New Ammunition, in More Ways Than One

Today I felt like my head just would not hold any more religion, so I took a break and made 50 rounds of .45 ACP. Things went pretty well, although I am getting severely annoyed with Hornady’s spent-primer tube. This thing hangs off the press, and dead primers go into it. Sounds, great, but the tube goes up and down as you work the press, so it’s not easy to find a container that will catch the primers. Short containers don’t work because the primers bounce out or the tube drifts out. Tall ones fall over. I taped a Baggie to it, but one side of the mouth fell down, and the primers started spewing out on the floor.

I was thinking I might weight the bottom of an old 2-liter soda bottle.

I tried to put a little Imperial sizing wax in my brass, but I don’t think I accomplished much. I’m not sure how to do it. Maybe I should get a dedicated cloth bag and wipe wax on the inside of it and then toss the primers around in it. I know I don’t have to use it, but it seems to make things go more smoothly.

I still have 40 rounds I don’t trust, so I have been taking them apart. I thought I could spread out the agony, substituting one of these for every tenth casing while making rounds. But that doesn’t work, because you have to push the lever all the way down to charge the shell ahead of the one in the decapping die, and you can’t depress the lever completely when a primed case is under that die. Either you deprime a primed case and lose a good primer, or you fail to charge the case ahead of it.

Wish I could shoot on Mondays instead of Fridays, but they don’t ask my advice when they set the range schedule.

Can anyone give me advice on target sights? I’m not sure, but I think the single biggest problem I have right now is figuring out what the gun is aimed at. The front sights on my guns are too small; they don’t fill the gaps in the rear sights, so it’s easy to end up with the front sight off to one side or another. Also, the front sights are just too damn big. I can tell I’m shooting at the center ring, but that’s about it. Of course, once the middle of the bullseye is gone, you have to guess, anyway.

I know a lot of 1911s have target sights, and I wanted to get one. But then it occurred to me that “target sights” probably means the same thing I have on my revolver. A giant front sight coupled with an adjustable rear sight. I don’t think that would be any more precise than what I have now.

Someone suggested a peep sight. I’m not sure what a pistol peep sight is like. I’ve seen giant weird sights on race guns, but I don’t know if they’re suited for precision shooting, or just for hitting the same object over and over, quickly.

I’ll figure it out.

The Complete Jewish Bible and the related New Testament commentary are wonderful. They make me realize how lucky Gentiles are to know about Jesus, who is, after all, the Jewish Messiah. You can see from the commentary how much easier it would have been for Jews to understand and worship Him. Christians do their best, but we have had to guess a lot, and we’ve made mistakes.

As Bible translations go, I find this one easiest to read, except for one thing. You have to get used to the Hebrew names. A name will pop up, and you’ll have no idea who it is, and then it will turn out to be someone you’re very familiar with.

One fun thing about it: about half the men have names ending in “yahu.”

Another small quibble: the Christian tradition of printing Bibles in two columns, broken into verses, with annotations in the middle is very helpful, and you probably won’t understand how helpful until you see a Bible where the text goes clear across the page, with two or three annotations at the bottom.

I love The Spirit-Filled Bible, and these two volumes will take their places beside it now.