Sorry About That

I am so mad. I drove all the way to the gun range, and it looks like they've changed their rules again. Their sign now says they're closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. I'm completely positive it was Tuesdays and Wednesdays a month ago. It seems like they do this all the time. And checking their website is pointless, since they don't update it.

I got an interesting comment RE prophecy:

With respect to prophets, pardon me for not having a cite, but in the gospels Jesus said that John the Baptist was the last of the prophets. The next true prophets will be the two old testament saints that return to Jerusalem during the first 3.5 years of the tribulation. Anyone who claims to be a prophet during this current church age is at best misguided. That's not to say that God can't or doesn't use dreams to speak to people, but my view is that it would be more for personal revelation and not true revelation of future events.

Naturally, I mentioned the New Testament prophecies. Response:

You're correct Steve, you definitely have to account for the prophetic revelations of John of Patmos. Perhaps the distinction is between the definition of a "prophet" vs. someone whom the Holy Spirit reveals prophetic information to.

I don't think "prophecy" is something Christians have defined all that well. I always thought a prophet was someone who could function pretty much like a P.A. system or a ventriloquist's dummy. The prophet's mouth moves, but God says the words. But having read the book of Numbers and the bulk of the New Testament, I'm inclined to think that "prophet" is a term that can apply to a wide spectrum of people, from Moses, who spoke to God face to face, to Stephen, who died after seeing into heaven. My best guess is, anyone to whom the Holy Spirit gives the ability to perceive things ordinary people can't perceive is a prophet. And if that's true, then there are super-prophets like Moses, above-average prophets like Jeremiah and Zechariah, and so-so prophets who occasionally get a revelation which may or may not be of great importance. So I guess that if you have a few bona fide inspired dreams or visions, you're a prophet. Not the best prophet around, but still, a prophet.

I am among the Christians who believe that the Holy Spirit is being meted out much more generously than it used to be, and that we are supposed to connect to it and be changed and empowered by it. I believe this is what prayer in tongues is all about. I think modern Christians who refuse to admit that this is happening are like divers who want to go down with knots in their air hoses. Doing God's will and fighting on His behalf have always been extremely hard. I don't believe we were ever expected to succeed on our own. If anything, God has made a point of proving we can't do it. The Holy Spirit is the power supply mankind has been lacking.

God is strange. He plants a seed, but doesn't reap the harvest for thousands of years. He established the Jews and allowed them to ruin Israel and be cast out, and He let them turn Israel into a wasteland inhabited by inept, barbaric squatters. He established a powerful Christian church and let it give up on the Holy Spirit and become worldly and weak. And apparently, He plans to bring it all together toward the end of time. Israel restored, the Church reconnected to the power of the Holy Spirit, and so on. You have to wonder. Why not just make us do it right the first time around? Why let Satan get away with so much for so long?

Regrettably, I was not involved in the decision. I don't know why God never asks my advice.

God is always letting us screw up and then giving us the power to fix things. It's a constant pattern.

I sometimes think the story of Samson presages the history of the church. Samson started out strong, because the Spirit of God was in him, and then he was seduced by worldiness and lost his power, and then he was blinded, and in the end he regained his power and destroyed the temple of his enemies, killing them in the process. The church started out full of the power of God, but it became corrupt and full of idolatry and pantheism, and it lost its power and its ability to perceive God's will. And it ended up serving the enemy. And maybe now the power is coming back.

There are other hints, like the bit about releasing foxes to burn the grain of Samson's enemies. Jesus compared people to grain. I suspect the foxes symbolized evangelists, destroying the harvest of the enemy.

I dunno. I always see the world in terms of symbols. For that reason, the Bible has always driven me crazy.

One thing I believe very strongly is that Christians need to get over feeling superior to Jews. I believe Jews missed the boat, with regard to the Messiah. But Christians threw away and even reviled the Holy Spirit, which is probably worse. It's the power to change the world. What we did was like losing the Ark of the Covenant, and the result was pretty much the same. We lost battles we should have won. And a lot of people who feel superior to Jews would have been clamoring for the Crucifixion as loudly as anyone, had they been around to do it.

I can tell you as an eyewitness that the Holy Spirit is still here, and that things that qualify as prophetic events still happen, and I am sure I'm one of many. If I were you, I'd be wary of ignoring what is happening, because to do so is on a par with failing to recognize the Messiah.

I'm not qualified to teach, and I am not fit to be a spiritual leader, but I feel safe in saying that much.

I really will catch up on emails soon. Sorry.

Posted by Steve H. at 6:35 PM | Permalink  

ISO9000 NOT

Marv is somewhat disappointed in his adoring fans for not asking him questions, so he has gone off on a rant about human intelligence. You can read it here.

I am going to try to get my butt to the range today. I have decided I don't totally trust the first box of ammunition I made, so I'm going to have to make more. I dread taking the first box apart, but I think it's a smart move. I've read about the fun things that happen to people who overcharge their rounds, and I am not interested in destroying a magazine and possibly damaging the gun and my precious self.

One nice thing about shooting with Mike is that we went to an indoor range, so we were able to find and recover almost all our brass, including nearly a hundred precious nickel .38 Super cases. Mike wanted to shoot .38 Super; what can I tell you. In the end he liked the .45 a lot better, and vice-versa. Don't know why. They seem to shoot about the same, from my perspective.

I hope he'll be able to shoot more often. The only thing more fun than shooting with a good friend is shooting with a good friend who shoots really well. Mike was a little rusty, but he would still be in the 95th percentile at Trail Glades.

I want to get into shotguns. When Mike and I were kids we used to go to arcades and wear out the skeet machines, shooting from the hip. I'd love to get proficient with the real thing.

You would think we could go ten days without a new natural disaster, but it looks like it's not going to happen. As I'm sure you know, there was an earthquake in China, and they think it has killed 3,000-5,000 people. It's particularly unfortunate that it happened right on the tail of the Burma cyclone. Ordinarily, a disaster like this earthquake would be big news, but with Burma death-toll estimates ranging up to a million, it will be harder to get the public excited about earthquake donations. I am sure World Vision will be all over this, and here's where you can find them.

While looking up information on China and Burma, I found a moving story on Yahoo! News. Irena Sendler has died at the age of 98. If you don't know who she was, don't feel bad. Neither did I. She was a Polish woman who saved the lives of thousands of Jewish children. She delivered them out of the Warsaw Ghetto. The story is a little sparse, but it says she was arrested by the Nazis, who broke her arms and legs for her troubles.

I will never understand how violent people can take pride in brutalizing the weak. I suppose you can derive a sick sense of accomplishment by harming someone who has the capacity to hurt you. But how can you be proud of breaking an unarmed woman's arms and legs? I think I would vomit for a month.

As for Mrs. Sendler, wouldn't you love to face God with a record like hers? As eternal resumes go, hers is hard to top. Most of us pack our lives with pleasure and goods, and then we die, and it all disappears. Mrs. Sendler packed boxes and suitcases with Jewish children and smuggled them to freedom. And her deeds will live forever, and they will continue to give dividends in the form of the new lives of the descendants of the Jews she saved. There is hope that the rest of us can be as lucky as Mrs. Sendler, or maybe less lucky, but in the same general way. If you send Jews to Israel via the IFCJ's On Wings of Eagles program, the good consequences of your act will continue to flower as long as the world endures. The people you send will have children, and their children will have children, and so on. As charitable donations go, that is a real bargain. Helpful tip: if you specify the country to which you want your donation to go, you'll receive a card identifying the people or person you helped.

Mrs. Sendler's story reminds me of another one. I doubt most people are aware that the physicist Niels Bohr was instrumental in saving around 6,000 Danish Jews. And he was Jewish himself, although I don't think he thought of himself that way. His mother was Jewish, so that made him Jewish, too. If you're not a physicist, that may not mean anything to you, but if you understand how great Bohr's contribution to physics was, it's interesting. Gentiles have done a lot of good work in physics, but for most of the 20th century, you could accurately have referred to physics as a Jewish science. Bohr, Einstein, Teller, von Neumann, Szilard, Meitner...the list is very long. Their work changed the world by giving us nuclear weapons, and sadly, many of them were instrumental in helping the Soviets get the same technology, resulting in the Cold War. So they reshaped the political world at the same time. Mainly in the name of socialism, the primary, seminal exponent of which was a German Jew.

Always at the center of the world. So strange. Scientifically, politically, in matters of religion, and even physically. Check a globe. If Israel isn't at the center of the world's land masses, I don't know what is.

But the Bible is a fairy tale, right?

In related news, via Stand for Israel, Victor Davis Hanson questions Jimmy Carter's bizarre human rights priorities. Don't we all? I would hate to have to explain to God why it was that out of all the people in the Middle East, the Jews were the ones I felt most compelled to criticize and hinder. I guess they'll never be as humane as their progressive neighbors, who are shelling Israeli civilians as I type this.

Pray I don't blow myself up at the range. Or that if I do, I survive long enough to write an amusing blog entry about it.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:09 PM | Permalink  

Sweet

This is beyond belief. I made about 70 bullets.

I only plan to shoot 51 of the ones I've made so far. The first 10-20 taught me how easy it is to screw up the charge, so I've already taken most of them apart, and I'm going to take the rest apart later.

I finally realized that a person as attention-deficient as I am would need a system pretty badly, so I actually sit there and say "casing, bullet, down, up" every time I crank the handle. That makes it pretty hard to miss a step.

The priming problem was caused by crud in the primer slide. I think. It appears that the hole the primers pop through isn't quite perfectly round, so I may remedy that myself. I also adjusted the rod that determines how far back the primer slide goes. I had a few misfeeds, but things went okay.

I hosed the inside of the feed tube with Hornady One Shot, and I put a piece of a coat hanger on top of the primers to gently make sure they were seated down in the press. Some people leave a brass rod on top of the stack of primers permanently, to push them down the tube.

I mentioned priming primerless rounds earlier. I guess I was having a low blood sugar moment. Two commenters have pointed out that this is not a bright idea, and I agree. When I get a primed case with no charge, I run it through again, but I won't prime a case that has a charge in it.

Powder is all over the place. When a primer fails to feed, powder flies. When I take a bullet apart, powder flies. I guess it's unavoidable.

I truly hope I don't blow up my beautiful SW1911 with a double charge. I can't see how that could happen. I was very careful. Now that I've actually made ammunition, I can see the danger, so I'm definitely going to get a doodad to monitor the charges. I can't weigh the rounds after I make them, because the cases vary in weight. I think the Dillon powder checker is the best bet. It's electronic, so it yells at you when you make a mistake.

Thanks again for all the help.

Posted by Steve H. at 8:50 PM | Permalink  

Bullets!

Annoyed as I am by the documentation that accompanied my Hornady reloading press, I am all about giving credit where credit is due. So let me compliment their customer service, which, like Dillon's, enjoys a sublime reputation.

I bought a bunch of Hornady crap, qualifying me for a huge pile of free bullets. Attention-deficient freak that I am, I screwed up the paperwork qualifying me for the promotion. You're supposed to send the UPC (bar code) label from every product you bought, and I had a whole pile of products. And I managed to leave the UPC code for the biggest item--the press--out of the envelope.

I'm always this way with paperwork. It's the only thing I hated about litigation. Courts are brutally picayune and unreasonable in their requirements regarding the niceties of paperwork. I think this is because they let their clericals, who have never endured the stress of law practice, make the rules. So sometimes you'll find yourself with three or more piles of paperwork, all different. One for the court, one for you, one for the opponent, and God knows what else. And the court may have a long list of very bothersome, unjustifiable rules concerning where to put the staples and what kind of paper to use and so on. And you usually have to Xerox a certificate of service and a final signature for each instrument, and you have to put the original signed versions on one set of documents for the court. But to put them on the other documents, you have to remember to remove the blank ones that came out when you printed everything.

By the end of the day, if you're not ready to blow your brains out, you are a very special person. You are probably a totally uncreative, highly responsible person who always knows where his car keys are. If you're like me, however, you will climb the walls.

So it was a certainty that I would screw up the Hornady order.

I called them after I found the missing UPC stuck between the sheets of a yellow pad. I told them the deal, and they said they had so many orders to deal with, they'd probably ship my whole package back and have me do it over. Okay, not ideal. But acceptable, given the fact that it was my fault.

Today UPS came by. And the poor guy delivering the stuff looked like he was carrying a black hole in a box. I went out on the porch and picked it up. Forty-eight pounds of lead and copper. Hornady gave me every one of the 1400 bullets I applied for. I guess they couldn't bring themselves to make me do the whole thing over again. I may never have to buy .45 ammunition again.

I just opened the box. They're so pretty. It's my understanding that these are not the most wonderful defensive rounds, because people have found that the expansion is not great. But they're FREE.

I also received my pistol rotor and micrometer, a bunch of tiddly little replacement parts, and a very expensive can of Hornady One Shot to degrease things. It will probably be Saturday evening before I can use any of it.

I had a bunch of crap to do today, but I'm taking a breather. Not sure how next week is going to pan out. I may be able to blog a fair amount, and I may not.

While on my break, I watched a DVR'd Tred Barta episode. I am really starting to like this guy. It's embarrassing, but I am. Maybe it's because he shares some of the irritating traits I possess and mistakenly think other people find charming and admirable. He's constantly yammering about his opinions while waving his right fist. "The conservation groups are buying up all the hunting land!" "The liberal press is running down our kids!" "We're just not kicking hippies enough!"

Okay, that last one was mine.

Today he shot a giant moose from fifteen feet with a bow. Luckily for him, it ran in the other direction. Then it wandered into a freezing pond and keeled over. The rest of the show was dedicated to the process of removing half-ton-plus mooses from remote ponds, using a canoe and a chainsaw. It took him and the guide a day and a half. For what? A pile of rapidly aging, unbled moose meat. Can you even eat that stuff?

I felt bad for the moose. I'm pro-hunting and so on, but this animal had an arrow completely through its lungs, and it ran a long way before it fell. I still think that when you hunt for sport, your primary consideration should be a fast, clean kill.

So far, out of all the hunting people I've seen on TV, this is the only guy I think I'd enjoy hunting or fishing with. I guess that's a bad sign. I'd definitely want to part ways with him an hour after the boat docked or the hunt was over, to do Barta detox in preparation for the next day, but I think the fishing or hunting would be a lot of fun.

Guess I'll get back to the grind. After fondling my bullets again.

Posted by Steve H. at 6:11 PM | Permalink  

SPACE

I had a wonderful day yesterday. I drove up to Delray Beach to see Mike, and we went shooting and took in a movie.

Because of the terrible traffic in Miami, I try not to leave the house between 7 and 9:30 a.m., 12:30 and 1:30 p.m., and 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. They have ridiculous school zones all over the place, crippling the whole city in the morning and when schools let out. And apart from school traffic, the morning and evening rush hours are not to be believed. And lunch hour is no fun, either. Accordingly, I hit the road before the lunchtime rush hour really got going and shot up I-95.

The drive was absolutely glorious. As I progressed into and through Broward County, I felt as though a coating of crust and grime were peeling off of me. Tension melted away. The traffic eased. The buildings grew farther apart. By the time I hit Palm Beach County, I thought I was in heaven. I knew I was sick of Miami, but the full extent didn't hit me until I was out.

I took the second Delray exit and passed through town on the way to Mike's office. What a mistake! I didn't take the bypass, to get around the deadly downtown congestion! This added perhaps 90 seconds to my trip. I got over it.

I drove Mike to lunch and the range. The traffic lights were so far apart, I felt pampered.

The range was okay, but it was dark and very hot. I don't think they air-condition the shooting lanes. I was surprised to at how hard it was to aim in the gloom. Up side: they allow shooters to use interesting targets. Mike and I both chose Osama bin Laden, and we took turns shooting .38 Super and .45 ACP. I didn't do all that great, but I had a fantastic time.

I highly recommend Iron Man. Marvel's movies are hit and miss, as their problems with the Hulk show. But this one was a perfect ten. And one of the things I liked most was seeing Robert Downey, Jr. pull off a major acting coup after all the problems he has had. Talk about a guy who seemed headed for oblivion. It gives you hope for other people with drug problems.

Naturally, there's a big, bad arms manufacturer in the movie. But they had enough sense not to do the traditional attack on the government and the military. I have a feeling the new Hulk movie won't be as kind to the Boogeyman Complex. It's funny; leftists, including entertainers, love Rosie the Riveter, but they hate her employers. I guess it's like supporting the troops while condemning everything they do and accusing them of being illiterate murderers comparable to the Nazis. Maybe we should call Rosie "Rosie the Dupe." Or "Rosie the Warmonger."

I have stuff distracting me today, but you will hear from me when I can take breaks.

Future Politics

Don't wait for the Obama/McCain debate. Read it now, via Moxie!

Posted by Steve H. at 11:22 AM | Permalink  

And More

I just wanted to post a note thanking all the people who sent me email offering to help with reloading. I haven't answered them all yet, but I will.

I'm off to Delray Beach, to visit Mike the health care entrepreneur.

Before I go, let me point out that the Mercy Corps is now accepting donations to help Myanmar cyclone victims. Here is a link.

Finally: as if Leah Friedman hasn't had enough problems, now her wisdom teeth are giving her headaches, and she's not strong enough to have them removed. Say a prayer. Leave a comment.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:56 AM | Permalink  

Helpful Reloading Hobbyists Continue to Bless

I am being criticized by the reloading mystics again! Someone linked to me from a forum, and the Sadducees there are up in arms because--like thousands of other people--I had problems with the lame manual Hornady provided with the Lock-N-Load press! I'll translate their criticisms briefly: we are cool. The bathrooms in our trailers have tactical toilet seats. We sign onto Ebay and bid on Rob Leatham's dirty socks. You will never be as smart as we are, regardless of how many times we failed the biased GED exam. So instead of helping, we will insult you and try to feel even better about ourselves than we already do.

Okay, whatever. When I blog, my goal isn't to please the self-righteous (not counting myself) and stingy.

One of these guys accused me of being an engineer! That hurts. The Nazis used to call Einstein an engineer in order to put him down. Besides, if I were an engineer, I might have some actual practical knowledge.

He probably doesn't have the education to know the difference between an engineer and a physicist. He probably thinks a guy who fixes TVs is a physicist.

When I studied physics, very little of what I did involved handling physical objects. I learned how to put simple electronic devices together, but that's about it. When I taught lab classes, the most complicated thing I operated was one of those machines optometrists use to test vision. Don't ask me how it works. I don't remember a thing, except the word "diopter." Physics is mostly theory. An unfortunate consequence is that physicists will sometimes come up with conclusions that seem to make sense on paper, but which are ridiculous in real life.

I'll give an example. When I taught, the grad students were expected to write questions for the final exam. One girl wrote a question about a cone-shaped iceberg, asking how far down it would ride in the water. And she assumed it would float with the point up and the base down. I pointed out that the other end would probably be at the top. An iceberg with a small top would be unstable; it would be impossible for it to remain in that position. And we were both wrong. Yes, it would have been stable in the position I described. But not too stable. Far and away, the most likely orientation would be horizontal. And the calculus involved in determining the submerged volume would have been way too hard for the students. The formula for the volume of a cone is simple. But a sliver of the side of a cone, carved off at an angle? Off the top of my head, I have no idea what it would be.

I was the only grad student who noticed the problem, and the rest probably have Ph.Ds now. Be glad they're not engineers, designing bridges you use to get to work.

It's funny how some hobbies attract jerks and others attract nice people. Let's see. Oddly, when I played bluegrass, I ran into a surprising number of obnoxious people. Homebrewers seem nice, probably because they're always drunk. Fishermen are the worst; maybe the constant sensations of desperation and failure make them vicious. I really can't stand serious fishermen. Boxers and other martial artists generally seem polite. People who play classical piano are stuffy and irritable. Cooks are generally pleasant; chefs are not. Math and science seem to attract utterly foul individuals as well as people who are humble and friendly in spite of their grotesquely oversized mental hardware.

Most people I've met at the gun range have been very decent, although the employees can be a real test of patience. I have wondered if people have been polite to me simply because they've seen that I shoot a lot better than they do, but I've found that rifle people are generally okay, and I have not accomplished much with rifles.

The peculiar thing about gun people is that people who can't shoot are sometimes among the most unpleasant. Maybe a cultivated air of superiority is a means of compensating for a lack of ability. Which is odd, because ultimately, it's all about who can make the bullets go where they're supposed to. Everything else is peripheral.

I'm beginning to think I should give up on the case-activated powder measure. People keep telling me it's sensitive to the way you pull the lever. Oddly, this fact is not emphasized in bright red letters on the box, nor does either manual say anything about it. I get the impression that the charge is the thing that is most likely to fail and destroy your gun. People talk a lot about overfilled and underfilled cases.

Most of my rounds end up going through the same hole. After fifteen shots or so, I generally don't get good feedback--entire new holes--indicating that the bullets have left the gun. So if I fired a slug halfway down the barrel, unless I felt a difference in the gun's motion, I would probably be unaware of the problem. I might shoot another one right behind it. Which would be bad. Maybe the best thing is to load the powder into the casings by hand. The problem with that is that I'll have to run them through the press twice. Once to size, decap, and prime, and once to seat the bullet and do the crimp. In between, I'll have to take the cases out and fill them. Otherwise, the powder may run out through the primer holes.

Oh, well. I'd have ridiculously consistent and reliable ammunition. That counts for something.

Some people have suggested I write new instructions for the press. That would be a good idea, if I had any idea what I was doing. I think I should write notes for my own use. I suppose once I understand reloading, I could polish my notes up and make a PDF available. Right now, the only advice I can give is, don't even consider it unless you want to devote a lot of time and money to it. Everyone who says it's simple is lying in order to impress you with their skill, or just mistaken. It may seem simple to them. Hey, calculus seemed simple to me. Bouncing a golf ball on the face of an iron and then hitting it in the air, so it heads for the green, seems simple to Tiger Woods. Odds are, you will see these things differently.

The final bunch of reloading crap will arrive soon. After that, I will know what I'm up against.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:29 AM | Permalink  

Choke on Your Form Letter

I sent Publix Supermarkets an email via their contact page, telling them I was not happy that they were trying to disarm their employees by suing to have HB503 overturned. This is the progressive new law that permits Florida citizens to keep guns in their cars at work. It's very obviously a reasonable and intelligent piece of legislation, but Publix and Wal-Mart and Disney want no part of it.

Their ridiculous form letter arrived today. Here is part of it.

Thank you for your email. Each year Publix monitors hundreds of pieces of legislation that would have an impact on our operations. The issue that you are referring to is one that could impact the employer/employee relationship. At Publix we value highly the relationship we have with our associates and therefore have concerns with any regulation or legislation that interferes with that relationship. Publix is not, and never has been anti-gun or anti-gun owner. Our concerns in this case deal strictly with associates on company property and have no impact on customers who shop with us.

I promptly responded, informing them that their anti-civil-rights lawsuit would impact millions of employees of companies all over Florida. But Publix does not want to hear from customers; they have their email rigged up so it bounces anything not sent via their ridiculous website.

I haven't been to Publix in quite some time. And I haven't missed it. Winn-Dixie has much better prices on meat, and it's easier to get to. I'm sure there must be something I can only get from Publix, but at the moment I can't think of what it is. I went from 85% Publix/15% WD to 95% WD/5% Publix. They'll lose several thousand dollars, gross, on me this year.

I wanted to go to Wal-Mart the other day and check out ammunition prices, but then I remembered their participation in the lawsuit, and I drove right by.

Help me punish these authoritarian throwbacks. Donate to the NRA-ILA, and avoid Publix, Wal-Mart, and Disney. Our civil rights are not a joke; this is not a minor issue.

Posted by Steve H. at 6:43 PM | Permalink  

Rats

I decided to give the Hornady powder measure one more try, on the theory that the acetone I applied made the paint and plastic sticky and caused charges to be inconsistent. I filled the measure halfway and even tapped it once in a while.

Results? I'm getting something like +/- 0.5 grains. Screw it. I'll wait for the pistol rotor and micrometer meter to arrive. I even ordered Hornady's special dry lube and degreaser, which costs over a dollar per ounce.

Someone claims Dillon's machines don't come with an oily film on them. Can that be true?

Posted by Steve H. at 12:50 PM | Permalink  

Only Heathens Have Hangovers on Monday

Once again, thanks for all the reloading info. I hope everyone realizes that when I write posts complaining about the press, I am in a homicidal mood. Imagine dealing with a problem with Microsoft software for about three days, having to reboot your computer a thousand times and getting utterly inadequate information from the boys over in Calcutta. Remember how you felt the last time that happened (shut up, George Moneo)? That's the state I'm in when I write these things. So if I seem unhinged, consider what I have been going through all day.

On top of that, I have always had a problem with bad teaching, which is what you get from a bad manual. Back when I was studying math and physics, I vented my spleen constantly on bad teachers and the authors of bad books. Very often, I ignored the text for a course as much as I could, in favor of better things I found at bookstores. Schaum manuals, in particular, were fantastic. Fifteen-dollar paperback manuals often blew away seventy-dollar hardcover doorstops.

For some odd reason, people in math and science feel entitled to write text books just because they're good at what they do. Sometimes they're right. A few Nobel winners have managed to write excellent books. Generally, they're completely wrong. The skills it takes to be a great scholar are utterly unrelated to the skills it takes to be a good teacher.

Part of the problem is that math and science people have gigantic egos, and many are a bit hostile, and they like making things hard for other people, because then they can swoop in and show how obvious the answers are. It's an insecurity thing. You spend your childhood with a perpetual wedgie, and you get used to mommy patting your head every time you say something smart in front of company, and you grow up with an insatiable need to prove your superiority. So you deliberately explain things badly and then express pretend surprise when intelligent or even brilliant people have no idea what you mean. The other side of this equation is the insecure students who sit and nod approvingly when they don't have the faintest clue what you're talking about. I assume they grow up to be textbook authors.

One physicist at the University of Texas said he considered something "obvious" if a graduate student could figure it out in a day and a half. Boy, I'll bet he has great friendships and romantic relationships. You can tell he's a joy to be around. Richard Feynman said that if you can't explain something to someone who isn't as knowledgeable as you are, you probably don't understand it yourself.

I think math and physics students should develop a practice of raising their hands and saying, "I realize you are a towering genius and I am a moron, so let's get past that and get straight to the explanation of what you just said."

I don't think bad manuals are driven by insecurity. Just bad business skills. If you punish your customers, they punish you right back, and they always win.

Sunday was great. If you're religious, let me urge you again: try it. If you're Jewish, take Saturday off. If you're a Christian, pick the weekend day of your choice. It really works.

Let's see. I finished Exodus and got started on Leviticus. I read more of Rabbi Eckstein's How Firm a Foundation. I stayed away from the reloading press. And I discovered one more benefit of observing the sabbath. I got to bed at a more reasonable hour.

I have come to the realization that almost nothing worthwhile happens after ten p.m. It's too late to play music. TV is like toxic waste mixed with junk food, and the older you get, the more boring it seems. It's too late to use noisy tools. Too dark to do anything outside. You can't eat, unless you want to lie in bed with a giant lump in your stomach. It's too late for me to take Marvin and Maynard out. Best choice? Hit the hay and get up at a better time the next day. The early morning, horrific as it is for the first half hour, is nothing like as useless as the hours after ten p.m. You can get your prayers done properly. You can have a decent breakfast. You can leave for work at the correct time and not drive like a maniac. All around, getting up early is a good idea.

Last night I managed to get in bed not long after ten, and it was due to the nature of the day. You can't observe the sabbath and then sit up websurfing or watching R-rated cable movies. So it's easier to get to bed early and reset your internal clock.

While reading Rabbi Eckstein's book, I was surprised by the attitude he takes toward the suffering of the Jews. He seems to think Christians believe Jews are supposed to suffer, and that this drives anti-Semitism. And he believes Man has the tools to end Jewish suffering, as well as suffering in general. I know Christian ignoramuses have come up with a lot of insane rationalizations for anti-Semitism, but I think Rabbi Eckstein is mistaken. For one thing, anti-Semitism is not a Christian idea; it's more pervasive than that. I think the Rabbi focuses too much on Christians. Right now, the worst offenders are Muslims. And the atheists who ran the USSR were also extremely damaging. As were the Nazis, who hated Christianity as well as Judaism. For another thing, I believe the world is manipulated by evil supernatural beings hostile to God, and the Jews are special to God, so they will always be targets. I think the same beings drive the persecution of effective, faith-filled Christians. And I don't think Man can put an end to any of this, under his own power. Seems to me that Christians and Jews have to stand together in faith.

Christians believe Satan is evil and has his own agenda. Jews believe he works for God, so I suppose they would have a hard time accepting the idea of legions of fallen angels under Satan's control, attacking everyone God loves.

Now that I think about it, it seems like Africans suffer more than anyone. Like I always say, compared to Africa, even India looks like paradise. And Jews have fared better than American Indians.

I may attack the reloading press again today. I ordered the fancy Hornady parts that are supposed to make pistol charges uniform, but I would love to make it work without them, just so I could feel like I beat the silly thing.

Place your bets.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:24 AM | Permalink  

Sunday Brings Welcome Break From Struggle With Mechanical Ineptitude

Yesterday I had an experience that helped me understand what Jews go through every week. Observant Jews always go crazy on Friday, talking about the things they can't get done by sundown. Well, yesterday I had a list of things I wanted to accomplish, and because the reloading press soaked up so much time, I had to cross a bunch of them off my list. I think getting the first batch of pistol rounds out of that thing may turn out to be my most rewarding experience since taking up tools. I felt great when I fabricated a smoker box for the Hoginator, and I was on top of the world the day I finished my outdoor entertainment cabinet, but those tasks were child's play compared to reloading.

It's funny how people live in little segregated subsets of society, and how that limits what we do. For example, let's say I want to redo some ducting for my air conditioning system. I'm screwed. I have to buy books and read websites. I'll come here and ask my readers questions. It would be a living hell. But a guy from a blue-collar background may have a totally different experience. Someone in his family will know how to do it. One of his friends, maybe. And in all likelihood, someone he knows will be able to "borrow" tools and materials from work.

Similarly, I suppose, people from blue-collar families have it rough when they need professional services. If I have a legal problem, I can handle it myself. I can call other lawyers and get free help. Doctors treat each other's kids free of charge. Something that might cost you five thousand dollars may cost a doctor's kid nothing.

I have never had a relative or friend who reloads! Not one! There is absolutely nobody near me I can ask for help. So problems that seem simple to other people are very difficult for me. I can email people or make phone calls, but it's not the same. It's like trying to learn machining in Miami. You can either enroll in vocational training and pay thousands, or you can do your best with DVDs, books, and the Internet.

Throw ADD into the mix, and things are even worse. The manuals are just plain bad, and on top of that, they're boring, so I have to read every page over and over. I can tell my attention span is getting worse with age.

Regardless, I'll beat it. All I have to do is conquer the powder measure. People are telling me they get consistent pistol charges with the rifle meter. I admire their skill. I'm getting +/- 0.5 grains on a 5-grain charge. I don't know if it's humidity, or stubborn bits of the manufacturer's greasy film, or what. But it ain't working, and I would rather spend another 70 bucks than keep beating my head against the wall. I do know I'm not the only one who has this problem.

It seems like reloading--like shooting--is an art, and I think that is the source of many of my problems. I expect cut-and-dried solutions, and everyone else is relying on experience and creativity.

Homebrewing was much easier to learn, and I had no help at all. My first batch of beer was magnificent. And I had to invent my own methods.

Commenters are now telling me things which confirm my fears. You have to work the press handle with a consistent motion. You have to have some vibration to make the powder flow. You have to keep the powder measure loaded up so the weight of the powder moves things along. Art, art, art. Okay, I accept it. It's not a toaster. You can't push a button and wait for bullets to come out.

I have this thing set up to where it will work, once the powder issue is fixed. From here on out, I'm going to start applying my own ideas. I'll quit letting it intimidate me. I think I'll rig something up to vibrate the powder measure. I may put a Dillon powder checker on the press, even though Hornady makes something less sophisticated which is supposed to do the same basic thing.

The goal of saving money is going to have to be abandoned. I am going to have to do what the manufacturer expects and buy items to make the machine work. Maybe over several years I'll come out ahead, but for now, it's expensive. To make four different calibers, I'll end up spending maybe eleven hundred dollars on equipment. I don't care. I want control of my ammunition, and I want to understand it. And I am not going to let this silly machine beat me.

I am off to enjoy the rest of my Sunday. Even though I am not where I wanted to be by today, I am doing better than I did last week. My preparation is improving.

Maybe by next Sunday, I'll have a post up telling how well my ammunition worked.

Posted by Steve H. at 1:05 PM | Permalink  

Ships With Questionable Powder Measure

Once again the reloading press is driving me insane.

The powder measure on the Hornady Lock-N-Load comes covered with grease, which you have to remove. They suggest you use their proprietary product, which they do not include in the package. Way down on page 9 of the powder measure manual (but not the press manual), they say brake cleaner will work. However, that isn't true. It leaves a residue you have to rinse out with another solvent. The press manual says other solvents will work. Guess what happens when acetone--the cleanest solvent known to man, and the most logical choice--touches the powder measure? It softens the paint and melts the plastic.

I think I finally have all the grease out, and the acetone didn't damage anything badly enough to keep it from working. But the measure still does not work. When I weigh charges in grains, I get 4.6, 4.6. 4.6, 4.3, 3.8, 5.4...I am ready to kill someone. I can't get 5.0 to save my life.

I've found a lot of other angry Hornady owners on the Internet. Apparently, to make this thing work, you have to have a friend who already owns one, or you have to call their tech line and work on the press while holding the phone to your ear, or you have to spend your life on the Internet, asking other people how to do it. I chose Option 3.

One guy claims the powder measure is worthless for pistol ammunition, because there is some part or other in it that only works for rifles. Other people say to buff the parts. Still others say to run a pound of powder through it to "break it in," or to run powdered graphite through it. You can probably imagine how much powdered graphite I have lying around, waiting to be run through powder measures.

I finally fixed the indexing problem, after learning that the manual is wrong. Don't bother me with questions, because I already forgot what I did. Other people have noticed the error. If your press quits indexing right, just screw with the pawl adjustments, see what happens, and take notes.

Okay, I found the pistol part you're supposed to get for the Hornady powder measure. Someone please explain why they don't have a boldfaced disclaimer in the manual: "YOU CAN'T LOAD PISTOL ROUNDS WITH THIS PIECE OF CRAP. YOU HAVE TO BUY MORE OF OUR JUNK FIRST!" Some people say it's okay down to 4 grains. I hope that is true, but I'm going to get the pistol rotor and meter anyway.

Here's what you need: 1. part no. 50128 - pistol rotor and meter assembly, and 2. part no. 50129 - micrometer for pistol rotor and meter assembly. Am I crazy, or wouldn't it be better to just tell you this stuff up front?

It's really nice to get free bullets from Hornady, but so far, trying to get their machine to work has been like a sick torture the Japanese would have inflicted on prisoners of war. The manual is crap. The machine is full of parts you can destroy while trying to follow the instructions for the first time. And when you finally get it set up, you learn that if you really want to do it right, you have to wait another week for parts they didn't tell you you had to have. And unless the Hornady operation is situated at the bottom of a mine shaft, they must be aware of the misery their new customers suffer.

Harley-Davidson does the same kind of thing. They sell you a bike that only satisfies you until you notice all the crap more experienced riders have put on their bikes, and then you have to go back to HD to buy pimp accessories. BUT a stock Harley runs fine and looks great while you're waiting for your new stuff to arrive. The Hornady Lock-N-Load...not so much.

I don't see any way I can use the press until next week. Maybe if I hose it out with spray silicone, it will throw consistent charges. I have a feeling it won't.

Dillon owners, if your experiences were better than mine have been, feel free to express yourselves in my comments. I ought to sell this thing and buy a Dillon just on the off chance that the suffering would be reduced.

Posted by Steve H. at 5:40 PM | Permalink  

50-Shot Groups Tighten Up

The range treated me fairly well today.

I have fallen in love with the Glock 26, because it has been consistently shooting better for me than my full-size guns. So it's what I started with today. I started with 25 shots. And things didn't go all that well. I'm wondering if there is something about the Wolf ammunition I shot last time, that this gun likes. I shot okay today, but it seemed like I could not get in a groove and avoid flyers. Toward the end, this group tightened up.

The second 25 were a little crazy. Sometimes you learn something really valuable while you're shooting a batch of rounds, but by the time you learn it, the target already looks bad.

I'm using smaller bullseyes now. They're cheaper, and the big ones were a waste at 7 yards, because I only used the middle.

The SW1911 treated me very well today. I started with Federal ammunition, which I liked a lot. This is 20 shots. Don't ask me why it's not 25. I lost count somehow. More than once, I stopped shooting to make sure the barrel was clear, because the bullet literally went through the same hole as the one before it. That also happened with the Glock. I actually opened it up and sighted down the inside of the barrel. That was a satisfying sensation. If only I could do it consistently.

Here is the rest of the box. I held one back so I could use it to compare to my reloads.

After that, I shot 49 rounds of CCI ammunition I bought from the range. I liked it a lot, but it seemed like the first few shots went crazy. I wonder if that was me, adjusting to new ammunition. I held back a second round.

I was very happy with the .45 today. I felt like I improved my sight picture as well as my trigger pull and the way I gripped the gun with the weak fingers of my right hand. That last item makes a big difference.

The wind was insane, as usual. I had trouble with the target rocking back and forth, but I think I managed not to shoot while it was moving.

Some guy had a big box of Winchester .45 ammunition, and he was shooting the whole thing. Guess who got his brass? BAH HA HA. I score!

Another idyllic afternoon, in the pre-Hillary bloom of American conservatism.

In other news, Chris Muir is bringing the Colt nuts down on his head.

Posted by Steve H. at 6:22 PM | Permalink  

Chametz Banished

I had to practice a little law today. What a drag. But now it's over, and I get to go back to farting around.

Against what passes for my better judgment, I decided to try to grow off-season tomatoes again. Hey, no! Don't leave! I can do it! I'm positive! I just have to shoot them with copper and daconil twice a week.

I've figured something out. Miami tomatoes don't like containers. At least, they don't like my containers. I think keeping the moisture level right is just too hard. The tomatoes I grew in the ground last year looked better. Maybe I need to buy that super moisture-control dirt they sell, or maybe I need mulch. But I've decided to put tomatoes in the ground one more time and see what happens. In the past, they were the only plants that did any good.

I went to Winn-Dixie today, with a loaded pistol in my pocket, to buy pork and score more bottles of kosher-for-Passover Coke. WD is kind of ghetto, but now that Publix is attacking our civil rights with a draconian lawsuit, I no longer feel welcome to stroll their aisles as an armed citizen in search of tasty saturated fat.

I grabbed 8 bottles of Coke, bringing my stash to over 20. And to keep me from keeling over on the way home, I bought two protein bars and a Coke Zero. I kept looking at it in the little cooler case, thinking, "It CAN'T be as bad as I remember." Oh, yes it can. How can people stand this crap? It tastes like window cleaner.

I was accosted on the way in and out by pushy volunteers collecting for something called DARE. I think they teach gang kids to play tetherball or something. Whatever. I almost never give money to charities that accost me on the street. Any moron can empty a chicken bucket and walk around in traffic trying to get people to put money in it. "Oh, uh, it's for the Dalai Lama's bladder surgery. No, really. And bunnies with cancer. Look, just give me a dollar before the liquor store closes."

Here is my tip for the DARE volunteers. Annoy people going into the store or people going out. But not BOTH. Because they are the SAME PEOPLE. If I didn't give you money before going in and finding out how much the ethanol scam has jacked up the price of my food, chances are, I won't give you money after I pay an indirect ransom to Al Gore and the rest of the corn crooks.

I bought a bag of jasmine rice on a whim. Certain types of rice were flat-out missing, and I wanted some jasmine or basmati rice, and all they had was a four-pound bag. I have no idea what I'll do with four pounds, but I can't help it. I panicked. I was going to do something with lamb, but I'm not sure what.

It cost $4.69. When you imagine it prepared with water and swollen to its fully cooked size, you realize it's still not a bad deal.

I should try to make some .45 rounds for tomorrow. I may be dragging my buddy Pat and his brother Mario to the range. They can drive me to the hospital if I weigh the powder wrong.

Hope your day is shaping up as well as the remainder of mine.

Posted by Steve H. at 5:50 PM | Permalink  

Hence Their Irrelevant Prefab Response

I complained to Wal-Mart about their efforts to disarm their employees and the employees of thousands of other companies and render them vulnerable to predators while traveling to and from work. This is their response:

Dear Stephen,

Wal-Mart understands its role as a leading, responsible retailer in the U.S. and is making strides to strengthen its already existing security processes to help combat illegal gun activity in the communities we serve. Wal-Mart has a long and proud history of offering the products hunters and outdoorsmen want and need and that will not change.

It is important to note that these procedures should not impede law-abiding citizens from purchasing firearms at our stores that sell them. These processes merely provide us, as a retailer, an additional mechanism to assist law enforcement when illegal activity occurs.

We are hopeful these enhanced processes with help from law enforcement and other retailers committing to do the same can make a positive difference in our communities.

Thank you,
Wal-Mart Customer Relations

This is obviously a boilerplate response they send out to anyone who seems like a "gun kook." It has absolutely nothing to do with what I complained about. I wrote them about Wal-Mart's sponsorship of a lawsuit to overturn HB503, a law which enables employees to carry arms in their private vehicles.

I am sick of hearing about "hunters and outdoorsmen." That's liberal propaganda. Obama uses those words, and he's a gun-hating, anti-second-amendment nut of the first water. The second amendment is not about shooting rabbits. It's about defending yourself from criminals and tyrants. It's about SHOOTING PEOPLE. Sorry to put it that way, but that's the truth.

Hunting is important, but it's trivial compared to the second amendment's true objective.

I can walk in and out of Wal-Mart all day with a pistol in my pocket, legally. Publix Supermarkets is co-sponsoring this anti-civil-rights legislation, but I carry a pistol into and out of Publix several times a week. Yet they want to fix it so their employees can't have weapons outside in their glove compartments. Does that make sense? How would you like to be a battered wife with a ludicrous restraining order, raising kids on Wal-Mart pay, and have to drive to work without a gun in your car? I assure you, there are women in that situation right now, and Wal-Mart could not care less.

Statistics tell us about 7% of shootings at businesses are perpetrated by employees or ex-employees. That shows that the threat from these people is much, much lower than the threat from the general public. What it doesn't tell us is how many of those shootings would have been prevented by allowing permit holders to carry at work. If I went nuts tomorrow and decided to shoot up a business, which would I pick? Gun-free Wal-Mart, or Jorge Garcia's strip-mall liquor store, with the 12-gauge under the counter? See if you can guess.

As I've said before, it's just plain stupid to think that an employee will be worried about breaking a company rule and getting fired, when he's breaking that rule in the process of committing a stack of violent felonies. Employees who want to shoot up businesses will do so, regardless of whether it means receiving pink slips later in the month. When you walk in the door at your place of business and start shooting your coworkers, it's safe to assume you've decided your job isn't working out, and that you're ready to move on. Some might go so far as to call it a constructive resignation.

In a "going postal" situation, the violent employee is about as concerned about being fired as he is about being fined for littering the parking lot with spent casings. Does anyone seriously believe Lee Harvey Oswald regretted losing his job at the schoolbook depository?

Do you realize what these rules mean? They mean that when I'm carrying at Wal-Mart, and a violent criminal comes in and starts trouble, the best hope this giant, well-heeled corporation has of avoiding a bloody catastrophe is ME. How would you like to have to rely on a fat old lawyer to shoot a lunatic while you cringe behind a girdle display? Let me warn you in advance: don't count on much. My behind will be the first one out the door, if at all possible, and once it's outside, it and my Glock will stay there.

God bless the NRA. I used to think they were extreme, but that was before I got to know the enemy. Extreme is the way to go. We have to push these pansy freaks back to the point where fighting them is like fighting terror in Afghanistan instead of letting it happen in America. We can't retreat and concede until we find ourselves reduced to the nominal right to keep unloaded long guns in locked boxes under our beds, like the pathetic folks in DC. We have to keep pushing them back, nearly to the point where they have to mount lawsuits to prevent us from carrying on airplanes. The second amendment frontier is like the border of Israel. We need to keep it as far out as possible, so our enemies will have a terribly difficult job, fighting their way to the point where they can attack our most vital rights.

Posted by Steve H. at 8:40 PM | Permalink  

Pony up to Fight Him

According to the NRA, Wal-Mart, Disney, and Publix Supermarkets are helping fund a lawsuit to have HB503 overturned. This is the new law that permits Florida citizens to keep arms in their cars for self-defense, regardless of their employers' backward anti-gun policies.

You can contact Publix at this URL.

You can contact Wal-Mart at this URL.

You can donate to the NRA-ILA at this URL.

Feel free to post an appropriate Disney link or email address in my comments. I couldn't find one.

Let your voice be heard.

More

Five states have passed laws like HB503. Here is a fact sheet debunking the BS.

Posted by Steve H. at 12:46 PM | Permalink  

Uncle Wiggily Meets his Match

I have to go crank up the DVR. Tred Barta has a new episode. Guess what he's doing? He's using a longbow to hunt TINY LITTLE BUNNY RABBITS.

God, I love this guy.

Posted by Steve H. at 9:04 PM | Permalink  

Grocers Outgun Armed Doofus

Looks like Drudgebart.tv.com is taking over the NRA's "Armed Citizen" shtick. Today it links to a story about an incident in which the owner of a grocery store successfully drove off an armed nut.

According to the Palm Beach Post, AKA "The Shiny Sheet," one Marshall Hugo Grant is alleged to have drawn his gun on a grocery manager during some sort of dispute. The manager and an assistant manager drew their pieces as well, and Grant chickened out and ran into the parking lot, firing as he went. The grocery guys convinced him to hand over his weapon, and they held him until the cops arrived. They didn't have to fire a shot.

Hurray, hurray. Concealed carry works once again. Neither of the good guys was injured, and the alleged crook went to jail.

I can hear the whiners now. "But the problem was caused by concealed carry, because Grant had a gun." Uh...NO. Grant was not a law-abiding citizen, carrying with a state-issued license. He was just an immature boob who went around with a gun in his pocket, for the sake of pushing people around and being a big man. How do I know this? Because he was charged with carrying a concealed weapon. This is an impossibility, if you have a permit. The store people were not charged, proving their guns were legal.

It's a perfect example of how privately held guns are supposed to work. A criminal has a concealed weapon, and he uses it to commit a crime. A law-abiding permit holder surprises him with a legal firearm. The criminal loses.

If not for the armed manager and assistant manager, two or more innocent people might be dead today. Instead, the system scooped a troublemaker off the streets. Added bonus: every dirtbag in the vicinity of this store will know about the guns, and when they decide to rob business in order to buy drugs, they'll cross this grocery off their list. And decent people will know it's a relatively safe place to shop.

Concealed carry is a wonderful thing. Open carry would be better, but it seems like Sigmund Freud was involved in the drafting of our permit laws, because concealed is the rule. When you go about your business with a weapon at your disposal, you have tremendous peace of mind, because you know the odds that you will be harmed by a criminal are much, much lower than they ordinarily would be. You can't use it to end arguments or to prevent people from being rude to you, as Mr. Grant should have known, but you stand a very good chance of preventing yourself and those around you from being injured, raped, robbed, or killed.

In self-defense situations, martial arts are a joke. The cops are slow. Pepper spray doesn't work on drug addicts or people who are really angry. If begging worked, a lot of people who are now dead would still be alive. But the mere presence of a firearm can save lives. It happens every day, countless times, across America. Guns even save the lives of criminals, by discouraging them from engaging.

If you're afraid to carry, you're saying you trust a criminal to show mercy, more than you trust yourself to be responsible.

Does that make sense to you?

Gun-violence agitators should be happy, because Grant no longer has a gun, and in the future, he will not be allowed to own one. But if logic appealed to these folks, they wouldn't be what they are.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:45 AM | Permalink  

Next: Assembling Pipe Bombs While Wearing Mittens

I spent maybe an hour and a half working on reloading today, and that's all I can take. I had to quit.

I got the dies set up the way I like them. That meant the next job was fixing the powder measure. The manual is a pamphlet. Naturally, it's useless. You have to look at the powder measure and figure out how it works.

The one thing the manual is good for is reminding you to clean out the copious film of grease Hornady puts on things to prevent rust. This stuff will prevent powder from flowing. So you have to completely disassemble the measure and clean each individual part. With what? Why, with a Hornady product that doesn't come with the press or the measure, of course! Some crap I would have to mail-order, taking a week and costing ten bucks in shipping. But they suggest alternatives, right? Uh...NO.

I tried what I had on hand. Carb cleaner and brake cleaner left a residue that took forever to evaporate, so I followed up with acetone, which seems to remove it. They even have grease on the funnel part of the measure, which is painted. Go figure. I wish I could describe how hard it is to get a swab into this part of the measure. I'm contemplating duct-taping a shotgun swab to the end of a gun-cleaning rod.

I thought I had the whole thing clean, but when I tried using the measure, my weights went 5.4, 6.1, 5.9...

I took everything apart again, and while I was wiping the little tiny funnel that puts powder in the cartridge, it slipped out of my hands and hit the concrete floor. Naturally, it's dinged up. Will it affect the powder flow? I'll find out soon. Maybe I can find a way to buff it out. This is one more occasion for kicking myself for not having a drill press.

Another fun problem has developed. Sometimes the shell plate refuses to drop into place after an operation. It goes about halfway down. The manual--here is a shock--doesn't address this in its tiny troubleshooting section. There is some vague language about indexing and pawls in there. When the plate doesn't register correctly, adjust the pawls! How? Hmm...just ADJUST those boogers! So I may have some more trial and error in front of me. I may have to call Hornady.

I can't find anything in the manual about installing the spent primer tube. I keep looking at the press, trying to find a nipple to attach it to, but I haven't found it. I guess I'm going to have to start running brass through it to see where the primers squirt out.

I hope the press is durable, because it's taking a monstrous beating already, and I haven't loaded a single round.

The recipes are confusing. I keep reading warnings. "Don't switch primers!" But when I got my loading info from Laser-Cast, it listed a bunch of primers as though they were interchangeable. Hope they're right. If they are, I paid WAY too much for my primers. I couldn't get them locally.

Here's the plan. Laser-Cast 230-grain round-nose bullets. OAL: 1.260". Charge: 5 grains Unique. Primer: Federal 150. Oddly, another recipe says 5 grains and an OAL of 1.190. That seems like a big difference. The second recipe is from the Alliant Powder site. But it doesn't specify the type of bullet very well. It just says lead 230-grain target. For all I know, they mean wadcutters.

Here is good news. You don't really have to seek prompt medical attention when you get brake cleaner in your eye. Don't ask me how I know.

I'm wondering if I have to measure all my brass. I was hoping the resizing die would make it uniform, but I don't know. Guess I'll find out.

The really maddening thing is that I have to test the ammunition, and I can't do it without a trip to the range. I think I should go ahead and make 50 rounds. I would rather disassemble them and start over than waste a trip to the range. And the damned things ought to work, shouldn't they? A low-pressure round, in a standard barrel? I don't think I'm tempting fate, here.

Maybe tomorrow my first completed round will roll into the collection bin. But I would not bet the rent on it.

Posted by Steve H. at 3:51 PM | Permalink  

I Now Fancy Myself Capable of Vocational Training

I've been at a friend's house all day, celebrating the opening of a magnificent new barbecue area. Val Prieto's neighbor Pat has been laboring for months, carrying sacks of concrete and wheeling in loads of slate, and now he has a fantastic bar and grill setup in his yard. I kept offering to help, but fortunately Pat never took me up on it. So I got the gain but none of the pain.

Tonight I thought I'd write a bit about mystification. This is one of my many, many pet peeves. It describes the process of greatly exaggerating the difficulty and complexity of something, in order to impress people. An Internet source says the idea is to convey the impression that a subject is "unknowable." That about sizes it up.

Here's an example. You decide you want to learn how to make toast. And you have a friend with six months of community college under his belt, and he owns a toaster, and you ask his advice. And instead of saying, "Put the bread in and push the button," he makes fun of you for thinking YOU of all people could ever learn to make TOAST, and then he tells you to give up and leave it to geniuses like him.

Here's another example. A blogger named Steve, who has a degree in physics and a law degree, goes completely insane and decides he may be smart enough to learn how to make his own pistol ammunition. And he buys a progressive press, on the theory that single-stage presses are slow and--for this type of work--outmoded. I mean, progressive presses cost more for a reason, correct? And he complains that he is having trouble because the press's manual is a piece of crap. And some people who already make ammunition respond by being as helpful as they can, but others heap abuse on him and tell him how crazy he was to presume to intrude on the purview of the high-and-mighty few, the nearly-GED-having Illuminati of the gun range, the camo-underpants-wearing Knights Templar of 65th-percentile pistol shooting performed with $3500 custom 1911s baptized in Col. Jeff Cooper's urine...the established reloaders.

Oh, fool. To think that YOU had intellectual horsepower sufficient to entitle you to skip the ten-year learning curve and apprenticeship period and secret handshake aided by case lube!

Please.

You know what we're talking about here? The kind of thing they teach in vocational school. You know how that works. "Not college material? Right this way. We'll learn you how to earn fifty dollars an hour running a milling machine." Dignified, useful work. Skilled labor. Something to be very proud of. But not rocket science. Not the kind of thing they look for on a MENSA application.

It seems like this happens to me every time I try to do anything new. Oddly, I always succeed anyway. Well, except for the times I've tried to grow tomatoes. I guess you have to have a research fellowship at MIT to do that.

Anyway, I emailed Kim du Toit about the supercilious cranks who were blaming me for my problems, and referring to his wife, he said, "Connie has a name for their computer systems incarnation. She calls them 'mystics' -- people who withhold information from others so that they keep an 'advantage.' Mostly, these are insecure people." And I wondered if she was familiar with the term "mystification," because if not, it's a truly wonderful coincidence.

I am reminded of one of the reasons we crushed Saddam Hussein's gigantic army in about a month. It is said that when his officers and soldiers received information that could be useful to people serving beneath them, they collected it and destroyed it. For example, the army would get some high-tech system or other for tanks, and there would be manuals for each tank, and each tank commander would collect the manuals and throw them out, keeping one copy of each for himself. So nobody could break his rice bowl. He would be the indispensable magical negro everyone could go to when the system went on the fritz. He would be Jeeves. His job was secure, and he looked like a genius to everyone above him, and all the people beneath him looked like morons, because they could not do what he could do. So they were less of a threat. The only down side was that nobody could fix anything. And fighting Saddam's army was a lot like fighting a herd of angry poodles, half of them in heat.

Not to take anything away from the brave combatants who defeated them. I exaggerate for comic effect. But let's face it. Pound for pound, Saddam's troops were pretty sad. There are plenty of smaller armies that would have hurt us much, much worse.

When I take on new skills, I am trying to improve myself. Has that occurred to any of the reloading Operating Thetans? Has it occurred to them that I'm not trying to steal their blinding glory? That my efforts to enlarge my own capabilities are not a direct attack on their status as ballistic deities? I very much doubt it. Clearly, my sole motivation was to emasculate the amazing people who have stunned humanity by learning how to shove a piece of lead into a brass cylinder.

I have a nutty idea. It's bizarre, but hear me out. My idea is this: when someone has the gumption and the industry to put himself out in order to learn something new, maybe the correct thing is to try to help.

No, it's too crazy. The world isn't ready for hubris like that.

I can't rewire human nature. I know it's useless to complain. People will always be this way. A man who can see a quarter-inch past the end of his own nose is a true visionary.

I'll tell you this. I'm going to win. You can't prevent me from learning how to make ammunition. And then I'm going to salt the wound by learning to shoot better than you. Regardless of the fact that Jeff Cooper never peed on any of my pistols. I'll do it without camo. I'll do it without patches on my jacket. I'll do it without target sights. With mass-produced guns. I'll do it as eccentrically as possible, with maximal violation of the tenets of sheepdom, just to make you wet the bed.

Then you can say, "Man that guy who reloads for all his pistols and shoots twice as good as I do was a damn fool, thinking he could learn to run a progressive press."

Thanks again, generous people who helped me out. You made things a hell of a lot easier.

As for the mystics, I'll see you at the range. I'll be the guy with the shiny Colt with abalone grips.

Posted by Steve H. at 10:16 PM | Permalink  

Short Glock Continues Outshooting Full-Size Guns

I shot fairly well today. Due to my ineptitude with the reloading press, I was not able to produce .45 ammunition, so I shot the 9mm, the .40, and the .357.

I started out with the .357, shooting double-action. In other words, I did not cock the pistol when I fired. I always get double-action and single-action confused. This is a whole bunch of shots at 7 yards. Not sure how many. I had problems because the wind was crazy today. The target kept turning sideways in the holder, and over and over, I had to wait while it was moving around. Really irritating.

I shoot the revolver so little, I actually do better with automatics. You would think the 6" barrel would give me nicer groups than the dinky auto barrels. No such luck. But I enjoy shooting it. I don't like the little Hogue grip. I ought to shop for a bigger one. I think the grip is intended for carry, which is a little silly on a revolver the size of a framing hammer.

Here's the second bunch of shots. The target was still spinning and rocking. Trail Glades won't let pistol shooters use multiple bullseyes, so I decided to make up by own by shooting at the little crosses on the target. I put 15 rounds into them, cocking the gun before firing. Oddly, I shot better when I didn't cock the pistol. I went clockwise, starting at top left. You can see I got better on the way.

I like this target because it's good except for a few flyers. I think it shows I was making changes that helped.

I got out the Glock 26 and steel-cased Wolf ammunition and put 50 rounds into this target at 7 yards. I cannot believe this gun. God help anybody who tries to harm me while I'm carrying it. It shoots beautifully.

You can see how much the target twisted. Look through the hole, at the guy several stations to my right. You shouldn't be able to see him.

I decided to try the .40, and here are the results. The 9mm shoots better for me, and it's much shorter. Go figure. My shooting improved as I worked on the lesson I learned last week, i.e., squeeze with the weak fingers first. And I'm working on getting a more symmetrical sight picture. I assume target sights leave less room for the front sight to wobble around in a big empty notch, but I don't actually know. I made up my own second bullseye again, at top left.

By that time I was pooped, so I left.

There were some old guys with FBI hats shooting today. They all shot well, but one was just scary. I realized that I was looking at one of the great blessings of life in America. This guy was at least 75, and he was probably one of the deadliest individuals in the county. In many countries, or in states with no carry privileges, he'd be weak and helpless. An inviting target. Think of the difference the second amendment can make in a life.

Here's a T-bird I parked near the other day. Not relevant, but impressive.

I feel like my shooting is still improving, but it's hard to tell, with this incredible wind that never seems to go away.

Posted by Steve H. at 6:10 PM | Permalink  

I Wish Lieutenant Dan Were Here

It looks like I was spazzing over nothing, RE crimping .45 cases. As readers have pointed out, these cases aren't supposed to have much of a crimp. I just assumed they needed one, because they looked unfinished. But I took out a sample of the closest thing I have to .45 ammunition--.40 S&W--and I saw that the case edges were perpendicular to the barrel axis.

On the up side, I learned how to adjust the die so it crimps. The instructions are completely wrong. I'm sure there is some way to construe them so they work, but I haven't found it yet. It works like this. There is a sliding deal inside the die which seats the bullet. The body of the die does the crimping. So to crimp a case, you lower the die body until you get a crimp, and then you adjust the sliding thing down until you get the overall length you want.

I ran off a couple of crimped shells without primers or powder, just to see if I could do it. They looked okay, except that I think I may have belled the cases a little too much. If you don't open them up a certain amount, the bullets may fall over in the cases as they are pushed up to the seating die. Instead of perfectly straight sides topped by a crimp, I got a very slight bulge around the case mouth, just below the crimp. Doesn't matter, since I have to adjust the die all over again.

Not sure how accurate the OAL has to be. I got it as close as I could, using Vernier calipers. May be off by a thousandth or two.

I was going to try to run off 50 shells today, but I'll never make it to the range if I do. I guess I'll take Glocks, since I have ammunition for those.

A reader is taking me to task for being an "avowed fan" of Tucker Max. I get the weirdest comments. Anyone who read what I wrote about Tucker can see that I'm not comfortable endorsing his work. But the guy was very decent to me, when people whose values are more like mine were doing nothing to help me or even working against me. He didn't know me from Adam, but he took the time to send me a priceless document full of PR tips. And Maddox was helpful, too. And unlike some conservatives I could name, who count every bean and extract payment for everything they do, they didn't want a single thing in return. Neither of them has ever asked me for anything. So I'm not going to spit in their faces in order to look holy. When my spam book came out, the only conservatives I knew who mentioned it were Lucianne Goldberg and a generous contingent of small-time bloggers. And the same thing is going to happen when the cookbook comes out. At best.

Chastity is part of Christianity, but so is helping other people without demanding anything in return. So is gratitude. Think about that before comment rage compels you to tell me who I should be nice to.

Posted by Steve H. at 11:44 AM | Permalink  

Press Beginning to Function

Okay, here is what I got.

Press station 1: decapping and sizing.

Station 2: priming

Station 3: powder

Station 4: expanding

Station 5: seating

I used a combination of Lee and Hornady materials to get there. I have everything adjusted except for the powder charge and the crimp.

Here is my question. Right now, I'm producing .45 ACP shells with kind of a big lip on them. Should I adjust the seater thing so it crimps them in and makes them pretty?

I'm trying to figure out how to do that, but the tiny pamphlet that came with the die is not all that great.

It turns out my dies are titanium nitride, and the manual says no lube. We'll see if that works.

Posted by Steve H. at 8:53 PM | Permalink