I am cleaning out the reloading bench today part 2

I started yesterday and got interrupted too many times to get anything done. I did manage to put a pretty good dent in it, though.

There's a lot of just plain stuff I have collected over the years and I think I will give a partial inventory, cram it into a box and try and sell it as a package. It ought to be fun as it will be listed as somewhat of a mystery box. Actually some of it is pretty good stuff. Own an M1 carbine? There's 2 pretty good magazines in the box.

Today I will likely go through the various powders that I have collected over the years that I did not have good luck with but other people do. I have not figured out what to do with them as I won't sell an opened powder container for liability reasons.

Years ago I probably would have made a huge pipe bomb or something and cranked it off in the woods somewhere. These days I suppose it is not an option because getting caught doing this would probably mean a court appearance or three on terrorism charges or some damned thing. I might dump it all onto an old gallon jar and use it to fertilize the spring flowers.

It's kind of funny where I have the powders stored now. They are  on a shelf that is labeled 'Sacrifices to the gods of accuracy'. 

As a reloader my tinkering days are somewhat at an end. I have a couple of pet loads and they will serve me shooting matches until the end of my days.

Another reason I am doing this is because I am getting old and do not want to leave this mess behind me for my relatives to clean up. There is a lot of stuff there from various experiments and alterations. Not everything on the bench is what it looks like.

For example there is a box of .38/200 for a Webley revolver that the cases are head stamped 38 S&W. The .38/200 used the S&W case but is loaded a lot hotter than the S&W. 

All this is fine and dandy until the widow sells the cartridges at a garage sale and the idiot that buys them takes one look at the headstamp and digs out Grandpa's old Iver Johnson top break, cranks one off and the revolver shatters into smithereens.

Of course in this day and age it is a no brainer that that will end up in court and the $3 you got for the ammo at the garage sale in the first place doesn't look very good anymore.

It doesn't matter if you sold the ammo with fair warning and that it is for components only and the person is responsible to disassemble the ammo and reload it himself. It doesn't matter if you warn him it is ONLY for a Webley MkIV and not for an antique top break revolver.

Some idiot won't pay attention and will ignore repeated warnings and blows his grandpa's revolver up. He will stammer and stutter "But it says on the cartridge it's a .38 S&W!" 

A jury will award him a fat settlement because, dammit, it said on the cartridge it's .38 S&W.

Actually what the jury SHOULD do is award the defendant their legal costs and all twelve should point at the idiot sitting there and shout, "Ha!Ha!"

Anyway, the best way to protect your loved ones is simply get rid of this stuff. That's a huge part of what I want to get done today.




I do have a rifle that needs sighting in and that's always good for a laugh. There is a neat trick I use to guarantee that the first shot is at least on the paper. You take four full sized pieces of newspaper and create a four or five foot square at fifty yards and put the target in the center of it. The first shot will invariably land in the black.

If you do not do this your first shot will miss the target altogether and you're screwed. 

Murphy knew what he was talking about.

I once did this when I tested an M1 that supposedly had a bad barrel. I was glad I did. The rifle shot a group of over three feet!

Of course I promptly re-barreled it and it shot fine but that's another story.

Well, off to spin the wheels of industry.







To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY