Dolomite_supafly

I've never seen that before. Not sure how many you reload but it might be worth it to uniform the flash holes. The tool is about $15. That or your could chuck the decapping rod in a drill and file it a bit thinner. You might have to sand it if the pin is hardened. Dolomite

Another option might be to get a couple of leg traps and set them at the entrance. And when you set them do not bait them, just set them in hopes they step on the trigger. They can be had at any co-op and are cheap. The size you need would be less than $10 each. Some people think they are inhumane but if you are on top of it they do not suffer very long. I would warn against poisoning them or making less than ideal shots. That might allow them to get deep into your interior walls before they die. Having the smell of a large oppossum rotting in your walls can be very overwhelming. Dolomite

The Lee keyed slug mold. I have also tried some of the Lyman "pellet" mold slugs. They worked well also. Dolomite

I do cast my own balls for 12 gauge as well as slugs. I also cast 9mm and 45. I am getting ready to start casting for 30 caliber as well. As a matter of fact I cast everything I shoot except 22. I haven't done a lot of anything lately because of other issues but I need to before it gets too hot. To cast your own you could get a Lee mold for $25. A cheap pot for $5 and a $5 bag of charcoal if you don't have a grill. Scrounge up some lead. You also need a ladle of some sort but for under $40 you could be casting your own. You need to make sure you do it outside and in a well ventilated area. I would also recommend a mask because if you small ANYTHING there is lead mixed in with it. Here is a round ball mold for 20 gauge: http://www.midwayusa.com/product/556085/lee-2-cavity-bullet-mold-575-diameter-round-ball And for the ammo use Federal because the cups work as is. I know with Remington you need different cups. And because the round balls are going to be close enough to the shot weight all you need to do is dump out the lead shot and insert a lead ball. Or if you want you are more than welcome to come out to my place and use my casting equipment. I am about 20 miles east of Knoxville. It will take between 5 and 6 pounds of lead to make 100 balls. Dolomite

Called them. All they have is low temp stuff. Dolomite

I used them overseas. They ran great with the standard barrel but with the paratrooper barrels they were prone to stoppages. Dolomite

Sure, the only requirement is the material used must have a melting point above 1,100 degrees. What type of brazing are you talking about? Dolomite

+1 If they go bang the first time you pull the trigger they are gonig to go bang for the rest of your life. We had locals that had AK's from the 50's with 10's of thousand,s if not more, rounds down the tube. And they have been cleaning them the same way for decades. A knotted shoe string with oil on it was pulled down the bore. The bolt and gas pistol pushed around in snad and dirt to get the carbon off. Then a wipe down with a oil rag. That is the amount of maintanence they did. A lot of them looked chrome because they had no finish left on them. And guess what, the majority of those guns could hit man sized targets at 350 yards the majority of the time. No need to have a high end AK. A Saiga is made in a factory that has been building AK's forever. There is a reason why most custom builders use them. And now I have convinced myself I need one. Dolomite

I seen on the news last night that Romney changed a stance to exactly what Obama has been saying. I don't remember which, I've slept since then, but I believe it was on energy or oil exploration. I am just scared of a person who speaks to the audience he is standing in front of. I think that no matter what happens we are in for a rough time. Whether it happens within this decade or takes a few decades we are going to have a major economic meltdown. It is because so many people have their hand in the cookie jar that you can't put more cookies in. I once said our children would see an economic collapse in their lifetimes but I now believe it will be in mine. Regardless of who is the next POTUS the country is pretty much doomed as a whole without hitting the reset button. And even then I do not see much of a change. Our representatives recently stripped a lot of the safeguard regulations that would prevent another major collapse so we will probably see another round of collapses and bailouts within this decade. Couple that with the increasing debt that we are having problems paying now and I believe by the end of this decade we, as a country, are going to be begging for help from the world community. And look at how well we are liked around the world now and think of who would be willing to help. Countries don't like us, the like the mighty American dollar but when that dollar isn't so mighty they aren't going to like us so much. But most importantly for this country to be successful again the people, as in individuals, need to take responsiblity. If you can't afford a $500K house don't try to buy it, finance it using an ARM then expect a bail out when the interest rates hike. I do feel compassion for those who lost their income and can't afford their home but there were those who could barely make their ARM payment in good times. I live in a modest house because that was all I could afford 9 years ago when my wife and I built it. And when I say built it I mean we built it from the ground up because we couldn't afford someone to build it for us. I never have and probably never will own a new car because even that is out of my comfort level. Dolomite

I can order it online but would prefer to spend the money locally. I am going to have to wait on the muzzle brake anyways so ordering the silver solder online is an option, just not my first option. I can order what I need online for under $10 shipped but cost isn't everything, but supporting the local economy is. I only need a few feet of high temp silver solder I am going to permanently attached a muzzle brake to a shortened shotgun barrel. It is too thin for the usual pin and weld method therefore the only other "approved" method is high temp silver solder. Needs to have at least 1,100 degree melt/flow temperature. I am wanting to try this myself rather than pay a shop. I have never worked in silver solder before and would like to give it a try. Gaining the knowledge is worth the extra cost of doing it myself. Thanks guys Dolomite

Whatever you do make sure you do nothing more than wipe it down with oil. DO NOT try to shine or remove any patina because you will remove any collector value. All to often people think they are improving the value of a gun by polishing and shining but with collectible guns it is just the opposite. With guns that old they used something called rust bluing. It makes the metal more of a brown color and that is the correct color for this gun, not blue. It is only modern guns that are blue. To give you an idea of how bad it can affect value I will tell you this. I watched a guy walk into a show with a very old and very rare Colt single action. In its original finish it was worth $3,000-$5,000, maybe even more but because he took a wire wheel to it the day of the show it turned it into a $500 shooter. He said he was trying to get the brown rust coloring off. It didn't appear to have any pitting and the grips were in nice shape other than where the wire wheel hit them. I say that just to impress upon you how important it is to leave original guns original. Dolomite

Well pushing a 9mm hard enough that the primer pockets were fall out loose is never a good thing. Noise and flash was similar to factory ammo, maybe a bit more of a crack. Realistically I wouldn't be concerned pushing it to 1,600 fps but not much beyond. And that is in a rifle only. It would no doubt turn the average pistol into a hand grenade. I literally made about 10 rounds that day and never revisited it. It was pretty amazing shooting at steel at 50 yards with no perceivable delay. I was also very, very nervous working up to it. I would never load rounds for "later". It would be too easy for someone to load them into a pistol and get hurt. I would never recommend anyone do the same and I will take the recipe to my grave. Dolomite

I now know what I want as my next purchase. I really like the design. Dolomite

Avoid the 770. They are very, very cheap guns. They use polymer for parts that should be steel. I have seen a lot that have headspace issues (way too tight). I have also seen them fall apart within two boxes of ammo. And replacement/repair parts are non existent. Spend the extra $100 and buy a used 700 if you must have a Remington. Parts are available everywhere for 700's and they are built to last several lifetimes. Almost the same thing can be said for the Axis. Except it is a much better built gun overall than the 770. But parts for it are also non existent. You can't find anything aftermarket for them. Spend an extra $75 and buy a Stevens 200 or a used Savage. Both of those are leaps and bounds better than the Axis. One great thing about Savage compared to Remington is they are owner serviceable. Bolt heads can be swapped in 5 minutes. Barrel changes take 10 minutes and can be done at home with nothing more than a hammer and punch in a pinch. No need for a smith to do anything to a Savage. WIth a Savage you just set headspace on the ammo you are going to be shooting. Tight headspace is not a bad or dangerous thing, too loose is where problems come up. Remingtons require a lot of machining to fit a barrel, even a factory take off. Even if the Remington barrel is a take off barrel odds are it will NOT headspace correctly. And that will require time on a lathe. And if you swap bolt head diameters is requires a whole new bolt which is expensive. With a Savage it requires a $20 part to do the same. This is why I always use Savages for my builds. It makes life so much easier. And as much as the rest of the brands want to deny it most Savages will out shoot most other factory brands. Not every Savage but more often than not. I konw my factory 223 will shoot under .3" inch pretty reliably with handloads and will do <.75" 95% of the time with quality factory ammo. Dolomite

The one that went the farthest, if I remember correctly, was a 12 gauge slug. Take a look at this: http://stevespages.com/jpg/bestbullet.jpg Notice how the SIerra Pro Hunter has a penetration over 5 feet when the velocity is 1,900 fps but only 12" at 3,100 fps. It is because the bullet's integrity is overcome by the extra velocity. This is what will happen with any caliber and any bullet design. If you push any bullet design fast enough it WILL fail. To give you an example. I was loading some 90 or 95 grain 380 bullets in 9mm and firing them out of a rifle. They were FMJ with a round nose. At velocities around 1,200-1,300, if I remember correctly, the bullet passed right through 2 one gallon jugs. They left nice clean holes all the way through. I took those sme bullets and pushed them to 2,000 fps (I know it was stupid) and the bullet never made it out of the first jug. There were bits and pieces of the jacket and lead in the jug, or what was left of it, but no exit. It literally turned the jug inside out but didn't hurt the second jug at all. Dolomite

Not sure it would work. I guess I could drill the lead balls for the mini chemlights. Break them then push them into the balls. At that point it would be more of a "can it be done" project and not of any practical use. Speaking of chemlights I did this once. I sat down, popped about 20 of them then cut them open. I them put them in a battery operated squirt gun. It was like shooting tracers in the middle of the night. Pretty cool but ruined the squit gun. Dolomite

Not yet, maybe I can get to the range this weekend. I have some other stuff to test out as well. Dolomite

Well I was shooting the other day and noticed my slug loads are going slow enough (~1,100-~1,200 fps) that 90% of the time you can see them in flight. I noticed that they would seem to tumble some in flight. That got me wondering how I could make those round balls more visible in flight. So I decided to paint them. One side is flat white while the other is gloss red. I figure that alternating colors should be more visible as the ball tumbles to the target. These are loads where I pour out the shot of cheap practice ammo and replace it with a .69" round ball. Using Federal 100 round packs all I have to do is dump the shot and insert a round ball, no need for seperate cups. Here are the pictures: White side, Then the red side, how they look. And the finished product: I made a die to kind of angle the mouth in to keep the ball in place and aid in cycling. The cases are .77" OD and the mouth is .70", not much of an angle but enough to make the reliable. I did have some issues before with "slugs" but never with these balls. Probably because they are 1 1/4 ounce in weight. My next batch is going to be yellow or orange and white. Dolomite

Don't use black powder. It can be a pain to clean up and will rust your gun if not done properly. I would try TrailBoss because it is a fluffy, case filling powder. Dolomite

But Romney is the same as any Democrat from 20 years ago, maybe even more recent. His beliefs are the same, as well as his actions, as most Democrats current and past. I am finding a hard time seeing a lot of difference between Romney and most of the run of the mill Democrats other than the ® next to his name. People are getting hung up on the ® and not looking at his actions. And some of us, including me in the past, have put the ® ahead of our beliefs. The biggest enemy of the country right now is that little (D) or ® next to each candidate's name. If people would have looked beyond those letters and voted what is in their hearts the country would be in a much better palce right now. Just in the same way we can't put (M) or (F) next to a candidate's name we should avoid all labels including those little R's and D's. That would at least get people to do their own research and vote for those candidates they agree with most. I won't vote for Obama but I won't vote for Romney either. Dolomite

Have you touched the hammer at all? I know the Tapco hammers tend to be higher and can ride the bottom of the bolt HARD causing cycling issues. I know mine did exactly what you describe and I took about 1/16th off the face to ease some of it but it still wasn't 100%. Since then I have enough compliance parts that I put the factory hammer back in and it runs EVERYTHING and it does it on 1. If I set it on 2 I get some issues from the bolt moving too fast, even with low brass stuff. Even though it cycles low brass fine on 1 I do not get impacts at the rear trunion when shooting high brass stuff. I will never fire 3" shells so I tuned it for 2 3/4". I would suggest swapping back to the original hammer at a bare minimum. If that doesn't help, I bet it will, then replacing the front spring with a 16 pound 1911 spring will definitely help. The spring is what is supplied in the reliability kit sold by CSS from what I have been told. Dolomite

I went through an electronic scale learning curve. I was having very erratic readings sitting the the corner of the room. After a while of being frustrated I realized that the ceiling fan was one. Turned it off and things settled down. Another interference I had was when my heating/air was running. The scale is senistive enough that a person walking by can cause it to bounce in their wake of disturbed air. Not sure how much fluctuation you are getting but for me a .1 fluctuation is normal. I know some scales go down to .01 and that would probably drive me mad. Dolomite

Found some bunnies on mine, guess it is time to go shoot them off at the range. Dolomite

Look at the Zoom Dot. They were made by MIllett but now by Bushnell. I have a Millett Zoom Dot that is built like a tank. When I bought it the cost was comparable to a used Aimpoint, ~$350. They are now made by Bushnell but should be a decent mid level red dot sight for the price of ~$250. My Millett was used and abused overseas but never lost zero or had any other issues with it. It also has a auto sensing feature that dims or brightens the sight automatically based on ambient light. The side knob controls the dot size, changing it from 1 MOA dot to a 10 MOA dot. It makes making more precise shots easier by turning down the reticle size.The battery life on the Zoom Dot is ~1,300 hours in a well lit area if left on. It can also be turned off. Another great feature is it has no wires, only a thin wafer of electronics that can easily be replaced by the end user. It uses standard Aimpoint batteries ot two LR44/LR76 or comparables. I had one and sold it and immediately missed it. It is one optic that will never leave my possession. Dolomite

I have already been shooting a few. I am actually go to use it as part of training. I plan on drawing and firing at the bees rather than the normal slow, aimed fire. Brings a whole new level of difficulty to killing bees. I will say that 9mm makes it infinitely more difficult compared to 38 or 357 because of the reduced capacity. Dolomite