Search This Blog

Monday, April 30, 2012

No User Servicable Parts Inside!

Sigh... I have been invited to the Wells Fargo Golf thingy this weekend. I thought that rolling up in the '94 Mustang would decrease property values at the home I have been invited too. So I wander to the bunker up north to retrieve the ostentatious ride. I am greeted with this:










All the way home. OK, maybe it is but that is also where the odometer and trip stuff is. This overrides all of that. Get home and open the "Bonnet". Sigh. 











It is full. Sigh. According to specs, this holds 2.5 liters of fluid. There is much more here than you are led to believe. A far cry from one of these to be sure:










Used to be if you pulled the knob, pressed the foot switch and nothing came out, you sorta had a clue. Not so much any more! This is gonna hurt! I think I have to remove stuff to get to the connector to either leave it unplugged or jumper it! 

I love the Ford/Jag in so many ways but it vexes me. Hard. 

Oh, and golf? What a waste of a perfectly good rifle range! I would rather have someone hit a golf ball and then I try to shoot it! I slice more balls than a veterinarian on golf courses! I gave it up.  
 

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Glocks....

Let's start this war on my little space. Laura over at "insert witty title here" has a wonderful post about Glocks. Not only about the Pistol itself, but rabid fans of it too. I laughed out loud!

I don't like them, but just as much as H&K, (fill in the blank of any other manufacturer here) the "Glockaholics" will come out of the woodwork to defend them as the pinnacle of firearm development. 

If you have one and like it, fine my me. There are enough flavors of Kool-Aid to go around for everyone.

Disclaimer: I am a certified factory Glock Armorer. I have shot plenty of them and taken them apart and put them back together. I stand by Laura's post. I hate them.  

NS Heritage Fleet

So in honor of the 30th anniversary of the merger of of the Southern Railroad with the *cough* other railroad, Norfolk Southern announced it will honor the occasion by painting 18 locomotives in original paint schemes of railroads that make up the present day company. Five of these will come from the Southern. 

How cool is this?













The locomotive is in SR "Green Tuxedo" paint! The others are the Savanna & Atlanta, original Norfolk Southern, Interstate, and Central of Georgia.

It looks great! Not a steam locomotive though.  


I am a fan of the SR and love to visit my home museum. Just in case you doubt my motivation here is a shot from the garage:



















Uh, yeah, still working on the garage, but you get the idea! 

Photo credit for 8099 from the Southern Railway Historical Association, Inc. I'm a member. Who would have thunk it? 

Monday, April 23, 2012

Kool-Aid Problems.... Sigh.

First congratulations to my new shooters in basic pistol class and the same to my CCH students this weekend!  

So, the new spare Smith and Wesson Military and Police VTAC 9mm Pistol  9mm bullet hose threw up its front fiber optic after 300 rounds. I check the older one and well, the results were less than pleasing:
















It started to remove itself after some range time as well. The new pistol? The slide was shipped to S&W on their dime. It arrived today back at the factory. We shall see what the turnaround is. VTAC sells these sights aftermarket for 240 bucks. American. I find this failure rate totally unacceptable. And of course, I am scheduled to be in a "tactical pistol" class this Friday. I think I will attempt some Cyanoacrylate-fu on this one. I have nothing to loose. Anyone have any other suggestions to get this optic back in the front sight? 

Sigh.... I will of course now take an old friend with me for backup:













On the other hand, I did go to the secure FedEx facility today and pick this up:













500 rounds of M1 Carbine food for my curmudgeon, 200 rounds of M1 Garand food for my M1. 

I hope everyone has a great week! 

Thursday, April 19, 2012

The Bench is Backing up!

I normally like to have one Firearm at a time on the bench, but some range rentals needed some love before the weekend.




















The Bersa Thunder had a broken Safety lever and a firing pin that was about gone. The galling on the right hand side of the slide is from when the magazine disconnect stuff was sorta floating free until repairs.

The S&W Bodyguard has a problem as well. Guess what it is? Yep...Dead Laser! Again a range rental. The other stuff laying around are parts from the Enfield. 

Looks like both Basic Pistol and CCH classes are going to be at or near capacity this weekend!  

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Anna's Clue Tank: Army pilots, man your planes!

Remember today! An excellent write up below at the link from one of my favorite Blogs. God bless the gallantry and sacrifice these brave flight crews showed so that we could remain a free Nation.    

Anna's Clue Tank: Army pilots, man your planes!

FedEx! Like I don't have anything else to do!

Here is the sad tale of a shipment of ammo from CMP to stately manor. Take a look at this:














I received a phone call on Sunday notifying me of the shipment and signature required. OK, I jumped online and requested a hold at FexEx location. Life is good right? Wrong! Cryptically I see the status above "unable to hold" and call them. Blah, blah, blah. They actually tell me that I can pick it up at a FedEx location about a 40 min. trip one way from here in another State! Uh, no! So I tell them to send to my wonderful neighbor. They say OK and tell me they will deliver in the afternoon today. I let my neighbor know and she says she is going to lunch today but will back by 12. Cool. NOT! 

Check the status of the package. 11 o'clock they tried to deliver today with predictable results.

I asked why they could not hold at a FedEx Office location for pickup. Here is the line... wait for it.... "Sir, this package is labeled hazardous materials and cannot be held there." OK, just because something has an ORM-D sticker on it, you will throw it on a truck and blast down the Interstate with it but won't let it sit in a locked cage in a franchise because it has a OMG  ORM-D sticker on it?  Really?!?!

Sigh... UPS routinely drops oh, 16 lbs. of powder and 10K of primers on my front porch. I know they do it because the shipper did not request a signature, but this should be simpler than this!  

On the upside maybe FedEx Delores will drop by!  

The War on Guns: Now That's Funny

It really is! 


The War on Guns: Now That's Funny

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Geek Card Renewal!

Yes, it is time to insure renewal of the Geek card. First, a range review from the past. Next, Brooke over at PaleoCon Command Center posted about her vehicle coming back from the body shop after a bit of a mashup.  She thought about naming the vehicle the Defiant. I get that, so I wandered about on teh Interwebz and found the Defiant on Google and went further. The Reliant.  The modeling had me interested and I went further. I ended up here.

Ok, on second thought maybe I need to turn in my Geek card! This is the best I can muster. I built it in 1992. 















A Stock ERTL kit with lights and sound. That is of course contingent on having a power source. The AA battery holder in the base broke some time ago. The batteries serve as ballast to keep the thing from falling over.  I need three or four hands to do the replacement and for some reason I rebuilt it after three moves. Very fragile. Of course in my defense, my model is not 3.5 feet long! 

OK, time to go back to gun stuff so y'all don't get scared. I am a North Carolina native and can say "Y'all" legally. 

Here is the Enfield awaiting welding. 

 















Receiver and barrel Serial # match!

Oh, FedEx sucks. More later.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Short Lee Enfield, Mark III*

After consultation with a walking encyclopedia on Firearms, (he had a run in with DMV today, I feel his pain), this storied rifle will be restored to original fighting trim as much as possible (De Bubbaing). 

First, get the scope mount off. 

 Lets see what is underneath!













A "K" mark above the serial # on the right side survived. Off tomorrow to get this all welded shut! 

Oh, the Brickberry is back. My life is more noisy again!  

Sunday, April 15, 2012

I thought it was too quiet around here!

And now I know why. Looks like the Blackberry:














Auto magically turned itself into a Brickberry. Sigh.... On the plus side it HAS been quiet!

Saturday, April 14, 2012

New Game. Name That Rifle!

So I go to visit my favorite Curmudgeon today. I wanted to proudly display Charline and go shoot her as his range can accommodate the caliber yet they only go out to 25 yards. Decorum again prevents me from telling a joke here about shooting this rifle on a 25 yard indoor range. I was only interested on making sure the rifle operated correctly. No slamfire, no clip ejection issues. NO THUMB EITHER! My friend said that anyone that got the thumb was doing it wrong. 

So BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM PING occurred. It was sweetness and light. 

So my Curmudgeon looks at the rifle as I present it to him. His wife has prepared standard issue coffee. This explains why you may get posts at 0400 hours tonight. Again, he snorts and makes a remark about kids these days thinking they have discovered something. He disappears into the basement and shows me this:

 


Sorry for the quality of the photo. Phone camera! A M1 Carbine! Looks to be around 1943. Woot! Lets go shoot! And we did.  

As soon as we whipped out the M1 Garand and the M1 Carbine people noticed. Both weapons functioned well. Then as we are shooting the latest 9mm bullet hose pistol several people came to our lane and offered their pistols for us to shoot! Go figure. It was fun as we picked up the Glock something and the Springfield something up in .45ACP to shoot. We countered with the Smith and Wesson M&P VTAC. Hey, you gotta counter offer right? Range etiquette and all that. 

So my Friend gives me this and wants to know more about it. I am stumped. Since there is a brain trust at the NRA Convention and others lurking around, can you help? You know the drill, click to enbiggen!



































  













































The muzzle mikes out to about 0.302.

Help! Please?

Oh, my friend whips out the photo of him graduating from his Army MOS school. I found him. It was 1955. I don't know why, but I seem to have a bunch of LEO and Military friends although I have done neither. Go figure. I'm in good company though!  
 

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Stuff....

I so have to get one of these T-shirts:






















And S&W has added another flavor of Kool-Aid. 



All the cool kids are at the NRA Convention. Sigh.... Me, off to work tomorrow and then go meet my curmudgeon to fire the M1 Saturday.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Inventory Control!

So while I was perusing the CMP Website, I came across a link to a program called MyGunDB. I have relied on a word document and folders of pictures until now to manage my humble inventory. Well, not any more! I will begin to populate this program with stuff. Here are some screen shots from the "Fortress of Solitude":















At first blush I have to say that it is comprehensive, intuitive and cheap enough! Trust me I know about software that is NOT intuitive, anyone fired up anything from Allen Bradley or Cisco lately? Hell conf t issued from the command line is more intuitive than Web based interfaces from Cisco!

Let me run the software for a little while and I will post with more detail about this program later. It should not take me long to enter my humble inventory.

Monday, April 9, 2012

If you are drinking Kool-Aid

I suggest more sugar. Once again a Apex DCAEK being installed. It changes the action on this pistol greatly.


















There are some really tricky parts to handle, but it is worth it. I think I have installed five or so to date and they all are worth the effort. 

FTC- I payed for all of them. So there. 

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Rebirth

A timeless story. One of great faith, love, sacrifice, death, and renewal. One of literally life from lifelessness. It has been told for centuries and was one of the first I read.






















My first Bible. 


















And the last. That one was given to me during my High School graduation. 

Once again after the bleak barren winter, the Earth renews, showing new life. It mirrors the story very well. The previous owners of my house planted a variety of flowers and trees. Today, my gift was this:















I remember my Father asking me as we were tooling around the mountains of Southwestern Virginia on a Easter Sunday asking me if I knew the meaning of Easter. I could not have been much more than 10 years old. I told him simply that Jesus arose from the tomb.

Could you imagine any movie today starting like this?






Whatever you did or are doing today I hope you have had a wondrous day with friends and family.

 

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Charlene is ready for the Debutante Ball!

Cleaned, oiled, greased, and application of some LinSpeed on the wood. 1907 sling. I hope to meet my curmudgeon next week and see how she dances. Click pics to well you know... 






















Does anyone know if I threaded the sling correctly? Testing with dummy rounds shows this:















On the left the first cartridge loaded and not fired. On the right the second cartridge that was loaded and fired.
Anyone think I will have a slam fire problem?

Can't wait to shoot this piece of history! 

Thursday, April 5, 2012

When you gotta go, you gotta go!

Just when you think everything is going well, sometimes things well, uh, lets go to the tape shall we?

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Ave Ceasar!

Over at Anna's Clue Tank, she knocks one out of the park. Go take a read.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Puzzle back together!

So I am waiting on some magic stuff for the wood on Charline, but in the interim, I cleaned, oiled, and greased. NFO won the Interwebs for the link on what to lube, CMP wins it on how to take apart and put back together

I am back in field strip condition!

Trigger group:















Upper:

















Finally this:



















Mr. Garand was a freaking genius BTW.




Don't worry, I'm not going all Private Pyle on y'all! 

"It's been swabbed.... and wiped. Everything is clean. Beautiful. So that it slides perfectly. Nice. Everything cleaned. Oiled. So that your action is beautiful. Smooth, Charlene."

I don't think I will waste the D.I. and then suck start a M-14! 



 .