-Aaron

Rules in my absence:
--Any cool gun must be noted, pictured, posted and brought back again the following year for a proper fondling.
--Auction items may be of any nature providing nothing "too cool" is sold for a pittance.
--Bourbon and tall stories are still allowed without any limitations.
--I will be the final arbiter in any dispute involving what constitutes "cool" and "too cool".

In all seriousness, we wish all of you a fabulous safe and refreshing gathering.

Cheers!

The Pedersoli Sharps "Little Betsy," available in .22LR, .22 Hornet, .357 Magnum, .38-55 WCF, and... .30-30.

It's about as practical as a pinafore for a pack horse. I don't care.

-AaronB

I am gonna have to make a run to the metal recyclers and get some lead. That's the path set before me!

TAKEN WITH A REALLY REALLY LONG SELFIE STICK
..
.
or it could have been stolen from NASA

That caused a light bulb to go on over my admittedly thick noggin. I have stored about five pounds of these bullets around two separate shops for over a decade now, maybe close on to two decades. The bullet in question is the Heavy Thirty, from a mold I spec'd out with Dan at Mountain Molds. It's poured of wheel weight alloy (with added tin) and water-dropped for hardness. It's a bore-rider design of .310 diameter, and it drops at 220 grains with a nice broad meplat. It was meant to be a hunting bullet design.

I looked up some Lyman Cast Bullet manual data for .30-06 using a Lyman 200-grain bullet, found a recipe using IMR 4198, and backed it off the max by two grains. I figure it may be good for 1800 fps. I function tested it into the woodpile through my old Springfield sporter, and it left the bore nice and clean while failing to blow the gun up. I consider that a bit of a win.

It cycles fine from the magazine of the Springfield, but the tube mag in my .30-30s is more of a challenge. In any event I think this would be a good design for .30-40 Krag. Maybe this weekend we'll see how it does for accuracy.

-AaronB

They did have, on the other hand, a box of 100 jacketed flat-point 170-grainers. "Well, I load for .30-30 too," I told myself, and got those. For $47.00. This is the garden-variety cup-and-core jacketed 170-grainer that .30-30s that have been loaded with for time out of mind, for almost half a Benjamin.

I'm in the wrong business. I should be swaging bullets.

-AaronB

Everyone who knew about it greatly coveted a turn at the tiller of the outboard motor of that boat. It was high summer and the bottom of the sewerage lagoon that received patona city's innumerable flushings had turned-up. This is a common occurrence in/on small bodies of water but with a sewerage lagoon, the turning was quite obvious. The prevailing winds wafted the malodour directly toward the bypass highway's strip-mall shopping center so something had to be done and done fast.

The answer was a stalwart aluminium flat-bottomed boat of some fourteen length by a bit over three and a half feet width. The tiller that I alluded to above served as both the steering lever and the location of throttle control for the approximate 20 horsepower outboard motor. The task was simple. Steer the boat over and through the slimey, smelly chunks of peat-like sewerage that nature had released from the lagoon's bottom and was now floating and bobbing on its surface. Over and over, to and fro, back and forth..... both haphazardly and systematically. Separate the chunks small and great and render them smaller yet with the revolutions of the outboard's propeller until they sank back into the relative depths of the green water.

Despite the gagging stink, every little boy from 8 to 88 wanted a turn at the helm of the good ship "s.s. patona city" but there was an unwritten hierarchy. Since the pensioning of misters hoyt crook and his coloured sidekick butter macdonald, the command of the boat fell to the reigning captain of patona city's utility truck number nine..... booby moates (the certified lunatic amongst us) and razor hooey.

butter macdonald.....while still employed, had been quite adept at maneuvering the boat and chopping the blue-green slimey chunks of poo but booby moates simply lacked both the hand-eye coordination and nautical balances and systematic patience necessary for the job. razor hooey lacked all of the qualifications and was also afraid of water, not being able to either swim or float.

So the honour fell to euell ______ , otherwise known as pill.....uncle pill to us part-time youngsters. uncle pill must had been born with a miniature outboard tiller in his tiny fist or else teethed on one in his crib. From logan martin dam all the way east to the confluence in downtown rome....georgia, not italy, pill knew the coosa river like both the back of his hand and his asymmetric, ugly visage in the mirror. Lacking the shekels to possess a proper bass boat with center-steering mechanisms, pill made-do with lesser craft with inimitable skill. No one ever lived who could pilot a flat-bottomed boat with outboard motor like uncle pill.

But the municipal beaurocratic chain of command....one of either roscoe or woodrow scoggins, unidentical twin brothers, required the department head to at least be onboard so that put the stoutish and ungracefully rigid booby moates in the center seat. After a few test turn abouts pill came back to shore and requested someone up-forward for ballance. The superintendent waved the floppy antenna of his wireless and razor hooey reluctantly donned an orange flotation vest and awkwardly stepped into/onto the bow. Razor wasn't happy about this.....especially having to face backwards as the bow bench did not facilitate any other orientation but he could not project the least amount of cowardice or weakness in front of whitey, now could he ?

So they went about chopping the blubber-like chunks of poo until the 0845 break for coffee and biscuits containing the tasty sage and cayenne flavoured flesh of ground swine. By this time there had been work orders submitted to the scoggins from city hall headquarters of customers reporting sewerage stoppages. This gave booby moates a reprieve and put razor in the center seat facing forward which put me up in the bow.

Now here is the opportunity to hearken back to the era. Tricky dick had self-destucted and his veep had lost the election to the thick-lipped peanut grower. As far as entertainment went, the masses were either queer for princess leia or the flashing lights of ufos or massive maneating greatwhite sharks with greatwhite sharks and carrie fisher being almost neck and neck in the polls. Though almost all would allow that carrie fisher costumed in her scant bronze bikini (in the sequel) sent far more tadpoles down the tub drain than any alien spacecraft or toothy fish ever did.

It must also be reminded that razor hooey was a publican in the englisher sense of the title who presided at and tended bar and bounced uncooperative patrons at his home-based shot-house. He also showed stagg-films projected on a wall from his reel to reel contraption. Occasionally he obtained the loan of an unlicensed bootleg of a current popular cinematic production. The weekend nights previous, he had shown the extremely suspenseful shark flick and it had made a profound impression on him.

Back to the tale. The boat went around and around and there and yon until tiffin break. When we assembled back to the lagoon we were all punchy what with the august heat and full gizzards and greatly needing the protection of shade trees and a civil-servant traditional nooner-siesta but the bosses were there and back on the water we went.

Things progressed much faster this season than in others but there remained one sole incorrigible largeish floater that was too intimidating to hit straight-on. Pill kept hitting at it obliquely over and over gaining speed with each pass until one attempt was too fast and almost upset the boat. As the bow (with me there) went upwards and listed dangerously to starboard I spied a massive snapping turtle surface from under the floating biomass. Razor saw it too....at much closer proximity than me and it made and angry hiss of sorts from its beaked jowls.

Certainly he hysterically overreacted somewhat but razor made enough of a scene that pill returned to shore a bit early for our scheduled 1430 break where we sought for shade from the unrelenting sun and for some cooling beverages. There razor paced to and fro relating our recent adventure to all assembled there. In less than a quarter of an hour from the actual event, the snapping turtle had imaginatively changed to a great white shark and there razor adamantly regaled us with just how pill had saved our lives from it by his boat handling prowess.

And that is how the bromance commenced with razor and pill becoming ebony/ivory brothers and razor being eternally obliged to pill for pill saving his life from the vicious hungry shark.

roscoe even had to transfer razor from booby moates and truck #09 of the waste-water dept. over to woodrow and the potable water dept. so razor could ride shotgun with pill in truck #11.

The massive floater turned out to be nothing more than an upside-down moulded plastic kiddie wading pool covered in sewerage solids that had somehow infiltrated from the gutter-culvert-ditch stormwater system over into wastewater.

I carried it either in my back right-hand pocket or tucked into my pants waist, just in back of my right hip. When I drew the gun I wiped it forward on my pants leg .. the gun angled so the top of the slide was facing my right leg. The rear sight caught my pants leg and slammed the slide back .. as I continued to push forward the slide returned chambering a cartridge. My trigger finger was outside the trigger guard, slightly above it. As I pushed the gun on forward my finger went into the guard and fired the gun.

I could do this before you could think about it.

One Shootists Holiday when we were meeting up in Buena Vista, Colorado, we had a group of young County Police attending. On the range I took the Officers ACP and unloaded it, dropped the slide and the hammer and inserted the magazine. Then I stuck the gun in my back pocket. I asked the cops, "If you walked up on a guy who you knew had the gun in this condition, do you think you could beat him if he went for his gun?" Most felt they could.

We were 5 or 6 feet from the firing line and I handed Jerry Danuser a rock a bit larger than a baseball. I told him, "Toss it at the backstop." I did not have my hand on the gun but just in a normal position, elbow slightly bent like I always stood. Jerry tossed the rock and I drew the ACP, wiped it across my pants leg and shattered the rock before it hit the backstop.

There were some of The Shootists standing around watching including Deacon Deason. The next day on the range Deacon approached me and said, “Can I see that little .45 you used yesterday?” I had it in my back pocket and handed it to him. He looked at it a bit and then handed it back and asked, “How did you do that trick yesterday? Can you show me?” I said “Sure. Like this.” and pulled the gun, wiped it on my pants leg as I poked it toward the backstop. AND THE LOADED CARTRIDGE FLEW OUT OF THE GUN AND LANDED ON GROUND A COUPLE FEET IN FRONT OF ME! I was completely and totally confused. I had done this a thousand times and never had the loaded cartridge fly out of the gun. How could that happen? And all around me The Shootists are laughing so hard some of them are crying!

I could not understand what was going on! I picked up the cartridge and it was a 10mm!!!! Deacon was laughing so hard I thought he was gonna fall down. It turned out that when he was looking at my gun, he dropped the magazine and stuck a 10mm magazine in it. They really got me that day!

I shot some of them today. All were at 20 yards. Some were shot offhand and some using a 2-hand hold and a barrel rest.

I also tried some loads using 4.0 gr. Bullseye

Next was bullet 454424 over 6.0 gr. Bullseye

The Bullet 454190 over 6.5 gr. 231

And bullet 45424 over 6.5 gr. 231

The old .45 is still accurate! The shooter ... not so much .. But it was Good Day! The sun was at my back, the target was bright, and best of all .... I COULD SEE THE SIGHTS MOST OF THE TIME!

As it turns out... (I can tell you're all waiting in suspense)... there was, and I brought it home. I got some bullets and a whole lot of brass, not to mention some cartridge boxes and some organized shelving that I could put to good use (my current system of organization being of the "a tornado came through here" school).

I was sitting down sorting brass yesterday and looking at what I thought was about 300 cases of 6.5 Creedmoor. It turns out it was about half 6.5 Creedmoor brass and the other half .250 Savage brass.

So I have about 150 empty brass cases for .250 Savage. I thought to myself "What am I going to do with this?" The reply came to me almost immediately: "Uh, I dunno... shoot some deer with it maybe?"

There's a shop a few townships over that seems to really appreciate the Savage 99, and they keep quite a few of them on the used rack. I am certain they will have one or more of them chambered in .250-3000.

A couple of questions:

1) Will the 14:1 rifling twist stabilize a 100-grain bullet adequately, or should I look specifically for the later 1:10 twist? and

2) Does anyone here have any experience loading and shooting the .250 Savage?

-AaronB

I remember well those cold and rainy winter afternoons, dark and dreary at the city barn. Roscoe, the utility dept. superintendent endeavored to give us menial tasks for the sake of principles but the iron in our blood always seemed to turn to lead and settle in our a**es. Much sitting about and shooting the bull and chewing the fat.
There was an excellent former u.s. army coffee urn, surplus from camp seibert. For those who imbibed on something stronger than caffeine, robert newsome and shagg simpson had an old crockery churn, covered with cheesecloth, continuously brewing whatever ripe fruits or veggies they added to the bubbling and foamy concoction. You used the bottom of a soup ladle to clear a pool amongst the sudsy slime, caught a ladleful, pinched your nose against the malodor and then down the gullet. A half-ladleful once was enough for me. I learned my lessen and never tried it again. On the transistor am radio there was george jones and charlie pride and the like for background ambience.

As far as entertainment goes, a gentleman called uncle pill was the primary raconteur of the group but sleepy jackson was more clever with a lewd joke and skillet keller and razor huey would also regale us with what was interesting with the coloured folk over in peppertown. On this particular lazy afternoon razor had the floor, telling us of a memorable impromptu party that they had had.

He used a term for the celebration that I was unfamiliar with and I wish I could remember it. Even in this day and age of internet search engines and their inexhaustible data I have been unable to discover the word he used. It was along the lines of soiree or hootenanny for quaintness but more african or west Indies in origin. Anyways, I'll insert "humdinger" for the disremembered word and let razor commence dispensing with the bother of quotation marks other than the obligatory one at the beginning and one at the end.....

"In those days when segregation had just started to ebb somewhat, we had a humdinger planned at the old slave cemetery up on dump mountain. We met first at Ida's Cafe which had just began to be interrogated (that is what he said presumably meaning integration) and allow mixed company. Since ida had a pool hall and pinball arcade I had equipped myself with several rolls of dimes. I didn't like the way those rolls rode in my tight-fitting dungarees so I emptied them dimes loose into the four pockets.

The party started out slow and mellow, all of us aware of the necessity of making a good impression on honky(s). Then as dusk set, singly or by twos or threes so as not to draw attention we trekked up west hill to oak ridge then on up mountain view were the coloured cemetery was located near the entrance to the old city dump. It was sure enough dark up there once you got past the street lights.....spooky too but some of the brothers already had lanterns and burning brands and whatnot for lighting. There was car radio music and wine and malt liquors and some fine sisters, ready and willing.

Suddenly, without any warning there was a blue flash and a clap of thunder and a great gust of wind. All of the lights went out and amid the confusion someone shouted for us to look in the direction of the landfill. In the pitch black it looked like bunches of green balls of light creeping and crawling across the ground up there.

A sister screamed hysterically "them's either the haints of confederates or the ku klux !" Panic ensued and then we were, all in a mob, running for our lives back down towards town.
Now some of them kids was quite fleet of foot and greatly out-ran us. I had ahold of the hand of the wench who I intended to have my way with later and she was really slowing us down by looking behind. "There is old lucifer almost on us. I cans hears his cloven trotters clip-cloppin' on the pavements !" she shrieked.

That made our feets move faster. Then I began to hear the rattle of chains. Sometimes right above us like they was hovering overhead. Other times like they was right on our tails, yea, even at our very feets. Everybody knows that some of them old slaves, ornery field hands mostly and not house n-----s was buried fettered with shackles and chains. Having a humdinger on top of and amongst them must haved ired them-up. So we picked-up the pace and was putting space between us and them. I could tell as the rattling gradually abated then ceased altogether just as we came-up under the welcome street lights of the parking lot of ida's cafe.

Whew ! I was a blowing with a throbbing stitch in my side. My gal was puffing too and an unhealthy yellow, two or three shades lighter than normal, she was. I really was too fagged for the long walk back across town so I reached into a pocket for a dime to use ida's payphone to fetch a ride. Empty ! All four pockets.....and I had started-out with $40 worth of dimes !

Then we began laughing as it dawned-on us what had occurred. Them chains we heard was nothing more than the sounds of all them dimes bouncing out of my pockets onto the pavements."

So ended his tale. We laughed and applauded just the correct amount. When order returned we heard uncle pill clear his throat in preparation for his turn at the stump but before he could begin, booby moates, the certified lunatic amongst us interrupted with an insaneish cackle.....

"did you go back up the hill with a flashlight to pick-up them dimes ?"
Razor refused to answer but we all knew that he had not.....

After a short stalk I spotted the one I was after. He was larger than the others and more aggressive. Not only that, but somehow he seemed to sense that I was after him. Every time I spotted him and started to get into position to shoot he would move. After a few times he simply started to leave the area.

I liked where we were because it was open enough that I could get a clear shot. And I could approach from different angles so that I had a good “backstop” of sorts if any shots ricocheted. As he moved away I went away from him at a 90 degree angle, then moved through the clutter and got in the path of where he was headed without alerting him. I waited until he appeared headed for me and stepped out, ready to fire, only to have him reverse and go back the way he came!

I thought “Crap!” and headed back the way I had come. I was able to get to where he was headed before he did and I had the rifle ready. As he came into sight he spotted me, gave an alert call and reversed, going directly away from me. I put the bead on his butt and pulled the trigger. At the shot feathers flew and he took off running. He ran maybe 10 feet and piled up, kicking his last. The Federal .22 Long Rifle hollowpoint worked really well!

He was old, a very large rooster, weighing close to 10 pounds. I carried him around to the compost barrel and tossed him in. He was too old and tough to try to eat, but he would make good compost.

Now we only have 9 other roosters to deal with, all young enough they will be good eating!

Using my mongrel alloy (some wheel weights, some pipe lead, some spent air rifle pellets, some sinkers) with just enough plumber's solder to help with filling out the mold, I was able to cast these:

They're dropping right at .455, at 257 grains dry. With lube they will be close to 260 grains on the button. You will see from the photo that the nose-pour sprue is a little rough; I can address this by cooling the sprues before I cut them.

I have some pure lead ingots on order, and I am going to see how well this mold pours with pure lead. I anticipate some weak fill-out, but my hope is that with sufficient heat I can get it done.

Many a Webley shooter can use these I bet.

-AaronB

Thank you!