Nothing Personal, Mr. Squirrel
March 27th, 2020New Toy Graces the Compound
I finished building my steel gong stand!
I was so excited when I finished, I took the stand to the pasture and started shooting after 7 p.m. Here are some shots of the gongs after a few rounds from 50 feet.
My squirrel rage now has a ready outlet year-round.
I didn’t realize steel was so liberating. With paper targets, I concentrate on my grip, pull, sight picture, breath control, and whatever else matters, and I try to put shots into the tiniest area possible. With steel, you just aim in the general direction of the gong and let fly. This is what shooting used to be like when I was a kid, terrorizing my neighborhood with BB guns.
It’s interesting to see how the paint holds up. The black stuff is truck bed coating, and it seems to be holding onto the gongs in spite of being blasted with CCI Choot Em’s. The orange paint is plain old Rust-Oleum, and it comes right off. Maybe I can find orange truck bed coating somewhere. I don’t expect gongs to stay pretty forever, but it would be nice to do better than this.
I shot these gongs with my Marlin Model 60, and it worked so well, we have reconciled. The Model 60 is a great gun, as long as you spend a lot of money upgrading it and then force yourself not to think of what’s inside it. The inner workings of a Model 60 are not a lot better than those of a Daisy BB gun.
When I got my Model 60 in 2018, I found that it shot 4″ groups at 50 feet. I sent it for warranty work, and Marlington replaced it. They couldn’t make it work any better than I could. The new one worked okay for a brief moment, and then the magazine tube fell out. After that, I put it away. I figured I would send it to Remlin eventually.
I decided to fix it myself. I bought a new pin to hold the tube in. Pins like this are supposed to be so tight they have to be hammered in. My new pin went right in with a push from my fingernail. The band it fit into had an oversized hole.
I bought a new band and a second pin for insurance. Then I Loctited the first replacement pin in place. If it falls out, I’ll replace the band and put the second replacement pin in it. One hopes the hole in the second band is not oversized.
The Marlin has a peep sight, which I installed shortly before the magazine fell out. The original sights are pretty cheap. The peep sight is really nice. I love peep (or “aperture”) sights. I had one on my old Crosman M1 BB gun. Regrettably, it accounted for a number of unwary lizards on my block.
Let’s tick off all the stuff the Marlin has now. I altered the stock myself and installed a correct sling stud, and then I added a sling. I put an MCARBO trigger in it, which, while not stellar, is worlds better than OEM. I installed a recoil spring that allows the use of hyper ammunition. Finally, I put a Williams peep sight set on it. So for a little over $300, you can have a pretty good $180 .22 rifle.
The Marlin is a beautiful gun. The stock is highly figured for some reason, and the basic lines of the gun have always been great. The balance and handling give it a sweet feel. It cycles well. It’s accurate. I just won’t think about what’s inside it.
POT METAL! POT METAL!
That just slipped out.
I feel like I need more gongs. I didn’t realize they were addictive.
Can’t wait to blast these with a 10mm pistol. Should be a joy.
March 29th, 2020 at 3:56 AM
My wife isn’t a shooting enthusiast. But a target that is a silhouette of a rat might change that.
A few Passovers ago we spent the holiday with our double in-law (my 1st and 3rd daughters married their 1st and 3rd sons). During the intermediate days, both families went to a shooting range. I learned my daughter #4 was the best shot among us with a .22 rifle… and I’m not shabby for someone who doesn’t shoot much. My “mechutan” (a convenient single Hebrew word meaning “my kid’s father in law” is an engineer and owns a Gyrojet pistol that shoots rocket bullets. I got to shoot a round. Almost no recoil. My “mechunista” (his wife) has a CCW license and uses it, regularly carrying in the nice neighborhood in the blue state city where she lives. Not all Jews are averse to firearms.
The absence of ambient noise has made LA almost liveable. For now. Was hoping to use equity to move closer to grandkids in 2021 or 2022. Hoping your calculations are correct, we have fewer deaths than in a typical flu season, and that the economy quickly springs back, with a jobs boom due to repatriation of tech and medicine industries from China.
March 29th, 2020 at 9:01 AM
You should ask JL what he thinks of the epidemic. A much better model would be child’s play for him. My equation is primitive.
The big problem facing Jews isn’t hatred of guns. It’s the love of cities. They are like choke points.
March 30th, 2020 at 10:20 AM
I’ve long advocated decentralizing by returning to shtetls, villages with populations sufficient for schools, not based on rapid growth, where extended families could support each other and housing didn’t require 2 jobs to pay a mortgage. There have been 2 pogroms in the US. I’m not especially worried.
My father stays away from politics as his wife and my half sisters lean left. As a theoretician, he hates doing any practical calculations and prefers that applied mathematicians and engineers mine his work a generation or two later.
March 30th, 2020 at 2:29 PM
He could come up with a good equation in the time it takes a bagel to toast and then let some underling figure out the coefficients.
March 30th, 2020 at 11:18 PM
Stipulated. But doing anything that he isn’t going to be worthy of academic publication is low on his priority list.
I’ve asked him to assist with getting a wikipedia page up, for which he is more than qualified.
I’ve also made an argument with which my siblings agree that his memoirs would be more valuable to his descendants than another textbook rehashing his academic specialty would be for humanity.
He is a machine that never veers off-road. The Swiss call him to calibrate their watches.