Tag: guns

KevinLeave a comment

But Then You Kiss Her Sister…

This never happens to me. I mean never.

In the continuing saga of the new (to me) Kimber, I neglected to mention that when I picked it up last Monday the salesman told me that they were giving away a new Ultra CDP this Saturday (today). Anybody who came in the store on Saturday would have one entry for the pistol, but anybody who bought a Kimber during the week would get an additional five entries. I filled out the tickets, but I knew it was just an exercise.

They just called me.

I won.

One of these:

Here’s Kimber’s stats on the Ultra CDP:

Caliber: .45 ACP

Features:

* Entirely built in the Custom Shop for enhanced concealed carry.
* Carry melt treatment rounds and blends edges to avoid snagging on clothing or holsters.
* Blackened aluminum frame with 30 lines-per-inch checkering contrasts with the premium aluminum trigger, stainless steel slide and satin ambidextrous thumb safety.
* Hand-checkered, double-diamond rosewood grips and low profile Tritium night sights finish these elegant carry pistols.

Specifications: Height (inches) 90° to barrel: 4.75
Weight (ounces) with empty magazine: 25
Length (inches): 6.8
Magazine capacity: 7
Ambidextrous thumb safety
Carry melt (frame & slide)
Recoil spring (pounds): 18
Frame: Material: Aluminum
Finish: Matte black anodized
Width (inches): 1.28
Frontstrap checkering (30 LPI)
Checkering under trigger guard (30 LPI)
Slide: Material: Stainless steel
Finish: Satin stainless steel
Barrel: Steel match grade
Length (inches): 3
Twist rate (left hand): 16
Ramped Sights: Meprolight Tritium 3-dot night, fixed
Radius (inches): 4.8
Grips: Rosewood double diamond
Trigger: Premium aluminum match grade
Factory setting (approx. pounds): 4-5

My wife comes home occasionally from the casinos with a few hundred dollars, but I pretty much never win anything.

Not today!

Now I don’t mind waiting for the Eclipse to come back from the factory.

Oh – it’s got an internal extractor. I asked.

KevinLeave a comment

No Matter How Beautiful She is…

…someone somewhere is tired of her crap.

Now I know why that Kimber Eclipse Pro II was for sale at such a discount below new.

Remember when I wrote:

It’s used, apparently very gently (which I hope does not mean “returned because it doesn’t work”) and in excellent condition.

and continued:

Yes, it’s got the firing pin safety. Yes, it’s got an external extractor. No, John Moses Browning is not spinning in his grave over the sacrilege.

If you listen closely, you may hear a faint whirring sound.

It doesn’t work. Using both commercial Federal hardball and my own handloads, Kimber factory, Chip McCormick, and Wilson Combat magazines, I couldn’t put eight rounds through the pistol without at least two failures to extract. It would pull the case about halfway out of the chamber before the extractor slipped off the rim, and that’s all she wrote.

Today, a Kimber factory representative was at the gun shop where I bought this pistol, so I headed directly from the range to the shop and had him check it out. He stripped, cleaned, and inspected the slide, extractor, and firing pin, and even checked the extractor tension. He advised me to try it again, but if it failed he recommended that I return it to Kimber for correction. I went directly to the closest indoor range.

No improvement.

It doesn’t matter how pretty it is if you can’t rely on it. It’s going back to Kimber just as soon as I can ship it out. NOW I miss my old job. Shipping via FedEx or UPS was simple. Now I have to go to the main UPS office to ship it. What a PITA.

KevinLeave a comment

Overtime.

You know all that overtime I worked during the last few weeks? Here’s what I did with some of it:


I picked it up yesterday. It’s used, apparently very gently (which I hope does not mean “returned because it doesn’t work”) and in excellent condition. Yes, it’s got the firing pin safety. Yes, it’s got an external extractor. No, John Moses Browning is not spinning in his grave over the sacrilege. It’s a beautiful piece. Here’s Kimber’s (much better) photography and description:

Eclipse pistols have such a striking appearance that it is easy for features and performance to take a back seat. All business right down to the core, Eclipse frames and slides are machined from solid stainless steel. Frontstraps have 30 lines-per-inch checkering for a positive grip. A match grade Premium Aluminum Trigger from the Custom Shop is tuned to release at 4-5 pounds. Breech faces are polished to ensure flawless feeding. Barrels and chambers are carefully machined to match grade dimensions.

The Eclipse finish brings out the classic lines of a 1911 better than any other process. The slide and frame are finished in a tough matte black oxide then all flat surfaces are brush polished, leaving recessed and curved surfaces dark and contrasting. Laminated gray/black wood grips checkered in the traditional double diamond pattern and matte black small parts round out the package.

The Eclipse Pro II™ and Eclipse Pro Target II™ have 4-inch match grade bushingless bull barrels fitted directly to the slide.

Being used, I obviously didn’t pay full list for it, but it was still pretty pricey. They’re right about one thing, it’s damned pretty. Hopefully this weekend I’ll get a chance to take it to the range and run a few hundred rounds through it.

KevinLeave a comment

Looking for a New Pistol?.

Interested in contributing to a good cause? Check out this raffle:

LTW (http://www.louderthanwords.us), short for Actions Speak Louder Than Words, is a consortium of custom shops from around the country who specialize in the 1911 pistol. We collaborate 2-3 times a year on a custom gun, raffle it off, and donate the proceeds to a selected charity. We are proud to announce that our first project for 2007 will be for the benefit of AmericanSnipers.org!

And what are they raffling off for $10 a ticket? Well, here’s just the pistol, a very customized Springfield 1911:

The enhancements include, in order of progression through the LTW shops:

Legacy Custom Products has expertly fitted the BarSto barrel and optimized the slide to frame relationship. He has also done one of his signature magwell treatments wherein a special mainspring housing of his own manufacture is utilized, enabling him to open the magwell out towards the rear without creating a knife-edge from the magazine chute’s rear wall. This magwell treatment does not add any parts, weight, or bulk to the pistol but seriously augments the user’s ability to get a fresh magazine in place, fast.

Rogers Precision: Chuck’s reputation and abilities for building hard-core working guns that look great is being taken full advantage of here. His “Golfball” treatment of the frontstrap and on the mainspring housing on the back, are likely the ideal gripping pattern for a true, in-the-fray pistol. This pattern gives a very positive grip when a firing grasp is exerted, and yet doesn’t “lock in” the user to the point that he can’t shift the pistol slightly if need be. Moreover, the pattern is “open” and does not tend to fill with dirt and debris–one might even say it is self cleaning. Chuck has also machined sand cuts into the frame/slide sliding interfaces, allowing the pistol to run longer in sandy or muddy conditions. Sand cuts are nothing new in the world of small arms, some of the most-issued military weapons in the world have them, the FAL rifle and Sterling submachinegun to name a few. Chuck has also added a recessed lanyard point to the butt– one that does not protrude but is there and ready whenever needed.

Don Williams brings to bear his considerable talents in fine-tuning the internals of this pistol for maximum safety, reliability, and precision. Hammer, sear, disconnect, mag release, trigger (triggers, actually; one long and one short)….. none will escape his expert attention. In addition, Don is fitting two spare extractors with and to a super-tough EGW oversized firing pin stop.

Ned Christiansen will be fitting the sights, which will start out as Yost-Bonitz Professional Grade sights. The YoBo PG rear sight is made with a front face that is vertical, providing a surface with which the user can perform one-handed manipulations such as chambering a round, by hooking the sight on something. Ned will modify these in “Shield Driver” fashion, where the front face of the rear sight is made even deeper, and is serrated, creating a hard-to-miss surface for racking the slide, on, say, the side of a ballistic shield. Ned will also fit and TIG weld in place the plunger tube, match the slide rear surface to the frame and texture it along with all three extractors, and ensure that the VZ grips are a great match to the pistol’s final lines. Ned will also be fitting the pistol with a light rail.

The shop of Yost-Bonitz Custom will be responsible for etching the LTW and AmericanSnipers.org logos. They will also fit the (Wilson Combat) safeties (one ambidextrous and one single-sided), and do a precise dehorning of the pistol. Yost-Bonitz is the nerve center of LTW and is also handling some of the administrative duties related to the raffle, and YoBo’s Steve Bailey’s itchy shutter-button finger will be putting this pistol and its accoutrements on film.

Final finish for the pistol is still TBD but a few different hard-knocks-proof options are being considered.

My chances are probably better than they are of winning the Powerball so I could afford to have something similar built. The drawing will be at the February, 2008 SHOT show. Winner need not be present to win.

Armed America2

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I’ve got two books coming in the mail with quite similar titles. The first is Clayton Cramer’s rebuttal to Michael Bellesiles’ discredited text, the second is a coffee-table book of portraits. Clayton’s book is entitled Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie, the second is entitled Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes.

As Clayton is a well-known supporter of the Second Amendment, I expect no surprises from his book other those resulting from his typical exhaustive scholarship. The second book I’ve known about for a while now, as the author/photographer has been working on it for over two years and links to his book web site and photos like this one have been common at places like AR15.com. I stumbled across his YouTube promotional video earlier today. I hadn’t realized the book was finished.

During the time when he was posting his photos, I wondered what the end result would be, and what it would engender in the public (if anything). It would appear that the result is not negative in the least. At the moment there are 14 comments about the book at Amazon.com, and a few reviews from such diverse people as Jim Petzal of Field and Stream:

…when I opened a package the other day and saw a book inside called America Armed: Portraits of Gun Owners in their Homes, what came to mind was the acronym BOHICA—Bend over; here it comes again.

But I was wrong. This coffee-table book is the child of Krause Publications, which puts out (via its imprint F+W Publications) the Gun Digest. So it seemed highly unlikely that they would be doing a hatchet job on us. And they didn’t. What we have here folks, between two covers, is that greatest of rarities, a fair picture of who owns guns.

and The New Homemaker:

Avery, Miles, Gregg and Theresa from Arizona chose to pose with their dog Ginny, two AR-15s, an M1 Garand and supressed Ruger 10-22’s for the boys. In their kitchen. Barefoot. Says Gregg: “…one time out of a 101 where having a gun would have meant saving your own child – you would sell your soul, or trade everything you have to do that.”

There are some telling quotes from the Amazon.com reviews as well. “A. Justice” writes one of the more predictable:

I hope this book brings insight and provokes discussion on both sides of the subject because like it or not, we are all americans and have an obligation to look out for each other as well as ourselves.

Your government is not capable of protecting you every moment of your life nor is it obligated to do so. Those of us who are responsibly armed may have an opportunity to help, but the only one who can ensure your own safety is you, and that goes far beyond just owning a firearm.

As I said, this book captures a glimpse of a private part of the daily lives of many americans that has become far too controversial and vilified by many who dont understand their own rights and responsibilities as citizens of this once great country.

But this one surprised me as much as the book surprised him/her. “Spleen” wrote:

I am embarrassed that I started out with such a small-minded view of gun ownership. I thought I was against guns and seeing pictures of them was viscerally disturbing them to me. However, reading what people actually had to say about their gun ownership did make me open my mind on the issue.

I appreciate that the book portrays first and foremost the people and does not slant or objectify them (there is no political agenda) which leaves me able to digest the contents for myself.

William D. Nelsch wrote:

It reached me on so many different levels: the ‘familial’ based on one of our LUG family creating a masterpiece; the photographic, based on the technique in achieving the images – bounce flash, rear fill flash, and the inadvertent (?) self portrait on page 127; the contextual notion that the Second Amendment (I am a left wing Democrat, christian more of an Episcobuddhist, anti-war, anti-violence, etc. ) must be always enforced, and in light of the recent idiocy in the WH seems ever more important; and finally the sub-context of all of the animals is just delightful.

This is so much different, and better, than what I had expected after reviewing the online images. Seeing the images in print form allows for so much more detail; the messiness/neatness of the subject environs; the additional items, or lack thereof, in their living areas adds so much more to the meaning of each photo. I can’t help but wonder how much of the shoot was staged vs. their actual environment. And the captures of the animals are priceless. This was no easy task.

I was also struck by the verbosity or lack thereof of the subjects when commenting on their gun ownership and what stuck me most was the argument that the Second Amendment, like all of the Amendments, must be upheld against the moneyed interest purchasing politicians attempting to take away ANY freedoms. This is akin to the NRA, ACLU and Sierra club all agreeing on the same thing.

I don’t like guns. I was going to say I don’t have any guns but that isn’t exactly true – I have an old flintlock from the Spanish American war that belonged to a relative of mine standing in the corner of my living room. Why? It just looks neat. This book doesn’t necessarily change my need to have or not have guns but it does cause me to rethink any notion of banning guns.

Mouth. Hangs. Agape.

What has Kyle Cassidy wrought here?

Another comment, this one from James M. Safley:

This is an important book. It makes no editorial statement, proffers no venomous rhetoric. It simply puts a human face on the typically abstract and much maligned “gun owner.” They are our neighbors, our friends, our coworkers. We normally would not fear these people, so why should we fear them with guns?

Or this one by Jennifer A. Summerfield:

As someone who has always regarded guns with apprehension and never considered firing one, let alone owning one, “Armed America” has forced me to reconsider my stance. There is such a broad cross-section of the American population represented that each page seems to bring a different revelation. The fact that the subjects are allowed to speak for themselves, their words printed below their image, allows you to draw your own conclusions, without the photographer’s own views, (which remain a mystery,) getting in the way.

It’s a fascinating document of American culture… both past and present… and in turning each page, you feel you’re on a journey with the photographer, rediscovering this vast, complex country.

If it can do that, I had to buy a copy. You might want to consider buying one too.

KevinLeave a comment

That Range Report I Promised.

I did finally get the Swede to the range last weekend. The good news: it no longer strings vertically, and the groups are about half the size they were before with the barrel free-floated.

The bad news: It’s about a 2 MOA rifle with the ammo that would shoot 3/4″ groups with the barrel preloaded, and that’s not good enough.

There are some options I could pursue; a synthetic stock or an aluminum V-block embedded in the forend to stabilize a preload screw, but I’ve been tinkering with this rifle for more than ten years now – it’s time to move on to something else.

Dammit.

KevinLeave a comment

The Best Laid Plans….

First, the good news: It looks like I’ll get to spend the next couple of weeks working out of the office, rather than on the road. And the Mauser is back from 300 Below.

The bad news: While I was on the road the clothes dryer took a dump and the kitchen faucet is screwed up and in need of repair, plus we’re out of everything – so I get to spend today doing shopping, appliance installation, and home repairs.

And why didn’t anybody tell me that Sunday was Father’s Day?

I did, however, put the Mauser back together bright and early (very early) this morning, and for those of you who expressed an interest, here’s a few shots of it. (Oleg Volk I ain’t.)

(*sigh*) Maybe next weekend?

KevinLeave a comment

A Quick Update.

Sorry about the silence. I’m currently out of town working on a project, and it looks very much like this is going to be the norm for the foreseeable future (at least the next 6-10 weeks) give or take a few days here and there. These days tend to be long, and about all I have time for in the evenings is to check out other people’s blogs and maybe leave a comment or six. I haven’t even had time to play with my new RCBS Chargemaster other than to run some tests with it. If I ever get the chance, however, I should have an interesting range report coming up.

I have an 1896 Swedish Mauser (Carl Gustav, 1916) sporter rifle (I know, I know, somebody done bubba’d a classic – but bear with me…). I bought the rifle many years ago for $100. It had no finish left, and the bore wear indicator badge said that it was about half shot out, so I thought the price wasn’t so bad. It shot OK (iron sights and my eyes being what they are) but I’d bought it to build a Silhouette rifle out of. One year I plunked down some hard-earned money and had it rebarreled with a Shilen 1-in-8″ twist medium-weight barrel, had the bolt turned down, had the whole shebang polished & blued, and had two-piece Weaver-style scope bases installed. To this I added a Jewell Timney trigger and a Fajen thumbhole stock which I then glass bedded the action to. I added to this a 3-12x 6.5-20x Simmons adjustable objective scope in a set of Burris Zee rings. (500 meters is a LONG way out there.)

I then proceeded to spend the better part of three years testing different combinations of bullets, powders, and loads to find something the damned thing would shoot. Nothing worked. I changed scopes. No improvement. I shot factory ammo. Still wouldn’t group. Finally it settled into shooting vertical strings. Much research and study later, I tried preloading the barrel. I cut up an old used credit card and slipped a few pieces under the barrel near the forend of the stock, then tightened up the action screws, and off to the range we went. The first five shots out of the rifle gave me this at 100 yards:

If you can’ t read the caliper, that’s 1.016″ outside edge to outside edge. Subtract one bullet diameter and the group is 0.75″ including the “flyer.” I was stoked! (Note the orientation of the “10” – it still was stringing vertically just a tiny bit.)

Problem was, it would shoot like this all day – but on Saturday those groups were at 12 o’clock. On Sunday they were at 3 o’clock. On Tuesday they were at 10 o’clock – and each tight little group could be inches away from the point of aim.

This is not acceptable out of a target rifle.

So I let it sit in the locker for a while. The week before last I disassembled the rifle and shipped the stripped barreled receiver to 300 Below to have it cryo-treated. It should be back by the end of this week, so if I have a little time off this weekend, the Swede and I have a date with the range to see if cryogenic stress-relief really works.

I hope so. It’s too pretty to shoot crappy.

KevinLeave a comment

Absolutely Correct.

James Rummel has an absolutely accurate post on the gun-nut subculture. Excerpt:

If you were born into a family that valued the shooting sports, then you always considered firearms to be cool precision instruments. Machines that challenge the individual to do their best while honing their own skills.

If you tried to pick up the hobby later in life, you were probably a bit daunted. The biggest problem, in my experience, was the nervousness that was brought on by decades of anti-gun spin in the media. (What if I do it wrong? I could shoot myself!) The second biggest problem is the enthusiasm and helpfulness that experienced shooters show towards those who are just beginning.

This probably seems odd. Helpful people are a problem? Isn’t that counter-intuitive?

Not exactly.

RTWT. He’s absolutely right, from beginning to end. See if you recognize yourself there.

KevinLeave a comment

Better Late than Never.

But still about 20 30 years too late: The UK Countryside Alliance organizes the First-ever National Shooting Week.

The first-ever National Shooting Week was launched on Monday 21st May at the National Shooting Centre at Bisley, known as ‘the home of shooting’.

From Saturday May 26th to Sunday June 3rd, thousands of people across the UK will try one of the most exciting Olympic sports during National Shooting Week.

Shooting schools and clubs are putting on more than 200 open days across the country so the public can try shooting for the first time.

I will be fascinated to see what the turnout for this looks like.

(via Uncle.)

UPDATE, 5/28:

Minister urges teenagers to take up shooting

(UK Telegraph, 5/27/07)

Anti-gun campaigners have accused the Government of making a U-turn on firearms after a minister urged teenagers to take up shooting to improve their behaviour.

Richard Caborn, the sports minister, has backed a drive by shooting groups to increase participation in the sport among children as young as 12. He believes that the sport helps young people to become more responsible and disciplined, and vowed that significant funds would be made available to help boost participation.

I’ll believe that when I see it.

Handguns were banned in Britain in 1996 following the Dunblane massacre, in which 16 children and their teacher were killed at a primary school.

Previously, the Government has taken steps to crack down on shooting by increasing the age limit for buying air weapons, as well as banning handguns.

After five gun murders in February in London alone, Tony Blair warned that 17-year-olds could face mandatory five-year sentences for possessing illegal guns.

What? The ASBOs are proving ineffective?

“We want to boost the number of people who take part in shooting sports, particularly among young adults,” Mr Caborn told The Sunday Telegraph. “We are investing £600 million in developing medal winners for 2012 and shooting will benefit greatly from that.”

Schools have been encouraged to increase the involvement of young people in shooting sports and Mr Caborn welcomed the first National Shooting Week, which begins this weekend, as a good way to raise levels of participation.

Though according to the first commenter to this post, none of that £600 million apparently went towards advertising National Shooting Week.

He has already upset the anti-gun lobby by supporting moves to relax the ban on handguns in the hope of boosting Britain’s chances of winning pistol-shooting medals at the 2012 London Olympics. Lending his support to the week-long campaign has raised its fears further. However, a Labour Party document, for which he wrote the foreword, argues that there is a need to work with shooting organisations to develop ways “to demystify firearms”.

How did this guy end up as a minister in Britain’s government?

The party has published a Charter for Shooting, which it released after promising in the 2005 general election to ensure that country sports would be protected.

In the charter, it says that Labour is fully supportive of shooting organisations. -“Government ministers have noted the benefits of introducing young people to the sport in terms of developing habits of safety, self-discipline and responsibility,” it says.

However, Gill Marshall-Andrews, the chairman of the Gun Control Network, said that she was alarmed by Mr Caborn’s backing for National Shooting Week, which aims to introduce people to shooting for the first time and improve people’s understanding of guns.

“The Government should be ashamed of itself for putting its energies into encouraging people to take up shooting when we should be ensuring that there are fewer and fewer guns available,” she said. “By backing this initiative they’re sending out the wrong message.”

Ms. Marshall-Andrews? They’ve tried that. And failed miserably. Repeating the same actions over and over while expecting a different outcome is defined as “insanity.”

Mrs Marshall-Andrews accused the Government of helping to make guns seem acceptable and of creating a society in which they will become prevalent.

And this is the part I love:

Since 1997, firearms crimes have risen from 12,410 to 21,521 in 2005/06 (an increase of 73 per cent), including incidents involving handguns, which have nearly doubled in this period, from 2,636 to 4,671, despite their being banned.

(Emphasis mine.) “Will become prevalent”?

However, according to David Penn, the secretary of the British Shooting Sports Council, an umbrella body for shooting groups, there is no correlation between gun crime and the level of gun ownership.

“To own a gun, people have to go through rigorous checks and it takes a long time,” he said. “People who argue that these guns are falling into the wrong hands obviously don’t understand the real statistics.”

• Ministers are dragging their feet over the introduction of laws to tackle imitation firearms, campaigners claim. Legislation banning the import or manufacture of realistic fake guns, of the kind used by criminals to threaten victims, was approved by Parliament last year. However, the measure is not due to take effect until this autumn.

Yes, banning look-alike guns is really going to help. What’s next? Banning “super-soaker” squirt-guns?