Category Archives: Gun Fun

Gun and ammo scams

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I did a web search for small pistol primers and found most brands of primers at unbelievable prices. They have Federal small pistol for $35.00/1000 and CCI small pistol primers for $50.00/1000.

I was suspicious but went through the order process. The cart did not result in taking my credit card information even though I opted for credit card payment instead of PayPal. It ended with a message saying I would be contacted for my payment information. An hour or so later I received an email giving me the payment options of PayPal,
Cash app, or Apple Pay. No credit card option.

I did some research. The domain was created on February 24th, 2021. Hmmm…

Their “About” page an other pages say “WELCOME TO HOUSE OF FIRE ARM”. That wording is a little odd… The email address they sent the payment request from is “House of Firearms houseoffirearms@gmail.com”.

The website says the company is located in Kansas. But a business search on the Kansas Security of State web site comes up empty for the names:

  • House of Firearm
  • House of Fire Arm
  • House of Firearms
  • House of Fire Arms

I am almost certain it is a scam.

I found another web site, again with awesome prices, with similar wording on many of their pages which I am very suspicious of. I haven’t fully investigated them yet.

Be careful out there. If something is too good to be true it probably is.

Bullet sale

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I just purchased some bullets (not loaded ammo) from Black Bullets International. They had a flash sale of 15% off if you used the coupon code BBIFLASH15 with purchases of 50 pound boxes. I’m not sure when the sale expires. Act fast if you are interested.

Bolt action

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I recently received a gift from son-in-law Jacob:

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Yes, it’s a bolt action pen in a nice box.

I’m using it to sign documents associated with guns and explosives.

Free to a good home

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I recently sorted through all my all reject brass from years of reloading. I discovered I had a fair number of 357 Sig cases. I cleaned, dried, and bagged them. My guess is there are between 100 and 125 pieces.

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I have no interest in reloading them so they are free to a good home. Send me an email or text message if you can meet in the Seattle area or near Moscow or Orofino (or Sandpoint or Coeur d’Alene the 14th –> 16th of this month) in Idaho. Or if you want to pay the postage I would ship them to you.

Boomershoot Field reviewed

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From here:

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“Can be noisy at times.” Smile

Of course there is Wi-Fi

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Earlier this evening I finished installing and testing the solar powered Wi-Fi for my gun range:

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I’m paying for 6Mpbs/3Mpbs and SpeedTest.net says this is what I’m getting from a server in Seattle at 9:30 PM and two Wi-Fi hops from my router which is a half mile away:

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I’m pleased with the result.

A good start

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There have been over 400,000,000 guns sold in the U.S. since November 1998.

Range construction is complete

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The range proper is complete. I have some grass to plant and a few other niceties to finish up but it is entirely functional now.

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The shooting box is at 15 yards.

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This is from about 35 yards.

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The pavers protect the washed river rock and drain tile directly underneath from dirt.

I need to get some target stands for USPSA paper and steel targets and a full set of Steel Challenge targets. That probably won’t happen until next year.

Minor range update

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Barb hasn’t had a chance to visit my gun range and made a comment about the size being somewhat small. I parked my car in it and put some targets in the berm for scale so she could get a better idea of the scale:

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She has revised her view of the size.

The tile inside the range and more gravel was installed yesterday and the washed river rock was put over the tile today.

Today I made two trips into town to pick up some concrete pavers to cover the gravel over the tile to prevent the dirt from plugging up the gravel and tile line. As the dirt from the berm starts to cross the paver line I will “rehabilitated” the berm.

The range still needs some more gravel but that should be completed tomorrow. Then it will be done!

I now need to invite Mike B. over. I told him about my project last winter and I promised to invite him over when it was done.

Update: The picture below is from across the road looking up range at the retaining wall for the berm. This is the reason for higher blocks on the left side than the right:

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Large trucks would be visible from the range if the extra blocks were not present.

Range construction update

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Last Saturday I said I expected the range to be completed by the end of this week or early next week. I was on site yesterday and it only lacked rock and gravel which are being put down today (and possibly Monday).

Below are the latest pictures.

Continue reading →

The castle wall

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Yesterday someone pointed out the walls for my current home project look a lot like castle walls. He was correct. And from certain angles this is especially true:

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I expect the project to be completed by the end of next week or the beginning of the following week. When it is done I’ll supply more pictures.

Range construction details

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Sebastian asked about the details of the base for the ecology blocks on the walls around my range. Here are some pictures and additional information.

The ground this time of year is really hard. It took a large dozer and a heavy excavator to get down to, essentially level. The range has a 1% grade down range to the target berm. A mini excavator was used to dig the footings about another six to eight inches deeper and three feet wide. This was filled with four inches of compacted and wetted, 3/4” with fines, gravel which was carefully (it took two people about two days complete this stage) made level. This deliberately did not match the 1% grade. Being level allowed for the back wall to be straight and have interlocking corners.

This first picture is looking down range from near the up range end of what will be the right wall.

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This is the compactor in use along the left wall:

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A four inch drain tile was put just inside the back wall (as seen on the right in the picture below) which exits under the right wall in the foreground:

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Another drain tile, parallel to the first, will be placed 15 feet from the back wall and will catch drainage before it reaches the target berm. This will connect to the first drain tile with a Y a few feet outside the range.

The floor of the range will be covered with four inches of compacted, 3/4” with fines, gravel.

In a class of his own

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Last weekend I participated* in the USPSA Area 1 Championship. As expected, Christian Sailer won.

One of the people in my squad, Steve, runs major matches in Montana and does range officer work for other major matches. He told stories of running Christian through stages.

Christian sees the stages differently than other people. He even sees them differently than other Grand Master shooters. When Steve runs Christian on a stage he doesn’t bother to follow him. He asks, “Where are you going to end up?” He then runs to the destination (as soon as it is safe to do so) and meets Christian in time to capture the last shot on the timer.

A specific example given was a stage where there were two targets visible between two barricades. Other Grand Masters would pause and fire the four shots, two per target, then continue on to the next targets. Christian ran by at full speed, “Bang, bang, bang, bang!” This resulted in four A-Zone hits.

As Steve pointed out, Christian is in a class of his own. Here are the results of the top ten people in the match from last weekend and from looking at the Match Points and Match Percentage you can clearly see this:

Place Name Class Div Match Pts Match %
1 Sailer, Christian G O 1460.8107 100.0000 %
2 Michel, Max G CO 1310.4572 89.7075 %
3 Ramberg, Tim G PCC 1275.3206 87.3022 %
4 Williams, Justine G PCC 1243.8811 85.1501 %
5 Conaway, Brennan G O 1229.281 84.1506 %
6 Tan, Loke G O 1228.1294 84.0718 %
7 Liu, Eric G O 1214.7476 83.1557 %
8 Chang, Jun G O 1209.7619 82.8144 %
9 Coley, Shane G L 1209.0808 82.7678 %
10 Steiner, Eric M O 1202.3446 82.3067 %

Notice how the people below him are grouped fairly tightly. There is no one within 10% of Christian.

I had hoped to watch him shoot a stage or two but he was shooting on the exact opposite times I was at the match. Here is the video of most of the stages:

* I came in 41 out of 58 in Limited Division and second out of seven in my age/division category. I had not shot an USPSA match since December of 2019. And with COVID keeping me out of the office I did not have the normal lunchtime access to the range for practice.

In another week or so I will have my private gun range and much better access to range conditions suitable for this type of practice: I’m going to be taking practice much more seriously:

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Primers on the shelf

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Barb and I were in Lynden Washington this weekend doing some hiking in the area. On Saturday afternoon we visited Just Desserts, Lynden Dutch Bakery and gorged on sweet stuff. Just a couple doors away was Dave’s Sports Shop. I wanted to do a little browsing and with Barb reporting a sugar buzz we went in.

Much to my surprise they had primers for sale. Customers were limited to two hundred primers per household so making a hundred mile drive for them isn’t going be be all that worthwhile::

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And the prices were higher than I wanted to pay. The last time I bought primers, 7/21/2017, I paid $3.00/100. These were $12.95/100:

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20210605_164134I did a little bit of measurement and calculating. At an average of 3.46 grains per CCI Small Rifle Primer those 100 primers weigh 0.7208 Troy Ounces. So at $12.95/100 plus the 8.7% sales tax the the primers are priced at $19.53/Troy-Ounce.

The current price of silver is $27.91/Troy-Ounce, so they are priced at 70% of their weight in silver.

What caliber for a tire?

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Of course you don’t believe the catastrophic blowouts depicted by Hollywood when a tire is shot. But what really happens?

Kenzie Fitzpatrick has the answers and video for 9mm FMJ, .223 FMJ, and 12-Gauge, 00 Buckshot.

Too much holster time

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It’s been at least a couple months since I went to the range. Yesterday I remedied that. This was what my gun looked like when I pulled it out of the holster:

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As I carry it every day, I knew it was going to be covered with lint.

It still functioned just fine but that was way too much holster time without being cleaned.

Boomershoot target production

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Wednesday afternoon Tim, TJay (mostly) and I began folding boxes for the targets. The boxes come as flat pieces of cardboard cut and formed in all the right places to be easily folded into a box. Here is what things looked yesterday morning:

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That is perhaps half of the boxes. Kim, Jacob, and I folded more boxes this morning. Others folded still more boxes during the day.

This was the target production crew this afternoon:

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This was the result by 5:00 PM:

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I think there were three more crates of targets I added after this. With the addition of those additional crates there are over 830 targets with nearly 1600 pounds of explosives.

And this doesn’t count the nearly 700 targets already consumed yesterday and today. Boomershoot is, literally, a ton of fun.

Boomershoot 2021 apparel, mugs, etc.

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The Boomershoot 2021 shirts, mugs, water bottle, drinking glass, etc. are now available for sale here.

Even if you can’t be there as a participant or even a spectator you can have a mug to remind you to prepare for next year and advertise to your friends who will want to join you next year when you partake in one of the greatest shooting adventures in the world.

Here is the image used:

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Don’t you just have to have a picture of Brandon realizing he was too close?

Boomershoot 2021 – sign up soon!

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Boomershoot 2021 is a go. But will you be there?

The last day for entry is April 23rd, this is six weeks away. But the Precision Rifle Clinic and Field Fire registration closes at midnight on March 31st. That is just two and a half weeks from now!

After having so many restrictions for the last year it’s time to get out and makes some noise with the rest of us!

Sign up soon so you don’t miss out: