Monthly Archives: November 2020

Going green

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I am very rapidly becoming a fan of cerokoting (cerocoating? Cerro coating? Screw it..gonna go with ‘coating’) firearms. As you guys may recall, a couple years ago I came into a HiPower that spent some time underwater (fortunately, it was fresh water). The gun had zero finish and pitting that made it look like an aerial map of Utah. Although the coating didn’t do much to fill in the great holes, it did clen the gun up a bit and give it a good look. You can see the story of the Watergun here. I liked the look and, honestly, wh odoesn’t like personalizing a gun in a unique manner that makes that gun truly ‘theirs’? I guarantee you, ain’t no other HiPower out there like the Watergun.

Anyway….

An LMI buddy of mine is going to gunsmith school and, apparently, he’s something of a gunsmithing prodigy. The classes have gotten to the point where he needed a gun to practice coating. He came to me. Did I have a pistol that I would let him experiment on? Mmmmm. Yes. I have some ancient NYPD police revolvers from waaaaaaay back when that have been sitting in the safe for the last twenty years. I got them for around $125-150 back in the 90’s and just kinda tucked ’em away. Pulled one out that had a goodly amount of bluing missing, a bit of pitting here and there, but was otherwise mechanically sound. (Most police guns are cosmetic nightmares but mechanically sound. Why? They get carried and banged around every day but they are almost never actually fired except at the occasional qualification once or twice a year for maybe a hundred rounds a year total. If that. And considering its NYPD it may have been a lot less than a hundred.) I told him to go ahead and see what he could do. I preferred olive drab or forest green and, while youre at it, slap a lanyard swivel on the butt for me, mmmkay?

He came by today and I had completely forgotten about the pistol until he pulled it and its holster out of his coat, shoved it at me and said “Here’s your pistol that you wanted coated.”

Oh. My. Crom. This was exactly…and I mean exactly…what I wanted. A nice dark military OD and a lovely lanyard ring. The trigger, hammer, and cyclinder release were were done in black and contrast nicely against the dark green. A lot of the technical details went over my head, but he toook the gun apart, even removing the barrel, and degreased everything coated it in some sort of vibranium-adamantium based coating, baked it on, and, I am told, the thing is virtually rustproof. It’ll  never be truly 100% rustproof but I can apparently abuse it pretty well and not have it turn into a puddle of oxidized metal. (I just received a text back from the LMI…he says “manganese parked on everything but the cerekote, that is zinc parkerized.” So there you go.)

TPIWWP, so here you go:

That is some seriously sexy lipstick on that pig. Now, to be honest, I gave him this particular gun to use because I had no idea how it would turn out. He’s new at this, right? For all I know the thing was gonna come out looking Jerry Garcia’s shower curtain. But after seeing this I am kicking myself for not giving him my old Ruger Security-Six .357 to do this to. And now, having fallen hopelessly in love with this color and finish, I’m gonna see if I can cajole/bribe/beg him into doing a couple more guns for me. In addition to the coating, he also polished up some rough spots and put that swiveling lanyard ring in there for me. I’ve always had a fondness for those archaic touches like lanyard rings and leather flap holsters.

I’m no photography expert, so I have trouble taking pictures that give accurate representations of an items true color…but its a very, very military olive drab that just looks darn good. Pretty much the exact same green as your average ammo can, in fact. Tell you what, I’d have happily paid some decent money for that level of work. I’d really like to have a Mauser .308 done up like this.  I think my buddy needs to start a portfolio of before-n-after pictures on stuff like this because the work he did was amazing.

Friday of Color

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Ok, so we’re in the post-Thanksgiving stage now. Now is the run-up to Christmas and then…the new year of 2021.

Media says that folks are staying home for the most part and that any Friday of Color of serious quantity is being done online. Works for me. I love online shopping. You youngsters may not remember it, but in the dark days before Al Gore invented the internet, if you wanted to shop through the mail you had to get a catalog. And the only way you even knew that there was a company you wanted a catalog from was to see their ad in a magazine or something. Then you’d send them a letter asking for a catalog, wait for them to receive the letter, they sent you a catalog, you waited to receive the catalog, you ordered from the catalog by sending them your order in the mail, wait for them to receive it, they ship it to you, wait for it to arrive, and then…finally…you got your cool survivalist geegaw. And then you’d find out it’s the wrong size/color/yield and have to send it back and the whole process would start over. Broadly, it could be a month from when you saw the company’s ad in the back of Soldier of Fortune to when you actually got your goodies.

Nowadays, I can literally….literally…have a plate and plate carrier on my doorstep in three days or less with one-click of my mouse. You kids have no idea how spoiled you are in terms of amazing choices and accessibility to quality survival gear. No idea.

I can be sitting at my desk watching YouTube and someone says “Hey, I bought a [Item] and have been testing it. Its awesome, you should get one!” and I can have one on order in less than a minute. How utterly amazing is that? There are people on this planet who have to walk five miles with a bucket on their head to get drinking water and I can order up a hundred pounds of ammo to be delivered to my door and I don’t even have to get out of my chair. I love this country!

Of course, there’s a drawback to all this – it’s easy…really, really easy…to spend money quickly and carelessly. I won’t say I have never had buyers remorse, but I’m much better at resource management than I used to be. Still..sometimes it’s an enormous relief when I go to order something and find hat I can’t because it’s out of stock.

So…while you’re doing your FOC shopping today think back to those dark days of survivalism where you actually had to slap a stamp on an envelope to order up your LL Baston underbarrel Mossberg 500 mount for your AR15. You kids have it so easy today.

“We’re all gonna buy.” No lie, this was an Actual Thing back in the ’80’s.

Turkeyday

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Today is Thanksgiving, which is, nominally, a day to give thanks. For me its a day to eat turkey. My life is a swirling dumpster fire of rage and pain, so I tend to not be thankful as much as I am vengeful. Nonetheless, I realize I’m in the minority on that sort of thing…so, for those of you who engage in the Norman-Rockwell-esque version of Thanksgiving, I say ‘enjoy’.

Following the holiday are the Black Friday Friday Of Color sales. I cannot imagine any vendor needs a holiday sale to get product moving in this Current Situation. Why would you mark your guns and ammo down for a holiday sale when you can double the price and have it fly out the door seven days a week? Still, I’ll go through the motions anyway because I’m always looking for a deal. Lemme know if you guys find any good deals that are actually in stock.

Who said 2021 was going to be better than 2020?

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Finals week, thats why.

So how are things going in the soon-to-be land o’ Biden? One thing I was confident of, a huge slump in the market, failed to materialize (yet) so I’m 0 for 1 on that one. In fact, the market is pretty close to what it was at the beginning of the year, meaning that if you didn’t take advantage of the freefall we had in March you might be kicking yourself now.

On the other hand, one thing I was right about is the continued demand for gun stuff and the resultant shortages (and pricing). Earlier this year I had the opportunity to buy bulk CCI 9mm ammo for $0.15/@ … and oh Crom, how I wish I had the foresight to get a pallet of that stuff. Easy doubling of money. Triple, even. But, if I could read the future Id be sitting on the several hundred thousand acre Rancho Ballistica enjoying the fruits of my prescience and planning (further) regional domination.

So whats going on these days? Well, the ‘easy’ stuff has been pretty much taken care of… basically any preparedness need that can be satisfied by Walmart or CostCo… has been. Whats left is the bigger, more complicated stuff – money in the bank, more metal, and other steps towards increasing my resilience. On top of that, though, I also have to do all the things for ‘normal life’ in case the world doesn’t come to an end. (Although at this stage..hey…what’re the odds? Y’know?)

Everyone seems to have an attitude of “OMG, I can’t wait for 2020 to be over.” But it does not seem to have occurred to them that there is no promise that 2021 is going to be better, in fact, 2021 may be worse. Perhaps even a lot worse. Just because the odometer on 2020 is rolling over doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods. It ain’t over until its over..and even then it isn’t over. If you’re thinking about letting your foot off the gas because, whew, we made it thoguh 2020…you’re being foolishly short-sighted.

2021 is still going to have the strong flavor of 2020, but with a few new notes. I’ve got some personal milestones coming up in 2021 so even if the Shanghai Shivers gets under control I still have a tumultuous year to look forward to. So…I keep doing what i’ve been doing – be smart, be careful, plan ahead, weigh options, act strategically. Might be worth doing the same for you.

The TP hoarding returns

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I got a text message yesterday from someone I know who wanted to let me know that the local CostCo was out of paper products.

:::dramatic music::::

Apparently the TP hoarding cycle has begun anew. I find that interesting because didnt everyone buy a lifetime supply of TP back in March? I’m guessing the current wave is from people who didn’t hoard in March, got left out, and are now stacking it in their basements going “Remember when we couldn’t find any in March? Well, not this time!”

I’ve heard this music before, ain’t gonna dance to it.

I’ve been (mostly) diligently shopping and laying back stuff since March. Other than my current magazine buying frenzy, I’m not seeing a need for me to do anything differently. Hopefully you don’t either.

Hows that magazine buying thing going, you may ask? FedEx just dropped another case of Magpul Glock mags at the door so….pretty well, actually.

Lucky

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So as you know, the Preponomicon has a list of everything I’ve deemed worth keeping track of…mostly consumables – food, ammo, cleaning supplies, toiletries, etc. It lists what I have as well as what i need. So, literally the easiest thing for me to do is go down my grocery list of things to stockpile, order them up for pickup on WalMarts website, and just get it all done at once. So I did that. Scheduled a time to go there and pick it up and I got an email a few hours later saying, sorry, due to [whatever reason] they had to cancel the order but I could try reordering for a different day…and by the way here’s an online coupon for the inconvenience. Nice. So, tomorrow I’m picking up a stash of canned vegetables, coffee, and a few other things and when it’s all done I’ll have saved 50%. Lucky.

Say what you will about WalMart, it is pretty convenient for my preparedness needs. If I want to spend, say, $50 on items that are needed I can just run down my list, add it all to cart, and head down there to pick it up as they carry it out to my vehicle. No muss, no fuss.

What with this endless ‘second wave’ or ‘surge’ of Kung Flu cases (although, I wonder, are they really surging? Because I can very clearly see the definition of ‘new cases’ being manipulated to suit the political needs of whomever dispenses the information) it seems that the panic buying of earler this year may come back in fits and starts. Makes no difference to me, I’ve always tried to keep my house stocked like its the end of the world.

So, a thumbs up for simply opening up an Excel spreadsheet on one monitor, and a browser tab for WalMart grocery on the other monitor. It literally makes stockpiling as easy as ordering a pizza. Which reminds me, frozen pizza was a scarce item during the earlier panic buying…gotta add that to the list.

Newer normal

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Once an event or action has taken place that affects you, it’s usually too late to undo it. All you can do from that point forward is mitigate the consequences. The previous paradigm of election outcomes was that whichever side lost wold sulk around and say “Yeah, we’ll see what happens in four years”. Nowadays? I think it’s going to be different.

All those people who burn buildings, overturn cars, break windows, trash police cars, and block traffic? They feel vindicated. They look at the election results and are convinced that their ‘tactics’ worked. The result? Going forward, I expect that every time theres a political choice to be made that is a little polarizing you’re going to see an uptick in violence and ‘civil unrest’ accompanying it. Why? Because the people who perpetrate that sort of thing are now convinced that ‘it works’.

I’m never happy when something I believe in gets shot down at the polls, but I take it like a man. I grumble, I fume, and then I move forward and deal with the consequences. I don’t hunt down supporters of the other side, I don’t burn their businesses, and I don’t threaten their families. But I think that sort of thing is going to become more and more common in future elections.

Mitigation? Well, as Theo. Roosevelt once said in regards to the tactics of the anarachists of the day, “”There is but one answer to be made to the dynamite bomb and that can best be made by the Winchester rifle.” (As an aside, I would totally buy an M4gery made by Winchester.) But I suppose in the future we’ll have to add Election Day (and the weeks leading up to it) as one of those ‘heightened alert’ times. It’s a shame too…I remember when watching election violence with mobs, burnings, and violence was the sort of thing that happened in Third World banana republics.

I guess ‘election related violence’ gets added to the list of ‘Apocalypses That People Prepare For’, right up there with Peak Oil, Planet X, the UN Invasion, and that sort of thing.

 

Quiet day

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One thing I like about winter – when it’s cold and unpleasant outside, it is the perfect time to hang out in the basement organizing supplies and going over the reassuring stash of food, meds, tools, ammo, and other goodies that make life a lot easier when the wheels fly off.

Thanksgiving is in two weeks. I need to check the freezer and see if i have any turkey left over from last years post-Thanksgiving sales. And, of course, Black Friday Friday Of Color sales will ge up in a few weeks. I suspect that this years sales will be rather lackluster since anyone in a field that is even remotely gun-related doesn’t need a sale to get merchandise moving out the door. Still, I’ll keep my eyes open,.

2021 approaches and it’s going to be an interesting year. Not in a good way, I suspect. But…I’m all about resilience. Just keep adding layers and layers of options, backups, and alternatives.

Oh, and while rummaging through the stored food I found some canned goods of rather advanced age that I’m thinking I might have to test out ‘for science’. We’ll see how that goes.

In for a penny, in for a kidney

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Remember I said “I have a ‘favorites’ list at one of my vendors websites. Its a list of things I want to buy when they eventually become ‘in stock’. I check that list several times a day. As of late, I have noticed that around 2-3am they are adding stock to their online inventory and it sells out almost instantly. But…sometimes I sneak one past the goalie and get lucky.“?

So…this happened:

:::sigh::: I don’t know whats worse…my trying to time the market, or my trying to time the magazine market. (Although to be fair…I did really, really well in the market this year.)

Two hundred more for the Deep Sleep. No, I will not sell you any, don’t ask. Normally I’d say go hit your local FFL and have them contact RSR and order them but I’m fairly confident these will sell out in the next 24 hours.

Edited to add:

Did I just spend a buttload of money that I didn’t need to spend? My neighbor thinks so. We were talking and I mentioned that I foresaw a magazine ban on the horizon. My neighbor, a learned man and retired military officer (though a Biden supporting Democrat) said that a magazine ban had been ruled unconstitutional. He was, of course, referring to the Ninth Circus Circuits decision earlier this year that struck down Californias magazine ban as unconstitutional. (And, yes, who would have seen that coming from the Ninth?) So, as I understand it, states within that Ninth district should be free from any onerous magazine capacity ban (on a state level. Federal level is a different story. Federal law usually supersedes state law. We kinda had a war about that). But on a federal level it is still an undecided thing. Same for states outside the Ninth. Is California going to appeal it to the Supreme Court? If they do, I hope that the legacy Trump has created there would smack any ban down without even blinking. I suspect California knows that and might not be willing to push the issue further, but rather bide(n) their time for a leftist court-stacking as opposed to risking creating a nationwide precedent that they really don’t want. In short, they might be content to live with a ‘maybe’ instead of pushing the issue and getting a ‘no’.

So, back to the question at hand… should I be spending money on magazines like this when there might be enough legal juice out there to preclude another magazine ban? I really don’t know. Historically, .gov does what it wants and when it gets smacked down on constitutionality it takes some time. California’s mag ban, for example, has been around for decades and only now is it finally getting threatened. Additionally, there are probably several ‘loopholes’ that .gov (state or federal) could exploit to give a de facto ban. Registration of magazines with high registration fees, expensive enhanced background checks….basically a tedious and discouraging NFA-style process that doesn’t strictly limit your ability to own a magazine…it just makes you wanna throw up your hands and say ‘screw this’.

Note that we’re just talking about magazine bans in this case. The other elephant in the room, “assault weapons”, are a different story. My neighbor says that he does foresee that one coming. I agree with him on that one. But the magazine thing….hmmm… I hope it winds up going to the Supremes and gets decided in my favor but until it does I have to operate on the assumption that a magazine ban could stand. So….I wish I didnt have to spend this money on magazines, but I’m not sorry I did.

Book – The Dog Stars

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A month or so back a generous reader sent me a book off Amazon. Specifically: here

I’ll tell you right off the bat, if you’re a fan of action-packed post-apocalyptic fiction that’s pretty much one gun battle after another with no real attention to character motivation and development….you’re not gonna like this book at all. And, admittedly, the style of writing can be very detracting with it’s first-person stream-of-consciousness style. But…if you get past that, its a good story (in my opinion). Succinctly, it’s about a guy who survives a kills-99%-of-everyone plague and is living quietly at an abandoned airport, flying his plane, fishing with his dog, and dealing with the tremendous grief and loneliness that comes from all the loss he has experienced. Eventually the opportunity arises to not be alone anymore but the risks are high..emotionally and physically. A lot of people will say this isn’t a very enjoyable read because all it talks about it feelings, loss, pain, hope, and questioning. Fair enough…but thats going to be part of living through an apocalypse as well.

It was a difficult read, what with its sometimes-disjointed style, but it was relatable in terms of the character’s sense of grief, loss, and ennui. Its an interesting take about an aspect of post-apocalypse fiction that I have seldom seen explored in this much detail.

Anyway, I’d like to thank the generous person who sent me the book and if you have any other recommendations, please share them.

And, as long as we’re on the subject of gifties… if you’ve found this blog entertaining or otherwise worthy of your time, I invite you to kick in towards it… everything received goes towards bandwidth and laying the foundation for a post-apocalyptic empire that will provide a safe refuge for morally-challenged-but-creatively-fun coeds.