Slinging lead

An hour and a-half with Ken in his west pasture embarrassed me.

It was time to sight in a couple of freshly scoped .22s and shoot the cob webs out of a decrepit Mossberg semi which I don't recall ever firing. The Mossberg -- a cheap pawn shop buy three or four years ago  --  ran like a champ.

The name brands sucked. With the Ruger 10-22  it was a magazine problem, and I had no spare with me. The Winchester 74 jammed every third or fourth shot -- stovepipes, failures to feed, failures to eject. I honestly didn't think its innards were that cruddy.

Shame kept me in the shop all evening, nearly full disassembly and scrubba dub dub on the Winchester. Fixed the Ruger mag and, since I was already smelling nicely of Hoppes No. 9, cleaned heck out of it, too.  Both are again combat-ready if a few rounds into the Armorer's Log* in the loading room are any guide.

I cleaned the Mossy too, but that was merely a gesture of gratitude.

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*I spent my early life looking for a Philosopher's Stone, then finally wised up and settled for an Armorer's Log.

Hey, for a little extra we'll make your new pistol work...

Trying to separate you from your last dollar is not an ambition exclusive to government, and ToddG bench strips one of the private-enterprise schemes

The gist is  that a $700+ handgun (the Sig Classic) ought to work fine right out of the shipping carton, without need for a $200  "action enhancement package" by the same company that sold it to you in the first place. But you should read the whole thing.

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The comments include a bit about a personal tic, ramp polishing. I routinely do it to virtually every semi I acquire. Sometimes it's unnecessary, but sometimes it improves feed reliability. It isn't something you need to pay a gunsmith for if you're adept enough to strip the pistol and self-disciplined enough to live by the Two Great Rules.

(1) Remove metal by the depth of only one atom and (2) changing any angle by more than one-fiftieth of one degree is an official screwup.

The goal is to smooth the cartridge/weapon bearing surfaces, not to second-guess the engineer who designed it. We're not fixing a design flaw. We're rectifying manufacturing processes dictated by company accountants.

I use an appropriately sized dowel and crocus cloth or a felt wheel chucked in a Dremel and loaded with jewler's rouge.  (Dremel grinding wheels and coarse abrasives should be locked away until the job is done.)

H/T Tam

Beware of open carry

--If  you left your SW Model 59 in the truck and

--If you walk out to fetch it and

--If if it seems too much bother to tuck it into your waist band, out of sight and

--If you sort of let it hang down along your leg so as not to seem to be "brandishing" to nosy neighbors and

-- If your excitable young Labmaraner is jumping and prancing around you, licking at everything she can reach and

--If she can reach the gun for slobbering purposes and

--If you lay the 59 on a shelf before wiping it down and

--If you forget to wipe it down for two days, then

-- You will have a substantial rust spot on your blue steel slide,  proving beyond doubt that dog saliva does not contain WD40.

Pornographic magazines

 

Like most of you, I keep an eye open for  spare magazines.  This one holds 20 rounds, and I hear two or three of my cousins in hoplopobic panic: "You don't NEED those clips that kill lots of people." * 

Maybe not. Only future events will determine that. But when I find good ones,  lonesome on a hobby dealer's table, begging for $5, I buy them anyway. Report me to the Brady bunch.

This one is marked S/W, but since I can find no record of a factory 20-rounder for the 59,  I assume it's aftermarket by a maker with the courtesy to give the buyer a verbal hint about which pistol it is intended for. Many of them don't.

I got it home and stuck it in the grip. It wouldn't fit. It lacked about 3/4 inch of seating as it should,  and I wasted a frustrating10 minutes looking for  satisfaction in all the wrong places. Mangled lips? Misplaced catch slot? Another disabling burr on the alloy frame? None of the above. Then, more by accident than careful examination, I noticed two stamping-machine dimples on the front, and obviously the upper one was engaging the toe of the frame, preventing seating.

A few seconds on the old Baldor grinder erased the offender, and the magazine now fits and feeds. Aha. The maker also intended the magazine for Smith's CC version, the 469. The upper bump's purpose was to prevent overseating.

Nothing wrong with that. I suppose the instruction sheet warned of "minor gunsmithing required" for use  in the large original model.

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*These ladies have a mystical bent, attributing malign self-will to all  shooty mechanical objects.  

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."

Not a dry heat

It's been several days since I unlocked the gun place and ran an  eye over blue steel and walnut. Too long; a scuzzy white fungus was getting a good start on the oil-finished stocks,  leather slings, and knife sheaths.

I caught it in time to avoid damage, and the lesson is learned.  Since Providence chose to make us live in a perpetual steam bath up here this summer,  a weapons wipe every couple of days is on the schedule.

How humid? Day before yesterday 94 per cent.

Junk Guns: Junk Policy

Turk has an item on the latest Sodom-on-Lake Michigan area gun-buyback. The gist is that taxpayers spent their money on about 200 non-working junkers with about the same crime potential as black board eraser.

Most of what the pictures show are unidentifiable long guns, and I doubt many are worth the $75 public bounty as potential working weapons.

But there's another element here. Just suppose one of them is a clapped out Winchester 74. Firing pin price-- $30. Magazine tube assembly about the same. Sights about ten bucks each. Or suppose a Remington 514, stock value at least $40. Et cetera.

And do you suppose there was anyone at the church there glancing at the stuff as it came in to check for old Redfield receiver sights? Marble screw-ons? Tang sights?

It is a sort of cash-for-clunkers disaster, huge amounts of benign value heading straight for the Burns Harbor blast furnaces with no conceivable redeeming public service rendered.

If I had a Huffington Post account I could say this there for the giggles inherent in being told that Redfield peeps can transform any weapon into a sniper rifle capable of killing children at a half-mile.

Retro bangers

The horoscope says it's a lucky day, so I think I'll try again on the magazine fix for the Marlin Model 38.

I'm trying to adapt a tube spring and follower cannibalized from a 1907 Hopkins and Allen Military Rifle which is too far gone to ever be a shooter again. (Neat old rifle though, almost a as neat as H and A's ad for it in Popular Mechanix. In those days gun makers used Presidents' words to move product.)

It shouldn't be all that difficult once I determine how to retain the follower in the tube after the magazine is empty. You can shoot the gun all day long even without the internal tube parts if you simply raise the muzzle to about vertical after each shot.

Gratuitous gun(smithing) porn

In truth, "gunsmithing" is a word too grand for what goes on around here. "Often successful tinkering" is more honest.

Unfortunately, even light tinkering ambitions sometimes require a vice -- a cursably in-the-way beast is when not in use. I put up with them permanently installed in the big shop, but the gun room bench is too small. Hence this morning's pre-sunrise project:

The nearly self-evident trick here is use of through bolts and wing nuts to attach a small machinists vice tightly but temporarily to the bench I use for reloading and small "clean" gun work. You can mount or dismount it in less than a minute.

The ploy won't amaze many of you, but it makes an excuse to post a picture of a neat old Saturday Night Special and one of St. Ackley's books.

The revolver is "The American Double Action," in .32. Others were made in .38 and .44. H &R built some 850,000 of them c. 1883 through 1941. This one needs a couple of parts, and we're scrabbling through the junk box.

The highly accurate M1 Carbine

My buddy Ken showed up for tacos with a story and a trophy. He has recently acquired another carbine, a plain-Jane, mostly Winchester, arsenal rebuild. Coincidentally he concocted 100 unremarkable hand loads with GI brass, 110 FMJs, and 2400 powder. The Winchester threw them all over the section. A little investigation revealed an Uncle Wiggly rear sight which could not be snugged down by peening.

Enter epoxy. No home is complete without it it.

With the sight chemically bonded to the receiver of the WW2 relic, he shot five rounds over a rest at 35 yards. He tucked the result in his wallet and, last evening, produced it as the beer was being served . The group was coverable by a quarter, and I don't care if it was only 35 yards. That's impressive.

Gun Porn, Courtesy of the Young Bill Ruger

If Bill Ruger were alive and running the show in Southport, this three-screw .22 would hold nothing but pleasant memories, including the time Dad shot it into the ground to scare off a bunch of thuggy teenagers who kept farting around in his back yard. (Bad procedure, of course, but it happened to work this time.)

And including the buddy I bought it from in about 1970, Mark Brown of Blackfoot, Idaho, a good friend and outstanding journalist who died way too young.

The good vibes stop with a decision to have the "safety" conversion installed and a factory refinish. The reblue was excellent, and a metal polisher in Connecticut is to be congratulated for outstanding restraint and attention to the owner requests.

After that the new Ruger company behaved in a way designed to send gun buyers running to another maker. Any other maker, probably. Not to put too fine a point on things, the damned revolver wouldn't shoot, even though a Ruger "technician" certified he had tested it and been pleased as punch with how well it worked.

Maybe gremlins invaded the shipping box and arranged things so the cylinder wouldn't lock, the hammer wouldn't reliably cock , and, sometimes, the entire set of innards would lock up. Email after email and two USPS letters went ignored until, months later, I was advised to return the gun "for evaluation."

A guy gets angry enough and does something he hates to do. He disassembles a single -action revolver and looks things over. Transfer bar actually broken, its selvage edge snaggable on the firing pin. Bolt burred. The fix on the shop bench took maybe 30 minutes. It taught a lesson: Retain the utmost respect for Bill Ruger, but never again trust the company which has passed into the hands of marketeers and cost accountants.

Now that it shoots, it's a lovely little thing, as is the western rig built for it by Janine Ann for Ottis Rollin.

Projects

One of Marlin's lesser-known .22 rimfires, the Model 38, built from c. 1920-1930.  It is a slight variation on the earlier Model 32.  This is the octagon barrel version with a very quick takedown; you slide what appears to be a tang safety backwards a little and you instantly have half a rifle in each hand. And that's probably why I own this  example. At a 2006 auction the  front half appeared  in a cardboard  box with seven or eight old SW, H&R, and Iver Johnson revolvers --  project or parts  guns. Sixty-five bucks bought all, and then, three weeks ago,  Marlin serendipity  batted  her lovely eyes. A fellow  I know delivered a complete back half. I doubt this one  is likely to be for sale. Some things just look right, feel right, shoot right. You keep them  -- gun, horse, truck,or woman. :)



The gun content here is a little thin, but it occurred to me that I could conceal some running gear on this  Walnut whazis  with a once-fired  Ma Deuce empty, trimmed to specifications deemed field expedient.


It was  a special order from a little girl I know. Merry Christmas.