Capitalism!

68 Years Ago

Well, the MOVIE was 38 years ago...

OBEY!

Obey your Air Raid Warden!



Keep off the highway.

Typecast

New axe.

A Remington Model 5 portable:

Gah, I'm a horrible typist.  That should be 'sweetly' and 'Messed' among other issues.

This cost $65 back in '32.  One in mint condition will cost 10 times that today.  I didn't spend 10 times that.  Or even twice that.

So now i have one of each in the typewriter department.  An office size, a portable Noiseless, and a portable standard.  All Remington.  In keeping with my 'one of each' philosophy, I am done.  Unless something special falls in my lap like this one...

Birth of a Tank

Almost 30 minutes of Eisenhower Era awesomeness.

Hope this link is still alive

For Cambridge Typewriter Repair.

Time

L.S./M.F.T

Used to smoke these.  So round, so firm, so fully packed.  Just like I liked my dames.

Paper, Mister?

 Speaking of old print...  Here is archives of old newspapers.  LOTS of them.  Up until 1922.  So in case you want to know what the National Tribune was up to...

Apparently some local Ogden man did well and got his pistol or summat adopted by the army.  The town is proud he made good.  Wait!  Silk dresses only $13.50?!!

Book Report #1

How bout an author report with typewriters?

Holtzapfel

Another one of my loves.  Holtzapfel lathes.  They are beautiful and make beautiful things, but good luck affording one. 

These things were also important aiding to the further development of precision machinist lathes.  There is an old saying, "a lathe is the only tool that can make a more precise version of itself."  So you can dial down your tolerances from +/- .25 inches to +/- .001 inches.

If you really want one, I'd suggest going the easier route.  Become a master machinist and make your own.  Cheaper that way too, maybe.  And at the end you can use your lathe to its fullest capability, too.

Type Cast

Blogging with a typewriter.  Gotta do that again...

I'd go on and on about linotype machines, but I did that last year.

I think of a typewriter as the 'attainable' printing press and typeset hobby.   While it would be neat to have my own shop to play in, who has the time unless you can devote your life to what it otherwise a fleeting interest.  A shop with a Heidelburg press and a Mergethaler linotype machine.  All in a 80 year old 5000 squarefoot industrial space...

Yeah, I can dream about the unattainable, right!  Even if I won Powerball I don't know if I could do such a dream justice.  Half the fun is in the longing.

Blimp work

Aw, HELL no.  I'm not going up 75 feet in the middle of a big warehouse on a wheeled wooden ladder and stand on the top rung.  I even used to work at a sign company, hanging sign on walls, but not like this.

From here.

Out of pocket

Please enjoy some randomish posts that may or may not be gun related.

I ain't here to post for a bit.  Hush hush stuff.  You know how it is.

600,000

600,000 visits to my blog, too.  Just flipped that odometer this week!

Thats...  carry the 3...  Almost 100,000 visitors a year! 

NOT GUILTY

Washington man fires shotgun into the air to scare off threat.  Is arrested by the sheriff.  Cites The Veep in his defense.

"Not Guilty By Reason of Joe Biden"

I believe a VP outranks some silly sheriff!

And...

I always wanted gray tacticool colored firearms, cargo pants, murses, and shoot-me-first vests.

Years gone by

Been doing this for 6 years gone now.  What a wild strange trip it has been.

I reminisce back to when I was a rank n00b.  Black plastic pistols were black plastic pistols.  I had no idea which was which.

Now, at a glance, "That's a HK, it has the different hoosie whatsits for the mag release." or "Glock.  Look at the slide take down thingummers on the sides, plus that dimple" or "Ruger revolver, not a Smith.  It's the size of a canned ham"

The Last Hunt

Saw The Last Hunt on the Teevee.  It's about buffalo hunters near the end of the buffalo era.  And indian fighter enlists the partnership of a season buff hunter that is about sick of the killing.  The indian fighter is quick to shoot a man in cold blood, too.  So, bingo, plot conflict.

They hunt with very large/long lever action rifles with tang mounted peep sights.  Not Sharps, Winchester pattern.  Dunno the model, as this 1956 movie is not in the internet movie firearms database.  The timing of the movie would make them Winchester 1876 models perhaps.  If I had to guess the caliber, they looked like .45-70.  Though they could have been .50-95 or summat, and that 1876 model was chambered in 45-75 WCF, .40-60, .45-60 and .50-95.  Hard to tell which on the little screen.

Before they set out to hunt they pack up 100 pounds of lead.  They do all their own handloading, and, presumably, reloading.  All while smoking by the campfire.  Phew!  The 'presses' are small single pliers-like doohickeys for seating the bullet, or sizing same.

The buffalo herds are getting smaller by 1880, but they can still shoot a 'stand'.  This is where you shoot the alpha bull.  If he drops, and doesn't panic or run, the rest of the herd won't go anywhere, and you can nibble away at the outside of the group, working in, and get most all of them.  Convenient for your skinners.  The skins fetched 2 dollars, and the tongue got you 50 cents.  The rest was wasted except for some meat to feed the hunters themselves.  A bit later, in history, there would be a market for the bones that littered the prairie, to be used for fertilizer.

The hunters made all one shot drops.  I don't know how they simulated this in the movie.  Maybe they actually killed off a couple small herds for the cameras.  There was no "no animals were harmed in the making of this flicker show" disclaimer in the credits that I saw.  American Bison must have been pretty delicate if reliable one shot drops were possible.  Not like the reputation of African Cape Buffalo.  The mean character even kills a few with a single action revolver.

HOLEE CRAP!

Jimmy Carter says the Zimmerman case was decided correctly.

Now I don't know WHAT to think.  I use Jimmy as guidepost.  If Jimmy says its so it must be the 'tother way.

Dang.

I coulda swore I had a post queued up for today. 

Ummm, lessee...  Uh... Well, Alan Gura is appealling Maryland's Woollard case to the Supreme Court.  Did it on the 9th.  It's our 'shall issue' case, ifn you don't recall.  So that's exiciting.  He bring up the point that Heller has said that people have a right to defend themselves but all these lower courts are saying that that right appears to stop at the threshold of your front door, and cout SCOTUS please clairfy? 

So we'll wait to see if it get's put on the docket.  And then hope they rule our way.  A happy result would turn all those May Issue states and then it's be sea to shining sea.

no more telegrams STOP

Yesterday, at 9pm, the last telegram, a service set up in 1850, was sent, stop. 

Where is all the old tech going, the world wonders, stop.

Man, Admiral Halsey is gonna be pissed.

I don't expect to get shot

In self defense.  Mainly because I don't jump on dudes and start wailing away on them.  If I did do that and the guy I wailing on shot me before I finished him off, well that's on me. 

If the dude I was wailing on was a jackass, well, being a jackass is not a justifiable reason to be freely wailed on.

And that's my comments on the actual La'affaire Zimmerman.

Zimmerman

I can understand why everyone is upset, the time is just odd.  I mean it WAS 96 years ago that that reprehensible Bosch tried to stir up Mexico in case we got all uppity about unrestricted submarine warfare.  The nerve!  The cheek!  Those Krauts think they can distract us Americans from the right?  Well them Huns have another thing coming. 

What?




----------

"We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you. You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States of America is certain and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves. Please call the President's attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace." Signed, ZIMMERMANN

Aw, crap.  Someone beat me to the joke.

Great

And now I learn the Omega-3 fatty acid from fish oil that I take to keep my arteries from clogging and giving me a heart attack or stroke?  It's gunna gimme the pee-pee cansker! 

At least salt is good for me again.  From now on I am taking all my health advice from Alan.  Or Breda.   Or Weerd.  Or JayG.  Pretty much the whole SqrlRpt crew.  Their first bit of advice is to avoid California.  Possibly because of Sharknadoes, but the reason is immaterial.  Breda says to check out a chiropracter.  Will do! 

M1A in 2013

When I started this blog, 7.62x51 guns were much more popular, and would have placed much higher in a poll than they did here. 

Why?  Hmmm.   Maybe it's 6 more years of War on Terror vets sticking with what they know? 

THe .45 is less popular too.  People are more accepting of 9mm than they were 5 years ago, including, famously, Tam.

Maybe only blogs have changed and their is just youngish people voting in blog polls.

It's like the death of Jeff Cooper made it OK to go back to poodle shooters and wonder nines again.

Just an observation.

Getting Old

And it sucks.  Aches and pains. 

I am no longer fully confident I will always be physically capable of springing into action when the need arises.  Drag the unconscious person from the burning building, rescue a drowning person, take on an aggressor bodily and at least hold my own.

I don't think I can don a pack, grab a rifle, and high tail it to the woods, effectively.  I'd hold back the group.  In a Carrinton event I am more likely to be one of the early die off in the chaos that follows the loss of every electircal device on the planet.

All the more reason to take advantage of conceal carry, though.  I am becoming an 80 year old woman, it'd be nice to fight of bad guys like an 80 year old woman with a gun.

MBtGE is worse off.  His spine issues are much worse than mine, and he is 10 years older.

Bad assery

If you want to know what I look like; the guy below but with 2 whole arms, a shaved head, no eye patch, and a full goatee.

No blog today.

My neck issue relapsed and Archie's terlet backed up again.

He flushes wet wipes, then lies about doing so.

So my mood is foul.  Doctor appointment follow up scheduled.  Monday.  Hate this.  Realized I like typing stuff.  Can only do that one handed, now

Stream of Consciousness

Looking for blog fodder I fell down the wiki hole. 

It all started with thinking on that user modified Glock someone had up on Gunbroker.  The one that had no trigger guard.  Made me think of the Fitz Special.  He was the dude that invented the snubbie.  One of the features was a cut down trigger guard, and this turned out to be extraneous, but giving the Fitz Special treatment to a Glock is genius!

Supposedly, some guy in Mexico did it to a 1911.  Now THAT gives me the heebie jeebies even more than the Glock.  Now I can't find that article.  I hope it was referring to a .45ACP revolver with the treatment...  Wait, here is a reference to Captain Manuel T. “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas

That article about the Fitz also led me to Colonel Rex Applegate who liked belly guns and point shooting.  He was sort of the other side of the coin to Colonel Jeff Cooper.  Looks like more people accept Cooper's way of doing things, now.

Applegate lead me to refresh my details on Wild Bill Donovan of the OSS and David Stirling of the SAS.  

I had no idea that Camp David was originally used by the Office of Strategic Service for training.

-----

Some badasses in that list of personalities.  But if you want a REAL badass, this guy:

Adrian Carton de Wiart

"a British Army officer of Belgian and Irish descent. He fought in the Boer War, World War I, and World War II, was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip and ear, survived a plane crash, tunneled out of a POW camp, and bit off his own fingers when a doctor wouldn't amputate them. He later said 'frankly I had enjoyed the war.'"

No, the "G" is for Good Guy

What an interesting idea!  An app that is designed to let "parents and community members mark, or geolocate, sites associated with potentially unsafe guns and gun owners. These locations are typically the homes or businesses of suspected unsafe gun owners, but might also be public lands or other locations where guns are not handled safely, or situations where proper rights to own or use any particular type of firearm may not exist."

How quaint!  Inciting people against gun owners will be fun for the whole fambly, and not just the domain of leftist print news outlets!  Yay.  Name and shame.  Friendly neighborhood misdemeanor doxing.  Wouldn't it be easier if gun owners were just required to wear a scarlet letter "G," for "Gun," on their clothing?  It's like they think the millions and millions of gun owners should all be ashamed, somehow.

Of course, in some jurisdictions, recent laws have been passed making it illegal to publicize such private information.

Two can play at that game.  Where is the app to geolocate "Dangerous Liberals with Socialistic Tendencies"?  After all socialism has killed more people than privately owned firearms, automobiles, and smallpox, combined, in the past century.

It's like the cops

aren't the good guys, not anymore...

I'm getting really tired of hearing about these abuses.  You know what would be a novel story?  A police jurisdiction closing down their extraneous masked flash-bang raid-team.  That would be cool.

Getting unreasonably "Elian Gonzalesed" for barbering without a license.  Betting in your football pool at work.  Holding a short lobster for more than 5 seconds.  Shame on them.

Carrington

Looks like a miniseries is coming up that explores what happens if we have a modern day Carrington Event.



The acting doesn't look too good, tho...  It's got a SciFi original series vide to it.  But the circumstances around the event are a good mind exercise to explore.

Monday Bust

I don't know what it is about composing a post on a Sunday...

You know what the world needs?  A rechargeable hairdryer.

Holy Crap, there is one.  In Asia.  Yeah, I don't see how that works what with the heating element you'd need.  My guess is it doesn't heat the air, just moves it.  It is a rechargeable 'fan' with a nozzle.

Gun content:  Blow driers look like guns, sorta.

Personal Ammo Inventory

Before the market went crazy, I was actually doing quite well in the ammo department.  I keep finding spare boxes here and there.  I am in no danger of running out.

But the inability to replace ammo stocks reasonably has me more reticent about expending ammo at the range.  At least regular range visits.  I still have a reasonable pile of "not counted in the inventory feel free to blow through this" ammo.  I may want it to have more .38+P, but it does have .38spc.  I may want a few extra .40 for a training class here or there, but I can always switch to .45ACP. 

I suppose I am like many of you, waiting for the trend to reverse.  The scarcity of .22 is the most perplexing.  Why .22?  It's just... odd.  I do hope we see bricks of .22 at reasonable prices sooner rather than later.

Health Update

So, my shoulder thing was a neck thing.  It felt a bit better when the steroids and muscle relaxers kicked in.  Enough to get a good night's sleep.  I should probably give a test drive to a different kind of piller, just in case.

The steroids run their course tomorrow.  We'll see how things are Monday or Tuesday. 

Getting old and decrepit is annoying.

Not Content

Not content with going after the 2nd and 4th Amendments, the bad guys are now violating the 3rd. 

Jiminy Christmas!  The 3rd Amendment?!  The THIRD?!!! 

I want the cops to be the good guys again.  I hope they do become so, some day.

Single Stack

I am turned off by double stack pistols.  At least the magazines are much more reliable now than they were purported to be decades ago.  I hope the single stack trend continues with other companies in the ways of the Springfield XD Slim.  A S&W M&P single stack with a drop in trigger?  That might cause me to reconsider buying another firearm.

[This article triggered this thought process.] 

The double stacks are just too fat.  Too big a lump in the holster and it's like gripping a baguette at the range, firing it.  While I am glad there are 30 round pistol magazines out there, and scream bloody murder when bans are contemplated, 5 or 7 rounds is fine for me, personally, and tactically, I think.  And I don't understand people that talk about the 1911 having big fat grips and you need big hands to grip it.  It's perfect!  What do you want, 1903 Colt Pocket Hammerless sized grips on everything?

I know many of you are clucking your tongues and shaking your head.  "T-Bolt, didn't you read about that cop that switched to 9mm and big mags when the bad guy just wouldn't stop shooting back until he was about Bingo on ammo?"

Yes, I saw that.  I am not a cop.  I don't have to press an attack to catch a dangerous crook.  Cops do mag dumps on a perp when they see a gun in the process of apprehending said perp. 

"T-Bolt, did you read about those flash mobs attacking people?"

Yes, and if a victim had fired even one round of a .38 snubbie what would the crowd have done? 

"What about home invasions where run out of ammo, T-Bolt, shooting one bad guy and then have the misfortune to find he has a friend in the house behind him, now you have a mad wounded bad guy and an unwounded bad guy to deal with?"

Ah-ha!  NOW you have a point.  But is that a realistic scenario?  Has anyone ever heard of something like that happening outside of a movie?  Victim resists, LOUDLY, and bad guys with an open window behind them ignore their sense of self preservation and press the attack?

The only time that happens is when SWAT or Seal Team 6 has your number (or your house number on the warrant, oopsie, that's a 2 not a 3...  Sorry for killing you and your household pets, Mr. T-Bolt.)  And a pistol with a bajillion beans in the barrel aren't going to get me out of that mess.  And they would tell horrible lies about you on the 6 o'clock news during the standoff if you did fend off the first wave.

There is the old chestnut of  "No one ever says they wish they had less ammo in a firefight."  But that's wrong.  Yes, they do wish that.  Lugging around a full ammo box all your life for the gunfight you will probably never have?  Everyone has to decide and everyone makes the choice for themselves somewhere between single shot .22 Short derringer with no reloads and the backpack fed minigun Jesse Ventura carried in Predator.   I just chose 5 shot .38+P snubbie or a 1911 Commander as my personal solution to the problem.  I could do worse.

Fourth

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their justpowers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Three

Check out this Egyptian Revolutionary adhering to rule 3.

Nice to see the Four Rules become more and more universal.

store bust

I had planned to go to the gunstore, check if they had AR lowers.  But traffic was horrendous and this neck thing gives me drugs that make me loopy.  Takes a lotta gumption out of me, too.  At least they are working.  I can snap my fingers again.  And sleep.

That was my plan for this post.  "What do MD gunstores look like now."

When I took my Father out shooting there were lots of SOLD stickers on the stock there, but less than a few months ago.  So, madness still reigns in the Free State. 

Saw the Doc

It's not bone cancer or bursitis causing my lumbago and dropsies.  It's my neck!

You know MBtGE's back issues?  I'm trying to do that with my neck bones.  Also, I hold my head up too straight.  Stupid posture!

Posting this before the drugs kick in.  Hope I got a good night's rest.  I've been catching up on my missed sleep on my commute home.  I drive alone to work...

zed too

Tam is a zombie? 

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

zed

The zombie menace continues to spread.  Both in Houston Texas, which is kind of rare.  When Zed does pops up in Texas he rarely spreads too much.  Obvious reasons.

Except for Austin.