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Mix 'N' Match

September 9, 2015, 12:10 am
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I've mixed magic into historical gaming before.

Magic and pirates in the 1650's was natural.

Magic and cowboys didn't quite go so well, but that had more to do with mismanaged expectations.  I think the players were expecting more history and were unaware at how little advantage cap and ball gave over certain stone-age weapons (especially in situations were the older tech was at its best advantage.)

Magic and the roaring '20's worked wonderfully, but I wasn't the GM then.  We were detectives working for an agency in 1935 St Louis.

I've been watching Boardwalk Empire and I am thinking that bootleggers and gangsters in a world with magic could be fun.
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Tactical Sales

September 9, 2015, 9:14 am
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With Wal Mart discontinuing tactical gun sales I decided to ask a couple of the local gun shops what's selling.

Pistols are what's moving.

AR's not so much as before, but still some steady sales.  It's not reverting to the '80's where the military looking guns are a novelty item.

The flattest sales are scoped bolt guns.  One owner put forward that he thinks, "the good guns are really expensive.  The affordable guns aren't very good." The gun makers are in a bind with that one, you've to to make something your customers can buy, but it also has to be something they want to own.

I note that Wal Mart doesn't sell but the cheapest model of any bolt-gun offering from any maker...  Couple that with their no-exchange no-return policy on firearms and I can see this having an active effect on people wanting a second hunting rifle.

I can also see the makers not wanting to sell to Wal Mart after customers send back a few rifles wanting inherent and unfixable flaws remedied.
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Range Time

September 9, 2015, 11:51 am
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Willard asked if I wanted to go shootin'.

"But of course," I replied.

The "reason" was his new-to-him S&W 39-2.  If you find that you want a Model 39-2 and can't find one, it's because Willard is collecting them.  All of them.


Note the Hydra-Shok® 147gr JHP's (P9HS2).  Best ammo ever made, no improvement possible... (wink wink nudge nudge).

It shoots.  Unlike the double stacked 1st Gen S&W autos, the 39 feels right in my hand.  Trigger is nice, it doesn't weigh a ton, groups well...  What's not to like?  All you're really giving up is magazine capacity.  He found this one in a pawn shop for $350.

 Of course, this is 124gr Winchester 9mm NATO "For law enforcement use only not for retail sale" (RA9124N) that we bought from a retired cop who had cases and cases of it...  If you happen to live in Trenton, NJ we thank you for your tax money buying your cops ammo to sell to us!

I took the M&P 9 out to see if it shot differently with the Surefire X200 on it.


Nope, shoots just the same.  Point of impact was shifted a bit left because the sights are regulated for 115gr and I was shooting the 124gr.  Supposedly my revision M&P has the wrong rifling for heavy rounds, must mean heavier than this.  The shift is more pronounced with 135gr Hornady Critical Duty +P.

Yes, this whimsical target was fun to shoot at!  Just 7 yards, because... heck I dunno.
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Love Reading Snobs

September 9, 2015, 2:02 pm
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My problem with most conceal holsters isn't the cost.

No amount of money is going to fix this.

Nobody makes a comfortable holster that accounts for being fat that goes inside the waistband.  For anyone who wants to jump in and say "diet and exercise" here is invited to come down and I will induce all of my orthopedic issues with a hammer and you can lead the way by example on the exercise front.

I'm a couple of grand into the quest for a perfect holster.  I'm not just not going to spend any more money on holsters when they always put the gun in the exact same location.  The only difference is how firmly they hold the gun there.

I am also getting sick and tired of people from the upper mid-west or northeast ranting on and on and ON about open carry who've never spent even an hour trying to carry someplace where it's hot and humid like the south gets hot and humid.

That hot and humid you're claiming you're enduring?  We call that "winter weather".  Y'all can wear more clothes than we can and not die from it.  More clothes makes concealed carry a lot easier.  I know this because I avail myself of it when it cools off!

Likewise, I'll prolly never need the practical advice of how to get down to my gun under genuine winter clothing.

And to be honest, should open carry get legalized here, I'm still going to conceal carry.  The main reason I want open carry is because I hate the politicians who say I can't, and it hurts them if it's legal.

Who says my motives have to be practical and free of malice?

There might be a few times I strap on an OWB holster in open view... but they're going to be few and far between.

Back to conceal holstery...

Because of my sore, I just cannot wear an IWB holster on my strong side.  Because of clearance issues between the center console and seatbelt latch, strong side carry in my Vette is a literal pain.

How about a cross draw IWB?

Who makes one?  I know I've emailed several people who seemed very accommodating about lots of things who flat refused to even consider the attempt to make such an item.  I wonder why this is.

I'm left with crappy floppy soft holsters for carrying this way.

I have a feeling that we don't see more shoulder holsters and cross draws because of range rules about drawing from them.  Can't take them to the kilo-buck kilo-round class, what good are they?
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Feed

September 9, 2015, 2:57 pm
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Found something kind of interesting.

The Star B has many fewer misfeeds when fed Federal aluminum cased ammo (CAL9115).

I've read that the original magazine design assumed that the cartridges would be steel cased.

Brass has a lot higher lubriscosity against steel than steel has against itself.

This might explain why the rounds are nearly self-launching from the magazine when using brass cases.  If they're designed to be reliable with "sticky" steel cases, they're likely to not hold the "slippy" brass tightly enough.

The aluminum cases are stickier than brass, and work better.

Go figure.

I should test with some sort of steel case now.  It'd be odd if the polymer coatings make them act too much like brass, huh?
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Everyone Should Own One

September 9, 2015, 5:56 pm
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Something I've noticed about being a Corvette owner...

People walk up and ask, "what year?"

For the most part, corvette drivers wave at each other.

For the most part, we're geezers.

There's a fair number of trophy wives.

There's a fair number of really cool wives.

Those two groups don't overlap much.

There's a contingent of the younger owners who don't participate in the community.

I drove the 2008 power tour, did the long haul.

All along the route it was, "Corvette; wave." Your arm gets tired.

People wanted to talk to me every time I got gas.  After finding out my car is a 2008, they'd often comment they missed their Vette.  Lots of sad tales there.

Got my share of people matching speeds and doing the rev-up-challenge-you-to-a-race thing.  I know how long my dick is, so I don't need to measure it in public; but I hope you got to tell your friends how you beat that Corvette like it wasn't even trying.  I am glad I could help you feel better about yourself and the work you did to your car!

People are baffled that there's 115,000 miles on my car.

I am baffled that there's so many Corvettes with less than 5,000 miles on them.

Lots of people say, "but there's no space in 'em," who are stunned when I pop the hatch and show them how much cargo space there is.

Lots of people ask what kind of mileage I get.  33 mpg if I can just cruise at 55 mph.  28 cruising at 70.  26 cruising at 80.  Lots of people don't believe it.  It's even funnier when I mention that the Z51 package came with lower gearing, a standard coupe gets even better mileage.

Everyone should own one!
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Two Many

September 10, 2015, 10:54 am
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Anglave sent me that.

Origins of the word two.

I noticed no Scots-Gaelic, and postulated that Scots can't count.  There's One then Many in their numbering "system".

Then it hit me...

"E Pluribus Unum" translated "One from Many".

The founders had a high percentage of masons...

Scottish Rite is a large branch of masonry...

Many is Scots-Gaelic for any number more than two...

We're on the other side of the looking glass now!

Try the chemtrails, tip your stewardess.
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This Has To Stop

September 10, 2015, 3:52 pm
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Tam is now claiming that a 1911 has fired 300 rounds without jamming or needing the extractor replaced.

I cannot take this any more!

What's next, a test where a Glock doesn't explode?
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Finally Some Good News For H&K

September 11, 2015, 1:59 am
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Heckler and Koch has been awarded an exclusive contract to supply the US Army with new M240G general purpose machine guns on an as required basis.
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It Occurs

September 12, 2015, 2:01 pm
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Playing with Willard's 39-2 made something apparent to me.

Colt and Smith and Wesson competed for the handgun market in the USA with everyone else being a very small percentage of the market.

I notice that Colt is in bankruptcy, again.

Smith and Wesson is a going concern.

So I started wondering about innovation.

S&W put that model 39 up for consideration to replace the M1911A1 in 1954.  It wasn't too long before the 39 got fatter and became a wonder-nine (The model 59 in 1971).

In the same time frame from Colt?  Well there's the Python... and military contracts for rifles designed by someone else and military contracts for machine guns designed by someone else and a grenade launcher designed by someone else...  Ouch on the innovation side of things.

It seems to me that S&W is a player and Colt is going away primarily because on company kept an engineering design department.

I remember Colt All American (another gun designed by an outsider) and even though the S&W Sigma is not well regarded today, it was still far better than Colt's 9mm double stacker.

Even teeny Ruger has made inroads on market share!

Every gun company that's doing well seems to have two things in common.  They're offering new products (even Glock is keeping it new enough) and they have embraced the commercial market.

There might have been a time where the police and military markets were bigger than the commercial market and you could ignore it...  Those days appear to be long gone.
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Addendum

September 12, 2015, 2:28 pm
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One reason you need to be innovative is the economic assumptions that are presently successful may not remain so forever.

The Colt Python is a wonderful example.

It was economical when it was introduced, but the intensive level of labor required for that luxuriously deep blue and the smoothness of the action became unsustainable as wages climbed.  Even without a union workforce, it would be unaffordable; it might be something you'd offer as a custom item, but you'd never sell enough to mass produce them today.

There's some parallel with the 1911.  Just looking at all of the parts that aren't made the way they used to be is instructive.  For people who like the old Gov't Model (like me!) it's fortunate that the design lent itself to being made via other processes.

The guts of a Smith and Wesson revolver show the same sort of process changes.
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Research

September 12, 2015, 5:07 pm
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I've occasionally been chided for making characters with unfair advantages.

I say I've just done the proper diligence.

Because I was "the gun guy" in our group I was constantly able get a better weapon for the setting because I knew when the anachronistically good guns were introduced so I sneaked around the TL limitations whenever the GM set a hard date rather than TL.

Standing Bear was running a GURPS world where the starting wealth was 1,000.  But he defined it poorly.  1,000 in the game world was 1,000 silver pieces (or a pound of silver).  This was a wonderful limit on higher tech characters because $1,000 is not a lot to buy your equipment when normal starting wealth is $15,000.

So I started asking questions and gaming the system...  Starting wealth was fixed in silver, so I made a character from a metals poor world where silver was worth more dollars.

FuzzyGeff ran a nexus world where one of four gates led to a world where firearms and magic did not work.  Again, asking questions until I learned that it was fulminates and like reactions that didn't work there while gun powder still worked.  But electrical primers did work!  So I had a gun where nobody else did.

I made a character for a different nexus style world and not knowing what form it would take I wanted to have a good excuse to carry some precious metals.  So I made a Rhodesian who exchanged his pay for kruggerands whenever he could.  A G$ is $US in his home setting, and a kruggerand is $151.30 each (I looked up the 1974 exchange rates).  After buying equipment from the G$7,500 (struggling, unsettled) I had G$4,515.50 or 29 kruggerands and 75.62 Rhodesian Dollars (R$) at G$1.69 each.  That's 2.17 lb. of crown gold coins (1.99 lb. of pure gold if we melt out the copper from the alloy).

In a typical fantasy world where a pound of silver is G$1,000, a pound of gold is G$16,000; so I'd have G$31,817 in such a fantasy world.

In the US for much of its history a troy ounce is US$26, so I'd merely have US$754.  And that's in worlds where starting wealth is G$5,000 to G$10,000 and G$1 = US$1.  So having all that gold is a net loss in G$ terms.

It all depends on how the setting runs out.


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Rifle Grenade

September 12, 2015, 7:25 pm
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There's astonishingly little information about rifle-grenades out there on the internet!

So my Rhodesian mercenary gets three Energa-75's because I have stats for them.  I think the Energa is representational of several designs, if for no other reason, because it was widely copied.
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Been Thinking

September 12, 2015, 8:15 pm
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Remember this?

I might have figured it out.

Everyone forgets that the 40x46mmSR illum rounds have a black powder ejector charge.  ATF has been hard on black powder transportation and storage for a couple of years now.

This seizure could simply be sellers being unaware of the new regs and getting nailed for it.

I also wonder if the official specifications for M9 flake powder used in the rounds is technically an explosive as well.  I notice that nobody seems to carry it and there's lots of information for using common smokeless powders for reloading rounds.
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Speaking Of Rifle Grenades

September 14, 2015, 1:22 pm
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Jasmine now has grenade sights.


Hard to see, huh?  Well they're meant to be out of the way when folded down.



To deploy them, you press the button on the side of the gas plug, rotate the sight 180˚ forwards, then rotate the entire plug 180˚ to close the gas port and finally raise the sight 90˚ up around the front sight.






The sight is actually rotated 270˚ total.


This is actually a REAR sight for the grenades.  You sight along the body of the rifle grenade and use the nose of the round as the front sight.  I don't have such a grenade to show off the geometry.

Also of note for fans of the "Assault" Weapons Ban, the combination device on a Belgian FAL, in addition to being a flash-hider and a bayonet lug, is also a NATO standard 22mm grenade launcher.

My combination device is missing the "grenade spring" which is a ring of spring wire that sits in the rear groove of the flash-hider and keeps the grenade in from slipping off the muzzle unintentionally.

If anyone has a NATO standard dummy rifle grenade they want to donate for photo purposes, please let me know!
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Scandal

September 15, 2015, 9:58 am
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I was going to compare the scandals of the Bush II administration to the Obama administration and note how often Hillary Clinton is attached to them...

I can't do it.

About midway into it I realized, again, that the real problem is "our" government has departed from the Constitutionally limited reservation long, long ago.

Before my parents were born long ago.

Nearly everything both sides are bitching about is caused by this exceeding of authority.

Nearly everything both sides are bitching about is exacerbated by the legislative branch abdicating their legislative power to the executive branch via regulation.  The executive branch should have refused the power on constitutional grounds.  The judicial branch should have stepped in and said, "Not so fast!  YOU can't give it away and YOU cannot accept it."

Alas.

My mind whirls in a world of jurisprudence where the both butterfly effect of growing wheat for personal use is "interstate commerce" subject to federal regulation and where I cannot challenge the laws forbidding the manufacture of a new machine gun for private owner ship because I don't have standing.

The system is broken.

They were right and I was wrong, voting will not fix it.

See you in the cattle cars.
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Gods Be Damned UPS

September 15, 2015, 10:31 am
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Willard's parts attempted to arrive today.

I was home at 1138.

Stupid adult signature required and UPS hiring ninjas meant I didn't hear them attach the "we missed you" sticker to the door.

I am really ticked by the timing of the delivery, because when it's an adult signature required C&R Firearm, they arrive at nearly 1800.

For fuck's sake, you drive a route, that should make you somewhat predictable.
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Dell

September 15, 2015, 5:57 pm
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I found a great tear down guide for Willard's laptop.

What they forget to tell me is the two short screws are to hold the hard drive I am replacing in place and that it will flop out of reach of those screws when you invert it on reassembly.

So out come the 16 long screws... undo the keyboard... undo the top cover...

Install the short screws while holding the hard drive down against the bottom cover so the screws can bite...

Then follow the otherwise fine guide!

Win7 Home Premium 64 is installing as I speak.  Dell was kind enough to send the OS disks free of charge too.
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New Gun News

September 16, 2015, 9:37 am
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Willard's GAU-5A clone is finished!


My XM177E2 clone is on top, his GAU on the bottom.

Come a long ways since its baby pictures in April.


The Anderson Mfg lower's holes are just a bit undersized and Del-Ton's roll pins are just a bit oversized.  Grumble.

UPDATE:
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Unreal

September 17, 2015, 10:54 am
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I'm encountering a feeling that the people on the other end of the computer screen aren't real at all.

They're becoming simulacra who only appear during normal business hours and disappear until the next business day.

It's as if someone is shutting down the computer running the simulation just before hitting the lights and locking the door.

In meatspace I am an astonishingly unlikeable person.  This is causing me to be left entirely too alone with my thoughts too often.  I'm the person at the party who is tolerated because I came with someone everyone wanted there not because I was invited.

My mind is certainly eating itself.

Not enough is eaten for me to not notice the process yet, hopefully soon though...
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