Three Foot Johnson

High 90's/low 100's for two weeks now, and no end in sight. Maybe the worst hot spell I can remember here. It's been hitting 90 inside by mid-afternoon every day. 20+ mph wind today too - all summer, I live in constant fear of a fire coming up the hill below my house. I've lived in this house for 24 years, but I'm six months away from my 70th year, I'm ready for the safety/security/comfort of a small 2 bedroom house in a little Mayberry town with a Super Walmart and a VA hospital not too far away. Hire the kid down the street to mow the lawn, walk to the coffee klatch every morning for coffee & a piece of pie with the other old farts, sleep late on the weekends, and watch The Weather Channel.

For CAS, I'm really liking these birdshead Vaquero .45 acp's. The Russians are a hoot too, albeit a bit clumsy to shoot - .44 Russian, of course.

Put me down for The Prepper, The Component Collector, The Cheapo, The Perfectionist, The Optimist, The Scientist, and The Messy Bench Maker. I've got a shooting pard who typically only loads for one match at a time, The Procrastinator... I've never understood why.

In my .32 H&R Single Sixes and Uberti .32-20's, I use the Lee TL314-90-SWC. I've been using the Accurate 31-105C in my .32-20 Marlin, but if I were to buy one mold for all of them, it would probably be the Accurate mold you're looking at.

Maybe there's still hope... On the S.A.S.S. and Cowboy Action Shooting Facebook page in a post about this topic, Starline Brass commented, "Check again tomorrow morning " https://www.facebook.com/groups/247150769193328/posts/1631714970736894?comment_id=1631716600736731 Hmmm...

Call it a 1911, a Sony, a Glock, a Datsun, whatever, it was a good deal. All gone now.

I've always wondered if "MUST BE REASONABLE" or "limited budget" has ever actually worked. If you think $80/1000 is a big price jump, CCI-35 .50 BMG primers are commonly $1.00 - $1.50 APIECE now.

Ho-boy, have I got a deal for you - PM inbound with details.

I did that here once, as mentioned above by Cypress Sun...

PSA "Daily Deal", 299 + 17 (?) shipping. https://palmettostatearmory.com/sds-1911-government-45-acp-5-7rd-pistol-parkerized-1911atgovt.html

Three pages? OK, here goes... a .45 acp cylinder is great to put your small primer brass to good use instead of tossing them.

I ordered a bottle of purple Loctite 222 from Amazon two years ago, and it came direct from Henkel in China, signature required...

Folks think of Montana as being rugged snow capped mountains and endless lush green pine forests, when in fact about 3/4 of it is dry barren prairie. The big "Horse Gulch" fire near me is holding at ~13,000 acres, 10% contained, no structures lost that I've heard, but an Air Tractor 802 "Fire Boss" was lost and its pilot killed last Wednesday on the second day of the fire when the plane crashed in the Missouri while refilling. The "Deadman" and "Anderson" fires in southeast Montana have merged into one large ~25,000 acre blaze as of this morning. There are four other smaller fires in the immediate vicinity (a few hundred yards to about 2 1/2 miles) totaling another ~7000 acres that could grow and merge with it in the coming hours or days.

They lost their "CE" certification, and Trail Boss, along with over 20 others, was discontinued effective June 1st, 2018. CE = Conformité Européenne, which I understand is sort of like UL certified in the US.

Daytime highs in the upper 90's and low 100's for the past week, and the long range forecast says that's going to continue for at least another two weeks. Zero percent chance of rain and 10-12 mph winds every day for the foreseeable future. I'm at the top end of a CRP field with prevailing winds coming right up the mountain to my house. If somebody a mile or two down below me lights off a fire, there really isn't much to do but throw whatever I can in a car/truck in five minutes, drive through the flame front, and call the insurance company with a live stream of my house going up. It will take the VFD probably, what, at least 15 minutes to respond even from just 3 1/2 miles away, and that's cutting it too close. It takes some extra time to get a 3000 gallon tender up that last mile and a half 6% grade. It snowed here three weeks ago, and now there are 63 active wild fires across the state, the largest being over 13,000 acres now, and only 4 3/4 miles away, but it's got to cross the Missouri river to get to me, so I think I'm good... for the moment.

The highest I've seen it sell for - $855 + $30 shipping + hazmat for two 9 oz cans.

18"ers.

What he said - whoever heard of a thread that stayed on topic for more than three replies?

I have four .45 acp Birdshead Vaqueros that shoot C45S just fine. They are .45 acp ONLY, not convertibles. ... ? I'm not reading something right, I guess. The thicker rim of the AR cartridge won't allow it to work in a single action .45 acp revolver, of course, unless the cylinder has been shaved to use moon clips, and you would have to remove the base pin & cylinder to reload the acp's.

I recently cut back to 10.4 grains Unique from the 12.0 grains I was using, simply as a powder conservation measure. 10.4, simply because that's what the RCBS Little Dandy rotor throws with a couple taps on the rotor to settle the powder and make a more uniform drop. I use a Claybusters Tournament wad, #WJI-20078 in either Remington STS or Winchester AA hulls, 7/8 oz shot, and any ol' 209 primer. This isn't rocket science, this is up close, point blank shotgunning. I'm sure dropping to 3/4 oz shot will be just fine, but I haven't tried it - now that I've seen the price of shot, I might give it a try. To adjust the height of the shot column and prevent the crimp from folding inward, I've always used a pinch of a foam packing peanut on top. Other folks use cards or vegetable wads, Cheerios, and other things. Whatever works.

A few years ago, I was in the local Harbor Freight and they had a little 3 1/2 cu ft cement mixer/mortar mixer on sale for about half price. I bought one to try out as a hull washer - it works great! I can't imagine one of these cheapo light duty mixers ever working for mixing cement.

I read a post years ago somewhere about a factory worker installing a barrel backwards to see if the shallow rifling had any effect when it was spiraling the opposite direction the rocket jets were spinning the projectile... I thought about that a few seconds, and posted back if you had a piece of threaded rod, then you'd need a left hand threaded nut if you turned it around the other way. He was still adamant that turning the barrel around reversed the rifling.

I cast my .303 and 7.65 Argentine bullets with a Lyman #314299 mold. It's a gas check design weighing around 200 grains, depending on the alloy.

I've seen them sell for $300 each, but $150 or thereabouts is more realistic.

I bought one at a local shop several years ago, along with six original rounds. The pistol appears to be unfired. The barrel actually is rifled, to get around that short barreled shotgun thing, but it's so shallow you might miss it with a casual glance down the bore.