Category Archives: Gun Fun

More on single action v double action

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This is in response to Uncle‘s response to this article.

First, we don’t need the new term “TDA” (Traditional Double Action). That’s the same as DA, which we’ve been using for a long time, as opposed to DAO. So we now have DA, DAO, and TDA. See the problem– So what does DA mean anymore? Do we now have to go back and revise all the old texts, adding the “T” in front of “DA”?

Anyway; I’ve never really understood the debate. If you have a DA and want to operate it as a SA, to avoid the “transition” then nothing is stopping you. Load it, put it on safe, and holster it cocked and locked, or ease the hammer down and then cock it before you shoot, just like your trusty, rusty old 1911. You need never encounter a DA pull unless you want to.

And for some reason this subject only comes up in a discussion of auto pistols. With revolvers, I don’t hear anyone complaining about all the double actions out there (and they’re always carried hammer down and have no safety switch). Does the “transition” no longer matter after you’ve thumbed the hammer back as opposed to having it cocked automatically? And you want to talk about light trigger pulls– you won’t find a lighter SA trigger than the one on a good factory-stock DA revolver.

I’ve never understood why SA v DA is this huge f’ng issue when we’re talking pistols, but it never comes up with regard to long guns. The most popular sporting and defense rifle in America is SA, with no de-cock, and no one blinks or ever thinks to consider thinking about it. Same with the Mini-14, 30 Carbine, M-14, M1 Garand, AK, et al, ad infinitum– The hammer’s out of sight, so it’s out of mind, just like the Ruger Mark II/III which we also never discuss as being a SA with no de-cock.

So REALLY this is more of a public perception issue than anything else— If you can SEE the hammer AND it’s on an auto, we’ll argue about it, but if not, “derp”. I guess that’s why Daewoo came up with their goofy action such as on the DP51– It’s cocked and locked, just like your AR-15, but it LOOKS like the hammer’s down. The old Lever action rifles are of course single action, with no de-cock and no safety per se. It’s also a training issue, so make sure you practice with what you have.

One of the coolest designs I’ve owned was the Beretta TomCat. It’s DA and has a de-cocker, but with its tip-up barrel you can load or unload it without cocking the hammer, so I always carried it like a revolver (hammer down, off safe) and to un-load it you just tip the barrel up and drop the cartridge out. The little 32 ACP scared me though, so I traded it away.

At one time I thought it would be cool to have a DA AK or AR. You wouldn’t operate it or carry it any different from the SA versions, but the only difference would be that it would give you a second strike capability. Then I realized that cartridges that actually do fire on a second strike are a sub set of those that fail to fire on the first, and so in many cases you’d be wasting time on the second, or third, or fourth strike compared to chambering a fresh round. On several occasions I’ve hit primers so many times that they were mashed WAY into the primer pocket, or rotated rimfire rounds to hit another part of the rim, and they never did fire.

Quote of the day—Leslie

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You definitely have the most interesting hobby of anyone I have ever talked to.

Leslie
Dental hygienist
February 5, 2014
[She was referring to Boomershoot.

It started out with her asking if I was going to the Seahawks parade in downtown Seattle yesterday. “Involuntarily. I work in the building next to the parade route”, I responded, “I’m not participating. They are a football team, right? Do they use the round balls or the funny oblong ones?”

She then ask what my hobbies were since I don’t have an interest in football. “Guns and explosives.”, I replied. I expected her to speech center to freeze up and then get to work on cleaning my teeth but instead she wanted to know my favorite handgun. Okay. We are going to talk instead of getting my teeth cleaned. At least it is something I like to talk about. So I told her, “STI Eagle. I use it in competition.”

She is looking to buy a gun for carry. And another hygienist in the office is a firearms instructor. She thought Boomershoot sounded really cool and suggested she and her husband should come over to watch. I encouraged it and gave her links to Kathy Jackson’s blog, my blog, and Boomershoot.

And I did get my teeth cleaned.—Joe]

AR-15 lower from a 2×8

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We used to say that anyone who knows a little bit of metal shop can build a gun in their garage. Well, it’s easier than that. Here is the lower of an evil “assault weapon” made out of a pine 2×8.

SolidPineAR15Lower

Or maybe it isn’t evil if it is made out of wood and has a natural color finish instead of being black plastic. I never could figure out the rules for good versus evil guns.

Plywood gun

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Wood is easier to work with than metal. So why not make a homemade gun out of wood? Yes. It won’t last nearly as long and it will be susceptible to moisture if you don’t treat the wood correctly. But wood stocks have been used on guns for hundreds of years. People are making complete guns out of plastic. Why not make an AR-15 lower made out of wood?

I didn’t come up with idea and I haven’t tried it. But someone else is trying it:

Gun cartoon of the day

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H/T to Weer’d Beard for the email pointing me to the image here.

ComeAndTakeIt

First, there are a lot of people that want to take our guns. Haven’t they ever heard the phrase “assault weapon ban”? Or how about New York’s SAFE act?

Second, invoking Markley’s Law is an automatic fail in the “discussion”.

Third, advocating for background checks to exercise a specific enumerated right is crazy talk.

Cut lead bar verses round ball

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I’d not heard of cut lead bar being used in lieu of ball. The use of “findings” in a fowling piece or a blunderbuss, sure, but not this. Interesting.

If you can melt lead or a similar metal or alloy (and who can’t?) and pour it into a slot between some boards, you have buckshot for your scattergun, or bullets for your “smooth rifle”.

I wouldn’t try it on the line at Boomershoot though. Well OK I might, but I wouldn’t expect any detonations, much less hits, from 400 yards.

New Product

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It’s the UltiMAK model M15 optic mount for the Yugo/Serbian M92 (A.K.A. PAP) AK pistol.

There have been a lot of requests for this. The first batch went into anodizing today and should be shipping by next week.

As always; yes it’s slightly shorter than the original piston tube. Yes, it’s supposed to be that way. No, that won’t have any effect on carrier cycling whatsoever. Yes, it’s the very best place for a dot sight on your AK. It’s also the right place to mount a pistol scope. No, it doesn’t need to be removed for cleaning.

I won’t get into the issue of the utility of an AK pistol. Several of the guns I own don’t have much real utility in the strict, modern sense (the reproduction 1861 Colt Navy percussion revolver comes to mind). Then again, some people are SBRing the AK pistols, providing a sub-gun-sized, shouldered shooter with a lot more power (and muzzle blast) than a 9 mm or a 45, plus ammo and magazine compatibility with a regular AK carbine.

1939 LA County sheriff’s revolver club

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From an e-mail.

The PC police would of course disapprove of the cigarettes and cigar. OK they’d disapprove of everything.

Also they handle lead with their bare hands at the range, shoot stuff out of other people’s mouths and ears which our litigious society now largely prevents, and they still for some reason thought the human heart was all in the left side of the chest. It appears that the price of their cast lead bullet reloads was a penny per round (presumably with the deposit of your spent brass).

They had someone else to clean your gun for you. That I do not approve– It’s not only elitist, but dumb from the standpoint of being able to understand and monitor the condition your own hardware. You should clean your own gun as an integral part of the craft.

They did have rotary, progressive loading machines.

I understand the desire for efficiency at a range, and of having some kind of standards for evaluating the skills of your deputies, but the highly controlled (and therefore highly limited) nature of the training/practice experience at such a range leaves me somewhat cold. I suppose it makes me something of an outlier, but I think you should to get out and simply “play” at it now and then, making up your own scenarios, picking non-standard targets at un-measured distances and so on. I’ll call this “messin’ around shooting”.

I once had a retired LA cop (which means he should very well know better from more than a little personal experience) tell me that his 45 ACP could “shoot through an engine block”. When I got back into shooting after being a hippie for a while, one of the first things I did, of course, was to try various calibers on an old chainsaw at a friend’s house. A 9 mm Para would break the aluminum fins off the cylinder, a 10 mm would strip the fins down clean, and a 7.62 x 39 would punch through the light aluminum and severely dent or tear the steel parts. There’s no way your 45 is going to “shoot through an engine block”. The messin’ around shooter already knows this from direct experience.

So while the gelatin testers, the organized range shooters and the gun magazine readers are talking about the performance of this or that bullet or load, the hunter who does his own butchering, and the messin’ around shooter, are often scratching their heads laughing at them.

I know people who are far more concerned about keeping the grass at the range looking nice than having year-round access for shooters, and they hate people like me. If it’s your own private club and your dime, fine.

Man; I got a little distracted there, huh?

Tim and Susan Have Matching Handguns

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Last week I received an email:

Hey Joe,

I realize you probably get a lot of emails, but this one may be unlike what you’re accustomed to. Bear with me and I’ll give you a little background so you can understand why I’m writing.  I work for a Texas-based company that makes rugged leather gear. We started doing product videos on our website about 3 years ago and it morphed into some pretty cool projects. One of those projects was short profiles on our employees. The first one was about a husband and wife who work here and their desire to have matching guns, so in case there were ever a crisis they could swap magazines.  (Smith&Wesson M&P9s) 

Well, it was submitted to Sundance Film Festival and out of the 8,100 short films, it was selected to be one of the 60 entrants. Then YouTube has told us they selected it to be one of the 10 in the running for their special YouTube award. (Crazy, isn’t it?!) Now we want to put the idea of husband/wife gun ownership in front of as many eyes as possible and thought that reaching out to influencers like yourself may be a good approach.

Please let me know if you’re interested. I’d be happy to show you a sneak peek. 

Thanks!

–

Sarah Farver

I thought it was a decent video so I agreed to post it. The “sneak peek” time is over and it is public now:

A kids gun

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Barb spent soon time in Idaho with me this week. Dad wanted her to see how much better the room in basement was since she was there the last time. After Dad showed off the improvements I saw something in the gun cabinet I wanted to show her.

WP_20131227_002

It was the old Winchester 32-20 that had hung on the wall of my bedroom for many years as I grew up. It had belonged to my grandfather and my Great Uncle Walt (Grandpa Huffman’s brother) had shot his first coyote with it when he was 10 years old.

Under some of the more repressive laws in this country it is banned as being an assault rifle because it has a capacity of greater 10 rounds. But as it was originally used it was a great gun for kids because of it’s light weight, relatively low cost to shoot, and light recoil.

Fair weather defense

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Last time I went out shooting it was a beautiful, sunny day. Granted, it was nine degrees Fahrenheit and very windy, and my fingers were going numb to the point where I could barely load my guns, but hey; sunshine and beauty.

There’s a lot of discussion about shooting in adverse conditions under stress, and then there’s also a lot of talk that goes along the lines of, “Hey I got this fabulous new gun, but I’ll have to wait ’till Spring before I can try it out.”

For seven months of the year, there is a real possibility of snow on the ground here, and more so as you get higher in elevation. Maybe your practice should be around 7/12 cold weather practice in places like this then. You may find that your gun(s), which functioned well at 70 degrees, will start behaving in strange ways at zero and below.

Remember Washington’s crossing of that icy river on that snowy night to attack the Hessians at Trenton? Yeah. That kicked ass.

Do you know what it’s like policing your brass in three feet of snow on snowshoes while carrying all your gear on your person? Have you dropped a warm magazine in the snow when it’s zero degrees out? Yeah; it’s out of operation ’till you can warm it up and get the ice out of it. How does that slick new pistol hold work out when you’re wearing a heavy coat and standing on uneven ground on ice? What does your super bright flashlight do for you in a blizzard? What happens to the effectiveness of different types of batteries when they get very cold? Should you attempt to shoot while wearing gloves, or no? What do you do when snow falls out of a tree onto the exposed action of your rifle? What happens to the effectiveness of your optics at 10 degrees when you happen to breathe onto the ocular lens? Can you even turn the zoom control on your scope?

Next time it’s snowing, windy, very cold and dark, maybe consider it an opportunity for some good shooting practice. If you enjoy the warmth and comfort of home on a stormy winter’s night, just think of how much more you’ll enjoy it after some good shooting practice.

Ammo for 3-D printed guns

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The plastic guns being made have been tested with conventional ammo intended to be fired in conventional guns. Why not load up some low pressure rounds specifically intended to work with the plastic guns?

Even if the bullets had muzzle velocities half that of conventional guns you aren’t going to get volunteers to be bullet backstops. Choose a common cartridge which already has a fairly low pressure then tweak the bullet weight and powder charge to get something that the plastic is much more capable of handling.

Here is a list of max pressure recommendations in PSI for various cartridges with the obvious high pressure cartridges removed:

380 Auto 21,500
25 Auto 25,000
32 S&W Long 15,000
38 Auto 26,500
38 S&W 14,500
38 Special 17,000
44 S&W Spl 15,500
45 Auto 21,000
45 Colt 14,000