Apr 2009
Consolidation in the ammo business.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 Filed in:
Shooting
industry, Ammunition
From The Firearm Blog comes the news that Sellier & Bellot (aka 'S&B'), the Czech ammo maker, has been acquired by the Brazilian firm of CBC (makers of MagTech ammo, amongst others.) In the comments to that article, you'll note some discordance with regard to the quality of S&B products. Let me tell you my experience...
A few years back I was assisting Georges Rahbani ("The Best Rifle Instructor You've Never Heard Of") teach a rifle course. In these classes there is always time for an instructor to briefly join students on the firing line during a string of fire, and the other assistant instructor (who is also a good friend) was doing just that. He was using his AR-15 loaded from a freshly opened case of S&B 5.56mm ammo.
During on of the strings, his trigger locked in the forward position - it wouldn't travel at all. Keep in mind that this is a gun through which he's fired tens of thousands of rounds, with nary a malfunction. We pulled the lower off, and stuck under the trigger was a spent primer! We managed to find his fired casings, and one of them had shed its primer right into his trigger group.
We fixed the problem, and one the second day of class he decided to shoot some more. Suddenly his bolt wouldn't close all the way, even using the forward assist. We took the gun apart, but couldn't find a cause. Everything was clean and perfect. The gun was assembled, but the problem persisted.
A search of the just-fired brass produced yet another S&B case without a primer. We took the gun apart again, and after extensive searching we found, buried in the bolt carrier key (the extension on the bolt which mates up with the gas tube), was the missing primer! It had managed to lodge in the key so that the carrier couldn't go fully forward onto the gas tube, which meant that the bolt itself couldn't go into battery. It was like putting your foot into a door to keep it from closing, and it put the gun out of commission until we found the thing.
He retired that case of ammo, and swore off S&B products. I hope CBC is able to do a little better with the company.
-=[ Grant ]=-
|
Monday meanderings.
Monday, April 27, 2009 Filed in:
General gun
stuff, Self defense
Over the weekend I got a nice email from the shooter in last week's article. Sure enough, the screw had backed out and let the crane past. He's ordered a new screw, and plans to LocTite it in. Good plan!
(The sad thing was that he was shooting really well up until that happened...ruined a perfectly good stage.)
---
Those of you looking for Lubriplate SFL grease may be in luck - I got this interesting email last week:
---Just for your info, I'll be offering the Lubriplate "SFL" NLGI #0 grease in 16 oz. cans starting in about two weeks.
The grease will come in screw-top metal cans with a brush attached to the inside of the lid, real handy for applying the grease without making a mess.
Retail will be $19.95 plus actual shipping, without any inflated "handling" charges.
Email is capntroy@aol.com
Gila Hayes over at the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network recently reviewed a book that I had to buy: "Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence" by Rory Miller. Miller's treatise is about violent criminal behavior - how it happens, why it happens, and what does and doesn't work to counter it. It's written from the perspective of empty hand martial arts (as opposed to the martial art of the firearm), but everything in it is applicable to the person who carries a firearm for protection.
He goes to great lengths to dispel both our romanticized notions of what violent acts are really like, and our belief in our own ability to deal with them. Early in the book, he says "you are what you are, not what you think you are." (Emphasis added.) The rest of the book shows us what why that's true, and why what we believe is not always reality. His perspectives on training, of what is/is not valuable, follow the same hard-nosed refusal to buckle under to fantasy.
This book has earned a permanent place in my library, which is not something I can say of many works. I highly recommend it to anyone who carries a gun for self defense, and perhaps even more to those who don't. (One warning: this book may be unsettling to those who've become attached to their images of how a predator interacts with his/her prey. As Miller reminds us, reality is rarely pretty - and his work is chock-full of reality.)
-=[ Grant ]=-
FRIDAY SURPRISE: A little bit of history.
Back in 1959, Peter Sellers made a film that, today, is sadly forgotten: "The Mouse That Roared."
The film relays the story of the tiny Duchy Of Grand Fenwick, which declares war on the United States. (There is a lesson in the clip that seems to have been lost in the intervening decades, but I'll leave that to your discovery.)
The mythical Duchy, though, has little on some of the tiniest 'countries' in the world, places whose origins and history are even more bizarre than Hollywood could concoct.
Cracked has the true stories of six of these mice.
-=[ Grant ]=-
"Epic revolver failure." Really? You sure about that?
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 Filed in:
Revolvers, Gunsmithing
Someone sent me a link to
this video yesterday:
The crane worked its way out of the frame, taking the cylinder with it. (You can hear the distinctive ring of the crane hitting the ground at 1:04.)
The submitter of the video - who is also the shooter - calls it a "defect", but is careful not to identify just what the defect might be. He then goes over to ar15.com, where he posts the cause as "shitty metal" and says that some gunsmith claims to have seen several with identical failures. (I should note that I have yet to see even one such failure.) He also says that the crane retention screw was still in the gun.
Some background: the crane, which is the piece on which the cylinder rotates, is held in place with a screw. (Those of you with S&W revolvers can look at the right side of the gun, and the screw that sits just above the forward attachment point of the trigger guard is the crane retention screw.) On newer guns it contains a spring-loaded plunger which holds the crane, on older models it was simply a slightly longer screw.
Since he claims this to be a "newer" gun, it's no doubt of the spring-plunger variety. (As an aside, note that the other participants in the thread seemed surprised by this, to their minds, "recent" change. Apparently none of them are aware that the spring plunger was adopted clear back in 1986, no doubt before some of them had even been born!)
Back to the topic at hand...if that screw works sufficiently loose, it will give the crane enough clearance to slide out, but the screw will remain in the frame. On quick glance, is may even appear to be properly installed. If the screw is out just the right amount, the crane will be just barely retained, but will separate with a little forward pressure - during a speed reload, for instance. Under those conditions the tip of the plunger and the mating surface on the crane can both be slightly damaged, leading the inexperienced to conclude that they were defective in some manner.
So, faulty gun - or something else?
In the forum post, the shooter tells us he changed the mainspring, but insists he didn't remove the sideplate. Now understand that I do that task on a very regular basis, and even I remove the sideplate to chainge the mainspring - it's a serious hassle to do otherwise, especially with the new (post-lock) guns. Once finished, it' easy to replace the sideplate but neglect to fully tighten the screw. (It's even easier to forget to check that screw every so often, even if one hasn't messed with it!)
Remember that I don't have the gun in hand to inspect, and I'm willing to give the fellow the benefit of the doubt, but I have not heard of, nor seen, any crane retention failures caused by "shitty metal." I have, however, seen lots of them from failure to tighten the retention screw.
If you remove screws from your revolver, be sure you do two things: first, make sure you put them back in their proper holes (they are different), and make sure they're very tight. A dab of low-yield LocTite ('purple', type 222) will ensure that they stay in place but won't hinder their removal.
Even if you don't remove them, it's a good idea to check them occasionally. It's part of normal revolver maintenance and the responsibility of the informed user.
-=[ Grant ]=-
The crane worked its way out of the frame, taking the cylinder with it. (You can hear the distinctive ring of the crane hitting the ground at 1:04.)
The submitter of the video - who is also the shooter - calls it a "defect", but is careful not to identify just what the defect might be. He then goes over to ar15.com, where he posts the cause as "shitty metal" and says that some gunsmith claims to have seen several with identical failures. (I should note that I have yet to see even one such failure.) He also says that the crane retention screw was still in the gun.
Some background: the crane, which is the piece on which the cylinder rotates, is held in place with a screw. (Those of you with S&W revolvers can look at the right side of the gun, and the screw that sits just above the forward attachment point of the trigger guard is the crane retention screw.) On newer guns it contains a spring-loaded plunger which holds the crane, on older models it was simply a slightly longer screw.
Since he claims this to be a "newer" gun, it's no doubt of the spring-plunger variety. (As an aside, note that the other participants in the thread seemed surprised by this, to their minds, "recent" change. Apparently none of them are aware that the spring plunger was adopted clear back in 1986, no doubt before some of them had even been born!)
Back to the topic at hand...if that screw works sufficiently loose, it will give the crane enough clearance to slide out, but the screw will remain in the frame. On quick glance, is may even appear to be properly installed. If the screw is out just the right amount, the crane will be just barely retained, but will separate with a little forward pressure - during a speed reload, for instance. Under those conditions the tip of the plunger and the mating surface on the crane can both be slightly damaged, leading the inexperienced to conclude that they were defective in some manner.
So, faulty gun - or something else?
In the forum post, the shooter tells us he changed the mainspring, but insists he didn't remove the sideplate. Now understand that I do that task on a very regular basis, and even I remove the sideplate to chainge the mainspring - it's a serious hassle to do otherwise, especially with the new (post-lock) guns. Once finished, it' easy to replace the sideplate but neglect to fully tighten the screw. (It's even easier to forget to check that screw every so often, even if one hasn't messed with it!)
Remember that I don't have the gun in hand to inspect, and I'm willing to give the fellow the benefit of the doubt, but I have not heard of, nor seen, any crane retention failures caused by "shitty metal." I have, however, seen lots of them from failure to tighten the retention screw.
If you remove screws from your revolver, be sure you do two things: first, make sure you put them back in their proper holes (they are different), and make sure they're very tight. A dab of low-yield LocTite ('purple', type 222) will ensure that they stay in place but won't hinder their removal.
Even if you don't remove them, it's a good idea to check them occasionally. It's part of normal revolver maintenance and the responsibility of the informed user.
-=[ Grant ]=-
A quick update.
Monday, April 20, 2009 Filed in:
Blog stuff
Supply Chain Management 101: on the ammunition shortage.
Gunstores continue to be a never-ending source of hilarity. Walk into your local shooting emporium and ask why there is an ammo shortage, and you'll hear inane speculation coupled with a conspiracy theory or two. The reality is that the supply chain for ammunition is relatively inelastic, and and is easily overwhelmed by a sudden jump in sales.
As one industry consultant has told me, ammunition demand over the years has been remarkably predictable. Ammunition wholesalers know (within a certain margin of error) how many units of each caliber they'll sell in the coming year, and approve purchase orders for the delivery of that amount of product during that year.
Ammo makers, too, know with fair certainty how much they're going to sell to the wholesalers during that period, and sign contracts for the purchase of sufficient components to produce those products. They don't typically keep large stores of components on hand, as standing inventory is expensive, so components are delivered on a "just in time" basis.
The suppliers of those components do the same thing with raw materials; again, ammunition is a stable business, which allows them to forecast with pretty good accuracy the stuff they need to make the components they sell. This pattern repeats itself on up the chain, all the way to the people who mine the stuff necessary to make a single cartridge.
Along comes a huge, sudden spike in demand. Retailers all over the country are suddenly swamped with ammunition purchases, and quickly call their suppliers to get more. The first few calls are rewarded with replacement stock, but soon the wholesaler's shelves are bare too - their entire year allotment of ammunition is gone in just a few days.
The wholesaler calls the maker, and the same thing happens: all of the suppliers are doubling (or more) orders to get their dealers restocked, and the manufacturer is quickly stripped of on-hand components as he tries to fill those orders.
The dealers are out, the wholesalers are out, and now the manufacturers are out. But it gets worse.
The makers of the priming compound, primer cups, brass, powder, jacket material, and lead are suddenly swamped with desperate pleas for more product, and they in turn contact the suppliers of the raw materials for more. The entire chain of supply is empty, and everyone has to wait while all of the raw materials are gathered. (I shouldn't have to tell you that those folks have other contracts to fill before they can get to the rush orders - they're not just waiting around for next year's order from the ammo companies!)
That all sounds simple, but it just isn't. As an example, smokeless powder may contain a huge variety of raw materials: Nitrocellulose, Nitroglycerin, Nitroguanidine, Dibutyl phthalate, Polyester adipate, Ethyl acetate, Diphenylamine, 2-Nitrodiphenylamine, 4-nitrodiphenylamine, N-nitrosodiphenylamine, N-methyl-p-nitroaniline, tin dioxide, bismuth trioxide, bismuth subcarbonate, bismuth nitrate, bismuth antimonide, Potassium nitrate, Potassium sulfate, Talc, Titanium dioxide, Graphite, and Calcium carbonate. Each of these has to be sourced from a supplier, ordered, received, then finally compounded into smokeless powder. Think that all happens overnight??
Once the raw materials are finally in hand, the work can start. Lead has to be formed into projectiles, copper into jackets, brass into casings; priming compound is made from lead azide and/or potassium perchlorate, then the mixture combined with metal cups to make primers (they have to be made, too); the aforementioned powder has to be made (a huge job in itself.)
Once those components are ready, they can be sent to the manufacturer, who puts together into a finished round, then packages them appropriately. (Oops - we forgot that boxes and trays that have to be made and printed. That takes time and materials!) They're then shipped to the wholesaler, who (finally!) can ship to the retailer.
This whole process takes time - lots of it. If demand is high enough (which it has been), even the emergency orders placed all the way to the producers of the raw products may not be sufficient, and shortages will continue. That's what we're seeing right now.
The supply chain is simply empty, all the way up to the people who mine the raw materials. It's going to take time to replace all the links in that chain, and it's not because of the war in Iraq/Afghanistan, The Joos, FEMA, the CIA, a secret agreement to implement gun control through ammo availability, or any other silly theory you may have heard. This is a textbook example of what happens when an inelastic supply chain, composed with scarce "just in time" inventories, meets insatiable demand. It's not sexy or intriguing, but that's the way it is.
You know what's scarier? Your food comes to you the same way. Imagine what would happen if...
-=[ Grant ]=-
Lights on revolvers.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 Filed in:
Revolvers, Self
defense
I recently received an email asking about the feasibility of mounting a light on a revolver. The writer was concerned about clearing his house at night and being forced to shoot one-handed with a separate flashlight. Would it be possible, he asked, to somehow mount a light to his wheelgun, to approximate those that are widely mounted on autoloaders?
That's a tough one to answer, because it's really two questions in one: can it be done, and should it be done.
I'll address the feasibility portion first: yes, it can be done, though the approach varies a bit with the make/model. In all cases, their are some limitations - mainly, the light has to clear the ejector rod as it swings away from the frame. The larger the light, the smaller the gun, and/or the more closely the light is mounted to the bore axis or to the cylinder, the more likely it is to interfere with proper cylinder opening.
The best choice is to make provision to mount the light in a forward position, in front of the ejector rod. This is the approach taken by S&W in their 327 TRR8:
The problem with this is that it makes activating the light on a momentary basis from a firing grip difficult (if not impossible.) One is left with the necessity to turn the light on and leave it on if one wants to shoot with a two-handed grip.
To provide a platform on which the light can be mounted, a short section of Picatinny rail can be attached (via screws) to the barrel's underlug. If the particular gun doesn't have an underlug, the barrel itself can be carefully drilled & tapped to accept the rail - only, of course, if the barrel is of a bull (heavy) configuration. There are also some clamp-on solutions available.
The other half of the question is "should you?" I'll put on my Tactical Tommy hat here, and say that I think it's a bad idea except in very specific circumstances.
For a gun to be used in an ensconced position the attached light has merit. All you're required to do is wait, and the light is nothing but a shooting aid: confirm the target, and allow a clear sight picture.
Using it to check your house, on the move, is another matter entirely. In this case, the light takes on multiple functions: navigation, search, identification, and (in the worst case) shooting aid. The trouble is that if it's attached to your gun, then you have a loaded weapon pointing in all sorts of directions that proper safety habits say it shouldn't!
A loaded gun is not a tool for navigation or searching, and using it as such is (in my opinion) irresponsible. Think of it this way: would you be pointing your gun in all directions and places in the daylight? I would hope that the answer would be 'no.' If that's the case, why would you deem it acceptable to do so in the dark?
The light on the handgun is a limited-use device. Don't try to make it into something it shouldn't be.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Feedback from the Stopping Power series.
I continue to get email from last year's "Self defense, stopping power, and caliber" series. It remains the second-most visited page on the site, behind only my article on lubrication, and appears to be well received by the majority of readers. Thank you!
As you might imagine, such popularity generates feedback, and some questions pop up more than once. While not exactly a FAQ, here are some of the common emails I've received.
Email: You didn't cover the difference between crush and temporary cavities, which I think is very important.
My answer: No, I didn't - because I don't consider it critical to the discussion. You see, I really don't care what the wounding mechanism is, as long as one exists. Going back to the article, as long as the bullet a) reaches something that the body finds immediately important, and b) does rapid and significant damage to that thing when it arrives, then I'm really unconcerned about how it actually does so.
Email: Can you comment on ammo from [a smaller maker], whose stuff is just as good but doesn't waste money on advertising?
My answer: In general, I recommend that one avoid "boutique ammunition." The majority (if not all) of such ammo purveyors are simply loading bullets made by someone else, but without the knowledge of how to make those bullets perform their best. Why should I risk unknown quality control to get a product that, at best, can only be as good as what I can get from a producer that has actual design and test budgets? My advice is to stick with known quantities: Winchester, Speer, Federal, Remington.
Email: What's your opinion of the book "Handgun Stopping Power" (aka "Street Stoppers", aka 'Marshall & Sanow')?
My answer: There are a number of solid, critical analyses of their work online; I suggest that you read some of them, as the problems with their "research" are both serious and numerous. In case I was too subtle in the articles, I consider stopping power ratings in general to be complete hogwash, and theirs are particularly so.
You'd be further ahead to take the money you would have spent on their book, and practice until you can shoot to a high standard of accuracy under stress. Couple that with a quality hollowpoint from a major manufacturer, and you'll be much better prepared than any ten people who swear by their scribblings.
(This should not be construed to mean that I am a follower of their chief antagonist, Dr. Martin Fackler, either. He concocted his ratings from a different sort of nonsense than Marshall & Sanow, and came to different conclusions - which were just as useless. Again, there is criticism of his work that can be found on the 'net, if one is so inclined.)
Email: Is there any reliable source of information on bullet performance?
My answer: Because of the huge number of variables in any shooting, and the relatively low number of incidents, the idea of hard statistical data is meaningless. What we're left with is anecdotal evidence which, while not valid in a scientific sense, does give us some rough feeling for what is and is not working. That's the best we can do under the circumstances.
One of the more prolific collectors of such information is Massad Ayoob. He is in a unique position: since he travels all over the country both as a trainer and an expert witness, he's thrown into contact with large numbers of police trainers and shooting survivors. He elicits their opinions of their issue ammunition, based on shootings in their departments. He gets some great feedback, which he doesn't try to disguise or characterize as anything other than raw opinion from people who have actual results to talk about.
If you want to hear some of Ayoob's findings direct from the man himself, listen to this episode of the ProArms podcast.
-=[ Grant ]=-
FRIDAY SURPRISE: What's old is new again.
It may surprise you to learn that the vast majority of transatlantic data traffic - phone calls, email, internet connections - doesn't go through satellites. Instead, most of those bits and bytes goes under the water through long cables stretched between the continents. Sounds awfully low-tech, doesn't it?
When the first undersea cables were laid, traffic was in the form of the telegraph message. Later, as the telephone became prominent, voice channels were added. There were some attempts to use radio to carry communications across the sea, but cables on the seabed were still the way most Americans kept in touch with Europe. It was that way up until the mid-1960s, when the first communications satellites were launched.
The satellite was the darling of data travel, and for a time it looked like underwater cables would be relegated to the back of the communications bus. By the early '80s, over half of all overseas traffic was carried on satellites, with more space-based capacity planned. Then something interesting happened...
In 1988, the first fiber optic cable between North America and Europe went into service. Fiber optics held the promise of bandwidth that was orders of magnitude greater than the copper wires previously laid in the Atlantic, and the new technology didn't disappoint: that first cable itself offered half of the entire bandwidth available on all of the communications satellites. Another cable would exceed the space capability, and that was just a start. Fiber optic cables were cheaper to deploy and had a much longer service life than any satellite, with corresponding reductions in the cost of moving data from one side of the earth to the other.
It didn't take long for the commercial satellite business to experience a serious drop in popularity; today, it's estimated that satellites carry less than a half-percent of all traffic between the U.S. and the rest of the world. Fiber optics were a hit, and it doesn't look like they'll stop being a hit anytime soon.
Thanks to all this fiber optic bandwidth we have the world wide web, which allows us to go back and relive how it all started: with insulated wires dropped off a ship into the middle of the sea. Here is a great site devoted to chronicling that early technology, complete with maps of historic cable routes.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Be honest with yourself.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009 Filed in:
General gun
stuff, Techniques &
Training
In college I minored in music performance. Being just out of high school (read: thoroughly stupid) I thought I was a hot musician, harboring dreams of becoming a professional trumpet player. Like so many other aspiring performers I really had no idea what the world of a professional musician actually entailed, but I was absolutely sure I had what it took.
One of my professors, an accomplished professional trombonist, made it his job to bring us post-adolescents into the real world. Shortly into my freshman term, he was talking with a few of the members of the trumpet section after class. The talk turned to the requirements of a "pro", and all of us were convinced we had the Right Stuff. Our prof had heard this kind of chatter before, and bet our first chair player that he didn't yet possess the bare minimum skills necessary for the job.
Trumpet players are usually narcissistic personalities, the kind who don't back down from a fight, and the kid said "you're on!"
The prof sighed and said simply "get out your horn. I want you to blow a perfect half-note G above the staff" (trumpet players in the audience will understand.) The kid smirked, dropped his case to the floor and pulled out his horn. "Wait a minute", said our teacher. "I said a perfect G. No warmup. Just one perfect note; in tune from start to end, solid attack, no slop or waviness, crisp decay. You have one and only one shot. Go."
I shouldn't have to tell you the kid failed - miserably. Then again, none of the rest of us would have done any better. We were clueless: none of us yet knew enough to understand how much we didn't yet know.
Fast forward a few decades, and the shooting range serves up the same lesson. Georges Rahbani, "The Best Rifle Instructor You've Never Heard Of" , has a way of impressing on his students how they should assess their own abilities:
"You are only as good as you are, on demand."
What you can do right now, without warm up or sighting shots, without excuses or alibis, is the true measure of how good you are.
This is different from how most people gauge their ability. Most folks would take their rifle to the range on a nice sunny day, settle in comfortably at the bench, fire a bunch of rounds, then shoot a 1" group. They're so proud of that group they take the target home and hang it in their garage or office. "I'm hot stuff!", they'll think - after all, they have the target to prove it!
The next day at the range it's raining, they've had a fight with their spouse, can't get comfortable on the cold bench, and now their best group doesn't even break 3". "That's not me", they'll say to themselves, "I shoot one-inch groups!" The alibis flow like PBR at a fraternity house, and serve to obscure the fact that the 3" group wasn't the anomaly - the 1" group was. The larger one is the true indicator of their skill.
It's not what someone can do when everything is going their way that shows ability; it's what they can do under suboptimal conditions that does. If a person can't shoot until getting into just the right stance, with perfect foot placement and textbook body positioning, then that person still has a lot of work to do to master the fundamentals. (I've seen people who can shoot pretty well on a concrete pad, but go all to pieces on a gravel range. They can't get into their comfort zone.)
This is one thing if we're talking about plinking, but becomes another thing entirely when the subject turns to self defense. The other guy isn't going to wait for us to get into the perfect stance we learned from our guru; we need to be able to deliver rapid, multiple, properly placed shots from whatever position the situation dictates, under whatever conditions it hands us. That requires the courage to admit to ourselves that maybe - just maybe - we aren't quite as good as we think.
Right here, right now, no warmups, no excuses - how good are you?
-=[ Grant ]=-
Monday meanderings.
Is it just me, or does anyone else smell something fishy in the sudden rash of mass murders involving firearms? I'm not one to latch on to conspiracy theories, but as someone once told me: "two is a coincidence, three is a pattern."
---
Speaking of recent shootings, it seems the police in the Binghampton incident waited more than an hour to make entry, despite the emerging protocol of immediate engagement upon arrival. Their Chief is now busy making excuses for the delay; one is reminded of the "Blues Brothers Gambit": "I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. IT WASN'T MY FAULT!"
---
The gun prohibitionists, realizing the the Mexican Argument for U.S. gun control isn't gaining any traction, have jumped on the chance to use the blood of the innocent to further their ambitions. Their latest planted story is that of the former newspaper editor who "almost went postal" once upon a time. Naturally, he blames the wide availability of guns (and specifically his "hunting rifle") for contributing to his supposed mental instability. (See if you can spot the egregious gun terminology error in his story...)
---
-=[ Grant ]=-
FRIDAY SURPRISE: Creepy. Then again, maybe not.
Back in 1980 I was working behind the sales counter in a camera shop to help pay my way through college. Without being too immodest, I had a prodigious knowledge of the photographic process, to include everything from vintage cameras and films to the equipment, chemistry, and procedures used to bring the images out of them. (I would later put that storehouse of information to good use when I opened a unique photographic lab that specialized in obsolete and obscure processes.)
Because of my deep base of arcane knowledge, I was often called upon to authenticate or debunk (depending on one's point of view) various kinds of "UFO" and "ghost" images. Over several years I looked at perhaps a couple hundred such anomalous images and, save for one, was able to immediately identify the source or cause.
Oh, that one? It took me a little time and some research, but eventually I was able to show how the image was made. I'm told that the person who paid a tidy sum for that "proof" of extraterrestrial life wasn't at all happy, but remained unconvinced. True believers are usually like that.
With that in mind, check out this gallery of "authenticated" spirit images. Who, exactly, authenticated them is unclear, but I can guarantee it wasn't me!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Progressive presses and powder measures.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009 Filed in:
Reloading, Ammunition
A common complaint with progressive presses is the throwing of inconsistent powder charges. Most people immediately blame the equipment, but some times it's actually operator error.
We first need to admit that there are certain incompatibilities with regard to some measures and some powders (Dillon's difficulty with metering flake or extruded powder, for instance, is often discussed on the various reloading forums.) However, even with a powder the measure "likes" unexpected variances often occur during a production run.
The variance usually comes as a surprise to the operator. During setup, the reloader is careful to check the powder charge, and finds that the measure it properly set up and is throwing charges with little variance - say, within .1 grains. During the middle of a run the person happens to check a random case and finds that it is perhaps a half grain off. He stops, carefully throws several charges, perhaps adjusts the measure, then settles down to again crank out the rounds. Another random check, and the process repeats itself.
Perhaps some attention to technique will cure the problem.
Those who reload rifle cases for extreme accuracy will agree that one's technique with the powder measure is critical to consistent, accurate charges. The same is true for the measure on a progressive press!
As it happens, there is a "dwell time" when powder is being dumped from the measure. The powder doesn't fall instantaneously into a case, it flows - out of the measure's cavity, down the drop tube, through the powder die, and into the waiting brass. That journey takes some time, and if the press operator is impatient - or worse, inconsistently impatient - there may be a few flakes of powder left somewhere in the path when he decides to go to the next round in the queue. That translates into a light charge for the current case, and a heavy one for the next.
There is a solution: when you pull the handle down, pause for a second at the bottom of the stroke to give time for all of the powder to make the journey to your case. Most operators I've observed don't do this - as soon as the handle hits bottom, they immediately jerk it back up to get to the next round in the shellplate. That may not give the powder enough time to drop, and can lead to those inconsistent charges.
When I'm using my progressive, I think consciously about that pause at the bottom of the stroke. When the handle hits the stop, I open my hand then close it; the amount of time it takes to do that is sufficient for the powder to drop completely (and has the added benefit of keeping my hand and arm from tiring during long loading sessions!) Yes, it will slow you down slightly; I think it's a small price to pay for more consistent and accurate ammo.
-=[ Grant ]=-