Glock40.
Grimjaw5
January 26, 2013
Suggestion for the serial number of the first hand grenade built and documented using the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
[It’s an inside joke for gun owners but it is so funny I had to share.—Joe]
@sebastiansnbq @antvq16 @tedcruz They certainly enhance a firearm’s lethality and accuracy, and allows shooters to fire from the hip.
CSGV (@CSGV)
Tweeted on January 30, 2013 in regard to the function of a pistol grip on a rifle.
[Spoken like a complete ignoramus. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence once again proves they don’t know what they are talking about.
—Joe]
Yesterday I received an email from a book author wanting to know what a homemade bomb used to assassinate someone would look like. She didn’t want to know the details of how to build it. She just wanted to know what it would look like so she could describe it well. She more than adequately distinguished herself from the usual bomb help losers so I agreed to help her.
Then as almost an aside she asked, since Boomershoot was about guns as well as explosives, if I could read over her long range shot scene and comment on it. After I read it, and finished laughing, I agreed to help with that too.
I totally rewrote it for her. Apparently she liked it because she responded with, “I really like the scene, have you ever thought of doing some story writing yourself?”
I included Barb L. on the Bcc line and she gushed (I suspect a bias), “Wow. Yours is really good. Ok, yet another thing you should do professionally, technical and writing consultant for ballistics and guns.”
So, here is the result of my writing exercise from last night. I did this instead of something productive like unpack some boxes, finish the cleanup from the mess of the blog conversion, or organize the contents of my multiple hard drives:
She rolled up a corner of the blanket to get a steady rest for her range finder at eye level when she laid down. As she prepared she let her mind ease into the “bubble” where everything else outside of her task at hand disappeared. It became just another very careful shot like a thousand others she had made into paper targets. The importance of this one being a live target was pushed from her mind. Her beating heart had to be calmed so that even the pulse present in her hands was diminished. At this range each pulse of blood in her limbs moved the gun enough to change the point of impact by several inches.
She moved slowly and calmly as she went through the almost ritual of making her first shot through the cold clean bore a direct hit. As she laid down she automatically pointed her feet with the toes to the sides so that both heels and toes would lie flat to the ground. Any wiggle would be transmitted to the gun and reduce the accuracy. She pointed the laser range finder at her target and she could see the jiggle from her pulse in reticle of the magnified optic of the instrument. She put a rock under the rolled up blanket and made the base steady enough to get a good reading. At this range bouncing the laser off of something just 10 yards further away could cause her to overcompensate for the drop and make the shot high by nearly 10 inches. Just an error of 5 yards would move the shot out of the vitals–the triangle formed by his nipples and the top of his sternum. After getting three readings in a row that agreed with each other she entered the data into her exterior ballistics app on her smart phone. It already had the altitude from the GPS and the weather conditions from the weather service. It still needed the incline, her rifle had an incline meter on it but with her new rangefinder she found herself using that instead. She punch in that number too. Her rifle was zeroed for 200 yards at standard sea level conditions. She had to adjust her point of aim to shoot 24.25 minutes of angle (MOA) higher. There were four clicks per MOA on her Leupold scope. That meant 97 clicks. She was glad she didn’t have to count them off individually. The target turrets were numbered with 15 minutes per complete revolution. She did the math in her head and cranked on the elevation she needed.
The windage was a tougher problem. The anemometer gave her the wind here but it did told her nothing about the 993 yards between her and her target. Being on a hill meant the majority of the bullet’s path would be high above the tall grass, bushes, and trees she would normally use for judging the wind speed. The trees at the far end of the bullet path would help some but that wind would only cause a slight deflection compared to the wind in the first half of its 1.4 second journey. What she needed was the wind 100 feet in the air 200 to 500 yards ahead of her. For that she needed to look through her scope. She put the gun in position with its short bipod extended. A small bean bag was put under the butt of the rifle.
She moved into position behind her rifle. Again she lay her entire body flat on the ground. She scooted the rifle forward an back to get the bipod on firm ground. She then shifted and squeezed the bean bag until the crosshairs found their place. “Find your natural point of aim!”, she heard her instructor of a decade ago bark at her. No muscle could be straining to make the shot. Everything had to be relaxed so the tremors would not be transmitted to the rifle. She adjusted her body position until she could close her eyes, relax, and open them again and the cross hairs would still be resting on the target the same as before she closed her eyes. She adjusted the focus back from infinity and watched the shimmering of the air against the out of focus straight vertical edge of the bench the target was sitting on. It was called mirage. You can see it with the naked eye on a hot summer day just above the surface of a road or other hot objects. If you know what to look for and you have the right optics you can see it in cold open air as well. The angle at which the mirage moved and wiggled was a good clue as to the wind at the range the scope was focused at. It was a little bit of science and a lot of art as she adjusted for the 2 MPH left to right wind here on top of the hill, 5 MPH out at 500 yards and judging from the bushes near the target and the ripples on the lake, a 3 MPH right to left wind at the target. She dialed in a correction of 1.75 MOA left.
She confirmed she still had her natural point of aim and the wind hadn’t changed. As she adjusted the focus on her scope back to the target she felt her awareness “bubble” tighten into a universe composed only of her scope reticle and the target. Her awareness of even her trigger finger faded away. She would find that perfect Zen moment when the two pound trigger on her Remington “just went off” without her consciously thinking about it. It was all about the focusing of the jiggling cross hair on the distant target. The bubble settled in tight and her sense of hearing disappeared as did her sense of touch and pressure from the rocks under her blanket. The smell of the crushed plants faded to nothing and even her vision narrowed within the tiny window of vision granted her from the 14 power scope. The cross hairs did their random dance of six inches or so about the chest of the target. He tossed a piece of bread to a duck so she waited as he leaned back and put his elbows on the back of the bench on either side of him. It was like he was making himself a wider and more stable target for her. The cross hairs hung in the exact center of the triangle for just a moment and the gun recoiled. She had no recollection of pulling the trigger and only a dim sense of the muzzle blast through her hearing protection. It was a very clean trigger break. A half second later the gun came back down almost into the same position as before it fired. She quickly squeezed the bean bag to get her line of sight a little bit lower and “waited” for the remaining quarter second for the bullet to arrive. She could see the trace, the distortion in the air from the supersonic shock wave, as it arced down into her target and hit it at 1600 feet per second. That delivered more than half again the momentum of a .45 fired from 10 feet away and the target showed the effects. It was a good shot, maybe three inches to the right of her point of aim. Not quite enough adjustment for wind but the elevation was right on.
As I mentioned Saturday morning on Twitter I went to the Seattle gun “buyback” (how can you buy back something you didn’t own to begin with?
I went with a fair amount of cash to buy things that were of historical value or something I might be interested in owning. I had fantasies of buying an AR-15 for $250. No such luck. The sidewalk in front of the site was packed with other private buyers:
The sidewalks approaching the site from every direction had people on them too:
I did get a chance to look a few guns being brought in. I was only interested in one, a semi-auto 30-06 with a Leupold scope on it. Someone else quickly made an offer and got it for $125.
One of the guns, an old shotgun, literally fell apart as the owner tried to hand it to someone to evaluate. Another gun I saw was an old .22 revolver with the muzzle all covered in rust. The guy I was sort of hanging out with told the owner, “You couldn’t get $5.00 at a pawn shop for it.” The owner agreed and said that is why he brought it. A $100 gift card for something that probably wasn’t safe to shoot was a good deal.
I talked to another guy that said he got rid of a junker for $100 as well. It was literally, a “Saturday Night Special” an old Bryco of some sort. He had a great big smile on his face about getting a $100 for that.
I talked to quite a few of the guys there. You could tell who the gun guys were. They were all happy, talking, and smiling. I didn’t take any pictures of them but there were people turning in guns who looked like timid “grass eaters”. Many of them wouldn’t sell to the private sellers. One told the guy I was with, “I won’t sell to anyone without a background check.” The would-be buyer told him that he had a concealed pistol permit (background check required) but that didn’t faze the seller. So apparently it wasn’t about background checks.
I asked several buyers if the police gave them any problems. Only one guy had some problems. He was told he was parked on private property and had his table on private property. Even after he was told he had permission of the property owner the cop continued to harass him and told him he didn’t have a business license and that he was going to give him a “Ticket that will cost you $1000”. The buyer held his ground (before showing up he had asked the Seattle police, the ATF, and a lawyer if it was okay and got the go ahead from all of them) and the cop eventually went away without writing a ticket.
One guy I talked to categorized the sellers into two groups. 1) People getting rid of junk and 2) People who want to save the world. I didn’t have a good sample but it sure looked to me like there were a lot more in the first category than in the second.
There were a few guns of value that made it to through to the police so the politicians, and news media declared success when they ran out of money about 11:45. I have to wonder how many more guns were purchased by private buyers after the police closed up shop. I really need to make a bunch of very cheap single shot guns out of tubing, a piece of wood, a nail, and rubber band or make the rounds at the pawnshops before the next “buyback”.
I hung around for probably 45 minutes before leaving. With all the competition I figured I wouldn’t get my hands on anything of interest and I had other things I wanted to do.
Just as I was leaving the guy I was hanging out with jokingly asked if I had anything I wanted to sell before I left. I told him the only gun I had was the $2000 STI on my hip. He “offered” me $10.00 for it. I told him, “Screw you!” He told me, “I appreciated the offer but prostitution is illegal in Seattle.” We both laughed and I left.
Via email:
Greetings,
SPC introduces it’s line of full size metal wall silhouettes. Shown is a Remington 870 that looks great on the wall of any gun room, den or shop.
The Plasma cut steel units are available rough as well as finished and painted.
SPC has heard of individuals burying full size silhouettes as decoys to throw off ground penetrating radar or imaging metal detectors that might be used by criminals to locate weapons, however SPC silhouettes are designed to be enjoyed on the wall, and SPC will not warranty silhouettes that have been buried.
SPC also has wall silhouettes of magazines, handguns and can do custom work as well.
For more info go to http://minisentryalarm.wordpress.com/
Regards,
Dennis Evers
dennis@thepocketpartner.com
I am of the opinion if you bury most or all of your guns to keep them safe from confiscation it is mostly a victory of the mind rather than something particularly useful. Putting out a few decoys might be useful though. And if you put them on the property of an anti-gunner it might even be entertaining.
I think I’ve read several hundred product “reviews” that go along the lines of;
“It looks and feels great. I can’t wait to go out and shoot it.”
I’m sorry, but “wow-I-can’t-wait-to-get-out-and-try-it” is not a review. Please don’t do that. Sometimes I can read through dozens of “reviews” before I find a single review. I fully understand your excitement and pleasure upon receiving a new product, but that’s a reaction, not a review. Please don’t waste people’s time.
I suppose that the word “clip” being used to refer to a magazine must have started in earnest during the period in which the M1 Garand rifle was common issue. “Toss me another clee-up, Cletus” would have been used to apply to either a 1911 magazine or a Garand clip (or Tommy gun, M3, et al, magazine) among comrades, maybe. I still talk with the occasional W.W. II or Korean War vet who says “clip” all the time (and if they’re from Alabama it is “clee-up”, with the extra syllable, as in “She-it” or the number Foe-er”)
And so we’ve been harping on it for a while now. Some media types are starting get a whiff of a clue, but just to be safe, they’re using both terms, talking about “magazine clips” which, technically, would be devices that hold two or more magazines together. I’ve seen those for sale. Not that your average media pundit would ever understand.
Anyway; just off the top of my head, I don’t recall ever seeing an ammunition clip than hold more than ten rounds (unless you count a belt). You?
I suppose some of this misuse is intentional, just to irritate people. When you read the actuall laws, they tend to use the term magazine when they mean magazine.
You are just so hot when you carry a rifle. Isn’t that weird?
Barb L.
December 15, 2012
[This was when I had just come back from a “Practical Rifle” match.
Yup. That’s weird alright. But I’m okay with it.–Joe]
It has been nearly two years since I went to a gun show and I decided today was a good time to go look around again. The first table I looked at was selling bulk food (hard red wheat, beans, lentils, and corn) in plastic buckets appropriately prepared and sealed for long term storage. Since we grow and clean lentils on the farm I decided to ask if they were interested in buying direct from me. It turns out I could sell delivered product to them for $0.10/pound less than what they were currently paying. They ordered 1000 pounds on the spot!
I also picked up a couple of stickers that I’m considering putting on my vehicle:
They say there have been many double barreled guns in the past, which of course is true, but the purpose has always been to have multiple shots available, either in leiu of a repeater (before there was any such thing as a repeater) or to have a second shot on hand without working an action, usually in a large African caliber or a shotgun. In this case both barrels fire together. It’s an interesting novelty. Maybe you could fiber/epoxy a couple of 1911s together and have a similar experience. The variations on the jam, or other stoppage, should be interesting as well. The two barrels are serviced by a common slide.
My G20 quit feeding properly last summer, and I identified the problem as an original recoil spring that had gone soft. A new Wolf spring and steel guide rod took care of that. Then I wanted to try a new Lone Wolf barrel because I was getting so much case buldge that one use was about all I was comfortable with, and the LW barrels have more case support at the bottom under the case web area. They also have standard cut rifling, which is supposed to better for cast lead bullets– something I’d like to try at some stage.
My first tryout of the new barrel led to a failure to feed the very first round, but after that it seemed to function normally and I figured all was well. Not so fast. Those were previously fired cases. Last time out, with all new cases, I had several failures to feed, and had to bump the back of the slide to get it into battery.
This morning I tried feeding some rounds from several full magaxines, and here’s what happened;
Above is the slide resting quite securely, with its new, beefier recoil spring, on a jam.
Below, I’ve removed the magazine and locked the slide back. That round is still wedged in the back of the chamber, and it took some fiinger pressure to dislodge it;
(Below) you see the mark below the case mouth, from the front of the feedramp digging into it;
My theory is that the new, softer cases are getting bitten more deeply than the work-hardened fired cases I tried the first time, resulting in more problems. The original Glock barrel has much more “throating” or relief at the feed ramp area, which is why the Glock barrel is said to have less case support. The LW barrel has more support in that area, but for now it doesn’t have enough clearance to feed reliably. My new StarLine cases are trimmed at the factory to only a few thousandths over the minimum, and about 7 or 8 thousandths under the maximum case length. The overall cart length is exactly, to within two or three thou extreme spread, what the Hornady manual (and several others) called for. The rounds plunk right into the LW chamber with the barrel removed, but jam in the chamber when fed from any of several magazines, due to the feed angle and the tighter (actually just longer at the bottom because of less throating) chamber.
A longer bullet ogive might force the front of the cart down as it feeds, but at the moment I don’t know if that would help or hurt. I might just put the perfectly good old barrel back in and live with super short case life for now.
I spent 30+ years doing custom work on various types of musical instruments, and long ago came up with an axiom I have repeated many, many times to perspective customers and fellow shop workers; When you divert from the original design, expect a cascading series of unforseen problems. In other words, expect to pay through the nose as we may have go back to the drawing board a time or two, to find ways to accommodate your custom thingamajig, making it work seamlessly with the rest of the system.
I noticed just yesterday that Brownell’s, I think it was, or maybe it was CTD, had a bunch of LW Glock barrels in a promotion, for all the Glock models except the 20, or those in 10mm. This kind of sucks, because I was having a ball late in the summer shooting silhouettes at 100 yards. The original barrel never seemed to give enough accuracy to make that a reasonable proposition.
[I]t’s widely known that anyone carrying a Glock has mental issues. In fact, I’m surprised that potential Glock owner’s aren’t disqualified by default when filling out the 4473 form!
Mike Lubrecht
November 1, 2012
WA-CCW email list.
[I find this funny even if I disagree with it.
Let the flame war begin.—Joe]
Barron continues our video series and posts mocking Brady Campaign Board member Joan Peterson with Pumpkins for Joan:
Think about this… The Brady Campaign wants to, and has tried for decades, to get various types of guns banned. Handguns were their first target back in the 1970’s. They were originally the National Council to Control Handguns (NCCH), then the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence (CPHV), then Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI) in 1980 and finally The Brady Campaign in 2001. And as recently as the brief they filed for the DC v. Heller case in 2008 they claimed the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right and even if it did it did not extend to handguns. Not only have they failed in their decades long mission the U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly said handguns are protected. And using the phrase “in common use” the court strongly implied that the secondary target of the Brady’s, “assault weapons”, are also protected. They have some extremely high hurdles to overcome to even get back to the position they were in as late as 2008, let along where they were when they were founded in 1974. And today on our side we use not only “assault weapons” but explosives to mock them.
When guns and bullets just aren’t enough aren’t you glad we have Boomershoot?
Barron made another video for Brady Campaign board member Joan Peterson. Read his blog post for the complete story with this as the dessert. It’s dessert because it is sweet (even if Barb L. says it can’t be dessert because there is no chocolate):
I’m working on a video of my own from last weekend. It will have a different focus but it still should give Peterson heartburn. Some people don’t like just desserts.
This is the third in the series of ESS Boomershoot videos. At about 1:30 in the video watch the trace from the bullet arc into the boomer for a detonation. Very cool.
From the YouTube page for this video:
Boomershoot: In the high Palouse of northern Idaho for one long weekend in April, the ground heaves with explosions and precision rifle and AR enthusiasts put their aim to the test.
That’s a good description. Perhaps “rumbles with explosions” or “vibrates with explosions” would be better than “heaves” but there is some ground heaving too.
There is also Volume 1 and Volume 2 in the series.
As I have said before ESS makes good stuff. They gave me a couple pair of their glasses and I use them whenever I need eye protection or even sunglasses.
Barron also has some comments on the video.
Of all the things I have been able to do while in the United States of America, celebrating Halloween by shooting a pumpkin filled with Joe’s special blend is one of the things I will treasure the most.
Kris R
October 23, 2012
Comment to I agree with Joan Peterson.
[It’s nice to have such an event be remembered so fondly.
I wonder if the anti-gun people get reports like that for their events. No, I don’t think so either.—Joe]
THIS is a gunsmith. Watch all of them. There are a bunch of vids all in a row detailing the handcrafting of an American longrifle. They hand hammer a barrel around a mandrel and hammer weld it. Awesome. No “machine tools” of any kind. The closest to a machine tool is the barrel drilling jig, which is hand powered and hand fed, using hand-made cutting tools, and having a wooden spiral jig for determining the rifle twist.
Hat tip; castboolits.gunloads.com
We are extremely pampered today by comparison, having rolled bar and seamless tubing of precise alloy to work with. I once “restored” (though the word is abused in this case) a hand-made, lavishly hand engraved and gold plated trumpet that was made in the very early 20th century– for its original owner, who was over 80 years old at the time. He had bought it as a kid and played it the whole time. All of the tubing was wrapped over mandrels and soldered, including the piston valves– every tubular part had a lengthwise seam therefore, and some of the silver solder had corroded out, resulting in leaks. I had to re-solder some of them, but others were too far gone and I replaced them with extruded, seamless tubing. The curved tubing was made back then by filling the straight pieces with lead and bending them by hand over a bending jig, then hammering out any wrinkles. Now they are bent using an ice composition and then hydro-formed in molds. Some curved tubular parts are now built up entirely through electrolysis over investment cores. And they didn’t use a buffing machine back then, but instead hand-burnished every square millimeter of the instrument prior to plating it– you could still see all the tiny facets on that trumpet– one for each stroke of the burnishing tool. But that all that was still short of the skills used in rifle making in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and I didn’t do any engraving, carving or inletting in my instrument repair career.
An instrument (or rifle) with that sort of craftsmanship today would cost you well in excess of fifteen thousand dollars (you find fine rifles for well over a hundred thousand) though we can get good ones, made by modern methods, for under one thousand. But no one makes musical instruments like that anymore, so far as I know.
When I first started in musical instrument work, the most expensive saxophone, the Selmer Mark VI, was under a thousand dollars, or right around a thousand, and it was imported from France, but the much simpler concert flute could be found costing several times that much, made in America. You know why?
Because a flute can be made by hand in a person’s basement, whereas it takes a rather large shop, with a tons of specialized tooling, to make a saxophone, that’s why. There were exquisite hand-made flutes, but no hand-made saxophones. You can’t hand build a large-scale integrated microchip in your basement. It may cost millions to set up for making them but you can buy one for a dollar.
It’s a rare thing but this time I (partially) agree with Joan Peterson on this issue (H/T to Sebastian). She says, “Don’t carve pumpkins with guns”.
I took two almost new shooters to Idaho this weekend to do a little pumpkin “carving” at the Boomershoot site.
First we prepared some chemicals:
Then we mixed them. Yes, she was a little apprehensive at first. This whole Kitchen Aid mixer making Boomerite is a little “different”. Six weeks ago had you told her she was going to be traveling to Idaho, making explosives to “carve” pumpkins, and shooting a rifle before Halloween she would have said, “No way!”
Here are some sample pictures of the pumpkins being “carved” (thanks to Barron for bringing them to the party):
The picture below was taken a fraction of a second after the picture above. Notice that the pumpkin pieces have slowed and are further from the origin. I wonder what the BC of a pumpkin seed is. 
The picture above almost duplicates a picture Ry took a few years ago. Here is a cropped version of the same picture: 
There are hazards to pumpkin “carving” with Boomerite. Max wasn’t really “entertainingly close” by some peoples standards but it was close enough that he sometimes turned away to avoid getting hit in the face with pieces of pumpkin. I was extremely pleased that his finger came off the trigger and he kept the gun pointed in a safe direction: 
I’m sure Ms. Peterson will be pleased to know we didn’t use guns as our primary tool for carving the pumpkins. It was just the remote detonator for the explosives. And these new shooters will share their experience and pictures with friends and family which will add to the set of people who recognize modern sporting rifles in common use are not “assault weapons” which should be banned. But instead many of them will desire their own and to share in the fun of the gun and Boomershoot culture. And what does Ms. Peterson and the Brady Campaign have to counter this?
Did you see the smiles after connecting with the 650 yard boomer? I am of the opinion Boomershoot is a valid treatment for depression and should be covered by most health insurance.
Strapped and frapped on the left side of the window and a zombie family on the right.
And the car ahead of it has a Mitt Romney sticker on the trunk lid.
It is almost amazing that this was in Bellevue Washington.
