FRIDAY SURPRISE: My dog has fleas.

Friday, March 12, 2010 Filed in: Friday Surprise!, Completely irrelevant

Sadly, my dog's fleas aren't terribly talented, unlike the fleas chronicled in Dark Roasted Blend's entry on Victorian flea circuses.

That, however, isn't the end of the story. In the aforementioned article I learned of a blog devoted to flea circus research. No, I'm not kidding.

There are some really odd blogs out there. As I always say, though, “everyone needs a hobby!”

-=[ Grant ]=-

P.S.: It just occurred to me that there may be even odder blogs floating around the intertubes. Post your strangest blog finds in the comments. (No extremely profane sites or anything dealing with sexual fetishes. We want to see odd, not disgusting.)

Tags:

|

School spirit.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 Filed in: Self defense, Techniques & Training

Rivalries among neighboring schools are nothing new. They start in high school, and continue into college: here in my slice of heaven, it's the Oregon State University Beavers versus the University of Oregon Ducks. In Texas, it's the Aggies and the Longhorns. Alumni from the respective schools can get downright cantankerous when discussing the "other" team.

So too with shooting schools. Graduates of one school (or, more commonly, one instructor) hold their alma mater or guru to possess the "true way" and refuse to even acknowledge that others exist. In the worst cases, the arguments end up sounding an awful lot like "my Dad can beat up your Dad".

This came up the other day in a discussion I had with AFGWWWTRA. The term that sparked the conversation was "disciples", and I think that conveys the thought quite nicely. Once one has invested time, effort, and money into an area of interest it's hard to accept that there are other, competing, interests in the world which might just have validity as well. The guru becomes infallible, because if he/she isn't the disciple has wasted time, effort, and money - and who is ever going to admit to that?

I'm not immune; I went through a mild episode of school spirit some years back, but since then I've progressed a bit. I'm open to new ways of thinking and new methods of doing, and my attitude has gone from "so and so says this and it is immutable" to "show me why." The litmus test of any technique or opinion is not the logical fallacy of argument from authority, but rather that it makes sense given an open and agreed-upon criteria.

In an odd coincidence, I just started reading a book that explains this behavior, and as it turns out the concepts involved may have profound implications for self defense. They go well beyond the guru, school, stance, grip, or anything else, and deal with our behavior at a surprisingly base level. In other words, discipleship in and of itself, irrespective of doctrine or dogma, may affect how one performs in a violent encounter.

I'll have more to say when I finish the book.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: , ,

|

On flashlight output.

Monday, March 08, 2010 Filed in: Self defense, Accessories

I'm too lazy to go look, but I think I've mentioned that I consider the high-powered flashlight to be the most important non-lethal self defense tool one can carry. When it comes to light output, I'm also of the opinion that more is better, and lots more is lots better. When I hit the switch, I want all the light I can get, and frankly anything under 200 lumens doesn't cut it as far as I’m concerned.

Not long ago it came to my attention that not everyone shares my predilection for light. Usually the contrary opinion is something like "that much light causes glare, which makes it impossible to see. Don't carry a really powerful light for that reason."

Poppycock. The issue with glare isn't in the amount of light being generated, it's in the nature of the beam.

If you pull out a flashlight (any flashlight, really) and shine it on your ceiling you'll notice two parts to the beam. The central part, where it's brightest, is called the 'hotspot'. The surrounding corona of dimmer light is called the 'spill'. The hotspot consists of light that is more collimated; that is, the rays are more aligned than the scattered rays of the spill. It's collimated light that causes glare, and since most flashlights have a hotspot most lights will cause glare if the conditions are right.

If something of light color, or of reflective nature, ends up in the hotspot the collimated light will be bounced back to your eyes, which is perceived as glare. This condition most certainly makes seeing things more difficult. The cure, which most people discover right away, is to illuminate such objects with the spill portion of the beam. Those scattered rays dramatically reduce, or even eliminate, the glare.

Most people think that glare reduction is due to the spill being dimmer than the hotspot, but that's not the case - it's because the spill is more diffuse, and less likely to reflect from the object.

If you try out a number of flashlights, you'll find some major differences in the beams they produce. The size of the hotspot varies, as does its definition. Some hotspots have very sharply defined edges, dropping abruptly into spill, while some are more gradual. There are even beams that have no really defined hotspot, in which the entire beam is a flood of relatively diffuse light. Those are the beams that are least likely to result in glare, and thus are preferred for a self-defense light.

A beam that is pure flood, that is to say with no definable hotspot, will light up an entire room with nice, even light. That's what we want to see! It doesn't matter how bright that flood is, as long as there are no collimated beams the incidence of glare will be reduced.

(All this will be old news to any experienced photographers in the audience. They know that you get more glare from a specular silver umbrella than a softbox, and that it's completely independent of the amount of light being generated.)

A flood beam makes it easier to spot threats, and it makes shooting with the flashlight easier as well. That's what "tactical" lights are supposed to be for, correct?

Sadly, the presence of the word 'tactical' on a flashlight's marketing blurb doesn't mean that it's suitable for such use. As it happens, there aren't a lot of flashlights with flood-like beam characteristics. When people look at flashlights they want to know how far it casts a beam, a desire which favors lights with very collimated and well-defined hotspots. A flood beam simply won't 'throw' as far, even though it's a better choice for the illumination of lethal threats. Bottom line: they don't sell as well.

I've been there; up to a couple of years ago, I too was more interested in how well the light illuminated distant objects than how well it illuminated things that actually posed a threat to me. I've learned since then, and today I look for the flood-iest beam that I can get.

Believe it or not, it's tough to find a light that is truly suitable for self defense, which favors a broad flood beam. Surefire used to have a couple of great candidates in the Lumamax L2 and L4 models. Their flood beams would light up an entire room from a doorway, but over the last couple of years the beams have changed a bit as the LEDs were upgraded. (I also suspect marketing had something to do with that, as we've already discussed.)

The L2 and L4 of today have a little bit of a hotspot and thus aren't nearly as good as the older versions, although they're still better than any other "off the shelf" light you'll find. They would be my first pick.

That is, unless you have a Surefire 6P (who doesn't?) or similar light. If so, all you have to do to make it into a first-class defensive tool is to replace the bulb with a Malkoff M60F LED module. It will give you a pure flood beam that, as of this writing, is the best on the market. (It’ll fit the aforementioned 6P, as well as the 6Z, M2 and G2 and perhaps a few others.)

As always, having a bit of knowledge helps you make better decisions. Lumens aren't everything, and just because it's expensive, from a name manufacturer, and says 'tactical' on the side doesn't necessarily make it suitable for defensive use.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags:

|

FRIDAY SURPRISE: When in Rome...

Friday, March 05, 2010 Filed in: Friday Surprise!, Things I like, History

My fascination with old and abandoned things often leads to dreams of great discoveries. Though I've been to a few abandoned places - all of which are pretty well known, at least locally - I'm handicapped by geography. Here in rural Oregon, there just aren't many such places.

There weren't enough people here to have produced a large urban/industrial base a century ago, our technological history doesn't go back much more than 175 years in any case, and we've never exactly been a hotbed of military activity. Thus my dreams of being the first (or, at least, one of the very few) to visit such a site remain elusive.

Other people are more fortunate. A British film crew just last year found the remains of the Aqua Traiana headwaters, the beginnings of a lost aqueduct that once supplied Rome with fresh water. It's beautiful and amazingly well preserved, and all lying below a pig pasture near the village of Manziana, just northwest of Rome.

What gets me is that they found it - in the best Indiana Jones style - by discovering a hidden door in an abandoned church.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: ,

|

Another Day In The Life Of A Gunsmith.

Wednesday, March 03, 2010 Filed in: Gunsmithing, My Life

Many people tell me that they'd love to have my job: "it must be fun to play with all those cool guns and get paid for it!"

Lest others be deluded into thinking that this business is all fun and games, allow me to supply a dose of reality: somedays it literally doesn't pay to get out of bed.

Last Thursday was just such a day. It started with the need to make a 'spud'. No, not a potato - a 'spud' is a metal pilot that aligns a cutter with a bore. They're used as guides for such things as chamfering chambers and crowning barrels.

You can buy them ready made, but they come in one size per caliber-specific application. The problem is that if the spud is even .001" off, the quality of the cut will be destroyed. They need to be fitted precisely to the hole in which they will be inserted, and the ready made variety never are. If good work is to be done, they have to be custom made to fit the work.

Over the years I've made a wide range of spuds in various sizes, and because of that selection I usually have one that will fit properly. Occasionally, though, I run into a situation where I need to make yet another one, which is what happened on Thursday. I needed a .216" spud, and the closest I had was .214" - not nearly good enough to properly crown the .22LR barrel on which I was working.

Not a problem! I picked out some appropriate metal and chucked it in the lathe. I made a couple of cuts to get close to finished size, but when I measured the diameter I found that it tapered by roughly .002" throughout the length of the piece! The spud is only a couple of inches long, so a .002" variance in that length is huge. It renders the part unusable.

It's also not supposed to happen.

Annoying, but not insurmountable. I thought that the lathe probably just needed to be re-leveled, which hadn’t been done for a couple of years. I leveled the lathe (which takes a couple of hours if done very carefully), made a test cut, and....it was still off!

Grrrrrr.

The next step was to check the lathe’s tailstock for alignment. The tailstock, which supports the end of work in a lathe, has to be precisely aligned along the lathe's longitudinal axis. Otherwise, it pulls the end of the piece left or right, which leads to a taper such as I was finding. I spent the time aligning the tailstock, and a quote from the movie "Ruthless People" poured from my mouth: "Now THAT oughtta do it!"

It didn't.

I went back, tweaked the lathe level, and aligned the tailstock again. The problem persisted.

Put yourself in my place: I've got a top-notch Austrian lathe, the best Swiss measuring instruments, and I'm making parts displaying precision more appropriate to a Kalashnikov clone produced in an unlit cave factory outside of Jalalabad. Something was wrong, and I had to find it. The only hitch was that it was now dinnertime, and due to skipping lunch I was as hungry as could be. The problem would have to wait until the next day.

Friday morning I came into work determined to find the cause. Double checking everything revealed no clues. I replayed the issues in my head, while at the same time resting my hand on the tailstock. I looked down, and it came to me: the live center in the tailstock must be the source of the problem. It was the only thing I'd not checked.

A live center looks like this:

0009911-11

The cone-shaped bit is inserted into a hole in the piece being machined, and the other end goes into the tailstock. The cone revolves on precision ball bearings, keeping the piece aligned as it's rotated by the lathe. Any rotational error will result in inconsistencies in the finished part.

A quick check with a quality (Swiss) test indicator confirmed my fears: .0025" wobble. I checked the piece I'd machined, in several orientations, and sure enough - not only was it tapered, it was also slightly oval, which is exactly the error a worn live center would produce. Bingo!

I ordered up a new live center from my favorite online tool supplier (www.mscdirect.com), and on Monday the smiling UPS man delivered it to my door. The center quickly proved to be the answer; the rotational error was less than .0001", compared to the .0025" wobble of the old one.

With the new center a perfect spud was easily produced, the barrel was beautifully crowned, and the gun will soon be on its way back to a happy shooter.

It only took me a day and a half, plus a not insignificant amount of cash to find and fix the problem. So, want to tell me again how you wish you had my job?

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags:

|

Monday meanderings.

Monday, March 01, 2010 Filed in: Humor, Self defense, Blog stuff

NEW ARTICLE UP - Check out my latest article, Dealing With The Double Action Trigger, at the Personal Defense Network!

 COWBOY TACTICAL - Don't know if I learned of this from Tam or Uncle, but it's funny either way! From Cemetery’s Gun Blob:

saa-t005x800ps


GREAT INTERVIEWS - The ProArms Podcast recently featured interviews with Gila Hayes and Kathy Jackson, regarding their respective books: Personal Defense for Women and Lessons from Armed America. Highly recommended listening (and reading!)

A LITTLE RECOGNITION - Many people have asked about the site's redesign. The site is built in RapidWeaver; the theme is from Nick Cates Design. Last week I received an email from Nick, who said he was impressed how I'd used his template. He asked if he could feature grantcunningham.com in his Showcase, and of course I said yes! You can see it here.

HOUSEKEEPING - You may notice that the tag cloud has changed a bit. I wasn't happy with how I'd handled the tags, so I erased them and started over. Hopefully what you see now is an improvement in usability.

A LITTLE MORE HUMOR - I ran across this link in my archives, and couldn't resist posting it again: How Gun Magazines Write Articles.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: , , ,

|

FRIDAY SURPRISE: Motor City throws a rod.

Friday, February 26, 2010 Filed in: Friday Surprise!, History

The decline of Detroit fascinates me.

For many years I've wandered the Northwest visiting ghost towns and abandoned settlements, and always in the back of my mind are the unanswered questions: why did people leave? What was is like to live in a dying town? When did people finally figure out that their town was destined for the dust bin of history? Did it happen suddenly, or was it a slow, agonizing extinction?

These questions come to the forefront as I watch the continuing downfall of one of America's proudest cities.

I'm not saying that Detroit is going to disappear like, oh, Bourne (Oregon) did. It might, it might not. But it's clear that the city's contraction leaves much doubt about its future, and the glorious past of the former powerhouse remains to confront and confound the present residents.

There are lots of great galleries of decaying Detroit around the 'net (I"ve linked to one or two of them), and Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre have produced some of the best.

 -=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: ,

|

Pincus on stances.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 Filed in: Techniques & Training

A while back I shared my concept of the shooting stance, about how it was really a type of scaffold - a device by which one can build skills, and of limited utility past that point.

Well, it turns out that I'm not alone at the Blessed Bovine Abattoir - Rob Pincus has a new video up at the Personal Defense Network giving his take on the concept of the stance. Watch it with an open mind.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags:

|

A uniform is scant protection from stupidity.

Monday, February 22, 2010 Filed in: Techniques & Training

Today we have two tales of poor gun handling. Pharmacist Tommy sent me this story about a police officer who shot himself in the head.

 From Carteach's blog we get the tale of an Army soldier whose buddy shot him. The young man is quite lucky to be alive.

What do these two incidents have in common? People do stupid things with guns they perceive to be unloaded. (The problem isn’t that the gun is or is not loaded, but that people are doing stupid things with them in the first place.)

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: , ,

|

Waiting list is closed. (I should have done this on Friday...)

Sunday, February 21, 2010 Filed in: What's New!

As I detailed last Wednesday, the waiting list closed Thursday at midnight. I've gotten several requests since then, which I'll honor. Any received from this moment on, however, will be deleted.

Also as noted, I will open the list up again in the next couple of weeks. If you want a spot on the list, watch for that opening.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags:

|

FRIDAY SURPRISE: Seedy characters.

Friday, February 19, 2010 Filed in: Friday Surprise!

Lots of folks, concerned with anything from global warming to economic collapse, are recommending that you have a garden. What's more, most of them say, you should be planting only non-hybrid varieties and saving the seed from those plants. Only by doing that can you hope to be self sufficient, or so the theory goes.

Whether you think such advice to be prescient or kooky, there are people who do this on a grand scale. Read The New Yorker's story about the global seed bank.

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags:

|

Waiting list is now open, Round One.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 Filed in: What's New!

Many people have written to me over the last year, lamenting that they "just missed" getting on the waiting list. The last time the list opened, there was a huge rush of reservations. The list filled very quickly, and since they were submitted on a first-come first-served basis those who got in a little late were left out in the cold.

This time I'm going to do something to level the playing field a bit.

I am opening up my waiting list for a limited number of entries. I'll take reservation requests until midnight Thursday, and sometime in the next couple of weeks I'll do the exact same thing again. This will hopefully give more people a chance at getting on the list. (Of course the second opening will be announced here on the blog, just like this one has been.)

If after both sessions have closed I've received more reservations than I can handle, I'll let my database program select - at random - those that go into the list.

I know this is a bit unusual, but it's the only way to give everyone a fair chance. I receive many more requests for work than I can accommodate, and while I'd love to do them all the reality is there are only so many hours in a day. (I have to eat and sleep sometime!)

Here's how to submit a reservation:

1) Send me an email with the subject line "Reservation request" - nothing more, and without the quotes of course.

2) In the body, include the following information:

Name
Email address
Daytime phone number
The gun you wish to send (one gun per reservation)
A rough idea of what you'd like done

Don't obsess over which gun to list - you can substitute models later if need be. Please, don't say "I just want you to look it over/check it out"; if you need that kind of service, it's best to visit your local gunsmith.

Understand that these reservations will be roughly two years from now. Just to be clear: that means I probably won't call for your gun until sometime in 2012. If you don't want to wait that long, please don't put in a reservation.

These requests will be used only to fill out the waiting list, and my database will automatically send confirmation emails when the list closes in a couple of weeks. The reservations will not get any kind of individual response, so please save any questions or dialogue for a separate email.

Thanks!

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags:

|

Notice anything different?

Sunday, February 14, 2010 Filed in: What's New!
Welcome to the new and improved grantcunningham.com!

The site has a new look, but more important has a lot of new functionality. You'll notice that navigation is easier and more logical, not to mention faster. The new search facility (see the top right-hand corner of the page) allows everyone - me included! - to find information contained in the many pages on the site. (It's powered by Google, and may take a day or two to fully index. If it's not working this moment, give it a day and try again.)

The blog now has a tag cloud in the sidebar. It's empty at the moment, because I haven't been using tags up to this point. As I add new posts, and get around to editing the older ones, you'll see the tag cloud grow.

That's not all - I now have Twitter and Facebook accounts, and you'll see the link buttons on many of the pages. Follow me, be sure to become a fan of the grantcunningham.com Facebook page, and tell your friends to do so as well!

(Of course, if you find any problems, errors, or bugs, please drop me a note.)

There's more to come. Stay tuned!

-=[ Grant ]=-
|

FRIDAY SURPRISE: I miss the Cold War.

Friday, February 12, 2010 Filed in: Friday Surprise!, History

I really do.

Today a rogue regime can acquire nuclear force simply by writing a check. A really big check, no doubt, but child's play compared to the old days.

If you wanted an atomic bomb back then, you had to work a lot harder.

You see, we were absolutely convinced that our sole opponent in the Cold War - the Soviet Union - wanted to bomb us out of existence. We had our plans, our bombs, our missiles - and so did they.

We were always trying to find out what they were up to, and they were doing likewise. That tug-of-war gave us a time of espionage, spies and high intrigue.

Somehow, The Underwear Bomber just isn't as, well, romantic.

To illustrate my point, one of those Cold War skirmishes was fought by an Iowa-boy-turned-Soviet agent named George Koval. It's an interesting story.

-=[ Grant ]=-
|

Wednesday wanderings.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010 Filed in: Accessories

I'm not wandering all that much today....

SL VARIANT SPEEDLOADERS: Reader Drew R. sends word that Bobby Mac's managed to uncover a small cache of the coveted SL Variant Speedloaders. If you missed them last time, don't hesitate - they're not being made any longer, and this may be the last you'll see of them.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM: Have you been over to the new Personal Defense Network forums yet? Things are just getting started, and your participation would be welcomed!

-=[ Grant ]=-

Tags: ,

|
© 2010 Grant Cunningham Click to email me!