A bit blustery, foggy, and snowy at the Beta Site. Whatever I build there will have to be built with this sort of environ in mind.
As someone pointed out to me, I need to put a yardstick of some kind out there to give me metrics about about how deep the snow is.
I went shooting around New Years Day with my boss and some folks from work. Wound up shooting some tannerite and had a good time. I asked the boss what he paid for the tannerite and I told him I could probably get him a better deal. And….today became Take Your Explosives To Work day:
In the past I’ve had people comment that they can’t believe I work in an office where I can talk about Trump, or drop a .50 BMG on the conference table. I may have hit a new level in workplace permsisiveness by bringing 20# of tannerite into work.
Oh, and my immediate supervisor and I installed night sights on his Glock 19 at his desk this morning.
Montana.
Hamilton gun show this weekend. I needed to move a bunch of the guns I got out of the estate sale and managed to move a few. And, unfortunately, I brought one home. Specifically a CZ452. Its a lovely open-sighted carbine that just has some nice charm to it. And the price was reasonable – $300. So, it came home with me to share a space in the gun closet with my other CZ .22. Wonderful guns.
I also got my Marlin .45-70 back from my buddy who did some work on it for me. The previous owner removed the original sight and replaced it with a Remington 700 rear sight. Well, that ain’t what the Zero wanted. My buddy removed the sight, cleaned up the holes that had been drilled and tapped, and put a sight blank in there:
And, since I was at the gun show it seemed logical to go hunting for a receiver sight. And….
The next and final bit of modification is to remove that outrageous cross-bolt safety. Fortunately, I have some experience with Marlin surgery. The safety delete will be here next week and that’ll put the finishing touches on this grizzly grabber. Although, come to think of it, I should pick up a sling tomorrow.
Other than that wonderful CZ452, I didnt see anything at the gun show worth spending money on. Which is good.
Right after I acquired the Marlin 45 Camp Carbine last week I put in an order with Midway. I ordered three extra 21# recoil springs and four stock buffers. It occurred to me today, as I was opening the package, that it seems I have already made up my mind about keeping this gun since ordering this many extras, and the expense involved, would suggest that ‘flipping it’ was never really part of the plan. So be it.
I’ll strip out the existing recoil spring and buffer, both of unknown age and condition, and replace them with the new. They may be just fine, but I don’t know that. They could have ten rounds in their history or they could have ten thousand. I just don’t know. So….replacements it is.
I also picked up a pic rail for it. Impulse purchase. But I bet a little red dot pistol sight like a Holosun of some flavor would be really handy on this thing.
One thing I hate about logistics is having to carry around spare parts for the life of my ownership of a gun. For example, I have a large .50 cal. ammo can with “P35” written on it in big letters. In it are spare parts, exploded diagrams, spare magazines, extra grips, extra holsters, etc, etc. And I have to keep that around for as long as I own that gun. (Yeah, technically I dont have to do anything…but if I’m holding onto a gun for the long-term it gets a support package like that.)
The Marlin was discontinued in 1999 and it’s propensity for eating stocks is a very well known issue. The treatment (because it isnt a fix) is to replace the buffer once in a while. Numbers I see call for replacing the buffer around 5,000 rounds. I don’t think I’ve shot 5,000 rounds of .45 ACP over my life. If that replacement schedule is to be believed, I’ve got enough buffers to last for 20,000 rounds and I’d surprised if I ever fire enough ammo through it to even make it to the first buffer swap.
But…maybe someday something will come across my path that I really want and the Marlin may come as trade goods. Or maybe I’ll keep it for the rest of my life. In either case, having the spares just makes the gun that much more attractive.
For those that have a Marlin carbine and haven’t laid in extras….I sourced mine from Midway and they were manufactured by Power Custom:
Wound up not getting up to the Beta Site Sunday either. Stepped out my door, all ready to go, and…flat tire. And since I wasnt going anywhere without a spare, I had to dismount the dead tire, put on the spare, and then take the offending tire off to repair.
Well, turns out it was a fatal flat and the tire could not be repaired…had to be replaced. And a buncha money later we were back to where we started.
But, Im slightly superstitious and chalked this up to the universe trying to tell me “Not this weekend, kiddo”.
And, of course, Sunday dumped 4-6″ of snow up there, so next trip, in two weeks, will involve the chained up side-by-side. We’ll see how that goes.
The game cameras I put in are doing their job. THis guy decided to visit the Beta Site around eight this morning:
This is the second visitor that the game camera has caught. First one was a squirrel yesterday. Im not posting that, ’cause its pretty boring. This guy, though…a surprise. The area is also home to some rather larger denizens as well:
If they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone. But if they wanna challenge me in a game of Food Chain Promotion/Demotion…..well…may the best mammal win.
And being a mildly intelligent animal, I know when to take risks and when not to. Today was a day not to. Tried to head up to the Beta Site but the snowmelt in the shaded draws had turned some twisty turns of road in to sheet ice. How bad? When I came to a stop I started sliding down hill…backwards. Fate smiled and I didnt go off the side of the road but I was in a not-great situation. Pulled a shovel from the back of the truck and spent an hour dumping dirt and gravel all along the road….not to get me to where I was going, but to allow me to leave in one piece. Managed to pull it off and headed straight to the tire store for a set of chains. Will also update the gear in the back to include a spud bar for breaking ice and least one bag of sand and salt.
So, todays trip up there was a bust. But I fully intend to be there tomorrow if the weather holds up.
A lot of people would say the Scout rifle concept, today, is pretty useless. And that even when Copper dreamed it up it was of extraordinary limited utility. Perhaps, but I’ll go you one better. Theres another gun out there:
Behold, the gun no one needed but, once discontinued, everyone wanted:
Yup..its a Marlin Camp Carbine in .45 ACP. IYKYK. Right now, several of you are getting ready to tell me about the self-destructing buffers that led to stocks cracking like river ice in the spring. Way ahead of you guys. I also ordered a couple extra 21# recoil springs and several extra poly buffers.
I was minding my own business and stopped in at the gun shop on my lunch hour. This thing caught my eye because, for reasons no one seems to be able to articulate, people hold onto these things with both hands and they seldom seem to turn up on the used market. In fact, I just looked on Gunbroker and found 21 Marlin Camp Carbines and all are 9mm.
I purchased this one and it jammed when I tried to feed a round of FMJ ball into the chamber. No biggie, I know exactly what the story is. Previous owner must have disassembled it and failed to reassemble it properly. Its a ‘known bug’ that you can reassemble this thing in such a manner that the feed ramp is in the wrong position. So, I disassembled, consulted YouTube, reassembled, and things worked fine.
Im not a huge .45 ACP fan. I prefer a higher capacity magazine and I’ll take 17 rounds in a gun that fits my hand just fine versus half that many in a 1911. And while there are double stack mags out there for .45 ACP, most of them result in pistol grip sizes that are rather unwieldy for me. I will say, though, that the S&W M&P .45 do an excellent job of keeping the grip size small while accommodating a double-stack mag.
I own a lot of guns but I have exactly one .45 AARP pistol….a Springfield 1911 I bought many, many years ago. I seldom carry it because anything worth shooting is worth shooting more than once, and a 17-rd 9mm makes me feel safer than a 7-shot 1911. However, it’s a fun gun at the range and sometimes I carry it in the woods. So I figured as long as I’m going to have a 1911 laying around I may as well have a matching carbine. So…I picked up this particular one.
Now, I should mention, I have a Ruger LC Carbine in .45 ACP and it’s not a great gun. It recoils heavily, is ergonomically awkward, and just looks stupid. It’s only claim to fame is the use of double-stack Glock .45 magazines, and the threaded barrel.
The Marlin, on the other hand, has a little bit of class, style, warmth, and charm. It’s a nice little throwback to the 1990’s. It’s a gun that doesn’t really, to me, seems to have a defined role in…anything. But somehow it has a charm to it that just makes it desirable. And we Americans have always enjoyed having a rifle/carbine combo that shared ammo. Having it share magazines as well just sweetens the deal.
Anyway, I picked this up today. Not sure if I’ll keep it in the long-term or not, but it’ll be fun to take to the range and shoot…especially beside the Ruger LC carbine. And, technically, Ruger could reintroduce these since they own Marlin. However, Ruger would be cannibalizing the sales of it’s own carbines, so its pretty solid that this will not happen.
holidayAs I mentioned last year, in addition to Paratus I have created a second holiday for myself – Personal Safety Day (aka “Threatmas”).
Personal Safety Day is my holiday where the day is dedicated to inspecting, maintaining, and updating everything that pertains to my safety and security. These are things that include but are not limited to – checking smoke detector batteries, weapon lights, flashlights, spare tires, door locks, security cameras, house guns, EDC items, the Bag O’ Tricks ™, and the like.
This year, Threatmas includes the factoring in of the Beta Site. I’ll be setting up my list of things to sock away up there on my next trip. At the moment, the Beta Site is just a chunk of wooded dirt, but until I get four walls, a roof, and a flush toilet up there I can still drop a Monovault full of Just In Case up there.
Personal Safety Day is no substitute for regular inspections/maintenance of that which keeps you safe and secure. PSD is, instead, the day dedicated to making sure it gets done. During the year, youre supposed to be doing these things and you blow it off with “When I have the time…”, or “This weekend, for sure…”, or some other excuse…….well, PSD is that day where you have no excuses because PSD is specifically time set aside for those exact things. You said youo’d do it when you had time? Well, PSD is that day where you have the time.
I find having a checklist is imperative for maximizing the results of PSD. You’ve set aside a day for checking out your systems, make the most of it and make a checklist. You’ve got 364 days to add to and modify that list….take advantage of that. And don’t forget, money is one of your most important pieces of safety equipment….count the gold, silver, cash, and other tangibles. Know what you have, exactly, so that you know where you stand when something bad happens.
Now, with that said, it’s back to crossing things off my list…………..
Was up at CostCo picking up some more lithium AA-batts at lunch. The price tag for the batteries had the dreaded asterisk (“*”) after it’s price. What does that mean, you ask?
SO, what this means, is that once the supply of Energizer lithium AA-batts at this CostCo is gone…theyre probably gone for a while. So if youre local, and you want lithium AA-batts (which you should use in all yhour critical devices), you need to hustle thee down to CostCo and snag the last few 18-packs that are there.
Today is the birthday of the author of the classic “Atlas Shrugged” – Ayn Rand. (Not her real name, btw.)
She’s one of those figures that has no middle ground. Either you like her or you loathe her. I’m more of the former than the latter. “Atlas Shrugged” changed a lot of the way I think about things…especially money. “Francisco’s Money Speech” is one of my favorite passages in the book. It is shortened but well played in this clip:
This abbreviated version of the speech plays nicely but doesn’t deliver the full ideas. That can be found here.
Especially apropos of late:
“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, ‘Account overdrawn.’
Wanting to make sure I was reading things the way she intended, I also read almost everything else she’d ever written..The Virtue of Selfishness, Anthem, We The Living, etc, etc. I even read her collected letters. (But I never could make it through The Fountainhead.) Fallible human? Absolutely. But even people with personal failings can still come up with interesting ideas and philosophies.
Anyway, I read “Atlas Shrugged” about thirty years ago and I still revisit it from time to time. I may not necessarily agree with all of it, but I agree with far more of it than I disagree with. And, no doubt, it has colored much of my attitudes on money, relationships, liberty, and government….for better or worse.
Its odd, but when I think about it, I’d say the two most influential books in my life have been “Atlas Shrugged” and “Starship Troopers”. There’s a pair to draw to, huh?