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Girls and Guns
Three girls, lots of guns.
Some photographer friends wanted to do a photoshoot with guns. The range being a much better location for this than the beach (one probably needs a permit and a police escort on the beach these days…), we all hied off there at oh-dark-early this morning, to catch the sunrise.
I didn’t really know what they wanted to do, so I threw most of my rifles, revolvers, pistols, leather and camos in the back of the car. And we ended up using pretty much all of the above.
Savage ’99, Norinco JW-21, Winchester ’94.
Started with leverguns on the steps, then moved to the IPSC / IDPA “funhouse”.
Only one of the three gals had ever handled a gun before, so I started the morning by showing them how to keep their fingers out of the trigger guards, how not to point the guns at people, and the like. But to get realistic photographs, one has to break those rules.
Good thing is, this gal asked me if I was sure when I said “point the gun at me” :-)
I just know that if I don’t say anything, someone is going to run across this posting, Photoshop the above picture, and find out that yes, indeed, that Astra 44 Magnum is loaded for bear.
So before I get an email “Finger on trigger! Loaded gun! Sky! Falling!”… I made dummy rounds specifically for this, because this kinda picture with an empty cylinder is just silly, OK?
After all of this I took one of the gals to the target range, where she shot the Astra NC-6 22 revolver, the Llama XIV 22 pistol, the Norinco 22 levergun, my CZ 22 silhouette boltgun, and the Star DKL 9mm short pistol.
In other words, a Good Day :-)
Absolutely gorgeous
Via www.retrothing.org. Brad Smith went and re-created The Dark Side of the Moon on a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).
Damn, it’s good. Or I’m strange. Or both.
Nostalgie
Dis ‘n eetplek. In Baron van Reede straat. Ek is nie honger nie. Glad nie. But the smell of the buffet is going to drive me to gluttony.
Kêrel langs my voel dieselfde. Bel pêlle om te kom help vreet.
Sê vir my ma ek het dapper gesterf.
KKNK 2010
Brought to you by modern technology, in this case a Nokia E61i.
So hier sit ons oop die stoep by Fokus.com (was laas jaar iets anders en die jaar voor dit ook… maar was nog altyd ‘n nice venue). Kos is excellent, diens is moer stadig, en Theuns Jordaan is besig om Skipskop te cover by RSG voor die CP Nel museum. Of rather, klink soos hy, vermoed dit is nie (laat ons nou nie die man in die gesig vat nie).
Beste koffie so vêr is by die Montague huis, maar koffie hier is ook heel drinkbaar. Moet nog gaan shoppe voor 1 uur show.
OK nou het ek eers my cursor verloor, tik blind, meer later.
The search for wheels
A week ago, we went to braai at a friend’s place in Bellville. Drove past a used car dealership in Durban Road, they had an Opel Meriva on the lot.
Now I was all for replacing Tanya’s Astra Classic with another Astra Classic, maybe the short-arsed one with an 1800 engine, because she doesn’t get nearly enough traffic fines… yea, right. But they stopped making the G-cars in 2005, and something newer would be nice.
But the later Astra models are either huge, or resemble an overgrown Kadett. On the other hand, the Meriva looked nice. White, 2006 model, 113k on the clock, R89k.
If they wanted to actually sell the thing to us, that is.
You see, if you’re looking to drop close to a hundred thousand ront on a car, you probably have a job. Which means that you will be pitching at the dealership outside of core hours. What do you mean, you don’t do test drives after 4? Or on Saturdays? Feh.
Meanwhile Pieter found a Gumtree listing for a little more than what the fools in Durban Road wanted, for a car with 45k on the clock, as opposed to 113k. Sounded good to us, so we went to see the car on Saturday. Tanya liked it, let’s do it.
Of course, when it came to banking details time, the price was suddenly R 99 900, up R 900. I’m not one to quibble over 1%, so I told him to deliver the thing with a full tank and I’m happy.
Update: Jaco delivered the car, already transferred to Tanya’s name, with a new licence disc valid for a year — I can’t complain about the service.
Google crumbs: RMP Motors, Bellville.
Keeping Aaron happy :-)
When I started this blog, it was all about the house.
Well, things have moved on, and while the house still needs lots of attention, I’ve also started blogging about guns and cars and computers.
I figured that this is not fair to houseblogs.net readers, so I spent a little time figuring out how to exclude some posts from going there.
Turns out it’s dead simple. Changing the RSS feed to http://www.retro.co.za/blog/?feed=rss2&cat=-6,-56 excludes categories 6 and 56, being “Guns” and “Cars” (I left the “Geek” for Laura-Jane).
So if you’re running WordPress, and you don’t want the wrath of Aaron… :-)
Why I never throw anything away.
Tanya’s car going up in smoke left us with a slight transport problem.
You see, the Rand-Lover was leaking water from the thermostat housing, and I figured it’s the gasket. So I pulled the housing, bought velumoid, psyched myself up for the job, thought about it, drank beer, and otherwise procrastinated, as dictated by my basic nature.
Which lead to me hurriedly bolting things together on Wednesday evening. And guess what? It still leaked. Made it to work by pouring water in the top faster than it could run out the bottom, or side, in this case.
Removed the thermostat housing and got our driver to take it to a MIG welding place, where the fellow shook his head and frowned. Whereupon I phoned around, looking for a replacement, but no such luck. Apparently these things have by now all corroded away in a similar fashion to mine.
So Tanya had to give me a lift home last night, which also means that I had to give her a lift to work this morning.
I used the opportunity to shoot through to Bellville, where I have a shipping container, will all the stuff I’d accumulated when my ex kicked me out, as well as a bunch of stuff I’ve accumulated since then. Gads, I love my stuff.
And there I found, as I rightly suspected I should, the thermostat housing which I didn’t use, because it was then the worse of the two, but of course now it’s by far the better of the two.
Which means that the Yellow Rand-Lover rides again.
For your further edification, I present Plan B. Or is that Plan C?
This is the bottom thermostat housing off the front of the Chev 2.5 engine head (in other words, the bit that the broken bit in the previous pics bolt on to). With a piece of pipe, an angle grinder and an arc welder, one can create a functional equivalent to the aliminium part, but one that should last as long as the rest of the head.
Accidents come in threes
Which means all of y’all can relax now.
First AD rolls his deer magnet, then Breda gets rear-ended, and then Tanya’s car catches on fire on the M3. Tanya blogs, so I guess it counts.
As far as we can tell, the aircon fan shorted out. Smoke poured out the dashboard, Tanya pulled off, called me. I got there, yup, looks like smoke all right. Opened the door to open the bonnet, and the fresh air fanned flames, coming out the dash. Hmmm. Not an easy fix then.
Disconnected the battery, left the car to stew. Fellow pulled up, handed me a fire extinguisher, I shot it at the dash, closed the doors again. We figure that might have helped keep the temperature down to “smoulder” instead of “burn”.
Fire department arrived around an hour later. Dumped a few hundred liters on the dashboard, making sure the smouldering is out. Car was a write-off anyway.
So now Tanya and I smell of smoke, and we need to go car-hunting again.
Moral of the story: make sure you have marshmallows in the boot.
Sunday shooting goodness
Star MB. Six shots at 10 meters standing. The magazine was giving me problems, so this was a two shots, clearance drill, one shot, clearance drill… kind of thing. It came with four magazines, but I’d left the other three at home… silly me.
The Star MB is a Model BM built on a Model M (large) frame, but chambered in 9mm. Like many Star pistols, anyone who knows the Colt 1911 will be familiar with the mechanicals. It comes with a detachable rifle type stock which also doubles as a holster, and with extended magazines. This one is nicely accurate (no, I’m not hiding flyers under the gun).
This is one of 350 built in 1972, and one of 1 757 made in total.
Star Firestar M43. A fairly modern 9 mm (they were made in the nineties, shortly before the demise of the Spanish firearm industry). A few years ago, I was looking at buying one of these new — I would have chosen the 40 S&W model — but I couldn’t bring myself to pay R 5 500. I got this one for considerably less.
Astra Police 357 Magnum. This revolver is very similar to the standard Astra 357, except that there’s a button that releases the cylinder crane, then you can swap in a 9 mm Parabellum or 357 SIG cylinder (neither of which I have, unfortunately).
I also managed four shots with my Browning 1900. Shot #5 was a missfire, and this is where I learned that the extractor is broken. Bugger.
In any case, the Browning 1900 is a fascinating design. The barrel sits under the recoil spring, and the recoil spring also doubles as the hammer (striker) spring. And the back end of the lever which drives the striker doubles as a “cocked” indicator, blocking the (rudimentary) sights when the gun is not cocked.
My Rossi Puma 357 levergun shoots into 40mm off a rest at 25m using 38 Special handloads. Not great, but I should be able to fix that with better ammo. And it’s a damn sight better than my Winchester ’94, which struggles to get 4 inches at the same distance.
My “silhouette load” 180 grain lead bullet 357 Magnum loads keyholed into 45mm, so I guess I should stick to 158 grainers with this gun.