Flea market report

Ok, Xavier has the pawn shop circuit, so on occasion I'll cover flea markets.

There's a big one over in Midwest city called Mary's Swap Meet, went over there this morning. Today was a good day, found
1. A pair of 30-round M1 Carbine magazines for a friend,
2. A WWII or just after side-opening .50 caliber ammo can and
3. A bucket of lead.

The magazines showed no rust, and if I'm not mistaken they were the version made for the M2 select-fire carbine. The ammo can was a prize; no visible rust, and the seal is in halfway decent condition. Most of these have some rust and the seals are completely dried out or missing. The bucket was full of mostly wheel weights, a few 3, 4 & 5oz sinkers and a big chunk that looks like was dumped out of a pot after it cooled with some wheel weight clips stuck in it. I'm guessing about fifty pounds total for $5. Very good. Except for carrying the heavy damn thing halfway across the market and out to the truck; I'm surprised the bucket didn't break or the bail pull out.

Did a little forging this afternoon(very little as it turned out; a few light pieces only because my elbow didn't like hammering today) and after that got out the pot and started melting weights and casting them into ingots. I've got one of the Lee ingot molds that throws two 1lb and two 1/2lb ingots. When all was done,














27 1lb ingots and 26 1/2lb with one about 1/4 lb; total about 40 pounds. And I haven't started on the big chunk yet, I'll probably have to use the torch to melt it into the pot a section at a time; I'm guessing it's about 15-20 pounds.

That's not the most I ever found there; one day found 5-gallon bucket of assorted lead, worked out to about 75 pounds, a mix of wheel weights, battery cable ends and-prize of all- a bunch of stained-glass window channel, pure lead.

So today was indeed a good day there.

By the way, it's no damn fun carrying something like that with a bum foot. I was originally going to go to Muskogee today with friends, but begged off because of crap needed to do and having trouble walking. I know, going to the market wasn't the best idea. And I'm paying for it now.

I started to write on this this morning,

but by the time I finished beating out letters to congresscritters, I had to go to work. I was also too damn mad to do it then.

This being the abortion of a 'border security and immigration bill' that those smirking idiots in the Senate passed.

Now, not only do illegal aliens get a pass on various felony crimes that would put you or I in jail; not only does it give amnesty to illegals who've been here a while(and I don't care how much the assholes don't like the word, that's EXACTLY what it is); thanks to those two extra-sorry shits Dodd and Specter, we would have to 'consult' with the friggin' GOVERNMENT OF MEXICO before we could build a god-cursed FENCE on our OWN DAMN BORDER.

Screw politeness, screw nice, these bastards should be removed from office for acting against the interests of the United States and violating the oath they've taken- more than once.

God-DAMMIT I'm tired of this crap.

I just LOVE doing things like this

Decided to get some dies and some .284 Winchester brass to resize for 7.5 Swiss.
Check Midway and find several things I need.
Find the dies; there are several, but I've had good results from them in the past so I get the Lee set.
Order the brass while I'm at it.

They ship fast, so I got the stuff in today. Joy, joy, I can load!

Except...

Remember those dies? I forgot something: you need to run the .284 brass through a full-length resizing die like this set the first time because you need to both resize the neck and set the shoulders back just a touch. So now I have to 1. send the neck-sizing dies back and exchange for the full-length set(not a problem; Midway is very good on customer service) or b: keep the neck-sizer and order a full-length set, using the full-length die for new .284 brass and the neck-sizer thereafter.

I repeat: I just LOVE doing stuff like this.

Buttpack carry

Or fannypack to use the more polite term. Especially in hot weather, it can be one of the best ways to carry a sidearm, but you've got to pick the right one.

'Right one' covers a lot of things. Size, color, and method of draw. Size, big enough to carry your piece and your wallet and/or phone and/or makeup(for the ladies, dammit, shut up) and keys or whatever. And you should use it for things other than your gun; that makes it a bag with stuff in it as opposed to a mostly empty bag that looks kind of heavy. Color because some styles, in the standard black, look like a gun-carrier; change it to yellow or brown or blue and it looks less like one.

Method of draw is what originally made me think seriously on this. I had a small pack I used for a couple of years; the main compartment fit a model 36 snubnose nicely, the smaller pocket carried my wallet & keys. But it was not a gun bag, just a small buttpack, so to get to the weapon you had to grab the zipper pull and pull it all the way across and then reach inside. This came forcefully to mind one evening when a friend and I were going into a bookstore. About halfway across the parking lot a guy started walking toward us. Specifically toward us, not past or near. Without really thinking about it I shifted my angle to put myself between him and my friend and scanned to see if there was anyone else(there wasn't) and, in the midst of this, realized that he was close enough that if he did attack, there was no damn way I could get to the piece before he reached us. Which kicked my mind into 'prepare for combat' mode, which means my body position shifted and I also thought about, if necessary, grabbing my knife(CRKT folder with the clip hooked over my pocket; unopened it stuck out just a touch beyond the outside of my fist, good to strike with). Turned out he was just a panhandler, but this is one of those 'maybe' situations. Maybe he was, and maybe he wasn't; maybe he had other plans but saw the change in my position/movements and changed his mind; who knows?

What I do know is I stopped carrying my piece in that bag, it was just too hard to get to it if you needed it fast. I found a new one. It's bigger(both good & bad), it's brown, it has a holster inside that's held in place with velcro, and the gun compartment has a zipper that runs almost all the way around with a pull tab on the outside on both left & right top corner; set it up for either left- or right-hand draw and you can grab the tab & pull to open it, exposing the grip for your draw. Much faster, and with a good bag of this design it doesn't stand out as a weapon carrier.

One of the things I like about it is that the holster can be set to hold the pistol right-side up or upside-down. May sound strange, but for my manner of carry I prefer the pistols upside-down in a bag like this. I don't like carrying it in front, it's uncomfortable and gets in the way when walking. With it in back, if the piece is right-side up I have to turn my hand palm-backward to draw, with the piece upside-down it's unzip/grab/draw without the twist.

Those are my thoughts on the matter, and how it works for me.

Experiment: results to follow

One more reason I like gun shows

All the bits & pieces you can find. At the one last weekend there was a man with a table covered with a mix of crap and actual usable stuff. Scope bases, rings, parts thereof among others. Which gave me an idea.

I've been wanting to try putting a red-dot on an AK on a forward mount like the Ultimak. However, I didn't want to spend a hundred bucks on one before finding out a: if I like the setup and b: if the rifle would be accurate enough to make it worthwhile. I've fired this one before and had less than amazing results: at 100 yards it remided me more of a 'pattern' than a group(See, Gerry, it happens to me too! Damn grav anomolies). I couldn't be certain if it was that the rifle needed work/was hopeless, or the sights. That short sight radius with the very basic post & notch, with my eyes anymore, is not the greatest aid to accurate shooting.

On the table, among other things I picked up, was a beat-up old B-Square scope mount for some handgun. Too long, but it could be cut down in length, and messing with this would be easier than some of the other ideas I came up with. And, everything on the table was $1. Yes, that's right, one lonely dollar, so step right up! Lay down your money an- ahem- sorry 'bout that. So it and some rings & stuff went with me.

Finally got a chance to mess with it this evening. Cut to length, cleaned up the ends, had to spread it open a bit so it would fit onto the gas tube, and voila!














or however you spell it. Little closer view:















Seems pretty solid, and from just aiming & dry-firing I think I like it. It won't co-witness the iron sights, but that's not a big concern. If the light's good enough to use them, it has enough gap between the tube and the bottom of the base that I can squinch down to the usual position for this thing and see the irons. I should be able to take it to the range soon to sight in & try it out, so we'll see how well it works.

This just in: Seattle plays Humpty-Dumpty

as in 'words mean what we say they do'. Ok, ok, people have noted this before, but this crap demands to be written about.

'Racism' is the believe that some race is inherently inferior/superior to others. What is the People's Republic of Seattle teaching now?
"Cultural Racism:
Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers."

Get all that? Only whites can be racist; teaching a kid to be a self-reliant individual is 'racist'; and they've added music in there, too! And what the HELL is 'having a future time orientation' and what does it have to do with 'racism', except in their addled little minds? Oh, and thinking that the English language shouldn't have 'different forms'(Ebonics, anyone?) is racist, too.

Jeez, nobody but a left-wing socialist racist could believe this crap.

Got the definition at Cam Edwards place

Idiot/craven/lying/etc. politicians, part, uh,

I've lost track.

In this particular case, Bloomberg, GFW mayor of New York 'effin City. Having just had his little "Let us get together and ban guns" conference, and having announced his 'sting' operation, over at Uncles' we find that
His bullshit 'sting' screwed up some actual criminal investigations, which may well- and SHOULD- get both him and his buttmonkeys in some real legal trouble(seems they may have actually violated the law as well as screwing up real LE investigations), and

so far, it appears that the shops may not have broken the law: ""It's the same scenario repeated many, many, many times," Farmer said. "Husbands buy guns for their wives, boyfriends buy for their girlfriends, fathers buy for their daughters."
and
"The woman filled out papers registering the sale and signed a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives declaration saying she was the buyer and buying for someone else, he said.

Men routinely advise women on what guns to buy, Mickalis said, adding "I think they were specifically sent here to create a lawsuit."
Gee, you think maybe?

So we've got people doing things for Bloomberg that were quite possibly violations of law and that appear to have been falsely reported to say the shops were breaking the law. So besides the possible criminal violations, would falsely accusing some store owner/personnel of breaking the law be something they could take him to civil court for? As is 'sue the city of NY's collective ass off?'

If the bastard did this to me, I'd damn sure be talking to a lawyer about it.

My world

"Where are the oven mitts?"

"Oh yeah, under those two bayonets"

"Lines I'd like to hear"

Over at LawDog, including:
"Oh, my God, Mr. President, the Alien Overlords crashed a family reunion somewhere in Southwest Louisiana. Early reports indicate that the Conquerers of 10,000 Worlds made, and I quote: 'A damn fine jambalaya.' Unquote."

"Okay, so the house told us to GET OUT. Set off the napalm, darling."

"Instead of sneaking around a vampire infested house after dark, why don't we blow the place with dynamite at noon?"

And I'd like to add, "I am the great vampire- what is this 'magnesium' you speak of?"

Ref the current idiocy in NO

Specifically the reelection of that incompetent guilty-of-manslaughter-through-negligence Nagin, I now officially say Screw New Orleans. Not in a good way.

Let's see, they bus people back to NO to vote, even though many of them had said they weren't moving back, etc., etc., from what I've heard LA politics in action. Pull the plug and drain that swamp.

Better yet, let it go BACK to swamp. A nice, productive, good-for-the-wildlife swamp with gators and water moccasins and so forth breeding again. And since those idiot levees- you know, the vitally-important ones they're building/repairing with ground up houses?- won't be needed anymore, some part of the Mississippi can go back to dumping silt where it belongs and building the Delta up.

About the ground-up houses: a while back I read a book called 'Rising Tide' by John Barry, about the monstrous floods along the Mississippi in 1927. There was a section talking about how levees were designed and built, and they were very careful to keep any wood- limbs, lumber scraps, whatever- out of the construction. They knew the stuff would rot and leave a weak spot in the levee, so fill brought in was inspected, including as it was added to the levee, to spot and remove anything of the type. And now these idiots are using ground-up houses, wood and sheetrock and metals(including all kinds of toxic-to-the-environment stuff) to build levees. I repeat, screw NO, let it go back to a nice, hunting & fishing-friendly swamp.

Also, for a different look at FEMA and their response, check out these comments at the LawDog, specifically the one from Thunder. I admit, I always expect things to get screwed up when some government agency is involved, but the some of the crap I heard about FEMA didn't make a whole lot of sense. Unless, of course, people wanted someone to blame(in particular, someone connected somehow with Bush). As I commented about Day Quayle, if you've got that many people looking for any/everything you do that can be used against you, Einstein will end up looking like an idiot and Mother Teresa like a runaway Nazi camp guard.

Enough of this crap. I had a nice day with my daughter, and I refuse to let a bunch of idiots in NO mess it up.

Drop part,

listen hard, grab flashlight, find part...damn, I need to dust under there.

Doesn't matter how old your kids are,

they can go through .22's like a beaver through soft wood.

I took 400 rounds along today, and my daughter went through most of it. She'd have gone through all of it if a: her hands hadn't tired out and b: I hadn't left the red-dot on the Trailside turned on and run the !**^%#! battery down. In the past, with daughter and son both along, we've gone through more than a brick along with some other stuff.

Speaking of which, I need to stick the spare in and get some replacements. Assuming I can find the spare.

It had been a while since she'd gone out to put some wear on her rifle, took her a bit to get the hang of it back. Pistol she's fired much more recently, started off pretty good there. So I need to get another brick for next time.

Ever hear some idiot newsreader tell-with Great Concern and Emphasis- how some guy must have had something bad in mind because he had an 'arsenal' of three guns and 'at least' 300 rounds of ammo? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I don't think I've got LESS THAN 4 or 500 for any firearm I own. I know I've got at least 2000 rounds of .22, because a: it comes in bricks(there's a name for a new blog, hmmmm) and b: you can go through so much of it. I just number the bricks and use them up in order.

Friend of mine was in Britain about two years ago, about the time some poor bastards were busted by the police with the aforementioned 'arsenal'. They hadn't done anything, but in New Socialist Nanny-State Britain it was assumed that there was no good reason- in the opinion of the assholes in charge- for anyone to have such a HUGE supply of arms & ammo. He said something about how stupid that was and the folks he was with asked- he having mentioned having a couple of Enfields- how much ammo he had? When they heard "About 400 rounds of .303" they were shocked; whatever would you do with such a stockpile? Apparently 'shoot it at the range and then get some more' just didn't make sense to them. Let's see, last big gunshow I got a case of 800-something rounds to feed the Mosin sniper and the M38, and a 440-round can of 8mm and the last 500-round pack of 9x18mm the dealer had. They'd have had kittens if they'd heard something like that.

Let's see, today I fired about 30 rounds of 7.5 Swiss, about the same of 8mm, about 40 of 7.62x54r, and a box of .380. Daughter went through most of 400 rounds of .22's(taking her time; nice, slow day at the range). Gee, I guess that makes us some of those 'People Who Should Be Watched' according to the bedwetters. Who can kiss my ass.

Let's see, a brick of .22... need to get some .284 brass and 7.5 dies... batteries, of course(find out where has best price)... Things to see, people to do, but at least the guns are already cleaned.

Gun show!

This weekend. Going Saturday. Two neighbors want me to try to sell something for them. One's a Dutch Mannlicher carbine, the other's a H&R .22 revolver. The Mannlicher is mechanically great, but the bore's pretty rough. It may be like the Mauser Kim cleaned up, but I don't have the time to soak the bore. So I scrubbed it out as best I could for now. If nobody offers enough to satisfy the neighbor, I'll do that next week.

The H&R is beautiful. 7.5" barrel, .22lr and magnum cylinders, in the original box. I'm halfway tempted to see if I have enough free and buy it myself.

It turned hot here very quickly. As in from highs in the 70's to highs in the 90's in about three days. So I stuck the window unit in the bedroom for sleeping comfort. The house has central(first house I've ever had that did) and I love it, but when I can just use open windows and a fan I do; lots of times I'm in & out to the garage or yard enough it's easier on me. Thus the window unit for sleeping.

Night, all.

To return for now to firearms,

a few days ago had a chance to go to the range for a little while, and tried the Trailside/red-dot combo in daylight.

This sight has 11 brightness settings. 11 gave a nice dot easily visible on a partly cloudy day. I'd wondered about that, because the sight on the borrowed .22 I wrote about was fairly dim turned all the way up.

I had some clay pigeons and one of my scope targets set up at 50 yards, and this made it easy to hit both if I did my part. The dot covered the 2" square on the paper completely, so just centered the dot on the paper. It covered the center 2-3" of the clays, making it easy to hit them. Seemed that with this gun/ammo/sight combo it's dead on at both 20 yards and 50.

I'm really liking this setup. I'm going to try to take my daughter out shooting this weekend, I'll see how she likes it.

Speaking of the Trailside, it came with their oversized pakkawood 'target' grips. Very nice, but the plastic on the basic version actually fit my hand better. I've done a bit of rasping and sanding on these, and they're much better now. More comfortable, and easier to hold on target.

Now to try a red-dot out on a rifle...

The 'free and universal' health care in Britain

apparently doesn't apply if you're offensive. Was over at Random Nuclear Strikes and found a link to this article:
"IT IS BAD enough that you can be refused medical treatment on the NHS for eating, drinking or smoking too much. Now it seems that you can be denied an operation for protesting too much in support of your religious or political beliefs.

Edward Atkinson, a 75-year-old anti-abortion activist, was jailed recently for 28 days for sending photographs of aborted foetuses to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, Norfolk. That draconian sentence was not deemed punishment enough: the hospital has banned Mr Atkinson from receiving the hip replacement operation he was expecting."

No physical attack, no threats to blow up the place or shave some Noble Physicians' moustache without permission. Be offensive and go to jail AND be denied medical treatment.

This tells us that 1: British hospitals are staffed with a bunch of wusses with tender feelings, 2. Universal Health Care gives the government even more control over your health than you thought, 3: socialized medicine sucks.

Those are the basics, add more as they occur to you.

More on women

My experience with them, at least. The piece I posted a couple of days ago was written under the influence of booze and a certain amount of pissed-off, and I think it needs expanding on. No, I don't disavow a word of it; just expanding.

I don't hold #2 solely responsible for the mess; the way I put it to a friend was "I made one big mistake, I married her", which pretty much covers it. We went together for a little over two years before we married, and the warning signs were there, which is where my big mistake came in. She lied about having worked it out about #1 wife, and I let- or made- myself believe it.

Ever wanted something to work so bad that you didn't listen to that little voice in the back of your head? Not the one telling you to stay home and clean the guns, the other one. Said voice said to me the day before the wedding(and a time or two before) "This is not the best idea you ever had, and you shouldn't oughta do it", and I told it to shut up and ignored it. I really, really cared for her; I wanted her to have worked her jealousy out, I wanted it to work so bad I let her lie to me about it, I wanted it so badly I ignored my own knowledge of where this was liable to go. I never said I was all that smart.

And I ignored hints she'd thrown out before about my smithing and hunting. Mind you, being female she probably thought she was making blunt statements where all I heard was some vague mentions of the possibility of a problem somewhere down the line. This is where the 'do ALL women do this crap?' came in. I know all women don't; I've known of too many cases of it to think it's rare. In comments was brought up the saying "Men marry women hoping they never change; women marry men hoping they will", though in some cases it seems to be "planning" they will.

This whole mess led to me giving the kids a lecture that boils down to Don't expect someone to change from what they are. Barring something on the order of a religeous experience, it won't happen, and hoping it will is a path to big troubles.

Hell with it. I don't hold a grudge against Beth(#2), though occasionally a spark of pissed-off still flares up; I hope she's well. I just wish I had listened to the voice.

While back I ran across a site by a guy named John Ross, which has some real interesting columns. Some of which I wish I'd been able to read back when I was younger and single, the ones dealing with women, dating and marriage. I think he's got a lot of truth in them, which brings up a big problem for me so far as dating goes: I ain't gonna do it. Play the games.

Speaking of games, a while back there was a lady I dated who stopped answering the phone. I figured it was a case of not having the integrity or manners to say "I've changed my mind, I don't want to go out with you again". About three months after that a friend ran into a friend of the lady and asked what the hell happened; she said she didn't know, that the lady had been through a messy divorce and wasn't real stable(my word, can't remember exactly what he reported) about dating. Then about three months after that he ran into both of them, and the lady told him she'd lost her phone and didn't have my number anywhere else, and would he ask me to call her?

This was in town- he was here for a small fair and crashing at my house- so he decided to help things along and got the four of us together for a drink after the fair Saturday. It took her about half an hour to mention something along the lines of "I didn't want you to think I just stopped answering you", but really nothing beyond that. And implied she wouldn't mind me calling again. By the time it was over I was pretty sure this was a game; she didn't want to be the Bad Guy in this and it was her way of showing how really Caring and Nice she was.

Mind you, I'd liked her, and I almost called her four times. Twice I had picked up the phone and then put it down. If she'd actually given a crap about going out again she'd have been happier to see me, and would have said "Call me". Or so I think. In any case, it boils down to one reason I'm not doing too well on the dating front; I'm not going to play the damn games. Ross mentions a number of things to do to keep a woman off balance and interested, and looking back I can see how they'd work quite well. But I'm not going to do them. If I have to play games constantly to keep a woman interested, if I have to keep her off-balance to get her to go out again, Ain't Gonna Happen. All of which makes me wonder, how many women out there are demanding guys play these games, and spending nights alone because only the guys who care about screwing her and nothing else will play them? And bitching about how there are no good guys out there?

Yeah, I DO have a jaundiced view of this. Please prove me wrong.

Taking the bad taste of 'Sen. McCain' out of my mouth,

I can look out at the garden. The tomatos have blossoms, as do the sweet peppers and squash; and there's one pepper about three inches long and several little squash. The roma tomatos aren't big enough yet, having been planted just two weeks ago, and the bell peppers just developed some buds. The habanero is about six inches tall, as I recall it won't really take off until it gets hotter. I need to plant a few more cloves of garlic to fill in the holes where some didn't come up.

I thought about expanding the garden a bit this year, but considering how little time I have to work on it decided not to. Ever bit into a tomato or pepper right off the plant? Beats hell out of hothouse stuff.

Last year I lost a lot of tomatos to birds, and some peppers to both squirrels and my idiot younger dog. I think I'll cut some poles and put netting over the tomatos; the birds did more damage to the them, and aside from fence and a .22 I can't do that much about the squirrels, the dog luckily seems to have learned that grazing in the garden gets her yelled at.

Ref John McCain(Jackass/AZ)

Kevin has his opinion up, and I second it. He includes part of the oath McCain has taken more than once:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God."

This from the idiot who recently said "I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government." So if we didn't know before, we damn well know now what his word is worth.

I said it before: this man is as bad or worse than Al Gore in thinking that he deserves the Oval Office as his home address, that it's owed to him; and anyone with a mindset like that can be allowed nowhere near it. And I repeat, Arizona, get that recall petition started back up.

Flint

One of the things I make is flint & steel firekits. Whole kit is a steel striker, a good flake of flint, some charcloth to catch the spark and a tin to keep it in. No problem to make except for the flint. Which you don't make, you find. And you need good enough quality flint that it'll strike a spark from the steel without breaking.

Lots of places to find flint(depending on where you are), and you can order the stuff. Dixie Gun Works carries both a bag of good flakes and flint nodules so you can try your hand at knapping. But I'd always wanted to go out and find some nodules and knock off my own flakes. No luck so far.

Then at Medieval Fair a gentleman came by to get a couple of strikers; said he'd lost the ones he got last year. Talked for a bit and found that he's an archeologist(retired) who knaps flint as a hobby and as a teacher for students at OU. When I mentioned I was about out of flint he said he had some pieces I could have.

So the other day finally got time to go by his place and get some. And he threw in a short lesson on flint knapping, and a short lecture on where in the state I could find some if I had a chance to go looking for it.

I'd bought a nodule from Dixie once before and tried knocking off flakes with, let us say, not the best of results. With a good hammerstone and his demonstration, earlier today I took one of the chunks and knocked off a number of good, usable flakes(as opposed to my earlier success in turning a flint nodule into sharp-edged gravel).

I get time I want to mess with this some more; try making some knives and arrowheads. Good flint or obsidian is brittle, but a flake can be unbelievably sharp. We're talking 'feel a tug and notice blood' sharp. Matter of fact, I've read that eye surgeons are using scalpel blades cut and polished from obsidian; the edge is smoother and sharper than steel, it can actually cut cells without tearing the edge is so fine.

He bet me a striker that within three months I'd want more flint to work on, said it's addictive. I need to make him a couple.

Carnival of Cordite #59

At Gullyborg. Actually up the other day, but being the organized sort I am, I'm just getting this up now.