FMJ..... a tool for the tuff jobs.

[xtriggerman]

Come October, we will be in our new home 3 years. About 9 years ago the previous owner put an addition on the back of the garage with a basement below the garage floor level. When ever there is any kind of steady rain for a couple of days, the basement floor would flood out from water seepage threw the back block wall. Apparently the builder wasn't to bright when considering water management of the foundation. The basement floor slab is poored on ledge rock so if you seal up the back wall with no footing drain..... I get what I had..... water intrusion. SO,
     A jack hammer was out of the question with arthritis setting in so level one is 7.62x39. After about 200 some odd rounds, I drained out a lot of the item 4 back fill.
 
 
    I still had to get back about 5 feet in there to where the water was seeping in with a small trench and the x39 was proving not so effective on the floor slab. So I stepped it up to some M2-AP. Its from the 50's but did a fine job. Then about 80-ish round of old M2 ball to excavate the back fill. About a dozen hang fires and equal amount of duds got me to where I wanted to be. A good flush of a garden hose left no puddles behind but a nice fast drainage.  Now I don't want folks to think this is particularly a safe thing to do since a bullet frag could very well have been along with the showers of concrete chips flying out of there but I have to admit.... it was fun as all get out blasting the crap out of that slab & back fill!
 
 Time to clean the ol 03-A3 tonight  8)

Edited October 6, 2017 by xtriggerman

[Wingshooter]

I've only trimmed trees, aerated burn barrels and odd jobs like that with those kinds of "yard tools", but I've never used them for foundation repair. I like it!

Edited October 6, 2017 by Wingshooter

[Omega]

Redneck engineering at its finest, I love it.  Recover any bullets?

[xtriggerman]

1 hour ago, Omega said:

Redneck engineering at its finest, I love it.  Recover any bullets?

No, there were only various shards of copper jacket all mixed in with the back fill. I hoped to find some of the hardened steel AP inserts but no luck there. I don't know if they were using tungsten carbide back in the 50's when my AP rounds were made. It would be interesting to see if they were damaged much once the jacket & lead were striped away. 

[Dolomite_supafly]

Last year we had a wood stove put in by a local roofing guy, great roofer. During the install I used .22 pistol with a laser and silencer to mark where to drill in the roof. I put the dot where he wanted and pulled the trigger. A 22 CB wouldn't go through so I had to use a short. Worked so well the next one we shot through the sheet rock ceiling and the roof. A lot easier than trying to drill a hole.

[xtriggerman]

2 hours ago, Dolomite_supafly said:

Last year we had a wood stove put in by a local roofing guy, great roofer. During the install I used .22 pistol with a laser and silencer to mark where to drill in the roof. I put the dot where he wanted and pulled the trigger. A 22 CB wouldn't go through so I had to use a short. Worked so well the next one we shot through the sheet rock ceiling and the roof. A lot easier than trying to drill a hole.

Yeah, in a pinch, a well placed piece of lead can save a person some labor. I remember a story a co worker told me back in the early 80's about how one day he went to this old guy's junk yard looking for a ford manual trany input shaft so he could line up a clutch plate under a pressure plate in his truck. The old guy tells him he can make one up for him and pulls open a drawer in his desk and takes out a Ruger 44mag black hawk. They proceeded to walk back to a pile of manual transmissions. The old guy flipped a few around and then flung one to the ground and told Terry to stand back a way. He then shoots the heavy casting around the input shaft 4 or 5 times, walks over to it and kicks the shaft loose and hands it to Terry.   
   I could see hitting it at rifle range..... maybe, but pistol range in the open?   Then again the old guy was a Korean War vet with all the "fear" pretty much drained out of him from what I was told. 

Edited October 6, 2017 by xtriggerman

[Bubba Fett]

Shame you didn't recover any of the AP cores.  I'd have liked to see that, myself. 

Around here I'd have to use a proper Hollywood-grade silencer on a job like that or the neighbors would be down my throat from the south end.  

[Murgatroy]

Had the floorboards flood on a car when I left the windows down overnight for a rough storm. Nothing a .22 didn't drain out.

[Ronald_55]

If I tried any of this, the first one would bounce back and take my head off. 

[JAB]

That's great!  About the only similar thing I have done - and it isn't really all that similar - is using a 20 gauge with the adjustable choke cranked all the way to the tightest setting to harvest some mistletoe out of a tree.  I did use a spent CCI Stinger case to repair an old, double barrel shotgun when one of the barrels wouldn't fire because the hammer wasn't being 'cocked' like it was supposed to be (and it worked.)

Edited October 11, 2017 by JAB

[Murgatroy]

On 10/11/2017 at 11:16 AM, JAB said:

That's great!  About the only similar thing I have done - and it isn't really all that similar - is using a 20 gauge with the adjustable choke cranked all the way to the tightest setting to harvest some mistletoe out of a tree.  I did use a spent CCI Stinger case to repair an old, double barrel shotgun when one of the barrels wouldn't fire because the hammer wasn't being 'cocked' like it was supposed to be (and it worked.)

I used a .410 for Mistletoe harvesting. I thought this was normal?