Beauty in .45ACP

Please go see a great portrait of a Marine veteran -- certainly of Iwo Jima and perhaps of the 4th Marines in pre-war China or Nicaragua in the 30s. Who knows what history it helped make?

To heck with our obsession with shiny newness  in our relics. This one is museum quality.

Thank you, Wyatt.

Well, it made ME laugh

My buddy John says:

"A 9 mm is a .45 set on 'stun'."

About that foreign weenie...

Every time truth requires me to admit to using a 9mm Eurowimp as my bread and butter piece, I feel compelled to get all defensive about it.

I loopholed the 59 cheap, as it should have been. It was intended to be trading stock, but my vestigial conscience denied permission to foist it off until it could be used as intended. So I disassembled, deburred, throated, and polished the internals. Most significantly I ground enough metal from the frame to permit the trigger to go back far enough to trip the sear every time. This is the truth, and I can still display the tool marks to doubters.

About the time I finished making the damned thing work right,  I got sucked into the high-capacity vortex which was just gathering speed in those days.

"Look,"  I thought,  "with 13 rounds in one magazine, I am  reasonably well covered for any threat I can imagine, even if I can't immediately put my hands on the spare."  


It remains a valid point, even after a guy becomes totally disenchanted with the 9mm as a defense round. (You can hedge your bet with zippy hand loads, and I do.) Besides, I really like shooting the thing.

But the controlling point is that my life has become almost as threat-free as a modern American life can be.  On the rare, all but nonexistent, occasions when I don't t think that Pollyanna-ish view is justified, the pipsqueak goes into the safe, and out comes one of Mr. Browning's (PBUH) 1911s in the decisive .45 ACP.

I do not urge this solution on others.

My Cup Runneth Over

I've mentioned the big lead stash and the barrel leading from the first batch of c. 230-grain round-nose bullets. Pan lubrication solved that problem, but a delightful auction has made it nearly moot.  I cannot explain why the gunny crowd let me  buy 1,500 commercial   .452 SWC 200-grainers at exactly one and one-half cents per round.

Geeking it out: A cent and a half for the bullet, three cents each  for the primer and case, just under two cents for the Unique.  I'll be shooting Mister Browning's (PBUH)  big pistol for about  twice the cost of the cheapest  .22 rimfires.

My oracle foresees more and louder bangs in the Camp J vicinity for the next year or so.

Social Networking Tools

The final 200 commercial cases on hand  are in the tumbler. Loaded with excellent 200-grain SWCs today they'll bring the Colts' fodder inventory up to the strategic reserve target.

(Pig weather rules out pleasant outdoor work.)
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Otherwise at the loophole...

A buddy got a fine deal on a Marlin Model 92 offered as a "parts" gun. It was missing only the butt plate, and you make a mistake to underestimate this man's stock-making and general restoration skills.

I was less lucky and settled for a good Lyman 358495 mold (147 -grain wadcutters), a GI . 1911 magazine, and a funky old .22 gun belt,  solid, but  missing its buscadero style holster. It  looks keen hanging next to the spurs.

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If I ever decide  to reload 9mm Eurowimp,  the  Lyman bullets will let me enter the caliber wars about whether 9mm Parabellum  using 147 grainers is a "good defense load." I will undoubtedly  straddle the fence and prove it is OK in Europe, but not here. Then I'll get to quote Colonel Cooper again. "If you shoot a European he will sit down on the curb and cry. If you shoot an American he will shoot back."

Mr. Jimmy regrets he's unable to shoot you today...*

Impromptu range trip this morning, and I am glad no one else was there to witness my humiliation writ large in .45 ACP.  Alibis galore are available and are  mostly true,  but nothing excuses  three magazines --- 21 rounds -- spread out over 11 or 12 inches at 50 yards.  The ammo was miscellaneous junk, but that accounts for only a little.

Yes, two-handed. Yes,  seated at shooting table.

This lad is resolved to shoot more.

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--I do like the gun, the SS Colt Series 70 built after the company decided to tell the panicky lawyers to get lost. The action is still stiff and the recoil spring feels too heavy, but it handled everything I fed it, from some light semi-wadcutter target loads up to the muscle  stuff I loaded recently. I will do a little trigger work.

--The muscle stuff is a 230-grain lead round nose over 6.3 grains of Unique, and I am going to back off a bit for everyday shooting. It's under the recommended maximum but noticeably zippier than the military load and not a lot of fun for casual shooting.

--The jury is  still out on whether I keep the barrel collet. I had intended to go back to John Browning's (PBUH) bushing system, but, as I said,  this lashup gave me no trouble. We'll see after a few hundred more rounds.

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*H/T Cole Porter

Truth as We See It

H/T to my buddy John, Chief Officer, GMA

Risque Piece

The heart of this Pelosi pleaser is an Augusta Arsenal rebuild of a 1911. It should shoot okay (not quite done, yet) but the general idea is to irritate the authoritarians.The carbine kit is from the 1980s or '90s, a 16 1/2 - inch barrel and walnut stock serviceable also as an emergency canoe paddle.

Part of the fun is its very illegal appearance. (It is if you install only the stock.)

First annual ...

Travis McGunGeek award to Dr. Strangegun for his fine photo essay on detail stripping the 1911 frame.  If you own one or plan to, it's a must-read.

Dr. S is carbinizing the JMB classic too, but with a complete new Buck Rogers top in a, errr,  subcaliber.

National Day of Mourning

You have two days to sponge and press your black arm bands.

On January 14, 1985, the Beretta/Mattel handthing was officially adopted by the Bureaucracy in Charge of  Stuff for American Warriors.

It's at a site which should be censored due to a subversive suggestion we kowtowed to European political pressure to adopt their sub-calibre nincompoopery. The very idea!

Meanwhile, the 1911  of John Moses Browning  remains undead. Enough breeding stock graces the hands of the MEUs and other special forces to offer the possibility of repopulation. 

Girl in the Sandbox

Introducing Abby. For you gentleman readers who served in the ranks, she's the noncom you wish you'd had, assuming that you could get over  the notion that uniform skirts should be worn only by those  who typed or gave injections or were looking for Section 8s.

Abby's been dealing with a shortage of 9mm ammo for those toy Berettas our military-industrial complex imposed on our warriors ~ 1985.  The fact assumes extra meaning when it's understood she and her Civil Affairs Unit reside in Iraq, but she's a resourceful female, and I suspect that some feather merchant in supply is about to suffer earburn.

Say, that reminds me, and this is no shit, back in the old days we wouldn't have had none uh them little foreign bullets. Why, that .45 would knock...".

Sorry. Nostalgia happens.

Jeff Cooper and the Europeans

A recent gun show had the usual scads of foreign minor-caliber semi-autos on display. That suggested  another round of browsing for  Jeff Cooper stuff:

"...Europeans retain their preoccupation with the 9mm Parabellum cartridge. This is due primarily to the fact that the Europeans as a group are not interested in stopping power. As one Frenchman once told me, if in Europe you shoot a criminal, he sits down on the curb and bursts into tears. In America he will shoot back and kill you if he can."