Monthly Archives: May 2020

Interesting times

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I don’t remember ordering up a burgeoning race war.

I’m not going to say that I’m not a conspiracy guy, but I don’t think I’m a tinfoil hat wearer either. But, when someone says “oh, thats just crazy talk…you know how those people are” I get curious and want to examine things for myself. :::shrug::: I’m a very inquisitive person.

The prevailing conspiracy theories out there are that, since this is an election year, there needs to be a significant amount of sturm and drang to sink any hope of the President getting re-elected. Does that mean that I think ‘They’ created a virus and released it to sink an election? Does that mean I think they got a buncha cops to kill a black guy on camera? No, I don’t. But what I do think is that there are factions that “don’t let a crisis go to waste” and, perhaps, exploit these events more than they normally would have if someone else were President.

I’ll bet this is the sort of thing that comes in threes…. there’s some other crisis out there, I’m sure, just waiting to get tagged as We Warned You That He Would Cause This. China? Earthquake? Mass Shooting? Your guess is as good as mine. We shall see.

Link – Savage Mk II 20-rd mags

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Years ago I bought a Savage MkII as a suppressor host for my Silencerco Sparrow. And…awesome .22. But the stock was crap so I spent the cash and got a Boyds Tacticool which made this thing into a wonderful little varmint killer / sentry remover. Thing is, the gun uses a 5-round detachable mag, which is fine. And Savage makes a 10-round magazine which is also a good idea. But….why not something with a little more capacity. You know, for those times where theres a lot of somethings needing to be quietly introduced to a hollowpoint. The free market provides – Savage MK II 20rd magazine.

Figured I’ll get a couple and try them out.

By the by, I cannot say enough nice things about that Savage MkII FV-SR. I like it so much that I might have to pick up a TRR-SR. But, realistically, for logistics, I’d be better off with the Ruger Precision in .22 LR.

Mags will be here in a week. I’ll let you know how they go.

Adventures in self control

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Went to Murdoch’s the other day to pick up a 16-gallon ‘blue barrel’ for rice storage and as I walked down the aisle I beheld….this:

I know it doesn’t seem like I have good impulse control, but I actually impressed myself by not just buying the bloody thing right then and there. BUT….I had a long, long talk with myself basically talking myself in and out of whether I should buy it. Fact is, it ain’t cheap at around $2800~. But I can freeze dry my favorite foods that may be unobtainable elsewhere and get myself a nice stash of FD meats without paying the crazy prices that they normally command. I actually should fab up a spreadsheet to calculate just how many pounds of chicken and beef I’d have to FD before the thing hits the break even point.

But…I already have a pretty healthy (so to speak) stash of freeze drieds. Sure, more would be nice and being able to get exactly the foods I want has a pretty nice attraction as well. And I suppose I could get a couple of the LMI to come in on it with the expectation we could all take turns using it. But..but….expensive. Although people pay more money for far stupider items….jet skis, expensive living room chairs, Manolo Blahniks, etc.

To my way of thinking its the same financial equivalent as:

  • 4 mid-tier ARs
  • 5 Glocks
  • 1.5~ oz. of gold
  • 150 oz. of silver (hey its a 100:1 ratio)
  • 1/3 of a decent used pickup
  • 13k 9mm ball ammo

What I really need is a friend who has one of these things. 80/20 ….. get 80% of the usage for 20% of the cost.

But, dang, it would be kinda fun to see what does and does not come out well.

Marlin surgery

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Pistol caliber carbines (PCCs) are all the rage today. Why not? Yes, you lose ballistics performance but you gain streamlined logistics. Anyway, let’s recall that the original idea behind PCC’s was not to have a carbine that took the same mags as your Glock. No, the original idea was to have a carbine that took the same ammo as your Colt revolver. The genesis of the PCC goes back to the Colt Single Action and the iconic Win. ’73. A fella with a saddlebag full of .44-40 ammo could keep his rifle, pistol, and himself fed. Leverguns: the OG PCC.

I have a lovely Marlin 1894 in .357 and it’s a perfect companion to my GP-100’s. But…I wanted a little more horsepower. Time for a .44 Mag. And then I came across a nice Marlin in .44 Mag but it had one glaring little problem:

This … abberation… has no place on a rifle as otherwise magnificent as this old-style Marlin

A crossbolt safety on a hammered lever-action rifle is an affront to Crom, nature, and pre-litigious society. If you run around in the woods with a cocked hammer on your levergun you are, sir, a fool. It is no less and no more work to cock the hammer when ready to fire than it is to push an ugly, obtrusive crossbolt safety. This is why Marlins (and Winchesters) without the crossbolt safety bring more money than those that have them. So, you have an otherwise excellent, high-quality, Marlin rifle but it has the absurd crossbolt safety. Do you live with it? Slap an itty bitty o-ring on the ‘FIRE’ side of it to prevent accidentally setting it to SAFE? Or….do you….remove it.

Duh and/or hello…..you remove the worthless thing.

Several outfits offer replacement ‘plugs’ to get that stupid safety outta there. I went with this one which was suggested to me by fellow blogger Ryan. (How ya doin’, buddy!) It arrived today. Time for gun surgery.

First, know your enemy:

Know your exploded diagram as you know yourself and in a thousand disassemblies you will never be left with ‘extra’ parts. In this case, that v-groove is what keeps you from pushing the crossbolt completely through and out the other side of the receiver. There is a set screw, spring, and ball bearing that keeps it in place. Let’s get the stock off and find that set screw.

I think I can guess where to start looking. Under whatever crap that yellow stuff is, there lies our starting point. Let’s clean that crap out with a dental pick and get rolling.

Alright…back that thing out and be careful not to lose it. It’s tiny. There’s also a ball and spring in there. Get those too and don’t lose ’em. Once it’s out, push the crossbolt out the ‘SAFE’ side of the receiver (right side). You’ll be left a with a glaringly large hole in the side of your beautiful Marlin.

Take your replacement crossbolt and slide it in. You need to line up the little dent for the detent on the crossbolt with the hole for the set screw. Easiest way? Get crossbolt in place, look down set screwhole with bright flashlight, rotate crossbolt until detent lines up with hole. Firmly hold crossbolt in place and replace set screw tightly. Put stock back on gun and bask in the beauty:

And there you go. Not as pretty as if it had never had the stupid crossbolt safety, but miles better than still having it.

Hey, if you find this imformative or useful howabout kicking back a little something to yours truly?

Range time with PC Charger and an upgrade for the Roof Koreans

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Took the little Ruger PC Charger out for a spin yesterday. Holy Drokk, it is fun!

But, we ain’t here for fun, son….we’re here to gear up against the unknown future. So..how’d it shoot in regard to that? Let’s review….

I only put fifty rounds of S&B 115 FMJ though it, using ETS happysticks, but of that fifty I had 0 malfs. Everything fed, fired, and flew just fine. I had  low hopes for the red dot Bushnell because, honestly, I’ve never really thought of myself as a red dot kinda guy and have no experience with them. As it turns out, it performed quite well. Got it sighted in and was ringing the 6″ plate at 50 yards with regularity.

The SB ‘brace’ (aluminum model) worked fine. One of the gun review sites had problems with theirs on the Ruger saying that the direct blowback caused a rear-and-downward recoil impulse that would unlock the folding mechanism on the brace. Not a problem for me since I prefer my stocks to fold to the right, so I had mounted the brace bracket upsidedown and reattached the arm. As a result, any rear-and-downward motion actually locks the thing up more. No problem.

Whats the purpose of this thing? For me, its pretty simple. When I roll into the office and tuck my Bag O’ Tricks under the desk I want to have a compact little ‘carbine’ with mag commonality with my Glock pistol for those days when things have gone so far sideways that just a pistol might not be enough to keep things calm. LA Riot type stuff.

So, thus far, with a very limited amount of range time, I rather like this thing. I need to dump a few hundred more rounds through it but so far I like it and I like the possibilities it opens up for me in terms of a handy little PDW-style gun that can travel quite well. It’s an absolute shame that Ruger was hamstrung for so many years by Billy Ruger and his Fuddness. Ruger clearly has some talented engineers and idea guys over there and the results of them getting let off the leash once in a while have been rather cool.

Speaking of LA Riots, we all know, love, and respect the Roof Koreans, right? Well, in (S.) Korea they take it to a whole new level:

Roof Korea is best Korea

Housecleaning

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I often joke than when I die, the garage sale will truly be epic. Might also be historical too since some stuff has been in storage for over 2o years. Since I have some time on my hands these days, I’m cleaning up a few things and laying eyes on things I have not seen in a very, very long time.

Freeze drieds from pre-Y2k, old flashlights, rain ponchos, MRE entrees, etc. There’s quite a bit of stuff. And, surprisingly, some did not hold up as well as I would have expected. Case in point – sometime in the wee hours of the new millennia CostCo had a close out on Baygen windup flashlights. They were, as I recall, $20. I think I bought about six or eight. I pulled one out of the box and kept it handy in the bunker for when the power goes out and I need something to find my other gear with. Out of curiosity, I pulled the others out of their boxes and tried them out. None of them worked. Not a one. Perhaps almost 20 years of inactivity deteriorated the internal capacitors or something. But…not a single one worked. Instead, they’ve been taking up space for the last two decades. Obviously, this was before I had adopted the protocol of ‘function test everything before you put it away for the Deep Sleep’. Lesson learned. Interestingly, the one that I took out of the box and use from time to time still works. So, wither that was the one winner in the bunch or the inactivity of the others proved to be detrimental. Regardless, the lesson is the same: test before rest.

Everything else seems to have held up fine. Ammo still works, flashlights work when you put new batteries in them, etc, etc. But its interesting to see how the technology has changed….krypton bulbs replaced by LED, electronics being smaller and more full-featured, that sort of thing.

Its some of that older, more dated stuff that should probably be upgraded. My older MagLites, for example, should be swapped out for LED. Older MRE entrees swapped out for newer. ALICE gear upgraded to MOLLE, etc.

Also, according to the last inspection dates I noted on the boxes, it’s past time to inspect the #10 cans in storage for damage. I’m 99.9% confident everything is fine, but why take chances? Plus, during the course of things I may find other issues that I hadn’t thought about.

So…off to the basement to deep-deg through layers of time like some sort of prepper archaeologist. It’s like a cross between Indiana Jones and Burt Gummer.

Reclaiming that sense of urgency

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Be honest, can you relate to this: several weeks ago you were focused. You were at CostCo, WalMart, and a few other places making sure you were ‘topped off’ on things. Maybe you finally pulled the trigger on some of those bigger expenditures because ‘now was the time’. You went to bed each night mentally wargaming how things might go and what you might need, and in the morning you resolved to hurry up and get dressed and go get those things. And then…things seemed ‘kinda’ normal. The panic ebbed and receded. Sure the rice and pasta aisles were empty, but there’s plenty of other stuff. And, after a few weeks, that sense of urgency you felt, that pushed you into doing things, started diminishing. Maybe ‘right now’ became ‘later this week’ became ‘next payday’ became ‘when I get around to it’.

Can you relate to that? Because that’s pretty much what I’m fighting against with the guy in the mirror. I’ve got a lovely spreadsheet of goodies (The Preponomicon) and far too many things on that list are at less than “90% complete”. But…but…it’s sunny! Gas is $1.65! The electricity is on! Dairy Queen is open! We can eat out again! So…what’s you hurry, buddy?

Complacency…thats what it looks like, guys. You stop running when you don’t see the bear behind you anymore. ‘Course, looking behind you means you might not see the other bear ahead of you.

I’m trying to be diligent about working my way down my list and, I gotta say, motivation can be lacking at times. But I know that even if there’s no ‘second wave’ of infections, no mutation, no economic Chernobyl from spending, no massive job layoffs, no meat shortages, no drug shortages, no stock market slump, happening right now that doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen tomorrow, or next week, or next month. The tricky part is maintaining that mindset that ‘bad stuff could be right around the corner’ when all your sense are saying ‘things arent so bad right now’.

So…I look at my list and remind myself that I wrote it for a good reason, I thought it over carefully, and made the ffort to put it on paper. I trust the me from two months ago that this was worth following up on. So…off to CostCo.

You guys should do whatever it takes…watch Walking Dead, read One Second After, review some graphic historical accounts of societal disasters…whatever it takes for you to recover your motivation, but stay motivated. Even if we sail through this, and the crappy fallout, there’ll be another one along before you know it.

Video – Top 10 Post-Apocalyptic TV Shows

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I’ve watched about half of these. One thing I always find terribly amusing is that in the British series the individual with a simple double-barrel shotgun is the high muckymuck because everyone else had nothing more deadly than a crossbow or a cricket bat. Contrast that with, say, Walking Dead where our heroes went from 870’s and Remington 700’s to MP5, M4, and AUG’s in less than three seasons. (Heck, they even had an RPG at one point.)


What I don’t like is that, at least in the series I’ve seen, it all boils down to a) having to fight other survivors for resources and b) scrounging. And while those probably would be rather important, I am always amazed how hygiene, or the utter lack thereof, leads to almost no bad consequences. Take Walking Dead….its summer in Georgia and these people are covered in dirt, sweat, blood, and a zillion other nasties and no one gets an infection when they cut or scrape themselves.

Anyway…entertaining post-apocalyptic TV shows are fairly rare. Movies come and go all the time, but TV shows…not so much. Probably because its difficult on a TV budget to empty out several square blocks of a city (which is why so many of these take place in rural settings, I suppose.)

Anyway, for your amusement…………

Haircut season

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Yesterday was the day that barbershops here in town were allowed to open.They’d been open elsewhere in the county, but our local .gov wanted to show that they were ‘doing something’ about the virus. I think I’ve done a halfway decent job with my own clippers. Not perfect, but if you think your hair needs to be perfect then you clearly need more important things in your life to worry about. I think that, for the time being, I’m gonna save myself twenty bucks a month and keep working with the clippers. I can live with a cowlick here and there for twenty bucks.

So far, for me, thats been the biggest headache resulting from the Current Situation. They may be dropping like flies in Cuomo-land but our hospitals here are quiet and boring with none of the chaos and drama that the evening news likes to showcase.

:::shrug::: I live in a state with barely 1/20th the population of New York spread out over three times the square miles….social distancing is measured in miles here. But…not to pass up on opportunity to throw his considerable weight around, our local mayor – a philandering, alcoholic, overeating statist – decided that this was a great opportunity to flex and issued all sorts of orders.

As I’ve said, tongue-in-cheek, this is the lamest apocalypse ever. But, as I’ve also said, the flu isn’t the real headline…the real headline is all the downhill stuff as a result of it. Sadly, one of those effects will be more government control with the usual ‘for the common good’ pass.

One size does not fit all when it comes to government. What works in California or New York may not work here, and vice versa. But to assume that whats good for one state is good for another….well…that might be a little much. Laws and police thuggery might be what it takes to ‘flatten the curve’ in a cage with nine million people in it like NYC. But in my little bucolic college town it’s a tad heavy handed.

I know, I know….our mayor (aka “The Biggest Boozer”) will no doubt say that because of his edicts we have been spared the ravages of a Covid-19 outbreak similar to what they have experienced in NYC. And…you can’t really disprove a negative…so a lot of people will go along with it. But there’s just some reflexive response within me that chafes when .gov starts doing things like this. Maybe it really does make a difference, maybe it has saved ‘millions of registered voters’, maybe we’d all be dead of of the flu right now if they hadn’t threatened to throw my barber in jail…or maybe not.

All I know is that I haven’t been able to get a haircut for the last two months and I can’t shake the feeling that it was a lot of sturm und drang over something that wasn’t as big a threat here as it was elsewhere.

Article – America’s meat shortage is more serious than your missing hamburgers

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If you go to Wendy’s this week, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to get a hamburger. Go to the supermarket and you’ll probably see some empty shelves in the meat section. You may also be restricted to buying one or two packs of whatever’s available. Try not to look at the prices. They’re almost definitely higher than what you’re used to.

This is the new reality: an America where beef, chicken, and pork are not quite as abundant or affordable as they were even a month ago.

One of the far-downstream  consequences of the Current Situation that probably not too many people thought about when this started. My habit of cruising the remaindered meat aisle and freezing any good deals I find should serve me well. But, honestly, if meat costs a little more…so what? It’s not a problem for me. And, really, this is true of everything. No matter what it is…from caviar to plutonium to machine guns…it’s always available, it’s just expensive. If beef jumps a dollar a pound..:::shrug::: I can deal with it.

Of course, prices go up when supply is low. I can adjust. It’s when the product is completely unavailable…thats the problem. I’ve got a pretty goodly supply of animal flesh sitting in the freezer but thats very much an ‘eggs in one basket’ kind of thing. That freezer craps out on me, I lose a good 85% or so of mt supply of meat. Oh, I have the resources on hand to can it all if something like that happened, but I think that perhaps having more than one freezer should be the way to go. I’ve the generator to run them in case of a power failure, and should the power failure last longer than my generator can support, that still buys me time to can it all.

I’d been picking up more canned meats from CostCo these last two months….chicken and beef mostly. I’ve talked about the CostCo canned roast beef before and I highly recommend it. Canned chicken is canned chicken…it’s all pretty much the same. In addition to the canned meats I’ve a couple cases of Mountain House freeze dried pork chops, diced chicken, diced beef, and ground beef. And, yes, I am aware of canned bacon but I’m just not a huge bacon guy…I like bacon, but I can live without it.

Being the jaded survivalist, I wonder how much of this meat panic is genuine and how much of it is a self-fulfilling prophecy brought about by the media. Thus far, for me, in my locale, I haven’t seen any real change in pricing or availability but then again perhaps it takes a while for these effects to trickle down to flyover country. I’ll continue to buy my meat trays once a week and just keep working the vacuum sealer. A full freezer is never a bad idea, really, anyway.