The Doctor is successful.

Measuring every powder charge, 4.0gr unique under 148gn HBWC.

I did have one "quiet" load... I thought it was a dud. Swung the cylinder out, had a good strike, and there wasn't anything stuck in the barrel. At the end I had six holes in the target, so it could have been a "psychological dud", someone let loose a round and it took my focus away. No idea...

Oopsie.

Well, after discovering that my reloads keyhole, there was much deliberation with the smiths at work. What did I get out of that? That Lee's reloading manual and dippers aren't to be trusted, and that I need a scale.

So I'm getting a scale; there's a Jennings HP-50X on the way from ebay... $30. Heck of a deal, shipped priority so I should have it soon.

On recommendation also, once the scale is here I'll be making a dipper for my .38 "mouse fart" loads out of a .22lr case. 4.2gr ought to do it.

Oh holy wow...

As you pretty much all know I work at Coal Creek Armory for fun, in the afternoons. Being the "specialty shop" so to speak we have some pretty funky new stuff pass through on occasion, as a customer can pretty much order anything made, or makeable.

Last night was no different.




That's some big'arn right there, uh-huh.

=====

Last night, I loaded up six cartridges... Hornady 148gr HWBC in federal .38spl cases, winchester SP primed, .3cc unique each. Tonight we'll see how they shoot.

Tomorrow I'll tell you one of two things; how many projectiles had to be driven out of the barrel with a rod, or how many fingers I'm missing. My silence will be an implicit admission of success, because if I've nothing else to worry about I have to reorganize the gunroom, clean in general, build the lightbox, and clean and photograph my CZ75 compact.

False start...

So I sat down at the press last night. I had a pound of unique, a handfull of .38 brass, a box of winchester small pistol primers, and some honrady 148gr HWBCs.

Ran one through the press, no primer, no powder, stuck the wadcutter on top and cranked it; shoved it halfway down the case. Whoops, forgot to adjust :)

One more like that and I've got it seating flush. Not bad, zero to runnin' in four cases (smashed one silly just after bolting the case down, that was #1). Or, at least I thought I was. I've only got a .5cc dipper. The load for unique is a .3cc dipper. D'oh.

---

Just as a side note, I've fully opened up commenting again.

Ohhh, we're all in trouble now.

And so it begins.



Where to from here... I think I'll load a couple hundred middling .38 specials and "learn the feel" before I move on to .32 magnum, 7.62 tok, etc.

That top? You, yes you can have one cheaply too. I was bumbling through Lowes one afternoon looking for ideas for trim on a bathroom project when I stumbled upon a rack of "ready to paint" ponderosa pine boards and planks. It hit me then that I could take two of the 2'x4' by 1" thick planks and stack 'em. The resulting bench is actually 2 1/2" thick and solid as a rock, while only weighing a little, maybe 20 pounds (?).

What I did was to take the best side of all of them and place it down, then set the other plank on top and even them up, measure a rectangle 2" inside the perimeter, drill and countersink-drill holes at the corners and every 10-11" (halfway on the short sides and thirds on the long sides)pick the top plank up and slather on the glue, use drill bits as pins to set the top back down in line, and zip 'er down with 14x1-3/4 screws. Then I turned the whole thing over, leveled it around on the entertainment center I'm using as a base, and drilled and sank four holes for 1/4-20 4" bolts tightened up with wing nuts and washers.

And note, you don't see holes in the top: they're filled and sanded flush.

I may eventually cover with bar-top epoxy and some microbead filler to make it opaque white; or "tileboard" masonite and contact cement. I want a white or light surface so I can see if I'm losing powder from somewhere.

That's all for now. Still haven't built the light box for the gun documentation project...

First post of 2007 and no gun photos...

That's right, no gun photos. Why? Because I haven't gotten around to it yet, my new camera's only a few days old.

And you read that right as well... new camera. I managed to snag an Olympus SP-320 from Amazon at a special price over the holidays and I'm *damned* impressed, so much so that I want to prepare properly and learn how to use it as best I can before taking photos. So, I'm studying, experimenting, and I'm making a little light box to better photograph parts. Oh, and I need to buy a 1Gb XD card for it; as it stands internal memory will only let me take two raw format 3072*2304 images before it's full.

To show this thing has potential, here's a hastily assembled "supermacro" mode shot:



Now, I'm pretty much going to leave firearmwiki alone as to the plan here, but I will be making pages to go on thisdamncomputer.com. What's the plan? I'm going to detail everything on everything. I'll be taking firearms, talking about use and history, posting detailed photos and breakdowns of marking, stripping them, and detailing out in photo how they work and why.

I'll be starting with my first gun, my CZ-75b Compact. I don't know how long it will take to put one together, but you will see it in the near future. I just have a few more preparations to make...