a certain amount of length, to get the velocity up, but it looks like added length doesn’t help guide the bullet.

So I started to wonder. What was the point in having any twist at all in the first half of a barrel? You would think it would add resistance to the bullet’s motion. I wondered why it wasn’t possible to make a barrel with rifling that was straight up to a certain point, with the twist added toward the end. You’d think the bullet would gain velocity faster, due to the lower resistance, and you’d get a more efficient gun.

This idea has been rolling around in my head since Saturday.

It occurred to me that maybe a bullet can’t take the stress of a sudden twist, when it’s already moving fast. Maybe it would come apart, or maybe it would slow down to the point where you could blow up a barrel. That led me to wonder whether it was possible to make a barrel with a progressive twist. It could be nearly straight at the breech, and then it could turn faster as you approach the muzzle.

I don’t know. This stuff is really interesting. I know that if I knew where to Google, I’d find that all of these ideas have already been considered.

Anyway, now I believe I understand how my short-barreled Glock 26 can be as accurate as my 1911s.

I think I may get the crown on my Smith & Wesson 686+ done. Since the last part of the barrel is so critical, I would like to have a recessed crown I can’t ding up. And God knows what I’ve already done to it in the past, with cleaning rods.

Nothing with guns is simple, I guess.

AB Comes Through

Agent Bedhead, keeper of the sacred words “Pete Doherty,” has once again demonstrated her kindness and generosity by putting up a free ad for me. Thanks, AB. I would fix you a steak and a peach cobbler. If you werent in Oklahoma.

I hope she has given up that insane vegetarian nonsense. What would Jessica Simpson eat?

In other news, my tasty new old Smith & Wesson 27-2 in blue with the 5″ barrel has arrived in Miami. Hopefully I’ll be able to connect with my dealer this week, before Range Day.

You Can’t Help Others Without Helping Yourself

Got several things to talk about today.

First of all, let me apologize to all the people who have patiently tried to make me part of their Facebook and Myspace experiences. I just can’t seem to get into social networking. I don’t get it. Maybe there is something wrong with me. I will log in today and try to catch up.

Second, someone emailed and asked about good gun shops in the Miami area. I can’t recommend any of the local places all that highly. I’ve bought guns at Garcia’s National Gun, and they’ve given me good prices and competent service, and I have nothing critical to say about them, but I wouldn’t say the experiences were inspiring. Bass Pro Shops has a store in Miami, and the gun area is pathetic, probably due to the yankees who still exert a disproportionate influence here. Their Hollywood store, however, is much better. I think I’d consider going there, if I needed advice or smithing as well as a good price.

Third, happy Fourth of July! Enjoy your burgers and don’t even mention Cinco de Mayo.

Fourth, I saw an interesting guy on Fox News today. He’s some kind of shrink. He was talking about the heartbreaking Brooke Bennett story. This young girl was apparently lured into the hands of murdering perverts by another girl who is only fourteen. And that girl had stated that she wanted to see Brooke suffer.

Megyn Kelly asked the shrink how a girl that young could have that attitude, and the shrink said that people from abusive environments learn to shut off their feelings in order to avoid feeling pain. Then later on, the same trick prevents them from empathizing with the pain of others.

I had never heard it put that way before. I had heard the phrase “cycle of abuse,” but it always seemed like a platitude. Now I see how it could make sense.

I had a miserable childhood, and I learned to put off feeling things that upset me. I’ve written about this before. After I became an adult, I realized I was not responding properly when I was presented with the suffering of others. For example, I remember watching footage of Nazi concentration camps. I disapproved of what I saw, but I didn’t think of each person–each body in the mass graves–as a human being with a name and relatives and a history and so on. I thought maybe television and movies had desensitized me. That was probably true, but I now wonder if the defense mechanisms I used as a kid were also to blame.

When I realized I wasn’t feeling the distress a healthy person should feel, I started making a point of trying to think more deeply about other people’s suffering. Today, for example, if I’m watching the History Channel and I see that old concentration camp footage, I look at the faces and I wonder about the lives of these dead individuals. I wonder if they were married. Whether they had kids. What their achievements had been. And what I feel is much more appropriate. The other day I saw a show about the B-29, and they showed footage of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs going off. I thought about the people burning under those clouds, and the fact that the gas was partly composed of human beings.

It’s a better way to live. Not as comfortable, maybe, but more likely to lead to constructive thoughts and actions. I find it helpful as I try to improve myself. For example, many times in my writing, I’ve said things that were unbelievably stupid and seemingly cruel, and I’ve been trying to pick up on these things as they appear, instead of being bitten in the ass by them later.

I was thinking about this today, and I realized that I knew of a way other people could protect themselves from becoming jaded and insensitive. Charity. I think this is one reason God demands that Jews and Christians give money to charity and take care of the needy. It’s not just to help others. It helps the giver as well. When you decide to give, and you start looking around for a good opportunity, you will find yourself presented with a burdensome smorgasbord of human misery. Babies with worms. Jews trapped in Muslim countries. Girls forced into prostitution. The list is virtually endless. And when you try to decide where to send your aid on a given day, you can’t help but feel empathy for the people you try to help.

If you, too, feel as though you’ve become calcified from movies and television and Internet rage, and maybe from the bad things that have been done to you during your life, consider charity as a way to heal yourself. You might try the links on the left side of my blog. World Vision and the IFCJ are especially good; they will present you with specific opportunities that may touch you in special ways. You might buy a family a few chickens or help a Jew leave a squalid camp in Ethiopia.

The Internet is making all of us less sensitive and civil. Maybe charity can help you fight back.

Final note: Russ Emerson put up a review of my book, Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook. Thanks, Russ. Your loyalty means a lot to me. Hope the physical therapy is going well.

Gun or Walking Stick?

I have a question. The Smith & Wesson 27-2 is pretty cool. And it seems like the model with the 8 3/8″ barrel always sells for less than the shorter-barreled models. I have never been tempted to buy a revolver with a barrel that long, because my guess is that the balance would be awful. And it would be awkward to carry and store.

So what I want to know is, what is a barrel that long good for? I think 4-5″ is perfect. You can carry guns that size if you have to, and they have a decent sight radius for accuracy, and they’re not hideously ugly, like snubnoses. I suppose you could say the longer guns are for hunting, but that doesn’t make sense, because you’d use a scope, which would work just as well on a 4″ gun.