Friday's follies

So this morning, I'm on the way out to the range for (yet another) test-firing of a problem AR-15 that has been vexing me, and as I'm walking out of my coffee shop, I see a guy with his wife walking in and I notice that we're both wearing basically the same shirt. Mine is a red sweatshirt while his was gray, and both had the same nifty logo on them, this Uzi does it" logo, as shown here. I got mine as a gift from Aaron over at The Shekel, and I like to wear it out to the range.

Now had we been chicks, this would have been a pretty awkward fashion faux pas. But us being guys, we congratulated each other on our respective sweatshirts and started talking guns. His name of Paul, and while Paul doesn't have an Uzi, he likes them. Me having one, I did what any decent American gun guy would do--I gave him my number and invited him to call me when he's free and we'll go out and shoot mine. We're gun guys, and that's how we roll.

Eventually, his wife pried him away (some chicks get awfully jealous when guys talk guns and tune them out) and I resumed my trip to the range. I wasn't holding out too much hope for today since I'd already had this rifle out here four times, each time with different parts swapped out in unsuccessful attempts to get it to work right, but this time it fired flawlessly and put 120 rounds downrange without a single hiccup. The apparent culprit: a recoil spring installed in the buffer tube by Rock River Arms which was a trifle longer than any other CAR-style spring in my parts bin. I'd been having no end of troubles with the bolt hanging up on the magazine, and I'd been attributing it to insufficient gas flow back to the carrier but when I replaced the spring with one of the others, the rifle fired fine. Apparently the over-length spring had been retarding the carrier and preventing the action from cycling properly. Thanks, Rock River!This AR has been a project rifle of mine for a while. I'd purchased the lower receiver assembly a couple of years ago, and it had just been sitting in my safe unfinished until the election and the rise of Barack O'Gun Grabber. When that happened, I bought an upper receiver and mated it to a spare 14.5" heavy barrel with an AK-74-stle brake that I had lying around and mounted the Pentagon light to the fore-end. Eventually it'll have an Aimpoint ML2 holographic sight, but that's going to have to wait until I get a bit more money. Right now, it's fine with the ARMS back-up iron sight. And now that it's working, it can go back in the safe and I can concentrate on other projects, like the Model 1888 Mauser that I wrote about a few weeks back.

It's been cleaned up, and the new bolt arrived today. The BEFORE pictures show what I started with. Well in took many hours of cleaning with oil and steel wool to get the crud off of it, and considerable gentle finessing to get most of the screws and fittings loose--and I'm nowhere near done yet--but it's at least presentable and functional now. The new bolt has a bunch of Turkish crescent stamps all over it but it's otherwise fantastic.It slid right into place and the action seems to work. Next range trip, this one's coming out. But in the meantime, here are the latest pics.










As far as I can tell, the action functions and it'll chamber an 8mm cartridge. I guess we'll see if it still shoots the next time out. It's times like this that I wish I could find an illegal alien day laborer to take the first shot with it, just in case it does blow up. But absent any of them, maybe I can find a bench-rest shooter at the range and offer him the first shot. At least then if it blows up, we're only out a bench-rest shooter and that's not such a bad thing either.

We're back

Sorry for the absence. Lagniappe and I went visiting for Christmas. Went to see family and to visit Aaron of The Shekel and his family. Those of you who follow that blog may note that he's been off-line for a bit too. Well that's because he poked himself in the eye with a stick or some similar object to get out of a trial. (Personally I would have just called in sick, but he's the kind of guy that has to actually BE sick or injured before he'll call off, apparently even to the point of maiming himself.) But he's finally back on-line and with a somewhat plausible explanation.

Anyway, Lagniappe had a ball playing in the deep snow with my nephew, The Spud. Spud's nine years old, and he erred grievously by challenging Lagniappe and I to a snowball fight on the first day. Needless to say, it was a colder, wetter Spud who finally went back in the house. But that was after much frolic in the snow. Lagniappe hasn't seen snow in a while and he was in his glory in over a foot of the stuff. Spud wanted to make a snowman, but every time that he started to roll a snowball on the ground, Lagniappe grab the snowball and run off with it. I eventually got him to stop that, but then he started pulling the gloves off of Spud's hands and running off with those. Of course he wanted Spud to chase him, but Spud's not one for running or chasing, preferring instead to simply whine and complain, so I had to deal with that too. But finally Spud (with a bit of my help) managed to build a nice tall snowman...which he enjoyed for about thirty seconds before Lagniappe ran up and jumped on it and knocked it over. I was waiting for the crying to begin, but for some reason, Spud thought that that was funny. Who can understand kids and/or dogs?

But Karma came back on Lagniappe later when Aaron and his family came over to where I was staying. Do you know what goes "Clunk!" and "YELP!" at the same time? Well if not, you've obviously never heard a German Shepherd's head getting slammed in a car door. And I hadn't either until Aaron's wife--who shall remain nameless--accidentally pulled that one off as an inquisitive Lagniappe was looking into their car as she was unpacking it.
Lagniappe still managed to have a great Christmas (after his CAT scan) though. He got quite a few new toys. He has always loved Christmas and thoroughly enjoys unwrapping his own presents. (And you need to wrap him a few and let him do this or he will jump in and help others unwrap theirs whether his help is desired or not.)
He got lots of doggie loot, and as he always does, he piled it all up in one treasure trove and zealously guarded them all. Here he is with some of his toys. (He got more later, and the stack grew.) All of his toys must remain in the pile. If you picked one up, he would come to you, take it back, and deposit it back on the pile. If he decided to go lay somewhere else, he would move all of the toys one by one to the new location. I suspect that this quirk of his goes back to his early days in a common kennel with other dogs as he's always been very quick to guard his possessions and even snacks given to him have to be taken somewhere else to be eaten in private. But hey--whatever floats his boat. It's Christmas--a time for humans to reflect on Jesus' sacrifice and for little kids and dogs to enjoy presents. SANTA!!!

Back I am

Sorry for the prolonged absence. Lagniappe and I took a well-deserved vacation.

We went up to Michigan for a while to visit family and Aaron, creator of The Shekel blog. He also blogged about this week-end--before I could--and he used several of the pictures that I'd planned to use. Ah well.



We went out to the local gravel pit and I unlimbered the 1919A4.
The target of choice today was my old dehumidifier, which had quit working--but not running or using electricity--a few months ago. It was placed on the hillside and reduced to scrap metal and plastic in fine form, as can be seen on this video:

Note the proper use of short bursts initially, just like the military field manuals proscribe. Long bursts are fun, but barrels are expensive to replace, so why burn them out prematurely? As it was, the video shows how quickly that 120 rounds can go even when you're making a halfhearted effort to shoot slowly. What can I say? It's fun!

I also had the chance to try out an old Enfield #5 Jungle Carbine for the first time. These rifles came about through an attempt by the British to make a lighter rifle for their troops in Malaysia and other colonial territories. They were made for about three years, from 1944 through 1947, until production ceased in favor of newer designs. They were never really popular with the troops despite the light weight because the recoil was rather stout with military loads and the rifle's zero tended to wander when it got hot, possibly due to some of the lightening cuts that were made.And this one is light. Surprisingly light. I think I've hefted heavier toy rifles.

I managed to pick this one up for a song, probably because some bubba had chromed the buttplate, trigger guard and forward band. Eventually I'll restore it with the correct parts and replace a seriously weak magazine spring and it'll be worth twice what I gave for it. In the meantime, it's a fun shooter and a great addition to my historic collection. I suspect that it also needs a longer bolt head eventually due to a string of incipient case-head separations that I observed when the handloads I was testing got close to max pressure, but it handles just fine with lighter loads and it kicks a lot less.

We got a lot of shooting in before it was over. Aaron had his Uzi submachine gun out as well. I also had an older AR15A1 that I'm rather fond of, and Aaron had a newer AR15 M-4 clone with an Israeli Meprolight sight that turned out to be an incredible addition to the platform. Think EOTech Holosight only without a need for batteries and with a finer dot easier to use at longer ranges. Seriously impressive. I got some practice in with my 1911A1 and old reliable Ruger 10/22 as well. No matter how many new or exotic guns I manage to lay my hands on, none have yet diminished the enjoyment that I get from that old .22

Shooting

Well it wouldn't be a trip without some shooting, so on Sunday, I hooked up with Aaron of The Shekel blog and after doing a bit of gunsmithing and installing Lone Wolf trigger bars on his Glocks, we went out to the usual gravel pit for some serious guy time. This time we thought we'd have the place to ourselves as it was deserted, but within seconds of our arrival, another car pulled up and some dorks got out and immediately began "bump-firing" some AK and SKS rifles. Now lest ye think that I'm being a tad judgemental, I've always held that anyone who shoots like this has just self-labeled themself as a loser. You see, "bump-firing" is where a twit takes a loaded gun and holds it in such a way that with the first shot, the gun's recoil rocks it in his arms and trips the trigger over and over, basically mimicking machinegun fire, but without the ability to actually aim it. You see, the gun has to be help loose and allowed to shake and flop around and you cannot do this with the gun mounted you your shoulder so both a firm grip and use of the sights is ruled out. This of course means that the fool doing it has no real control over where the bullets go and I personally consider it not only stupid but dangerous and I think that people who do it should face charges and loose their guns. And frankly, it's bubbas like that that cause much of the image problems for decent gun owners.

Now Aaron and I were out there with machine guns ourselves, but ours were real and kept under control. He had his Uzi and I had my 1919A4 MMG. Call me a snob, but as a real machine gun owner and shooter--one who practices safe and responsible gun handling, I don't want bump-firing clowns anywhere around me.

Aaron and I also shot my AR-15A2 HBAR, a rifle that I grabbed out of the safe almost as an afterthought while packing. It's been years since I fired it and I'd been contemplating selling it but after putting 50 rounds or so thought it, I remembered why I like AR-15's so much and it's back off the sale list.

We then got out pistols out--his Glock and a Sig P-6 that he'd just acquired, and my H&K P7M13, and we proceeded to engage the far targets out on the range, hitting things with them regularly that the other shooters could not hit with their rifles and a scoped shotgun. But then Aaron and I have practiced. In addition to regular and frequent practice, He's an NRA pistol instructor, I'm law enforcement, and we've both trained with Mas Ayoob. We like to shoot and we're not out there to waste bullets on misses because ammo's getting seriously expensive these days. But it's all about fun too, and in one of our more enjoyable games, we tossed a coffee can out on the ground and took turns hitting it and flipping it all over the range with our pistols as the dozen-odd other shooters watched, hopefully noting that neither of us ever missed it. It's good to be good, especially when there's an audience.

And it was cold and wet out there but real men shoot in the cold and wet so we didn't mind all that much. In fact, the only exasperating episode came when someone *cough* this guy *cough* dumped a box containing nearly a thousand 1919a4 links on the muddy, snowy ground while attempting to place it back in the vehicle. *sigh...*

Day #5. We shot!

This day we went shooting. It was me, Aaron (aka: Shekel-boy), my Old Man, Marty (a guy who my Old Man knows from work) and Scott, the blogger who owns the Providentia blog. We went out to a gravel pit near Lapeer and unlimbered the toys. We started out with the Uzi submachine guns. Both Aaron and I have one of these handy and reliable 9mm firearms. (Mine's cooler because it has a wooden stock on it in lieu of the plain old stamped metal folding one.) My Pops has shot mine once and Marty'd never shot one before, nor had the Owl. Here's the old guy with the Uzi, tearing up some targets downrange.

After some fun time with the Uzis, it was time for me to officially introduce Baby to the world. This was the most recent acquisition to the Lair's arsenal, one that required the sale of many lesser firearms to finance.

This gun, shown here with Lagniappe during his operator's training, is a Browning 1919A4 .30 caliber air-cooled heavy machine gun. Made for and used by the US military in World War Two and Korea, this was one of the guns that was eventually transferred to Israel, eventually returning here and re-sold without the right side plate as a "parts kit". It was rebuilt on a new side plate by the fine folks at Ohio Ordnance Works and I took possession of it a few months ago after getting a sweetheart deal on it from a cop buddy down in Florida. Set up to run in caliber .30-06, it can be switched over to fire both the 7.62x51 NATO round(.308) or the venerable 8mm cartridge in about 5 minutes. This was only the second time that I had it out, and it was definitely a hit with all the manly-men who were present.

Here's Marty shooting the 1919 on the left, and Scott on the right. Note Scott's happy grin and Marty's open cell phone as he calls people and has them listen to the gun firing.



Yeah, that Browning sure piles up the empty cartridges and the metallic links that it feeds from. It operates at a cyclic rate of 550 rounds per minute and even though we shot it much slower, it's barrel and jacket were still too hot to touch half an hour later. Instead of the quick-change barrels seen on many of it's contemporaries like the German MG34 and MG-42 and the M-60 that replaced it in US service, the 1919 relies on a barrel made up of almost 8lbs of steel. (I have whole rifles that weigh less.)

The gun itself weighs 28 lbs and with it's tripod it tips the scales at about 41 lbs without ammunition. But this gun has the power, and if you can see a target you can probably destroy it with this beauty. Here's my Pops burning up another belt of Taiwan military surplus .30-06 ammo. Get some! Get some!



Finally, here's the only shot I got of Aaron with his Uzi. WTF?! His eyes are closed! (Well that would explain his "marksmanship".) And on the right is my Pops with that million-dollar grin that a guy gets after doing guy stuff with other guys.




A good time was had by all!

Canadian crime wave brings risk of invasion

As much as Canada likes to put up the fiction that their country is crime free while ours is dangerous and full of criminals, I have to point to the recent victimization of my Shekel-owning pal's family in Windsor. Note that this crime took place just across the river from Detroit, a city in which he and his family have never been victimized, despite spending far more time there than they ever have in Windsor.
And I'd like to warn the Canadians in and around Ontario particularly that my friend and I did discuss actually invading Canada and seizing Windsor until reparations were made in this case. You see, we're both lawyers and we have machine guns. That means that we're probably smarter and better armed than most Canadians. People in Canada can't have guns except in rare cases (The relatively few truly smart Canadians mostly live in Northwest Territories where they are still armed and as far from socialist Ontario and Montreal as they can get)and therefore there's really nothing that you could do to stop us. In fact, the only reason that he and I have not driven over there and seized Windsor is that, frankly, we just don't want it. But be assured that if we ever decide that we do, we're coming for it and there's precious little that you guys can do to stop us, especially if Dudley Do-Right and the Toronto Maple Leafs are busy that week-end.

So clean up your act, Canuks. Solve your crime wave quickly before we really grow annoyed. And if you know what's good for you, you'll get that camera equipment back here ASAP, preferably before we decide that we want Toronto.

Guy stuff (shooting)

Of course with Aaron of The Shekel here and me getting back on my feet, it follows that we'd spend a fair bit of time on the shooting range. We got out twice this past week for some pistol shooting. More would have been better as I've got other guns that we wanted to shoot but it was a prety full week so we had to settle for two sessions.




On Wednesday we went to the range for the first time. Here's Shekel Boy shooting my Model 1860 Navy Colt .36 revolver. It's a replica Civil War pistol, black powder of course, as evidenced by the smoke.









I chose to shoot a Beretta Model 96G .40 semi-auto pistol. This one was formerly owned by the Indiana State Police. It shot well and once I learn some solid new shooting stances that work with this new foot, I should be able to do great things with it.









Thursday we went back to the range again. Aaron shot my 9mm Browning Hi-Power and I shot my other Beretta--a Model 92F previously owned by the Washington State Patrol. Last time we had the pistol range to ourselves, but this time we had to share it with one of the bench-rest knuckleheads that so vex me. The guy had a Smith and Wesson 1911 that he wanted to sight in. No problem there. We invited him to join us as we shot from various distances but he insisted on propping his pistol up on a rest and a sandbag and shooting it from the 25-yard bench. He told us that he'd just put adjustable combat sights on it because he couldn't stand fixed sights. Then he proceeded to sit at the table and slowly bang away while tweaking his sights with an allen wrench until he could hit close to the center of his target. If he was serious about combat shooting, he'd have been down with us, shooting at 7 and 15 yards from the holster. I'm a firm believer in training the way that you're going to shoot in real life, and in real life the bad guys don't wait patiently 25 yards away for you to get your bench rest and sand bags out. And of course the guy spent $1100.00 on this custom pistol but I noticed that he was shooting the cheapest (and crappiest) ammuniton on the market. I guess that he's planning on using that crap as his defensive load because he was sighting the gun to it. Again, all ammunition shoots differently and real shooters know to zero their sights around the actual ammuntion that they plan to use in real life. Real shooters also run several hundred rounds of their chosen defensive ammo through their defensive sidearms as well, just to make sure that the gun will reliably feed and fire those rounds. Yes that can be expensive, but it's a better investment than adjustable "combat" sights, especially when pistol combat generally takes place between 7 and 15 yards and occurs suddenly, with no chance to whip out a little allen wrench and adjust them.

But while the "bench-rest combat shooter" was working on getting his gun to hit the center of his target from it's immobile rest, Aaron and I were realistically and rapidly placing all of our shots on paper plates, and that is more than sufficient for combat shooting, in my opinion. If you doubt me, compare the diameter of a paper plate to your own chest or head. I'llargue that two of three fast hits anywhere inside that circle are better than one hit in the center that takes a table, a chair, a special rest for the gun and fifteen seconds of sight alignment first. Real targets don't stand still for fifteen seconds.

I fired 115 rounds and put them all on the targets. Aaron did likewise. "Joe Bench-Rest" shot maybe twenty rounds then told us that he was all set and started packing up to leave. Given a choice between him and Aaron at my side when things really break bad, I want Aaron any day.

A fun side-note: Aaron flew so he had no guns with him. I loaned him one but his Civilian carry permit barred him from carrying it almost everywhere. My cop credentials still let me take mine everywhere though and I never tired of reminding him that I had a Glock and he did not. It's good to be da man.

What a week...Drinking, shooting, WALKING!!!

All right. Back again. I apologize for the lack of updates this week to both this site and The Shekel, but Aaron, creator of The Shekel was here visiting all week and neither of us managed any site updates. But I dropped him at Dulles International Airport a while ago and as I write this, he's on his way to Toronto where he's undoubtedly going to catch hell for missing the flight that he was supposed to have been on. That's my fault though. If I hadn't insisted that we bring those two strippers back here last night we'd have been able to get up on time to allow him to catch that flight.

Uh, if Aaron's lovely and understanding wife Natasha should actually read this, I'm kidding about those strippers. We did not bring them home. Uh... I mean we didn't even go see any, Tash. Honest. Two nice guys like us would never even consider such a thing.

What we did do, however, was knock out a lot of pre-winter projects that I had lined up here. We stripped and painted my last deck, did some heavy grocery shopping, and got lots of other things done that I quite frankly needed a bit of help with.

We also went to the gym every day to work out, (Hooray! I finally found someone younger than 60 who is in worse shape than me!) we shot a couple of times, we visited a few Civil War battlefields, and we drank lots of beer and watched a lot of violent movies, critiquing the weapons-handing, military tactics and any legal arguing in all of them. In other words, we just did the guy thing for a week. (Except for the strippers, Tash. Honest...)


But the best news of the week was that I actually started WALKING again without crutches! Serious Yay for me!!

Let's deal with the walking first.

I got the new foot last Friday, but it was very rigid and heavy, and my leg wasn't terribly keen on my putting my full weight on it. I had to continue to use my crutches with it, but I was still grateful because I could move a lot faster and easier than without it and it was another step on the long road back.

Saturday was no big deal--I used it to get to the airport to pick Aaron up. Sunday we went out for breakfast, and as I stood up to pay, I was struck with a massive lower leg cramp in that leg. (Just imagine the worst Charley Horse that you've ever had...) And since I could not just stretch the foot and make it go away, I had to just grit my teeth and ride it out. Two more hit me at church that morning, but I still insisted on going to the gym. There, as I worked through my exercise regimen, they started up again and grew so severe that I had to quit and remove the foot immediately. And Monday I couldn't even get the foot back on due to the swelling. But my prostetist suggested that this might be caused by muscle strain due to the foot pulling at the leg muscles while I'm seated and he recommended that when I sit down, I should try releasing the foot's locking mechanism to take the tension off. I began following that advise Tuesday and I haven't had any further problems with it.

But Wednesday... That was Walking Day! Neither my prostetist nor I expected me to be walking on this temporary foot, but as Aaron and I were leaving the gym Wednesday, I decided to show off for the physical therapists there by holding my crutches off the ground and taking a couple of unsupported steps. As I lurched forward and took a step, something just clicked and two steps became three, and it didn't hurt. Three steps became four, then five, and not wanting to stop, I kept moving forward in a straight line right on out the door for another thirty feet until I reached my Jeep, where the leg finally gave out. Damn! First time on two feet since August 3rd. No one was more surprised than me. Thanks, God!

Thursday was even better. We went to Gettysburg National Military Park and I tried some more walking. I hobbled around a bit, with a gait resembling that of Frankenstein's monster, but it was good. And then I saw the tower.



It was an observation tower intended to let people see the panorama of the battlefield, and I just knew that I had to climb it. I looked at that tower and knew that it was going to be a tough one, but I couldn't just drive on and not do it. Leaving my crutches behind, I headed for the stairs with aron close behind, telling me not to overdo it. Yeah, like I've ever listened before when anyone's given me that good advice...
Using both rails, I took it one step at a time. Up, up, up we went. Slowly and with great exertion as the new foot not only doesn't have any muscles to help, but it's heavy and has to be lifted by the other leg. That tower has 121 steps and I'm proud to report that I made it all the way to the top, dripping with sweat and puffing like a vintage steam train. And Damn, it felt good!

I did one more strenuous walk a bit later, walking up the fairly steep and uneven trail that led to the Little Round Top position. This gave me a chance to try walking on soft earth, grass and rocks as well as asphalt. I also learned that it's easier with this foot to walk UP hills than to walk down them. And I was pretty much spent after those two short walks. It's definitely going to be a long walk back to where I was before, but I overcame these challenges and there's nothing going to stop me from going the rest of the way.

Again, Thank you, God. With Your help, I'm going to make it back.