Cast bullets for an auto pistol

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Down the rabbit hole into the esoteric. Before the current ammo shortage I decided to start casting bullets, just because I liked the idea of an extra level of independence. The 30-30 cast bullets worked OK but there’s more to do there. This time though its the 10 mm Auto.

I’ve been loading the Hornady 180 XTPs with good results, but I wanted a 200 grain cast bullet too. The RCBS 200 SWC has gotten good reviews so I got that two cavity mold a while back. The mold handles I use for the Lyman molds didn’t fit the new RCBS mold, and people were starting to run low on things. Buffalo Arms in Idaho sells a hand-fabricated-looking handle set that works like a pair of Vice-Grips. Pretty expensive and heavy, but they had them in stock. They’re great. You get VERY consistent closing pressure for each pour. I weighed 20 already lubed bullets tonight and the extreme spread was 1.5 grains, 201 gr +/- .75.

Of course, to “save money” casting bullets from one dollar per pound lead, I had to buy a lube sizer. Seating the lead bullets, I was shaving lead on the case mouths, so I bought a 10 mm M die. It expands deeper into the case than a regular expander die, plus it makes a wider spot at the mouth. I’d been seating crimping in one swipe with the jacketed bullets, but since that’s not really an option for cast, I had to readjust my otherwise permanently adjusted seating die. Now I figure I’ll buy another seat die in this “money saving” venture.

To prevent the case mouth shaving lead from the bullet upon seating, I had to put LOTS more flair on the cases. I tried chamfering the mouths a little and that didn’t help much, so now I’m working the brass a lot more, which means it will work harden sooner. The bullets aren’t getting shaved now, but the cases are so wide at the mouth that the seating die can’t be lowered nearly as much as normal or the crimp taper starts to erase that wide belling, shaving lead anyway. And that means that the seating stem is just a bit too short, so with the locking collar removed from the seating stem and the stem screwed in as far as it will go, I still have to screw the die body down to where it is narrowing the flair just a bit. That means there is no support on the case at all except at the very mouth. I noticed that if I nicely align the bullets on the case mouth by hand before seating, they now don’t get shaved. When the bullets shave, the lead that’s stuck in front of the case mouth interferes with head spacing. It’s not serious, but it is annoying.

Loading dies, at least for straight wall auto cases, are not made with cast bullets in mind. These are RCBS dies, but I doubt there’d be much difference. The whole paradigm is wrong. Since you apparently need much more flair at the mouth, and you’re shoving the case up into the die mouth-first, your die has to be too large to support any part of the case except for the very mouth, or else it will erase your mouth flair. Instead of going mouth-first into the seating die, the cases should be going head-first into a support die, and then up to a seating stem, with the bullet pre aligned before it touches the case. That way, much of the case, and all of the bullet’s drive bands, could be aligned prior to seating. It couldn’t be done “right”, in my opinion, any other way.

But we make it work, somehow, with what we have. There’s still more testing to do, but initially I got two groups of just under 5 inches at 20 yards standing unsupported. Lots more recoil than the 180 XTP loads, but my chrono got lost along a 20 mile stretch of highway in a snowstorm so no vel data. A third group was MUCH larger, so I quit. There was leading in the Lone Wolf barrel. That was before I eliminated the lead shaving at seating. We’ll see later whether the shaving verses not shaving makes any difference.

The load is 9.4 grains Blue Dot, CCI 300, OAL 1.255, #2 alloy, Super Molly lube that came with the Lyman sizer. Still don’t know if it’s a keeper, but I do know I can get off at least 10 decent shots. Whoopie, eh?

The Stars Came Back -037- Rules of battle contracts

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Fade in

EXT – Day – grounds next to the ship

The recruits, SGT Kaushik, Cpl Kaminski, and Harbin stand in the morning sun. The recruits in formation (two rows), with Kaushik and Kaminski as the squad leaders. They are all dressed in simple camo fatigue uniforms. Arrayed before the formation are a series of mannequins, each clad in a different style. In order from left to right there are: Continue reading →

Gun Song – Ennio Morricone – Guns Don’t Argue

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Classic spaghetti-western soundtrack stuff, here. You can smell the horse-sweat, the gun smoke, and the cattle, feel the mounting tension, hear the clink of spurs, see the MEN riding into the action.


Ennio Morricone – Guns Don’t Argue

Morricone thought of the soundtracks he wrote as being “working music,” what he did to pay the bills, not “real” music. But he did a LOT of that working music – he wrote the scores for more than 500 movies and TV series during his life. His name is listed as the music dude on a seemingly endless list of classic and/or infamous movies, from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and The Thing to Kill Bill.

Quote of the day—Todd Vandermyde

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We think it’s a civil right that deserves a single uniform standard across the state. No matter whether you’re from Decatur, or from Chicago or from Moline to Lansing, it’s a fundamental right.

Todd Vandermyde
February 22, 2013
Heated testimony at hearing on state’s concealed carry law
See this and much, much more at Video Weekend, Part II: Todd Vandermyde.
[I found it enlightening that no matter how many times and how many ways Vandermyde explained this the legislators, most, if not all of them lawyers, questioning him couldn’t seem to get it. They would even say, “We respect the Second Amendment” then in the next breath say they had an obligation to deny that right to the people they were representing in the interests of protecting them.

Vandermyde would ask questions like, “Well then do you think you should let the police search people without a warrant? Or should the police be able to ignore their Fifth Amendment rights?” Apparently these people could not understand the point he was making.

These people are bigots and should be treated as such. They, as Federal judges have said, are thumbing their noses at the U.S. Constitution, the Federal judges, and the rights of the people they supposedly represent. This is no different that the people in the deep south that abused the rights of people of color 50 years ago and I would not feel the slightest bit of sympathy for them if the Feds used similar methods to enforce their rulings upon them. Send in the National Guard to protect a parade of individuals openly carrying guns down the main streets of Chicago and Federal Marshalls arresting any city or state government employee that attempted to interfere with people peaceably exercising their right to bear arms in public.—Joe]

Five year plan?

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From Tyler Durden:

Yesterday Senator Tom Harkin introduced S. 544, “a bill to require the President to develop a comprehensive national manufacturing strategy.”

In effect, Senator Harkin wants the President to centrally plan the economy. Never mind that the President has zero experience in business or manufacturing. But hey, this worked out so well for Stalinist Russia, it’s no wonder Mr. Harkin wants to copy that model.

If I were emperor of the U.S. I could come up with a plan that outperform anything the President could accomplish in five years and have it implemented in five days. It’s really simple:

Government shall make no law restricting the free association of people other than a tax on retail sales not to exceed 5% and to enforce contracts freely entered into by people and companies.

All waste products shall be safely contained or returned to the natural environment in such a manner that those people responsible for producer of said waste are willing to build their own homes on, eat, breath, or drink said waste products.

In five years there would so much wealth generated there would be private companies with terraforming Mars, robots bringing mining products back from the asteroid belt, and sex tourists going on vacations to the resorts in low earth orbit.

“The economic AND the personal sphere.”

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Those are Rand Paul’s words from CPAC, and as much as a like what I see in Rand Paul, that phraseology really bugs me. That’s like saying we must pay attention to the weather AND the temperature, humidity, pressure, precipitation, cloud cover and wind as though the term “weather” doesn’t already take those other things into account.

As a business owner, that attempt to separate the economic from the personal has never made any sense at all.

In fact, it is impossible to separate the economic from the personal. Name any “personal” subject or issue and tell me it has no economic implications whatsoever. Name any economic subject or issue and then tell me it has nothing whatsoever to do with personal choice.

Tax me, limit my business activities, my investments, get between me and my bank, and you are directly attacking my personal choices. Try to tell me who I must or must not associate with, how I must interact with others, or what I can do with my body, and that is a direct attack on my economic liberty. One equals the other. There is no moral or logical separation between them.

Yes yes, I know that we’re supposed to separate the personal from the economic, as though they’re different, for political reasons, but that’s a ruse. A trick. I will not step over the line into Crazyland just to make someone else’s politics easier, or to assuage their guilt. No, Young Grasshopper; there is just the one word that matters, the one that encompasses everything, and you’re either for it or against it – liberty.

The Stars Came Back -036- The Book

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Fade in

INT – night – back in Helton’s cabin on the Tajemnica

Allonia comes up to the open door. A couple of the many computer screens that double as lights are on “dim”, providing a low, diffused light to the room. The bed is made. She looks around and doesn’t see him. Continue reading →

Quote of the day—Geoffrey Canada

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The Wild West was never as wild as many communities in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, (and on and on) are.

Geoffrey Canada
Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence
[I haven’t looked up the actual numbers but I suspect his statement is true as long as you don’t regard the Hollywood Western as the definition of “Wild West”. In which case we have a good comeback for those anti-gun people who claim we don’t need guns anymore because “the Wild West doesn’t exist anymore.”

I finished this book recently and need to review/fisk it. I believe Canada has some excellent insights, is a good person, is making a positive difference in the lives of countless people, and came to his anti-gun views honestly. But I think his conclusions about guns are incorrect and misguided.—Joe]

Pure plutonium

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That’s a John Ross term, for something that “nukes” the enemies of freedom. Tonight’s episode of the Glenn Beck program is pure plutonium. The fastest hour you’ll spend this week is the March 13 episode of the Glenn Beck program.

Call in sick, take a vacation, whatever it takes; watch this episode. Hang on every word. Even the commercials, most of them anyway, will have you up, out of your seat. It’s on theBlazeTV.

THIS IS THE (new) MAIN STREAM MEDIA, or medium. If you are not a subscriber, you are missing out. I don’t care who you are, you are missing out. They have a free trial membership, so you have no excuse. Support them.

Tonight’s guests include one Starr Parker. I’ve read two of her books. The other guests are very good also, and it is clear that they love each other. You will get hope from this.

If there was any doubt before tonight, there is no longer any doubt– Glenn Beck is slated for death. Keep an eye out. I think he knows this and he can take care of himself, but keep an eye on it.

This is what can happen when you own your own network, and it’s beautiful. What you may not know are the things Glenn could NOT say when he was on someone else’s network. That’s a story unto itself, but I digress. Go watch, and for that matter spend your sick day, or your vacation day, watching this whole week’s worth of shows.

It’s is an addendum to Joe’s latest post.

To you Progressives out there, and you know who you are, weep. You cannot escape the truth forever. We are WATCHING YOU.

Doesn’t fit the narrative

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Via Stanley on the gun email list from work:

It’s unlikely you will be hearing this viewpoint from the mainstream media.

Unintended consequences

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Or; Action, Reaction, Synthesis
Or; Thesis, Antitheses, Synthesis
Or; “I’m not sure that it means what you think it means.”

Refusing to sell to government entities that attack the second amendment is fairly popular, it certainly has made good press, and I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment, but I’m not sure people are thinking things through.

Oskar Schindler was a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party, and he had extensive business dealings with the Nazis. Just keep that in mind.

Let’s say we all refuse to sell to any government entity that even infringes (literally; “touches around the fringes”) on second amendment rights. That would be all of them. Just keep that in mind; we are talking ONLY about degrees of violation when we say that New York or Chicago is bad and OUR jurisdiction is…what…a bit less egregious? Or does your state and local .gov commit zero infringements? So we all refuse to sell to any government entities. What will be their obvious reaction, for 100% sure and for certain? Taxpayer funded, government owned munitions factories of course, with union workers, full benefits and a retirement plan, and now they are, one way or another, competing with the private industry. Good luck with that. OR, you know all it takes is for one individual company to sell to your worst violators, they will become the next General Electric, i.e. a pet company for the tyrants, funneling their profits via multiple channels into the Democrat Party. They’ll arrange it that way just for that purpose. It’s what Progressives do.

How to make a mortar

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I played with some metal working equipment last weekend after not touching anything for several decades. While mostly successful I “learned a lot” without any permanent damage to the item I was working on and without leaving any of my blood or body parts behind.

Then yesterday I was looking for something else and saw this video of how professionals do things these days:

The Stars Came Back -035- Monks of St Possenti

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Fade in

EXT – Day – dry gulch road

Helton is walking up a road in a small, deep, dusty gulch, sparse bushes and bare rock around him. He is sweating, and it looks hot. The sun beats down. As he comes around a bend he sees a group of six men ahead, working together with hand tools building a gate and part of a stone wall across the wash, looking like they could be right out of the 10th century. Continue reading →

Quote of the day—Robert Slaughter

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Robert Slaughter (@bobslaughter)
Tweeted on March 12, 2013 in response to More stalker activity.
[If he only knew the total sum of crazy people in my life he would think I have a herd of recruiters out looking for crazy people and sending them my way.

I actually asked my counselor why there were so many crazy people attracted to me and why I was, in many cases, attracted to crazy women. With her help I think I have solved the later problem. I suspect there is no practical, moral, and legal solution to the first problem.—Joe]

The Stars Came Back -034-Parts Depot

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Fade in

INT – DAY – Eridani Parts Depot Office

Helton is in a modest office at a space-port / bone-yard, which is cluttered with various machine parts, electronics, shelves, and ship-related oddments. There are two desk, only one is occupied by a young man in plain cloths eying the e-reader in his hands. Helton sits opposite. Continue reading →

Quote of the day—Clayton E. Cramer

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Trying to argue abstract concepts like right and wrong or constitutionality with most Americans is a waste of time. Few believe in right or wrong, and fewer still have any conception of the Constitution as a contract between the generations.

Clayton E. Cramer
January 18, 2013
Comment to Does ‘Gun Show Loophole’ Actually Result in Gun Crime?–Statistics do not point to criminals using this tactic.
[I can’t say that I disagree. But to agree with him sucks me into depression and despair. If right and wrong are beyond most Americans then are not also facts and fallacies, truth and falsity beyond them as well? Unfortunately I have substantial data to back up that claim.

See also Philosophy: Who Needs It (The Ayn Rand Library Vol. 1). A case can be made, as Rand does, that what Cramer states as fact can be explained by the lack of sound philosophy being taught to our children for the last 50 or more years.—Joe]

More stalker activity

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If you have been following along I have a “stalker” of sorts.

Background:

At 3:31 this afternoon I got a call from 630-489-9064. I didn’t recognized the number and didn’t catch the name they gave me. He ignored my attempts to repeat himself.

The bottom line was they claimed to be representing someone who was going to sue me for “information on your blog” and that I would be required to show up in California for the lawsuit.

I question the validity of this. I find it difficult to imagine a lawyer would take the case since no false statement of fact was made. Further confirmation of this hypothesis is that the number is not that of a law office. It is the same number that was used to deliver the threat on February 26th.

At 3:50 I received two more text messages from 619-646-7526 (this is the same phone number he used to call and sent me the text messages on February 18th):

I am suing you for internet defamation for eleven million dollars. Your site unlawfully placed information about myself that led to me being fired

And:

See you in court really soon buddy

I suppose it is possible the blog post contributed to him losing a job but I am of the opinion, if in fact he did lose a job, that the main factor is that he has way too many screws loose.

The Stars Came Back -033- Clothes make the man

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Fade in

INT- DAY – Starship liner dining room

Helton sits at a table with a half-dozen other passengers. Dinner is being served. A couple of tables over near the door, Bipasha is also being served, studiously ignoring him. At her table seem to be a collection of dignitaries, with fancy clothes and a couple in some sort of uniform. Light Bollywood-bluegrass music plays in the background, and there is chatter filling the air as well. A uniformed ships officer comes into the room, looks about, walks by Bipasha and goes up to Helton, and leans forward to whisper into his ear. Continue reading →

Quote of the day—Jola Mehmeti

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Am I the only one convinced that once scientists figure out how to fix small penises/masculinity issues, the NRA will dissipate? #GunControl

Jola Mehmeti (@JolaMehmeti)
Tweeted on January 11, 2013
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via still another Tweet from Linoge.—Joe]

The Stars Came Back -032- Going to Eridani

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Fade in

INT – Night- Helton’s cabin

Low angle camera shot with his desk in the foreground in dim light, and bunk in the background. On the desk is the medallion that the monk gave him. Helton lays in bed under a light blanket. He tosses and turns. Continue reading →