About that trip to the range,

now that I'm not running in circles trying to take care of various things at once, a bit more about that.

On .45-70, had a experiment to try.  I'd been reading this book, which has a lot of good stuff about loading for buffalo rifles, and one thing he mentioned was that for black powder loads he'd get a custom case expander so mouth and area of the case which covered the bullet is only about .002" smaller than bullet diameter, so as to have less chance of the case pressure deforming a soft lead bullet.  Well, I have a lathe, so...

On the left is the case neck/mouth expander of a Lee die, on the right the expander I made.

Once I got the die adjustment so it would expand the case to the depth the bullet was seated, I ran off eleven: five for Blackhorn 209 loads, five for black, and one to dirty the bore for the black loads.  Not always, but often a black powder load through a clean barrel will hit higher on the target, so one to dirty the bore, then the blow tube, then the shots for grouping.

All these were the Lyman 525-grain bullet, cast of 20-2, and a Federal Large Magnum Rifle primer

Five with Blackhorn

First was way the hell high, then three almost touching, then one to the right.  I should've fired a fouling shot first, I'd bet that's why the first was so high; the fifth was either wind(it was getting gusty at that point) or my fault.  I need to try this again.

Five with 65.0 grains of Goex 2f

I didn't fire the fouling shot for this group, figuring that though it wasn't with black, the previous shots should've nicely fouled the bore.  Not bad at all.  I've gotten a couple of previous groups about this good, but I'll definitely try this again.    The multiple efforts of getting an expander just right(don't ask) might not have actually made any real change, but I had to try.

Shut up, yes I did.

On to other things:
I also had several .40-65 loads to try out, and I did them first.  Because after the recoil of the .45-70 I sometimes am not that precise on later stuff.

One thing I wanted to try was a lighter bullet.  I had some 300-grain from a RCBS mold, and tried them at 100 yards with five 56.0 grains 2f, and five with 57.0.
56.0

57.0

At first test, the 57.0 seems to have a bit of advantage.  Or I blew the vertical on two.  I will find out.  From what I've read most newer rifles in this cartridge, with a faster rifling pitch than the originals, often don't shoot well with shorter bullets, if this is one of those that will at longer distances, it'll be interesting to mess with.

Some other groups were shot, but the wind was giving me some trouble on them, so no pictures of those.  This cartridge definitely has less recoil than .45-70, more pleasant to shoot.

No Chrony readings on any of these, too busy a day to take the time to set it up.  I'd love one of the radar chronographs, but I can't justify that much cash for it.

There are some judges who need to be decorating trees

right next to the politicians they're protecting.

Memorial Day

Yeah, getting personally slapped in the face with what these idiot 'gun safety' laws really mean

has a tendency to change minds.
His March 11 purchase of a 9mm would have been the end of the story, were it not for a political standoff over shutdown orders and background checks. Now Kane, a former supporter of gun-control measures and AR-15 bans, is frustrated by the arduous process that has denied his family a sense of security. The pandemic has made the soft-spoken software engineer an unlikely Second Amendment supporter.

I will note that for this weather

a tactical kilt is quite comfortable.

Saturday night

Data in.  Enjoy

Kiss that boot on your neck, comrade,

the Party will reward you.
Kuo has argued that the Chinese Communist Party's rigorous domestic censorship of unflattering facts and information about the regime has, at times, saved lives and that some cultures, including present-day China, are not ready for what is widely recognized as a core human right: the freedom of association. 

"I would love to say that Chinese society has reached the point where we should have the right to free assembly," Kuo told iTnews, an Australian digital outlet, in 2010. "But in reality, today assembly in China can have violent consequences. … Perhaps, and I hate to say this, some cultures aren't ready for free assembly."
Translation: "The Party does not approve of this, therefore it is Bad."

Friday night, etc.

Data here.  Look.  Me out of semi-clever introductions.

tab clearing

The NYeffingTimes wants either the cops or commissars enforcing "This is how you must live" rules.  But they don't like the results.


Crap like this is why either get rid of qualified immunity, or restrict it to what it was supposed to cover.
Also, reason some idiot in black robes need a trip to a dunking stool.


The numbers have been padded, and a bunch of politicians need to be dealt with.  Harshly.


Well, so much else about this mess has been based on garbage, so why not 'social distancing'?

We'll see what comes next, but at least this bastard

won't be running the BATFEIEIO.

Was able to hit the range yesterday*

and do some shooting.  More on that later when I've got time to type.

I need to do a bunch of casting, when there's enough time free.

I need to get some paint and do some touching up.

Etc., etc., and right now I've got to do some grocery shopping.


*Have family moving, and a friend who pretty well is family going through very trying time, so it was really nice to get out.

Scene from the range

"Yes, we have 9mm ammo.  No, you can only buy one box per day.  Because we're trying to make sure as many people as possible can get some.  No, I can't sell you a case as 'one box'."  Etc.

We've run out of some ammo off & on, happily getting a little in(most of the time) before long.  Sales overall have been on the 'two weeks before Christmas' level still; it's enough to make Watts & Bloomberg and the other clowns cry.

More on that bastard Ferguson & Co.

In a tweet sent in late March, Ferguson—then still one of the leading voices within the U.K.’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), tasked with handling the coronavirus crisis—stated that the model was implemented in “thousands of lines of undocumented” code written in C, a widely used and high-performing computing language. He refused to publish the original source code, and Imperial College has refused a Freedom of Information Act request for the original source, alleging that the public interest is not sufficiently compelling.

As Ferguson himself admits, the code was written 13 years ago, to model an influenza pandemic. This raises multiple questions: other than Ferguson’s reputation, what did the British government have at its disposal to assess the model and its implementation? How was the model validated, and what safeguards were implemented to ensure that it was correctly applied? The recent release of an improved version of the source code does not paint a favorable picture. The code is a tangled mess of undocumented steps, with no discernible overall structure. Even experienced developers would have to make a serious effort to understand it.
I would think that 'Your model was used to wreck the economy of several countries and scare hell out of millions of people' was a pretty damned good public interest.  They probably would, too, if they weren't trying to hide their screwups.

Short version: Ferguson's an idiot, his code and model are garbage,

and he and his team need to pay for what they've caused with it.
The model, credited with forcing the Government to make a U-turn and introduce a nationwide lockdown, is a “buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming”, says David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco.

“In our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust."

Saturday data

ready for review

If it was in Ohio that early, you can bet

it was pretty much everywhere else.

Further evidence that a bunch of control-freak and/or panicky politicians, listening to experts using crap models built on bad data, have trashed our economy without reason.

Bunch of people need to be out of those public-supplied offices and trying to get on the unemployment line.

Just because

I would like a suppressor to mount on, say, a Sharps or Remington Rolling Block in .45-70.

For those times you don't want to use the can, I'd have a thread protector that matches the barrel profile.  And it would be funny as hell to watch someone's face as you removed it, and then started screwing the can on.

It would have to be a type that can be taken apart for cleaning, but I'm sure there's one out there.

A fine description of far too many governors and mayors

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
Personally, I think this should've concluded with
"And their proper fate should be to become tree ornaments."