Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Senior moment

I had just written and posted a cast-boolit story about the .44 Mag 310-gr load, then remembered that I had done that a while back on Straight Case, my reloading blog. Oops, senior moment.

In fact, you can go to there and read that. I decided in that blog that I didn't like that load, anyway.

Sorry if you read the new post and can't find it now.

I deleted it, first time I've done that... 

Slug-day Saturday

Yep, still in jammies, but that's how bloggers get noticed, right? It worked for a couple of blogger-babes, anyway. 

I was dressed long enough to answer the doorbell at 0900...couple of Boy Scouts collecting canned food for a food bank they run. You should have seen the look on their faces when I admitted them to my prepper's pantry, telling them they didn't have enough bags to haul away what I was about to give them...they went away VERY happy, and so did I. No, I didn't add it up, it was probably $50 or so worth of food, but I couldn't get THAT kind of Happy Ending if I'd just paid the best whore in town for a night's worth of her talent. I am SO delighted to be able to help out this beleagured outfit.

Now, I'm watching the Georgia-Alabama game. It was tough getting through all the SEC-love being spouted by the sportz-blatherers before the game, but now the matter is being settled on the gridiron, as it should be. It will be further settled in Miami for the BCS Championship, where the upstart Snappers wait for the winner of this game. If Notre Dame wins that game, it will probably be the end of the BCS, and I agree with President Obama, that would be good riddance to bad rubbish.

Drink of the day is Starbuck's Dark French Roast laced with Colonel Lee.

Just confirmed a rumor I heard about the .410-ga shotgun, which I now have an example of, the Savage Model 24D. The survival-gun secret to the over/under .22/.410 is to have some way to reload the .410s. I just found that system: a hand priming tool, a 16-penny nail and a pencil. Yep, I just confirmed that .444 Marlin hulls are just the right size to fit the .410 chamber. The .444 Marlin is a long straight case that is about 1/8" short of a loaded 3" .410 round. There are some Brit cases from the old black-powder/early-Cordite days of Dangerous Game rifles that also work, but the cases are rare, and the .444 Marlin is still available. My TEOTWAWKI kit will have my RCBS hand-priming tool, .444 hulls, primers, powder, shot, wads, pencil and maybe some slugs (if and when I figure out the best boolit to load). The non-digital scale is already in there. I have to figure out if the hulls will need re-sizing, but I doubt it for the shot loads.In fact, my test hulls were fired under factory loads in a levergun, and they fit unsized even as they show a slight base-bulge. Since the shotgun load won't generate but a third or less of the pressure of a heavy rifle load, I doubt that there will be any sizing issue at all.

Here's an "Uncle Cliffy" warning. Preparing for the FearSome Cliff: #1: Pay your house payment and any loans due for 12-31/01-01 early. If the "cliff" causes a collapse, you don't want your obligations to get lost in the confusion. There are sharks out there planning right now how to profit from such a collapse.

It's almost half-time in the tied game, so it's time to think about sommething to put in the skillet for lunch. Later, maybe.

No Thursday Thuds

...this is a "44 Day", so the only thud will be if I drop something at the reloading bench. Of course, if I do that, I will follow the mechanic's usual sanction: a six-pack to share among all present for the dropped tool event. Gosh, I'd have to drink it all myself...too bad. Make it Terminator Stout, meck-a-neck. Actually, it's a continuation of  "44 Week", because earlier this week I have already loaded some 44 Magnum, mid-range loads with 240 XTP-JHP and 10.0 and 10.2 grains of Unique for chronograph and accuracy trial. Some 44 Special have also rolled off the press, loaded with Xtreme Bullets' 200-gr Copper-Plated Flat-Nose and shoved along by 5.1 and 5.4 grains of Unique. Those are for the charter Arms snubbie.

Note the similarity? I'm thinking of Unique as my go-to powder for all things handgun-caliber, and my Winter load development will reflect this. Last Winter, my 44 development centered on "Skeeter" heavy rifle loads in 44 Magnum, and I was not happy with the results. The Hornady XTP apparently doesn't like speeds in the light-bullet twist of my Marlin 1894C much over 1500-1700 fps, and some of mine approached 1900. They were 6-10 MOA at 100 yards, from a rested rifle, some even keyholed, and two recovered bullets from the berm showed the effects of wiped rifling marks, showing that the bullets jumped the rifling towards the end of the barrel. So, my first cure is to go from the H110 they were loaded with (max load of 23.5 in the 44 maggy) to a hotter Unique, and maybe even to Blue Dot, to get all the pushing done in the first third of the carbine barrel.

We'll see. Could be that the XTP bullet itself is the issue, not the powder. Maybe a gas-checked cast boolit solution here? Buffalo Bore's site says not to use a bullet over 270 grains at all in the Model 1894, the super-slow one-in-38 twist rate doesn't support heavy boolits. If that's the case, I'll melt and recast some of the Oregon Trail True-Shot 310's I got into a 240-gr SWC Lyman mold I have and try those. The Oregon Trail lead is very hard, should work well at 1500-1700 or so.

Reloading Fail

Yep, just had one. Read all aboudditt over at Straight Case, here.

Advanced gunny bleg

Very advanced. You might have to be a serious benchrest shooter to answer this.

Problem: I have acquired a rifle in the caliber of .300 Savage. Highly advanced for it's 1921 day of introduction, the 300 Savage had the approximate power of the .30-06 Springfield, but was built into a shorter case. Chuck Hawks says that much later, in the 1950's, the .308 Winchester, then the 7.62X51 NATO was developed from the 300 Savage, and of course we know of the provenance of the .308 Winchester.

Here's my personal problem: time has passed this caliber by. Once the most popular non-military deer AND elk caliber in the Northwest woods (Northwest hunters are cheap bastards, and used a lot of milsurp rifles to hunt with), it is still available, but there is little in the way of new cases to be reloaded, and the ammo itself commands a high price, almost $30/box. Hulls are over $25 for 50, and they are VERY hard to find.

I just completed some study, both in the SAAMI charts and by detailed measurement with a dial caliper, and it seems to me that the body of the 300 Savage cartridge case is virtually identical to the .308 WIN from the base to the start of the bottleneck. The only difference below the bottleneck is that the rim-cannelure (is that called the rebate or the extraction-channel?) is much wider in the .308 WIN than it is in the 300 Savage. I would guess that the 300 Savage, being designed for bolt or lever guns only, would not need as wide an extraction-channel as the .308 WIN, which was designed with semi-auto and full-auto battle rifles and MMGs in mind.

So, the big question is: Can the profile of a .308 WIN case be changed to the 300 Savage profile? Of course, the bottleneck in the 300 Savage is much steeper, it reminds me of Ackley-Improved calibers, and the actual case neck is much longer in .308 WIN, but that is just a matter of using a case trimmer on it. The main thing is changing the angle-profile of the bottleneck.

Can that be done?

If it can be done, there might be a few grains of difference in powder capacity between a re-made .308WIN/300SAV hull, but that can be measured and the powder loads recalculated so as to have the right pressures.

Secondary question: if the change can be made, will it best be made with dies or fire-forming?

Another secondary question: what will the longevity of these changed hulls be? My intent would be to use them with cast-boolit loads, which are much lighter in pressure than high-power jacketed hunting loads.

Some photos:

On the left is the .308 WIN round, a Hornady 168-gr AMAX match round. On the right is the 300 Savage round, a 150-gr Remington Corelokt. This gives you an idea of the cartridge profiles, side-by-side.

Another sXs view:

Well, there you have it, advanced gunnies. All advice welcome. Of course, I also know that I can just start hoarding the scarce 300 Savage ammo, but apparently, it is only made by Remington now, and I just don't like the Core-Loct bullets. Yeah, I have killed deer with them myself, and they did their job, but that little lead protrusion at the tip gets beat up easily, and I figure it causes some inaccuracy. I suppose I could pull the Core-Loct bullets from factory, and reload with my choice, that's always an option as well. I have a large selection of .308 bullets to try out in load development, everything from 110-gr up to 180-gr with several in between.

It's going to be a fun Winter, both at the bench and the range. Speaking of winter, it starts here in the PacNorWest in 2 days, so I need to get my bippy iun gear and put all the summer-living stuff away.

Cross-posted at Straight Case blog.

Is is "chatter"?

...or is it the future?

I just signed on to a new gunboard (new for me, CastBoolit.com has been around for a while).

Some old heads over there raised a suspicion that I have held for a while: since the 2A is about GUNS, not ammo, a wannabe gun-grabbing gummint could put a severe crimp in the 2A by just shutting down ammo supply, without much chance of an immediately-successful challenge.

After reading some posts over at CastBoolit, it re-enforces this belief that I've held before now.

Accordingly, I give this advice:

Stop buying guns to bulk-up or improve your inventory. When you have the basic inventory on hand (3 guns/person: rifle, shotgun, handgun), concentrate on buying ammo.

Several things to consider: an actual "gun-grab" by the .gov would meet with immediate resistance (perhaps except for guns like 50BMG, which I think could be grabbed without SCOTUS opposition). An ammo crunch would be harder to resist successfully. By Executive Order (remember, Obama has issued close to 1,000 of those, eclipsing all the previous POTUS' together), all imports of ammo would cease. No more CommBloc stuff for your AKs or RPKs. No more milsurp stuff from anywhere, and that cheap Russ steel-case stuff would also stop.

That's only Day One of an ammo freeze. It gets harder for the .gov after that, but imagine if an Executive Order froze powder shipments, or declared any component of ammo as HazMat? Maybe an Executive Order declaring copper and/or lead to be a strategic and controlled supply item. I seem to recall that there is already an Executive Order on the books for that, but it was never put into practice.

Don't dismiss these musings with, "Well, CalGuns or 2AF or NRA or JPFO would fight THAT". Of course they would. When is the last time you saw some sort of Executive Office plan to delay a legal process? If you're a Geezer, think back to Watergate, but just recently, we had Gunwalker, which is not resolved yet despite an entire Congressional Session investigating it. Oh, yeah, those Oval Office people know how to delay things, yes they do.

Here's the program:

• Buy ammo. Buy it/load it often. Develop a system to keep track of it, storage systems to protect it's quality, and possibly be ready to hide it from .gov eyes if some sort of  "Arsenal Law" is declared.
• Plan on having enough ammo for the duration of an Obama second term. If an "Arsenal law" gets declared by ObamaFiat, it will be in effect immediately on publication in the Federal Register, and that can be done in days, maybe hours. All ammo sales will likely be immediately frozen until the Registration requirements for the Arsenal Law are worked out.
• Don't talk about your ammo supply any more. Not on your blogs, not to anyone outside of necessary household members who have to help you with ammo logistics.
• If your State/Muni gummint already registers/limits ammo purchases, you are screwed, unless you have found a way around them (like driving to a neighboring State and purchasing, making you an instant criminal). NEVER talk about such lawbreaking to ANYONE.
• Consider caching most of your ammo away from your primary residence. If you DO get known as an ammo hoarder, and I'm sure I am known that way already, you MUST have off-site and dispersed storage.
• Reloading: reloading is a long-term solution to an ammo ban, but reloading components/equipment will likely be embargoed as well as loaded ammo in the Arsenal Law. We will all have to pack up our reloading benches/rooms and prepare to hide/disperse them also if ammo gets banned by fiat.

Okay, you're a gunny who isn't a Type A prepper. How about YOU? How long until your ammo supply runs out at your present rate of use without re-supply, Grasshopper?

Back from the Planet Meh

....but, you can take the blogger out of Meh, but you can't take Meh out of the blogger (or something like that).

Meh #1: Politics. How can I say that the current iteration of what passes for organized political campaigning sucks, and sucks a root big enough that it obviously didn't come off this planet, it came from Meh. How can politicians (of both stripes, too) miss so many opportunities to finish off their opponents and have a tidy election? Many people predicted that without a TelePrompter to think for him, the Won would come-a-cropper in the dee-bating. He did, and now it's "OMFG, how could they not let him use a teleprompter"(saw that on Fox, it was re-broadcast from somewhere, all those collitch students with heads STILL full of mush moaning about no teleprompter). Meh.

Meh #2: The Obama Administration's Department of State (Secretary Hildebeeste's domain) is another big Meh. In case not one of these dim bulbs ever read a history of diplomacy (I did, several of them), that fine human art and science functions on the basis of information and steely-eyed reserve on the part of it's practitioners. Lacking adequate intelligence, and lacking the ability to stare down malevolent opposition across Big Mahogany Tables, your foreign policy is going to suck. In the old days, that could somewhat be made up with a solid carrot-and-stick program, the carrot being US Dollars and the stick being the United States Marine Corps and the Fleets which delivered them to those shores of Tripoli (where they obviously need to be right now), but since we never pull back any of the dollars, and almost never send in the Marines anymore, the carrot-and-stick program has lost all it's effectiveness. Hell, we have wannabe nuclear pirates holding us up for ransom when we could end that threat from a cornfield in Kansas with the flexing of two peoples' index fingers.Just Meh!

Meh #3: It seems that the Citeh (rhymes with Mitt-Meh) of Stumptown (okay, Portland, Stumptown is a local joke), the Citeh has permitted it's partners-in-crime, the Parking Barons, to pretend that they are Government, and issue citations! Yep, here's a story about a parking lot client who goofed and put the receipt up-side down on the dashboard, and the client got a $43 citation. Never mind that all non-police parking enforcemnt Deputies have to be authorized by either a Police Chief, the Sheriff or the Circuit Court. No matter that the authority cited for the "citations" does not exist in law. No matter that the Parking Baron failed to disclose that a simple showing of the receipt should have voided the "citiation". No matter. Yep, Graft on a Stick. Rates a big Meh!

Meh #4: Gunny Meh. I recently acquired a fine old Savage 99F, chambered in the fierce-for-it's-day .300 Savage caliber (about the same as  present .308 Winchester or early 30-06). Fine rifle. Interior roatary magazine, cocked-indicator, magazine capacity counter (ingenious, really). Now I'm apparently a victim of the Great Ammo Price Run-Up (or Great Ammo Swindle, as I prefer). Just as recently as two years ago, the last time I looked at a price for this ammo, it was just over what 30-30 Winchester ran, about $15-18/box. It's up to $30 and better now. No sweat, 'Dog, you reload, right? Sweat. Few places make the hulls, fewer carry them, so I had to pay MidwayUSA's price of nearly $30 per bag of 50 hulls. By the time I had ordered everything for the rifle, including 100 rounds of loaded ammo, the hulls, the dies and some other minor stuff, I had laid down a bit more than I paid for the rifle.

Meh #5: Health Meh. Getting old sucks. Don'tget old. That is all. Meh

Is Obama trying to head off a second "Obama Gun Rush"?

****Just in:****

Still rumor status, but given this source, strong rumor.

A close friend, a former ranking police official locally, previously responsible for purchasing Police Department firearms and equipment, got familiar with a cerrtain gun shop. The owner of that shop and my buddy go way back. I am an Internet Journalist, and this information will be protected under Oregon Law.

Buddy tells me today that this gun shop owner told him that there is now an "allocation system" in place for ammunition.

This can only mean one thing: the BATFE (read: OBAMA'S BATFE) is leaning on the ammo makers to prevent the Second Obama Gun Rush (as it pertains to ammo). This is ANOTHER direct violation of the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution.

In the past, when ammo makers were faced with a surge in orders, they put on extra shifts to make the additional ammo, as long as brass supplies, primers, bullets, etc held out. They raised the prices to cover increased component costs if they had to, but they made the ammo available to the public. Apparently, not this time. Three Novembers ago, Obama had to sit back and watch in dismay as millions of new guns and billions of rounds of ammo were sold after his election victory. You KNOW that had to have fried his butt then, he won't let it happen again; he tipped his hand two years ago, when all of a sudden, OSHA descended en-masse on the ammo factories with their usual bullying tactics in what we can now determine was just a test for this event we are having now.

I'm putting my money where my mouth is.

The Rivrdog Blog will offer, for openers, a Five Hundred Dollar Bounty (cash) for the legitimate transfer to this blog of any communication, email or otherwise, with either the actor (agent of BATFE or OSHA or some other Gov't Agency), or to any receiver of such communication, proving or even strongly suggesting that the Government initialized this system of limiting ammunition production, and with that actor or receiver offering that communication for legitimate transfer. It will, of course, be published on this blog.

I've got the "whistleblower" whistle in my mouth, and the penalty flag in hand ready to throw onto the field. I have an excellent firm of whistleblower's lawyers ready to assist me if the need be.

If Obama or any senior member of his Administration can be associated with this "allocation system" for ammunition, I intend to ride Obama's sorry ass to election defeat with it.

If any other gunbloggers (or anyone else) wishes to contribute to my "reward fund", I will gladly accept those funds to fatten up my initial offer.

We don't have to put up with this Chicago-Style bullying. We don't have to wait for the NRA to "work behind the scenes" to supposedly-mitigate the effects of an "allocation system". We can get the evidence, publish it, and take this corrupt Administration down with it, without a shot being fired or the first gun coming out of a gun safe.

 

New posts up at Straight Case gunblog!

Yesterday's, which leads into today's. Both articles feature the subject of a second gun, and what the choices are there. The first article refers to famous gunwriter and LEO Massad Ayoob, and I build on that article in the second post, which is about pistol-caliber carbines, my very most favorite gunny topic.

Now that the heat of the summer is in the history books, reloading in my Shed out back is again of primary interest, and of course, most of the work at the bench gets written up as a Journal at Straight Case.

On the subject of guns, my best-ever statement of opinion on Open Carry is up over at Joe's Place.

Word. I'm not an O/C fanboy. If the 2A was ever interpreted to require Open Carry, I could do that, in fact did, for 25 years as a Deputy Sheriff, but I prefer to carry concealed.

Reloading bleg

Need some ideas here:

Suppose you're into reloading. I am, and most serious gunnies I know are as well. Now, modern smokeless powders last a long time in their original containers, but there is some degradation over time. If you wanted to store some powder against an uncertain future of the sales of such, would it be in your interest to vacuum-seal it?

With modern vacuum-sealing systems so easy to use and avaiable for reasonable dollars, most modern households have one of them on hand.

Would the vacuum bags work to seal quantities of smokeless powders? Would any Feddle laws be broken in doing so? If repackaging is an issue, what if you repackaged it small enough so the packages could be stored inside the original containers?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Cross-posted at Straight Case Blog.