GP-100

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Ah, the GP-100 arrived today. Another gun rescued from a life of not belonging to me. Came with some competition speedloaders too. This thing was used as a competition gun by a fella so it has replacement springs to give it a smoother, slicker trigger pull. As sweet as the dounle-action is, I’ll probably pick up a set of factory springs and put them in. I want this gun as a general-purpose revolver and I’d like the heavier springs to ensure good firing pin hits.

gp100

As you can see from the photo, theres some carbon markings on the cylinder. Anyone have any ideas on best way to remove ‘em? Keep in mind I dont have a parts tank, hazmat suit, or EPA certifications….so something over-the-counter would be nice.

ETA: Would not have believed if I hadnt seen it with my own eyes: pencil eraser does the trick!

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Freezer fun

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Lately, as in the last month or so, my upright freezer seems to have been developing a rather intensive frost problem. Its a 20 year old freezer and I suspect that the door seals were starting to fail and warm air was getting in there, condensing and creating the amazing amount of frost. How amazing? I am not kidding when I sawy that when you open the freezer door it looks like this.

So, here’s where logistics problems come in. The smart money says: defrost fridge, clean it up, check all the seals, replace if necessary, restart freezer, bring to temp, watch for a few days, and load it back up if no problem.

Thats the smart thing to do. Trouble is, where do I keep a couple hundred pounds of meat in the meantime? Am I supposed to rent a meat locker, chisel all the meat out of the fridge, bin it up, run it to the truck, race across town, hurl it into the meat locker, and then reverse the process a few days later? No, the solution we went with was this: the freezer has worked for twenty years, it’s time to pull the plug (Ha! I kill myself sometimes.) and let it go after serving for two decades and replace it with a new chest freezer. As it was written, so shall it be done.

More logistics issues followed. The biggest was this: I have a bunch of preparedness gear and supplies stashed in my house. I do not let just anyone into my house and virtually no one into my basement. So who the frak is going to help me haul a freezer down a flight of steps? Well, there’s only four people I trust enough to let them into my house like that – one has moved away, one has mediocre upper body strength and the other two have tight schedules. Still, managed to get one of them in there and we got it down the stairs. So now comes an even greater adventure: shuttling food from freezer A to freezer B.

You would think this would be a snap, right? I stand at one freezer, toss a steak across the room to the missus, she catches it and stuffs it into the new freezer, right? Nope. Remember that little frost issue? Every package that comes out of the freezer looks like something that crawled out of abominable snowman’s butt. Every vacuum-sealed stake was caked in frost. Solution? Every package had to be quickly dunked into a bucket of hot water to get the frost off, dried with a towel, and then carefully organized and placed in the new freezer. All the while, the door to the old freezer is wide open, things are thawing and the clock is tick, tick, ticking. Hey, no pressure.

So we got it done and in the process took an inventory. The old upright is thawing as we speak and once its done doing that and dried out I’ll check it over and turn it back on to see if this frost problem persists. If it doesnt, I might keep it around as a backup freezer in case I ever need to defrost the other one.

From a preparedness standpoint, this was a bit informative…I got to pull out some stuff outta the freezer that is a couple years old but, thanks to the vacuum packaging appears to be doing just fine. This was also a reminder that I need to get off my butt, stop whining about it, and just put out the money and buy a bloody Honda eu2000 already.

 

More invitations to OPSEC fail

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I seem to be getting more and more of these sorts of emails these days. This sort of thing can never be a good idea. Theres just no reason to do this sort of thing. But, I mention it here in case anyone wants to take a swing at it. I wonder if maybe someone could troll them by being so amazingly over-the-top that they think they’ve hit ratings gold.

Hello,

My name is Jessie and I’m a casting assistant for Metal Flowers Media. We are in the process of casting for a reality TV show and are searching for zombie hunters, preppers, and apocalypse specialists who have the expertise to speak boldly, passionately, and fearlessly – and can show off their preparedness for the coming apocalypse. We are accepting applicants of any age that are serious about the matter and I think you would be a perfect candidate for the show! Would you be interested in anything like this or know anyone within your group that may be interested? You can reach me at jessie@metalflowersmedia.com or my cell 303-818-0767.
Thanks!
Jessie Davis
Casting Assistant
Metal Flowers Media, LLC
720-310-5338
………………………………………..
Web// www.metalflowersmedia.com
FB// facebook.com/metalflowersmedia
Twitter// @metalflowers

moar gunz! – pt. II

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A little late to the party, but somehow we’ll find room in the safe for it:

9030208168_98eae70dcf_zReally, more of a competition rig than a ‘practical rig….G35 w/ fiber optic front sight, aftermarket rear sight, trigger job, spare mags with basepads, mag holders, Bladetech holster and a Tactical Solutions .22 kit w/ three mags. Price? Oh..well…I don’t want to be tacky….but this whole deal cost less than what dealer price is on a new G35 all on its own,

Yeah, kinda stumbled into the deal. This should be the end of the gun buying for a while and we let our respective wallets recover. (Although the GP-100 is paid for, just waiting for it to arrive now.)

moar gunz!

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There has been a bit of an orgy of gun-buying going on around here as of late. However, the firearms circle-of-life does not come cheaply..and some guns in the safe are sent on their way to make room for new additions. What sort of new additions? A Glock 34, a Glock 35 and a Ruger GP-100. Who in the gun safe got voted off the island? The wife’s Kimber Pro Carry II that probably hasn’t had more than 200 rounds through it in the last six years. While 1911′s are fun guns, to me they just are not suitable candidates for our anticipated uses. They can be finicky, parts can be expensive, the guns themselves are spendy, and the magazine capacity is fairly limited. So…I keep my old Springfield 1911 for nostalgia’s sake but I rarely use it in any other capacity than at the shooting range. (Once in a while, I’ll carry it afield but thats usually because I have better field holsters for it than I do for the Glocks.) I keep all the support equipment for the 1911 so if the day comes, I could certainly use it and maintain it for quite a while but I’d have to go through about a half dozen Glocks before I hit that stage.

The Glock 35 is in .40 which is not a caliber we plan on doing much with. The missus wanted a race gun for Open Class and this thing came to us in a crazy good deal…comes already tweaked out for competition, comes with some competition mags, and even a Tactical Solutions .22 conversion kit…all for less than the dealer price of a new G35. So..yeah…had to get that.

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The Glock 34 was, I thought, for me but a miscommunication has also landed that one in the wife’s competition loot pile. I’ll have to satisfy myself with the GP-100 as my new gun-o-the-month.

I’m actually a Smith and Wesson fan but, honestly, the Rugers tend to be a bit more robust and durable than pretty much any other revolver. Given my druthers, for a .357 I’d face the world with a Smith 681 in each hand but they just won’t be as durable as the Ruger. I have a Smith 28 sitting in the safe now and theres really no reason for me to keep it so I should probably Gunbroker that one as well and use the money to get another GP-100. The GP-100 is about the same size as Smiths L-frame series so perhaps there will be some cross-platform compatability in terms of holsters and speedloaders.

And although it’s not a new gun it may as well be – I drank a couple gallons of Magpul kool-aid the other day and tweaked out one of my old school non-flattop AR rifles. I’ve been carrying around the PTR when hunting and the HK-style of sling attachment and carry was very appealing to me. Sadly, even though we’ve had a bout fifty years of M16 development we still have the old-style sling attachments. I pulled off the factory handguards and stock and added the MOE rifle Stock and Handguard, that was half the battle. The other half was then mounting the Sling Attachment point up front and getting the two-to-one point QD Sling. So, now I can carry the gun pretty much the same way I carry the PTR but without the network of around-the-stock loops of webbing that are normally needed to convert an AR to that style of carry.

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Still have to order in the matching replacement pistol grip, but this is how it looks so far. The biggest drawback I see so far to this stock is that while it does have a storage compartment, the shape of it is completely incompatible with the GI cleaning kit. That annoys me. And, yeah, that Magpul Kool-Aid can be an expensive drink. But, I got the features I wanted, the color change to thegun that I wanted, and a few other mounting possibilities are now available, so I don’t mind spending the money if I get what I want the way I want it. Honestly, I’ll probably only do one or two ARs up this way, one rifle and one carbine, and see how I like them.

And, finally, my 30-rd 9mm Beretta factory happysticks arrived:

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So there you have it…a gun-centric week so far and it’s only Tuesday. THings to do this week: set up the big Dillon and crank off some ammo so the wife can start playing with her new G34.

 

Convenience packaging – batts at CostCo

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One of the basic things about preparedness that youre just going to have to get used to is that you wind up buying things in two sizes: huge, gigantic, Costco-sized containers/quantity or tiny, itty-bitty single-serve sizes in giant quantity.

Why the disparity? Well, when youre hunkering down at your home or retreat you have no problem dipping a tablespoon or two of ketchup out of your gallon jug. But if youre out in the field, sleeping in your car, or otherwise living out of your pack, you’ll be better served with those little fast-food packet sized offerings.

Problem is, the smaller you get to a quantity of a product, the higher the premium (usually). For example, if you bought a five-gallon pail of mustard and you then bought a case of fast-food packets that added up to five gallons you’d see that, almost certainly, the packets cost more on a cost-per-ounce basis than the bucket.

This is understandable, naturally,  because while the empty five gallon bucket costs more than the empty foil packets, the five gallons of mustard only needed one bucket…the five-gallons of packets, however, required about a thousand individual foil packets and were probably more  resource-intensive to fill – thus, higher price per unit.

Are there times when the convenience of the packaging is enough to offset the increased cost? Sure. Take that condiment example I just gave.

I mention this because I was up at CostCo to day and stumbled across these:

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They are a ‘bulk’ package of Duracell batteries that are broken down into ‘matchbooks’ of four batteries. Each smaller cardboard box contains four AA or AAA batteries. Why is this handier than the bulk packages? When I grab a handful of batteries to throw in a pack I always have to put the batteries into some type of holder or tape them together as a bundle. Doing t his keeps the battery contacts from shorting out against each other or other metallic items in my pack. This packaging helps to prevent that – just grab a box of four and toss it in the bag. Additionally, we all have ‘junk drawers’ with loose batteries floating around…this solves that problem neatly. Now, obviously, if youre disciplined and organized enough, you can do this sort of thing on your own; no need for a pre-packaged solution. But some fast math showed me that in this particular case not only is there no increased cost, the batteries were actually $0.25 cheaper for the entire package than if I had bought the bulk battery packages. So: no added cost for convenience packaging.

If youre the kinda guy whose particular flavor of apocalypse includes ‘trade goods’ and bartering (or giving away your hard-earned gear as ‘charity’) then this sort of packaging definitely has some attraction. For setting up small caches or bugout kits these would also be convenient choices. My only complaint is that AAA-batts are not something we have much need for…we standardized around D-, AA- and CR123-batts. To be fair, though, I do keep a  very small quantity of AAA batts on hand for some non-preparedness toys we keep around like remote controls, tiny LED lights, etc.

Not sure if this is a CostCo-specific item, a temporary ‘test market’ type of packaging or what but it seems like something that would be handy.

Cool

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Summer is apparently on its way here in Big Sky Country. Im not a fan of hot weather and while the days in Montana can often get up into the 90′s (or worse) they usually cool down by about 20-30 degrees at night so you can sleep comfortably with nothing more complex than a fan in the window. If it really gets objectionable, I can always retreat to my basement where its usually a constant sixty something degrees.

I feel bad for folks that live in regions where the weather is always Too Damn Hot and basements are a rarity. (I’m looking at you, south-east USA.) I cannot imagine living in a place where, should the air conditioning go out, there is no recourse to cooling down short of subersion. How the heck did people live in these places before the advent of electricity and ceiling fans?

On the other hand, the winters here will, without heat or electrical power, kill you in short order. While the folks in Georgia or Alabama may think the world is ending when an inch-and-a-half of snow hits the ground there it’s really pretty lame compared to a week of -10 degrees and windchills in the -40 range.

On the bright side, the hot, sunny summer months are when a couple PV panels would be doing the most work so one might be able to charge enough of a battery bank to run an electric fan for a few hours a night. MacGyver a swamp cooler with some bins of water and a rack of hanging towels and a person might make it even in the hottest climes.

One thing I’ve always been curious about trying – since we are told that the temperature underground is fairly constant, why couldnt a person have a network of underground tubing to draw air throguh? Bury it five or six feet underground and draw warm air through one end and after travelling a few hundred feet the air would be cooled and come out the other end. Only drawback I can think of, which might not really be a drawback, would be condensation form in the tubes but that could be drawn out as well to provide water.

Like I said, in my particular region it drops 20-30 degrees at night so I’m never too worried about keeping cool enough to sleep. I can always set up a tent in the yard and sleep out there at night and be nice and cool.

Basements, though…..thats where its at. Cool temperature, fairly consistent year round…I feel bad for folks that dont have one.

LED MagLite

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When you’ve been into preparedness quite a long time, progress can be a double-edged sword – while it’s awesome to have improvements in your gear over what you had twenty years ago the drawback is that it means you have to upgrade, often at considerable expense, to get those improvements. Case in point: flashlights.

Now, I don’t know how old you are but it’s likely that, for most of your adult life, when it comes to flashlights you reflexively think of the classic, all-metal, beat-a-man-to-death-with-it MagLite. Prior to the MagLite the market was mostly plastic-bodied flashlights and a few specialty lights used by the cops. In fact, pick up an old book on cop gear from the late 1970′s or early 1980′s and you’ll probably see references to the ‘Kel-Lite‘, one of the earlier ‘duty flashlights’.

For basic end-of-the-world duty whether it be tornado, earthquake or NYC Blackout, the D-cell MagLite is what I keep  on hand (other than small pocket SureFire lights). For years I’ve had various MagLites of the 3-battery D-cell variety laying about the house, and a stash of about a half-dozen laid back for future use. And, for my needs, that seemed a good way to go.

Then, naturally, progress marches on and the incandescent bulbs and ‘Xenon/Krypton’ bulbs, which were all the rage, started giving way to LED bulbs. LEDS drew much less power (a big consideration when  you may not know where your next batch of batteries is coming from) and had no delicate filaments to break if you dropped the light on a hard surface. (Older MagLites had a spare bulb in the tailcap…LED MagLites dispense with this since the bulbs are, effectively, unbreakable in normal (or abnormal) use and have a life measured in years and years of continuous use.) So now the stash of incandescent MagLites is ‘yesterdays technology’. Oh, they’ll work just fine but they wont have the advantages of the more modern LED lights.

Since I’ve always been a fan of the MagLite for its brutal ruggedness the obvious solution is to upgrade to the LED versions. Now, if youre like me you really dont want to spend any more money than you have to so you may be tempted to buy one of the LED ‘conversions’ thats are out there. Basically,  you just swap out the bulb for a regulated-power LED bulb. This will work, no doubt about it, but it will not turn your old-style MagLite into the equivalent of the newer style. Here’s why: in addition to replacing the fragile filament-bulb the reflector of the flashlight is shaped differently. On most incandescent-bulb flashlights the reflector is funnel shaped. On the LED MagLites it is more ovoid (egg) shaped. The difference is noticeable when it comes to performance. If you’re going top upgrade, then upgrade. Half-measures to save twenty bucks probably will not pay off in the long run. Spend the money and get the purpose-built D-cell LED model.

I bring this up because someone emailed me a while back and asked me about what to keep in their car for a long road trip they were planning on. I told them to take along the usual things, blanket, water, cash, flashlight, etc, etc, but I admonished them not to just grab the first $9.99 flashlight they found on the shelf at Home Depot but to specifically get the MagLite 3-D Cell LED Flashlight..accept no substitutes. Think of all those AAA commercials where the guy is kneeling next to his car, in the dark, changing a tire, as rain pours down on him and his wife stands by the side of the road holding the flashlight. That is so not the time for a $2.99 Made-In-China flashlight.

But what about the higher-end stuff like SureFire? You know, I love SureFire products. They make great weapon lights, they make great tactical flashlights, but they do not make, in my opinion, work lights. By work lights I mean the flashlight that you would use in the aforementioned AAA tire-changing scenario. Let’s face it, CR123 flashlights are not ‘sustained fire’ flashlights…they are meant for short(!) periods of use as you check out hallways and rooms and that sort of thing. Leave one on for fifteen minutes straight and it’ll either burst into flame or be time for another set of $5 batteries. Mel Tappan had his ‘working guns’ and his ‘defense guns’, well the MagLites are pretty much ‘working flashlights’ and the SureFire are ‘defensive flashlights’.

Regardless, I have a number of the older style MagLites here that will be relegated to secondary or tertiary status. They’re fine flashlights…for 1999. While I would certainly take one over a cheapo Made In China $2.99 flashlight, I would rather have the more modern LED light that is hardier and thriftier in terms of battery usage.

While Im on the subject of MagLites, in an attempt to gild the lily MagLite offers some accessories for their product. The colored filter set is, in my opinion, not terribly useful. If youre not using one of the colored filters you have to carry around the filters and the clunky rubber ‘mask’ that goes over the flashlight head. One accessory that is worthwhile, though, are the brackets ( MAGLITE D-Cell Flashlight Mounting Bracket ) that let you mount the light to a wall or other surface. While practical, these are made out of some fairly brittle plastic and I have broken more than one. If you use one of these make sure you replace/remove the flashlight on a straght-line axis…torquing it out of the jaws at an angle will sometimes break the darn thing.

My biggest complaint about MagLites is that there is no attachment point for a lanyard. You could just drill a hole through the tailcap and thread in a sling swivel or somethingl ike that, but you would then lose the waterproof integrity of the product. I think there might be enough meat in the endcap to drill a hole for a split ring but I havent tried that yet. I suppose a crafty person could chuck the body of the light in a lathe and turn a groove in the body shallow enough to keep a loop of paracord or wire from sliding up and down the length of the body.

Anyway, if youre in the market for a solid flashlight thats a bit more practical than tactical definitely get the LED MagLite. Skip the C-cell version, those are just silly. Go with the big burly D-batts.

Now if only CostCo would bring them back so I could buy a bunch at a discount, I’d be a happy camper.

ETA: Two interesting accessories I havent tried yet (but want to):

Maglite D Cell Flashlight glass breaking Tail Cap X Cape Cap – If youre going to keep a light in your car, might as well have one with the glassbreaker built in.

X Cape Cap Maglite C or D Bezel Upgrade – Short of beating someone with this thing, I have no idea if it works or not but looks like it would make a nasty impression.

 

Gold, suppressor paperwork

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Well, it wasn’t mine but at least I got to  hold it:

IMG_0829Thats about, uhm….fifteen, sixteen thousand dolllars worth of gold. The Metals Pimp came by to show it off. There is virtually nothing going on in my life that could not be favorably altered with a solid application of this stuff.

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Still have a few of the Hardigg cases left if anyone is interested.

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Dropped off the last of the paperwork for my suppressor this afternoon so it is now in thehands of our benevolent and accomodating fedgov. The guy at the store told me Christmas might be the time I can come by and pick the bloody thing up. I can have an ‘instant’ background check to buy a Glock but it takes six months to to a background check for a suppressor? The implication is either the instant background check is far more lax than the NFA checks, or they simply drag the NFA checks out unneccesarily. Either one doesnt exactly instill a lot of hope.

In addition to having the Rugers threaded, I’m going to send out my 10″ Contender .22LR barrel to be threaded. Since there’ll be no noise of an action cycling, the finished product should be as quiet as can be. I should also probably start work on a good bullet trap for my basement.