Presents from the Taliban

Following the advice of Tam I started picking up some extra magazine for my "Peoples Sporting Rifle." I ordered a couple from Cheaper than Dirt and found them to be worn, but serviceable and relatively clean. Perfect for my wishes. I decided to order another one (can't have to many) and when this one came I must say it was...interesting. The insides were filled with red sand. There was to much for it to be just rust (unless the package originally had two mags in it) so I can only assume that the Taliban are trading in there old mags for new poly mags.

That's right, I believe I just received a Taliban trade-in. Momma always said you get what you pay for.

Buy! Buy! Buy!

So what's a single gun-head supposed to do when you don't have a car payment and just got a nice raise? Buy guns of course. Over the last month, I've picked up a couple of new guns. First of all, I traded in my SW99 that I don't carry anymore on a new Rock Island 1911. I wanted a mil-spec 1911 for the Wild Bunch matches so's I could shoot it no matter where the WB match was or the rules involved. I also wanted to have it so I could present, at some point, a Wild Bunch category to one or both of the clubs, perhaps next year.

I was going to wait for a range report on the Rock before posting, but in its first outing, the firing pin peened and stuck (CHEAP Philipino steel!). After getting a tool steel Ed Brown in it, I took it down to TVR and the damn slide stop kept engaging, grrrr... I think I have everything ironed out for this weekend, but then you never know. Anyway, it bites my hand, so I ordered a commander hammer for it and I'll try that to see how it goes, I got one of the Swenson original commander hammers since I love the look of it and want to keep it as period as I can. The other thing I want to do is experiment with the trigger to see if I can improve it. If I can, then I'll look into my Kimber's trigger as well since it's got some creep in it.

The other gun I just bought is one of the Norinco 97 pumpguns. Like Judge, I got it through our pard Vaquero Hayes who I had do an action job on it. He suggested I get the 26" model and have it cut to 20" instead of getting the 18" model. What sold it was that the distributor didn't have any 18s in stock. I just got word that it was ready and need to go pick it up along with Judge picking up his 87. My thoughts on that are having a spare 97 for the matches and a 97 with nice wood on it. I may get walnut furniture for my first 97 and work on it even further if its not as smooth as the one I get from Vaquero. We'll see.

Other things I've been working on are the brass shotshells with smokeless powder, I'll get them one day, one day... I've also loaded up some 45 Colt with Trailboss powder to see if it works any better than the others I've tried. I'd like to get a clean powder that doesn't give a lot of blowby in the rifle like I get with Clays or Tightgroup. I might try the Clays/Grits solution at some point, but I'm not a real fan of doing things that manufacturers say is unsafe.