Three Foot Johnson

I survived the ablation procedure Monday, spent the night at my sister's house, and drove home yesterday. Hard to tell yet, but I think I feel a little better - the cardiologist says the "blanking period" can take up to 2-3 months before everything is healed and my heart "resets". My hearth rhythm has been a little flatter yesterday and today, with high & low spikes not as severe as they have been (52-112 BPM today). Blood pressure has been on the low side (105-110/65ish) but slowly coming back up, and O2 saturation has been a little low (88-90ish). The cardiologist says it's common to have to top ablation off with another electric cardioversion to finish the process, and that it's much more effective after ablation than as a stand alone treatment. I have a follow up evaluation with her in a month and we'll see what she says.

The inspiration for my present alias is a gold miner from Vermont named Henry Davis who struck it rich in the Cariboo mountains near Barkerville, British Columbia in the 1860's. He went there after going bust in California, but all the good spots along Willow Creek had already been claimed. He noticed one seemed to be more than the 100' prescribed by law, so he measured it that night and found it was 112'. Davis filed claim on the twelve foot overage, and took a small fortune off it. Naturally, he earned the moniker "Twelve Foot Davis". I sometimes shoot a pair of 18" Uberti .45 Buntlines, which is three feet of barrel, and also occasionally a 36" shotgun. Since my name is Johnson, I thought Three Foot Johnson was fitting. Some of the Wire's grade school fart joke mentalities vehemently disagree. Oh well.

I found a rather nice 1958 model locally in '05 for $300, EXCEPT somebody had drilled five crude holes in the barrel for a scope mount - not all the way through, but they looked like hell. In '06, I got a very nice barrel off eBay for $78 and rebarreled it.

Gunfighter rigs aren't mandatory either, a crossdraw setup is perfectly fine. As long as it meets the cowbell factor and the entire gun is below the top of the belt, you're GTG.

I bought a nice Model 12 shotgun from a law enforcement clearing house auction in Austin TX in 2019 that had "Bayside Police" electric penciled on the receiver. Looking online, the city of Bayside had a population of 400 in 1990 and has been steadily declining to 273 today. It was 315 in 2019 - maybe it became economically unfeasible to have a police department and it was dissolved. My little hometown of ~2100 has 5 officers, and 1 office clerk. We used to have a part-time judge who's full-time job was at a lead smelter about 350 yards away. No idea who the judge is now.

The rules say the shotgun must have a barrel length of at least 18", and pistol grip configurations aren't allowed.

I held a state job from 2012 - 2017, and spent a lot of time working out of town. Usually my motel stays were planned as part of multi-day jobs, but sometimes on day trips because I couldn't get back to the office before quitting time... ... weird way to operate, but if it looked like I would be a few minutes after 5:00 pm getting back, they absolutely wouldn't authorize overtime, but instead had me get a room, paid the meal allowance, and a day's per diem. So a couple hundred dollars instead of 10-15 minutes overtime. Anyway, the state rate at Comfort Inn was $120ish when I retired in 2017. Eight years ago, so it's probably gone up.

My second oldest granddaughter (18) graduated Saturday from the Montana Youth Challenge Academy in Dillon - think voluntary military school, light. She's a different person than she was 22 weeks ago, with a new sense of direction, self-worth, confidence, and self-respect. She's lived in numerous hovels on the Flathead Indian reservation growing up, comes from a broken home, was very withdrawn, a lot of emotional abuse from her parents, and she's still got some work ahead of her to finish high school or equivalency, but I think she's gonna be OK. Brigadier General Trenton Gibson, the Adjutant General of the National Guard, addressed the graduates, as did the past adjutant, Major General John Hronek, four Montana state legislative Representatives, proxy speeches from Senators Daines and Sheehy, and a few other dignitaries. https://www.mycacademy.org/ Salute to Cadet Reum from a proud grandpa.

I used to work in a noisy industrial plant, and we had the welders fab a pipe bumper air reservoir for one of the pipefitter trucks because we found a huge locomotive air horn in the scrap pile one day. We mounted it on the fender, rigged up a ball valve & T handle through the dash, aired up the tank, and drove around the plant looking for victims. There was plenty of background noise to prevent our mark from hearing the truck roll up on them, and they were wearing earplugs or muffs too, then about ten feet away, we'd pull the T handle. Good times.

To me, those boots look too plain for B-Western, but if your club has an "inspect each other" policy for costume categories and no one complains, so be it. Years ago there was a B-Western shooter here who claimed the small makers stamp his otherwise plain holsters & belt constituted "tooling", and so met the requirements for the category. The belt has a basket weave pattern on the back framing my alias. The 18" holsters have some light stamping, conchos, and slit braid leather pulls. Staged pic at my house - just me, so no need for eyes & ears.

One of them came with the gun, of course, and the other three I bought from eBay auctions years ago. The two on the left are pitted from being in a storage unit or something for several years - I've long forgotten the story the seller told me, but they cleaned up nicely and function fine. A hundred to a hundred fifty each for the mags is common today. I can't really tell what the price sticker says, but it looks like 263.95. The first number has to be a 2 or 3, and it doesn't look like the other #3, so...

My dad bought this re-issue in '78 - I inherited it in '88 when he passed on, and still have it.

I've used a lot of them, never a problem, but my springs are stock or toward the heavier end if lighter aftermarket replacements were installed.

Maybe that's the one I'm thinking of.

Pretty sure Deuce Stevens did a review of the CD 500 and had a favorable opinion of it.

I recently found not one, but two new-old-stock NOE 363 molds for the .38 S&W, made a lowball offer, and the seller accepted. One is a 4 cavity 200 grain RN for the British 38-200 service load, and the other is a 5 cavity 150 grain RN, both NIB.

I used to buy out the Sportsman's Warehouse supply when I went in - regular price $9.99, but with one of their $10 off $50, or $30 off $150 purchase discount coupons + military discount, it came out to $6.99/pound. At one time, I probably had over 150 pounds of the stuff, but have since sold off most of it - either it's their liability now, or they made a good profit off it. If my house ever burns down, I won't have to fight an insurance company over why I had several cases of black powder substitute in my basement, and God forbid somebody got hurt or killed because of it. The loading instructions say to use no fillers, no lube, and no compression. Alliant published load data for a small number of cartridges, but with variations in bullet design, crimp groove location, etc., I wouldn't consider it absolute. Just use 100% load density for whatever bullet you're loading - no compression and no empty space. ______________________________________________________ Alliant Powder Black MZ Cartridge Data BY WEIGHT The charges are by weight and are the charges, not to be reduced or increased. 38 Special (Federal brass, Fed 100 primer) 125 gr RNFP lead 16 grs @ 826 fps 158 gr RNFP lead 15 grs @ 773 fps 357 Rem Mag (Federal brass, Fed 100 primer) 125 gr RNFP lead 19.5 grs @ 913 fps 158 gr RNFP lead 19 grs @ 905 fps 44 SW Special (Federal brass, Fed 100 primer) 200 gr RNFP lead 25 grs @ 920 fps 240 gr RNFP lead 22 grs @ 869 fps 44 Rem Mag (Federal brass, Fed 150 primer) 200 gr RNFP lead 27.5 grs @ 1043 fps 240 gr RNFP lead 27 grs @ 995 fps 45 Colt (Federal brass, Fed 150 primer) 250 gr RNFP lead 26.5 grs @ 878 fps 300 gr RNFP lead 26 grs @ 824 fps 45/70 (Federal brass, Fed 210 primer) 350 gr RNFP lead 53 grs @ 1503 fps 405 gr RNFP lead 49 grs @ 1364 fps -------------------------------------- I glued a handle onto a hardwood dowel to break up the clumps.

My blood lead level is already high enough.

Some years back, Harbor Freight had a small cheapo Chinese cement mixer on sale for $99.99, so I bought one for the express purpose of washing shotshells. I got it together and I can't believe this lightweight piece of crap would ever mix more than a couple drums of concrete before it broke or the motor burned up, but it works great for washing shotshell hulls.

Scoop out 1 gn? I'm having trouble visualizing this... drop the charge in the hull, then reach in with a tiny little Barbie spoon and take some out??

I have several Load-Alls. The oldest one has an aluminum base and the rest have red plastic bases. The black base must be the current iteration. One of them has the 6pt crimp in front and the 8pt in back, and some of them have the crimp starter point to the front while others have the valley to the front. I could have swore I've used a 3/4 oz shot bushing too, but I just looked and none of them have a 3/4"er in the bushing set. Oh, and pass on the "automatic primer feeder" - unless they've redesigned it, it's slow, clumsy, and problematic.

First, the crimp starter on a Load-All isn't self aligning. After determining which one is six point and which one is eight point, you have to look up inside the tube and see how the star is oriented - for some inexplicable reason, they're not all positioned the same. If you don't index the shell properly in the correct crimp starter, your crimps are going to come out goofy like that. After I get that figured out, I mark the base with a Sharpie to remind me how to orient the shell.

You have to look at your own financial situation and do the math, but if a person has a decent investment portfolio making 8-10%, why on God's Green Earth would you use your own money instead of borrowing somebody else's at 2-4%?

It was cheap anyway.