Garrison Joe, SASS #60708

Are two pieces of string separated by a wall one string or two? Sure it's two strings. Write it into the stage if you want to override standard stage conventions and NOT require immediate re-holstering of revolver after the first five shots for anyone but GF style. Or make it real simple and REQUIRE restaging revolvers back on the table! Collect them after the stage is done. Good luck, GJ

A small but fairly aggressive grit carborundum stone would be my first choice - a sliver that can be hand-worked back and forth with careful strokes. Could even be roughed in with a small diamond coated bit in an angle-head die grinder, then finished to square corners with the stone. Pulling the barrel would make it so much easier, however. Then you just run an end-mill down the slot. EDM machining would be the high-end, very accurate approach. If you had a buddy in high-tech metal shop. Good luck, GJ

Leather stays loose rolled in my plastic "packer" boxes with the rest of the gear needed for Cowboy or Wild Bunch. Labeled Box for each so I don't take the right box to the wrong match. All the stuff I need makes it to a match - nothing left hanging on the wall 30 or 300 miles away from the match. But then again, perhaps your rememberer is sharper than mine. Good luck, GJ

To reinforce what DS stated, because you are getting into a gray area with your stage where the rules could get argued either way, your stae description had better make it clear which way you are going to allow shooters to run the guns. It sounds like your design intent here is to split the pistols with shotgun following each of 5 revolver shots. A GF can accomplish that either by double duelist (and either by drawing one gun at a time, or drawing two and shooting only one, staging, and picking up one or both but only firing the second pistol duelist). So, state the SEQUENCE of guns clearly. In this case, yes, you would have two separate revolver strings and two separate shotgun strings. Meaning the first pistol should be returned to leather for non GF, UNLESS your stage instructions give the shooter permission to stage the revolver(s) between strings. If you don't care if a shooter mixes the sequence of guns and only want a revolver to start and rifle not last, state it that way. And you will get folks who shoot all 10 revolver shots first. And some shooting all 10 rifle shots first. More of a shooter's choice stage. All will depend upon how you write the stage to make it clear. Good luck, GJ

Ummm, probably not cores. Cores usually don't get lubed and knurled, as far as I understand bullet swaging processes. Perhaps some experiment where standard .38 bullets were run through a sizer die for some reason? In any case, melt 'em. Good luck, GJ

PPU ammo is very nice quality. And no longer made under communist management. And makes reasonable empty brass to reload. It is, however, not made in USA. Good luck, GJ

Pretty long to be pistol slugs. Do those weigh 158 grains, or more? Sounds like feedstock for the melting pot. They will be soft lead, most likely. Good luck, GJ

No, a full case of even FFFg black will NOT blow up a SAA. Will be well under the SAAMI pressure standards for .44 WCF cartridge, which are 13,000 Copper Units of Pressure (11,000 PSI). Original .44-40 loads by Winchester were loaded with 40 grains of FFg powder, according to rounds that have been broken down for inspection, and that amount of powder will not fit in modern cases. Good luck, GJ

SOMEONE needs to check the timing on the gun, and the condition of the cartridge support tab on the bolt face! Second, the slot in the chamber face into which the extractor extends when bolt is in battery. The common "breakage" comes from the tip of the extractor slamming into either the case rim or an obstruction. It's hard to wear out a .45 Colt extractor in just a few months. But, yeah, for us to tell you more, we need to know much more - about the gun, about any damage to the broken extractors, what vendor of extractor he's using, how fast and smooth he runs the gun! Good luck, GJ

Only have had 1 buy where I had to spend a couple of months running the feller to ground to convince him to send the gun to me. He was a pard on the way out of the game, and I guess it didn't matter much to him what his reputation would be. Probably twenty other transactions with you pards, and every one has been from good to wonderful. Thanks to you all, and keep up the good work. It's the Cowboy Way. WE ARE NOT POST_TRUTH AGE HERE! GJ

Don't get a cap stuck in the works! Best wishes for quick and easy recovery, Dawg. Good luck, GJ

He's relocated recently to the PNW, if I recall. good luck, GJ

Accurate Molds makes several designs that would work well in C45S. In fact, they make a mold that I designed and use. http://www.accuratemolds.com/catalog.php See page 11. 45-150S, 45-160S are good candidates. My design is the 45-175B - accurate in my revolvers. Tom at Accurate will cut the mold to drop .454" or even slightly larger if you want. Since he cuts every mold on order. PMing you my favorite load with 175 grain slug. Several dies can be mixed and matched to load C45Sp. It is easiest with a full 45 Auto Rim die set - the roll crimp die will be included with that set standard. But this sizes the case down smaller than a .45 Colt die does, The "trick" way to size is use a .45 Colt, and size only far enough down from the mouth to give you tension as you seat the slug. Sizing farther than where the base of the slug sits is just overworking the brass. Good luck GJ

Certainly no inside reaming is needed to shoot in revolvers. And I can't see where it would be needed in rifle either, as the .45 Colt chamber dimensions are VERY large. Chop saw and a jig to get close - then a case trimmer to get right on (0.898"). And a mouth deburring tool to take of the burrs! MUCH less recoil loading a 160 to 175 grain bullet, which is now fairly easy to find! I've used both of those powders. Crimp tightly. Good luck, GJ

Griff - yeah, that is a REAL fat nosed slug. And poly coating it just makes it a couple thousandths fatter. There is a reamer that will long-taper the leade in 1911 barrels to help you if you really want to shoot that slug. But otherwise, get a smaller nose on the slug. Accurate Molds has a couple of truncated cone mold designs that are really nice in the .45 auto. I shoot the 45-200E a lot. And when I want a 230 grain slug, the 45-230E, good luck, GJ

Same discussion (just about) from a week ago: http://www.sassnet.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=258793&hl=laser Have Drifter (Old West Laser Graphics) or some other laser expert cut you some standard checkering on the forearm with their laser setup. Much faster and almost always quite a bit cheaper than true cut checkering. But just as effective at keeping your hand from slipping. If his prices are about the same as last work I got done, expect about $75. http://oldwestlasergraphic.com/ http://oldwestlasergraphic.com/Checkering.html Also: http://www.chuckaroos.com/ Taz - http://www.shootingbums.org/klassiclaserworks/. He'll be at Winter Range! Good luck, GJ

http://www.gunstockduplicating.com/duplication.html In Pennsylvania, USA

That Cimarron (Colt 1878) gun is the same as the TTN hammered double. Stoutest and actually the fastest hammer double to shoot for most cowboys. Go for it. You will be in good company. Good luck, GJ

There's also the amount of storage space and infrastructure support that letting users upload photos and videos requires - such as, a photo upload that is never deleted or cleaned up after a few months would stay on SASS's disk storage forever. And there's the legal ramifications if folks were to upload illegal content to be shared with other people. Porn, copyrighted materials, hate materials, etc. Takes a TON of policing of what folks try to upload onto sharing services. In general, it's much more appropriate to have shared media on a professional web service. But as Google Photos and Amazon have proved - it is VERY HARD to make an easy-to-use photo/video sharing site. Especially one that is free to the users. And one that does not overwhelm the users with advertising (PhotoBucket) Good luck, GJ

Alloying your own tin/lead is simple. But if you try to find metallic antimony to add to your alloys, it is tough to find and even harder to get it to melt into lead alloys because it is so much higher melting point. The Antimony Man (now passed on I believe) in Sierra Vista Az used to have a special flux and procedure and metallic lump (pure) antimony available. Now, it's just better to get your antimony already alloyed. Linotype is a common antimony source, wheel weights of course have 2-3%, And the hardball 6% antimony is the common commercial bullet casting alloy. Which can be diluted 2 or 3 times with soft lead for what works best for Cowboy shooting. Good luck, GJ

It's not the hardness of the finished bullet, as much as the difficulty of getting proper mold fillout when you have 1% zinc (which is what dissolves in most bullet alloys) in the melt. They just get hard to cast. They have to be cast at about 75 - 150 degrees F above normal. This often means you start frosting the bullet surface when you get the alloy hot enough to cast well-filled bullets. Bottom line, zinc in the melt is a BIG headache. Which is kinda making me very hesitant to cast from melted range scrap any longer.... Good luck, GJ

GP has a pretty large learning curve. If you want to be successful at using it, it probably takes about 4 hard hours of sifting thru the limited documentation and forum help available, and trying out on some of your photos. But, I was able to get fairly good at using it in that 4 hours of testing and trying, even without a teenager looking over my shoulder pointing at the next thing to click. But, it too right now does not seem to let you build a link that shows a picture directly in the SASS Wire page. The link it builds seems to be prohibited for display here. But I can put in a link by just pasting in the URL of a shared Google Photo, and adding "?.jpg" to the url. This is directly pasted into the text of this message, not made part of an IMG tag (using the little picture icon tool from the toolbar) nor was it made an html fragement by using the angle-bracket tool from the toolbar. Just pasted in in the text editing window. A link to a picture of a serrated revolver sight: https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipNUs2RxZv7w1M-6QYdawkw2AoF9KgkTEKL09tXq?.jpg Of course, this is not where I WANT to be with making my posts directly show images, so I guess I'm still looking too. OK, this is a photo shared from SmugMug. Their image url pasted into the image icon URL field and WORKED first try! Upside - very easy to drag and drop a photo into your storage area. Seem very professionally organized (not like imgur). Downside - an account is $40 or more a year (more gets more storage). May keep looking. Tried deffe.com - they won't turn on my account by sending me an activation message. Good luck, GJ

Brinell testing - I use graphite drawing pencils. From art supply shop, get Pacific Arc or Pro Art pencil set Here's some conversions between useful graphite hardness (the mark on the pencil) to Brinell hardness that works real well: 6B => 5 Brinell (soft lead) 2B => 11 Brinell (just about perfect for SASS) HB => 15 Brinell (hard cast, what Lyman #2 or hard-ball commercial alloy is close to) H => 20 Brinell (linotype) How to use pencils? Find a flat spot on your alloy. Flat nose or base of bullet works best. Hold pencil so the tip can be pushed into the surface of the lead at about a 45 degree angle from vertical. If pencil skates off without leaving a gouge on the lead, then go to a harder pencil until you can get a gouge mark. That will be the hardness of the lead (on that pencil). A little bit of a flat on the tip of the pencil lead will gouge more accurately than the tip right out of the sharpener. Good luck, GJ

Have had real good luck with free (up to lots of photos) Google Photos. Good luck, GJ

Good luck with your casting efforts! It's both easier than most folks think, and harder than it looks. Since you have already been referred to the best learning materials (Fryxell's work and the Lyman Cast bullet Handbook) above, I'll add some quick-start tips. Good, clean alloy of what ever hardness you choose is VERY important. So, never melt down range lead or wheel weights or any metal that is not already real clean and of known content in your casting pot. Get an old cast iron pot and melt "dirty" lead in that, flux and stir until NOTHING will come out of the metal, and cast small ingots of that to add to your casting pot. I can do all my casting now with three different stocks of lead ingots. Pure lead, slightly hard lead (about Brinell 9-10) and hard lead at about 16 Brinell hardness). And some tin to add when needed (old style solder or pewter). The most common commercial alloys you can buy from the various vendors and their hardnesses are: * soft (pure) lead - Brinell 5 * hardball alloy 6% antimony and 2% tin - Brinell 16 * Lyman #2 5% antimony and 5% tin - Brinell 15 So, I can make all three types of ingots I want with just the first and second of these. Pure lead - easy, In old melting pot, toss in the pure lead. Maybe add 0.5% by weight of tin to make the lead fill molds better. Comes out about BNH 6 Use this for casting round balls for percussion revolvers Slightly-hard - about 10 Brinell - 2 pounds of soft lead to 1 pound of hardball Good for almost all SASS shooting. Even use it for 1911 pistol bullets. Hard - 16 Brinell - straight 6/2 alloy cast into small ingots. Good for long range smokeless loads for rifles, especially Wild Bunch BAMM bolt action rifles. And for black powder cartridge loads, a pound of my slightly-hard ingot to a pound of pure lead ingot. Gives about 8 Brinell. An old muffin tin makes a good ingot mold for small 1 1/2 pound ingots that go into any casting pot. Avoid calcium alloys (from maintenance free batteries in cars, trucks, golf carts) - it makes any metal that contains it hard to cast and clogs up pots and is dangerous to your health. Avoid zinc alloys (from the new zinc wheel weights) and even some use of zinc bullets in target loads. Lots of scrap thought to be lead is found later to be zinc. It makes any alloy hard to cast, increases bullet hardness a lot, and makes bullets more brittle and lighter weight than normal. Clean molds really well with hot soapy water and a scrub brush immediately before first use. Pre-warm molds with an old hot plate. Never use steel brushes, knives, picks, etc to clean up lead on molds. Brass brushes are even too rough. Keep all of the mold cavities clean of oil and other material while casting. The sprue cutter plate and the top of the mold will sometimes collect lead alloy, especially if you are not waiting a few seconds to cut off the casting sprue (puddle). That can be cleaned with a rag just moistened with 2-cycle engine (for mixing in gas) oil. I use the synthetic version of 2-cycle oil with great results. It keeps the sprue plate and mold top lubricated even when they are hot, so lead won't stick nearly as easily. AND, NEVER let any damp, moist or wet ingots, tools, or fluxing material get near the molten lead. Water explodes into steam at the temmperatures of molten lead, and throws molten lead around wildly. Wear gloves - and a face shield if you like seeing things. Wear leather boots or work shoes - lead spilled down onto tennis shoes or flip flops becomes a life-long problem! Good luck, GJ