20131127

componetz

Propellants are slowly returning to the shelves.  The slower IMRs and Hodgdon numbers in particular, and shotshell propellants.  I took 2 lb of H335 to try in Grendel and 762NATO.

Still no BL(C)-2.  If this is how long it takes suppliers without permanently expanding capacity, then, well . . . this is how long it takes. 

20131105

I was really looking for election returns for the Colorado secession, and I got this (updated)

Dude, it was Czechoslovakia.  Just one "k."

A columnist who presumes to "edit[] Democracy:  A Journal of Ideas should rely on an editor or two himself, and a human spellchecker.

In a column where he laments the underlying discord in American politics and hopes to apply that as context to a secession vote in eleven counties in Colorado, he cites other sorrowful examples of other nations who couldn't stay married, in spite of the kids, and were sundered by the "culture-ization of their politics."

No matter that a guy named Tito kept those Yugos from piously murdering one another for most of a generation (defined as four 20-year spans, if you follow the Strauss and Howe model), for example.  A generational cycle of that length is about as long as any government-imposed common immiseration can be expected to hold together.  The New Deal included. 

(Typo corrected)







 

 

20131029

Open Letter to the GOP Congressional Delegation

Dear Republicans in the US Senate and the House of Representatives:

I am not a Republican.  You owe me no particular debt.  I may have voted for one or another of you while registered in several States over the years, but most of that time I was registered with a third party.  I remain so today. 

For some of you I had very great hopes.  Some of you then turned and betrayed those hopes. 

So don't get an inflated ego when I say that I generally despise the Democrats across from you, partly for their refusal to pass a Federal budget for the last 4 years they held a majority in the Senate, partly for their mischaracterization of your newer, more energetic, and dare I say more ideological members. 

You can yet earn my malediction, and the best way to do so is to cave in to those Democrats.  The next best way to do so is to turn on those newer, more energetic, and more ideological members of your own party.  They have led a dangerous, risky, odious effort to defund, delay, or repeal the PPACA.  They drew the line and they tried to defend it.  The leadership of your party has abandoned and abused them. 

If you're from Wyoming, you should be familiar with the name Lane Frost.  All he had to do was stay on the bull for eight seconds.  It took everything he had for those eight seconds, and he trained a (short) lifetime just to know what to do during those eight seconds, to last that long. 

Your job is easier than what Lane Frost had to do.  All you have to do is, well, nothing.  Just hold on, ignore the bucking, ignore the noise of the crowds.  Don't give in on a delay now, don't insist on defunding.  Just keep the law exactly as it is right now, and leave the Obama administration's people in place too.  Keep his team exactly as it is for a few more weeks.  Insist on no firings.  Pass no "if you like it you can keep it" bills.  Carve no new exceptions.  Mind your damned manners with your own caucus.

All you have to do is nothing but hold on. When you get thrown, the sand will break your fall, and there will be clowns unwittingly helping you to run to safety. 

If you don't even bother to climb on the bull, you are on the sidelines forever. 

Cordially,

Fûz

20130827

shortage of reloading componetz, updated

My sticker shock on primers kicks in right around 4 cents each, like a bout of GERD during a hangover. 

No sticker shock here.  Five thousand Large Rifle arrived in one box. 

20130616

Proof, if you needed it, that guns make one stupid

I literally slapped the table with my hand upon reading it:  "Few students ask to have guns on Wyoming campuses, and when they do, the answer is likely to be 'no.'"

I'm not surprised.  Only one or two students, staff, or faculty need be told 'no' at local Community Cawlidge before the word gets out to likeminded others, not to bother asking.  Cause and effect are likely reversed.   

This is unfortunate, considering that not all that long ago, a concealed weapon would have been rather handy against a kid planning to kill his father with a compound bow and a knife.  Whether bringing the edged weapons on campus violated campus policy or Wyoming law is no consolation, because the father is dead and the kid didn't ask in advance. 

This pearl though:  “The presence of too many firearms can inhibit the educational process.”  We can see that the absence of a firearm (where and when needed) surely as hell Inhibited the Educational Process.  Jim Krumm, RIP, did not finish teaching that day, let alone the semester.   "[S]tudents watched horrified as Chris Krumm stepped into the classroom and unleashed an arrow at his father" sounds rather, er, educationally inhibiting, doesn't it?  "Casper College, where some 5,000 students are enrolled, canceled classes for the rest of Friday;" well, there you have positive sighting of Educational Process Inhibition. 

I'm willing to cut UW's Chief Samp a little slack. What cop would use such stilted and pretentious terminology?  I suspect he's parroting a talking point given him by his superiors in UW administration, and woe be unto him if he were to deviate from it.  That line goes something like, "guns make people stupid, if we have more guns on campus we'll have more stupid people, stupidity inhibits the educational process.  Universities are supposed to have no inhibitions on the educational process, we need no stupid people in them.  So no guns.  The law of this unenlightened land at least requires the unwashed to ask permission, so we simply deny it."  This from folks who claim to be teaching Critical Thinking to the generation who will be creating wealth to fund my Social Security benefits.

The likely result is, as suggested above, that the truly intelligent people who want to protect themselves on a college campus will simply pack heat carefully, without asking, or telling, anybody. 

Which is how Wyoming law on the limits of the CCW permit ought to read in the first place.

20130417

Panic! panic! shortage of reloading componetz!

I'm down to just 3 8-lb jugs of WC846. 

And an 8-pounder of W231.  And 6 lbs of Unique-ski. 

20130311

12V rechargeable flashlight

Blegging for recommendations for a metal bodied flashlight:
  • impressive, maybe even intimidating, light output
  • replaceable bulb or LED assembly
  • rechargeable
  •  . . . by 12V via a cradle
  • available replacement battery pack
  • suitable for mounting in an automobile, constantly on charge by permanent wiring into the vehicle's electrical system
  • body stout enough to use as a bludgeon, at least twice
  • low enough price to put on an Amazon wish list without sheepish grin
  • lanyard, or place to attach one
Please post in comments if you can suggest a make and model. 

20130310

if I had an Oscar Meyer weiner . . .

if I got my hands on a 3-D printer, the first thing I'd like to try is a replacement barrel bushing for a Star PD.  The 3-D printer would make a plastic version of it, but then I'd try using the plastic version as a mould for an investment casting.  Somebody around here can investment cast carbon steel, no?

But the real cool thing I'd like to try is a stretched double-stack 1911 frame.  Imagine slicing down through the frame along the magazine well, and making that magazine well about 2mm longer, front to rear. That ought to be just enough so a double-stack magazine of 7.62x25mm Tokarev would fit.  That cartridge is too long for a standard or doublewide 1911.

3-D print that frame, with gaps for hardened steel slide rails to be pressed into the plastic.  Finish with standard or double-wide 1911 parts as needed, and a .38 Super slide.  3-D print a barrel for the Tokarev, and have that buddy investment cast that for you too (update:  or use J&G Sales's Tok barrel).  A 3-D printed magazine will be needed too.  It would probably have capacity for 15 or 16 rounds. 

Update:  is there any way to mix graphite fiber flakes into the plastic line that feeds into the 3-D printer?  




20130208

what to do until ammunition returns to your dealer's shelves

 . . . well, since it may be 6 to 18 months for case lots of ammunition to come available again, what is a fellow to do with his dollar-cost-averaging in the meantime?

Let us suggest that you identify those parts that wear out the soonest on the blasters you own.  Anything semiauto can be rough on extractors and ejectors, and the springs that push them, if any.  If you don't know how to pull the ejector out of the bolt face of your AR, now is the time to figure that out.  MBRs with fixed ejectors (FAL) and pistols (1911) can still break theirs, replacing them might be a bit tougher. Have a set of all the springs on your platform, many parts houses will sell you every part in one bag. 

Unfortunately, I'm not the first to have this idea, and this is why even replacement parts for ARs are getting scarce.  And 1911s too.  

Don't neglect your non-patrol rifles either.  The Remington bolt rifle extractors are said to be weak and will leave you heartbroken when they break.  Brownell's will sell you a replacement, and the replacement includes instructions.  Broken cartridge case extractors for the rifle calibers would keep your MBR out of the junk pile. 

As you try these, or have a brother show you how to do them, you'll learn what tools you need.  So we next suggest the books and tools that make you self-sufficient in keeping your beloved blasters a-blasting.  Pin punches, including the roll-pin punches that you'll need to assemble an AR, and hollow-ground screwdriver bit sets.  FAL owners would do well to get gunplumbr's guide and skim it through.  Some blasters have parts that are meant to wear out, like the buffer on the Star PD. 

If you are willing to go hardcore, get a spare hammer, trigger, and sear for your platform.  Learn how to take them out and put them back without trashing the gun's finish, breaking tools, or seeing spring-loaded parts fly out a window. 

Next, if money is still burning a hole in the ammo bag and ammo is still not available, talk to your gunsmith about some improvements to be made to your existing blasters.  If you scored a spare HTS set and its connected springs, have the smith stone them together for a good trigger pull, then take them back out, mark them as a set, and wrap them for storage.  A muzzle brake on a rifle would enhance its position on Diane's List.  Remember, in the current unpleasantness, your gunsmiths might be worried about their livelihoods too, so support them now. Give them work. 

Okay, last and most unpleasant:  if this can happen to ammunition, it can happen to expendables like food too.  You didn't prepare when ammunition prices were slowly rising.  Will you be caught again, but worse this time? 

20130117

QFTD

What is it in the American psyche that we pay so handsomely to get hectored by these vermin?

TFG

you joined the NRA . . .

 . . . so now you want a medal, or something?

Sorry, I can't get very excited about you responding to the crisis only after it looks like it could really become a crisis.  Every time I hear someone say "Hey, everybody, I joined the NRA today,  and so should you!" I think one or more of the following:

  • what took you so damned long?
  • (update 2) are you the same guy who laughed in my face, or rolled your eyes, or called me a paranoid black-helicopter wacko when I suggested National Ammo Day a few years ago?   Why yes, yes you are. 
  • Congratulations on waking up on the gun owners' side of the battle line.  
  • Get just an annual membership, then spend the dough you saved on a Dillon press and . . .
 GOA, GONH in the East, RMGO for us Westerners, IJ, and numerous other organizations.  They have been fighting at State and regional levels, especially when the NRA didn't show up.  They complemented the NRA and made many of the NRA's gains possible---or prevented the NRA from caving when the NRA started feeling, y'know, centrist.   Send them some love and money too.

NRA didn't help Heller very much, in fact one can argue they interfered.  Thank Cato instead, their Bob Levy made the Heller win possible.  

Spend as much on these institutions and organizations as you would on your next scarcity-overpriced case of ammunition or your next batch of standard-capacity magazines---if you can find the ammunition or the mags.  You can't now, because they're gone. They're gone now because you didn't buy them before the sphincters closed.  The sphincters closed because you didn't support the organizations back when this stuff was cheap. 

In short, shame on you.  Stop congratulating yourself.  You have some catching up to do.

Update 1:  I forgot Firearms Coalition, founded by the architect of the Cincinnati Revolt and continued by his widow and sons.