Nope, it’s not my breakdown story, and it’s not Gresh’s, either. This one comes to us as a guest blog from good buddy Bob O, whom you may remember from his earlier blog about a custom handgun by TJ, another good buddy. I’ll give you the link for that blog later.
Bob was a motorcycle messenger in an earlier life, and this story comes to us from those halcyon days of yesteryear.
Over to you, Bob!
It was some years ago, about 1983 or as kids today would call it, the ancient time before the common use of the Internet or social media. I was working as a motorcycle messenger here in Los Angeles. It was an interesting way to make a living. I had started out as an in-house delivery rider for a travel agency and then moved up to messenger services. We were based in Century City in West L.A. on the land that had been 20th Century’s Film Corp’s back lot back before the movie industry shrank due to television. I used to run all day long on the bike (typically about 200 to 250 miles a day). Pick up three messages in Beverly Hills going downtown, pick up one downtown going back to the west side, etc., etc., all day long.
Motorcycles are great for this kind of work in dense LA traffic. Lane splitting is legal in California and that in conjunction with ease of parking made bikes a lot more efficient than cars in both time and cost. I was running a Suzuki GN 400, a forgotten little 400cc single-cylinder street bike that they made for about 3 years. It was left over from the prior year’s production and they were being sold off at a bargain basement price. As I recall I paid $1123 for it brand spanking new. It wasn’t fast and it wasn’t flashy but it was fast enough for messenger work and was about as reliable as an anvil or the sun. And it just sipped fuel. All in all it could have used a little more uumph power wise but it got the job done.
I lived in the Southbay area of LA which is in the southwest part of the county and the office was in West LA. If the dispatchers could they would try to get me a south run to help pay my way home at the end of the day. This particular day I was in the office at about 4:30 that afternoon and the day was still frantic but winding down. My dispatcher called my name and told me he had an Orange County for me which was a good one money wise and also because it was southbound. The pick up was in Westwood going to Stanton in Orange County.
I took the dispatch ticket and went downstairs to my bike and off to Westwood I went with a big smile on my face. Got the pick up in Westwood and headed south on the notorious 405 freeway lane splitting merrily on my way through bumper to bumper rush hour traffic. I got to Artesia Boulevard in Torrance and doglegged across the Southbay to pick up the 91 freeway going to Orange County which is a distance of about 5 or so miles on the surface streets.
I was just getting on the 91 when suddenly my rear end started swinging wildly back and forth – Ugh!!!! Damn!!! I blew a rear tire!! I made my way to the shoulder of the freeway and walked about a hundred feet to a freeway call box. Nobody in those days had cell phones then except rich people and they were the size of a brick so all we had were beepers duct taped to our back pack straps. I got on the phone with the Highway Patrol operator and was trying to get a driver to come and pick up the delivery I had as it had to be there. This was somewhat difficult as the office had closed and we were trying to arrange all this through relays of calls to a nighttime relief driver.
As I was waiting for the operator to come back on the line I heard a horn honking repeatedly. I looked down at the freeway onramp just below me and for some reason there was a guy in a white bobtail truck honking and waving at me. I ignored this friendly gesture as I was in the middle of a minor crisis and also had no idea who the hell it was and was still waiting for the Highway Patrol operator on the call box to come back on the line.
Much to my surprise, the truck did not continue onto the freeway but edged over onto the shoulder where my bike was and started backing up. Well, this required a bit of investigation as it obviously was more than just a friendly hello from someone just passing by, so I put down the call box phone and ran over to the bike while the bobtail reversed to about 20 feet away from the bike. I approached the cab of the truck and miracle of miracles it was a friend of mine who just happened to be getting on the freeway who looked over, recognized me, and stopped. “Hey didn’t you see me waving at you”? Um,…..well yeah but didn’t know it was you”. “So what happened”? “I blew a rear tire” “Hey, no problem, lets put it on the lift gate and I’ll get you home.”
Well, we did just that. Up into the bobtail the Suzuki went, it got tied down, and my bud took me to the stop in Stanton to drop the package and then dropped me off right in my driveway in Redondo Beach. As he drove away I was kind of thinking to myself “did that really just happen or am I dreaming?” Well, it did happen. Sometimes you just get lucky. Real lucky.
That’s a great story, Bob. Thanks for sharing it with us. Ride safe and keep your powder dry.
This is an update on my latest 1903 Springfield load development work.
I purchased this rifle about three years ago assuming the headspace was correct, but it wasn’t. That’s a risk associated with old military rifles. Rifle parts are often mixed through the years, and when doing so with the bolt and the barreled action, it’s easy to induce an excess headspace condition. That’s what I encountered on my rifle, so I had the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) in Anniston, Alabama install a new 1903 barrel and rechamber the rifle. Live and learn, I guess. Always check the headspace when purchasing a milsurp rifle.
As it was returned to me from the CMP the rifle shot to the right and jacketed bullets shot way too high (at least I thought it shot way too high, but I was wrong…more on that in a bit). I noticed that the front sight was biased to the left (which made the rifle shoot to the right). I drifted the front sight in its base (it’s a dovetail fitting). The front sight takes a retaining screw that secures it to the barrel mount, and on my rifle that screw was missing. It might have shipped that way from the CMP or it might have fallen out.
When the Springfield was returned to me from the CMP, the front sight was biased to the left, as you see here. I didn’t notice it at first.A replacement front sight screw.
I wrote to the CMP regarding the missing front sight screw, but I haven’t heard from them and I found a replacement front sight screw on the Sarco website. I haven’t installed it yet (that will come later). I drifted the front sight in its dovetail to the right, and that brought the point of impact closer to the point of aim.
Before I get into the reloading specifics, I should explain a bit about the rear sight. The rear sight on the 1903 Springfield rifle is a complicated device. It’s called the M1905 rear sight, and it is designed and calibrated for standard military ball ammo (back in the day when the Army used .30 06 ball ammo). The sight is a ladder type rear sight and it has four aiming methods. One is the battlesight zero (it’s with the ladder down); the other three are with the ladder up which allows adjusting for various distances. In the big photo at the top of this blog, you see the rear sight with the ladder up. In the photo below, you see the rear sight with the ladder down.
The M1905 rear sight assembly on the 1903 Springfield rifle. The sight ladder is in the down, or battlesight zero position. Wow, there’s a lot going on there.
This first aiming method is through the battlesight zero notch with the ladder down. Battlesight zero means the bullet will coincide with the point of aim at 547 yards. The thought is that if you hold center of mass on a man-sized target at any distance up to 547 yards, you’ll hit the target. At 100 yards the rifle will shoot way high with the ladder down using the battlesight zero, which is what I experienced. I did not understand this was a normal occurrence when using the battlesight zero rear sight notch.
The 1903 Springfield’s rear sight in the raised position. Note that the sides of the rear sight force the crossbar to the left as distance to the target increases. That’s a built-in feature to compensate for bullet drift to the right at longer distances. Clever people, those Army engineers were. This rifle is over 100 years old.
The other three aiming methods all involve shooting with the ladder up (as you see in the above photo). You can adjust for various ranges from 100 yards out to 2800 yards (which is roughly a mile and a half) by loosening the crossbar lock screw and sliding the crossbar up or down to various indicated ranges on the ladder. One sighing method uses the crossbar upper notch. You simply slide the crossbar up or down so that the top of the notch aligns with the estimated distance to the target (in yards) on the ladder’s distance graduations. Another sighting method uses the crossbar lower notch. In this case, you slide the crossbar up or down so that the top of this lower notch aligns with the estimated distance to the target. The last sighting method involves using the crossbar aperture. There’s a horizonal scribe line across the plate containing this aperture, and when using the aperture, you align that scribe line with the estimated distance to the target. The aperture allows zeroing the rifle for ranges as close at 100 yards, which is where I do most of my shooting.
All the above is calibrated for standard military .30 06 ball ammo. If you’re shooting cast bullet ammo, or jacketed ammo with bullet weights or velocities other than standard ball ammo, you have to zero your rifle for your specific load.
There’s one other bit of coolness incorporated into the design of this rear sight. The sight ladder is designed so that as you raise the crossbar, the sighting notches and aperture move to the left. That’s to compensate for the bullet’s natural drift to the right as distances increase.
It’s all very clever, but in my opinion the Army made it too complicated. The rear sight was probably designed by an engineer who never had to carry or use a rifle in the field or train recruits to do so. I think most of the guys I served with in the Army would have a hard time remembering all this (I’m an engineer and I struggled to understand it). Apparently the Army agreed: They simplified the rear sight on the later 1903A3 rifle. The 1903A3 rear sight is much better for an infantry rifle.
That’s enough background on the 1903 Springfield sights. Let’s get to the reloading variables and which loads the Springfield likes. I prepped several, and I also grabbed some of the ammo I had previously loaded for the M1 Garand.
Four bullets used in this testing. From left to right: The Hursman 173-grain cast bullet, the Montana 210-grain cast bullet, the Winchester 150 grain jacketed soft point bullet, and the jacketed Speer 168-grain Match bullet.The Hursman cast bullet loaded in a .30 06 cartridge.
I first fired at a 5o-yard silhouette target to see where the bullets were hitting (there’s lots of real estate on that target). With the ladder down, the point of impact was to the right and low using the 17.0-grain Trail Boss and 173-grain Hursman bullet load. With the ladder up, it moved left a little and printed higher using the higher rear sight notch. For that 0.793 group up top, I used the bottom edge of the upper left box as the aimpoint. For the other two groups, it was the bottom of the orange bullseye.
An initial target shot with cast bullets and Trail Boss powder. There’s a lot of real estate on this target, so I could see where the rifle was shooting.
I shot groups at 50 yards with several different loads using combinations of the bullets shown above and SR 4759, Trail Boss, 5744, and IMR 4064 propellants, all at 50 yards, and all with neck-sized-only .30 06 brass. Then I returned a week later and fired groups with the 150-grain jacketed Winchester bullets (again at 50 yards).
After shooting the above groups, I had 20 rounds left with the Trail Boss, Hursman bullet, and SR 4759 load. I shot two of them at a clump of dirt at about 80 yards and hit it (I think) both times. Then I put a 100-yard small bore rifle target up at 100 yards and shot at it with the 173-grain cast bullet SR 4759 load (8 rounds were crimped, and 10 rounds were not). To my surprise, all 18 rounds were on the paper and 14 of the 18 were in the black. It’s not that great a 100-yard group, but it shows potential. All this was with the ladder down using the battlesight zero sighting approach, so with cast bullets this rifle (at least with the SR 4759 load) is pretty much in the ballpark.
Cast bullets at 100 yards using the battlesight zero rear sight.
For the jacketed loads, I used the 150-grain Winchester jacketed soft point bullet (I bought a bunch of these a few years ago when somebody had them on sale) and 48.0 grains of IMR 4064. This is the accuracy load in the Lyman reloading manual with a 150-grain jacketed bullet, and I know from prior development work it is superbly accurate in my Model 70. It is also a minimum load, which is nice given the 1903’s steel buttplate. The 1903 did well at 50 yards with the Winchester bullets, so I posted another silhouette target at 100 yards. I fired three rounds and it was rough shooting at that target. Using the aperture, I literally could not see the orange bullseye at 100 yards when I focused on the front sight. The orange bullseye disappeared until I shifted my focus to the target. I’d acquire the bullseye, then rapidly shift my focus to the front sight and squeeze the trigger. I did that three times, literally firing blind, and managed to get a 3.050-inch 3-shot group.
The 150-grain jacketed Winchester bullet load at 100 yards. I couldn’t keep the orange bullseye visible using the aperture at 100 yards.
I figured it was time to quit while I was ahead. I didn’t have any more black bullseye targets with me. I knew I would be able to see those focusing on the 1903’s front post while sighting with the aperture. But with the orange bullseyes (like you see in the target above), I might as well have been shooting at night. I returned to the range a few days later and shot at 100 yards with the jacketed 150-grain Winchester bullets (with the 48.0-grain IMR 4064 load), the 210-grain cast Montana bullets (with the 17.0-grain Trail Boss load), and the 168-grain Speer match bullets (with a 48.0 grain IMR 4064 load).
Using the rear sight aperture, I shot the target below at 100 yards with the 150-grain Winchester jacketed bullet and 48.0 grains of IMR 4064. I was pleased with the results and I quit after 3 shots (I didn’t want to screw up the group).
Three shots into an inch and three quarters at 100 yards. The load was 48.0 grains of IMR 4064 and the Winchester 150-grain jacketed soft point bullet. Old eyes and an even older rifle sometimes do great things. My rifle was manufactured in 1918; I was born in 1951.
I then shot at another 100-yard target with the 210-grain Montana cast bullet (these were loaded with 17.0 grains of Trail Boss). I used the rear sight’s lower notch for this target. Hmm, what do you know…the elevation was about perfect without moving anything on the rear sight.
Another 100 yard target, this time with the Montana 210-grain cast bullet and 17.0 grains of Trail Boss. I used the rear sight notch immediately above the aperture without making any adjustments. This is a real sweetheart load with minimal muzzle blast, almost no recoil, and no leading. The cast bullets are not as accurate at 100 yards as are the jacketed bullets, but they are still pretty good.
Finally, I fired eight rounds originally loaded for the Garand (I reload for the Garand in multiples of eight, as that’s what a clip holds), returning again to the rear sight aperture. This load used the 168-grain Speer jacketed boattail hollowpoint bullet and 48.0 grains of IMR 4064 propellant. The Speer bullets are almost identical to the Sierra match bullet, but the Speer’s ogive is slighly different and it has less bearing area in the barrel. I called the wizards at Speer about that and they recommended going to a heavier charge than would be used with the comparable Sierra bullet (they specifically recommended 48.0 grains of IMR 4064 for the Garand). That load was a little warm in the 1903 (the recoil was significantly more than the 150-grain Winchester bullet and the primers had slight flattening). But it was reasonably accurate.
Eight rounds of .30 06 ammo loaded for the Garand, using the 1903 rear sight aperture, at 100 yards. The astute blogophile will note there appears to be only seven holes; the hole just outside the 10-ring had two bullets pass through it.
My observations and conclusions from the above are:
The 1903 Springfield rear sight is needlessly complex for an infantry rifle. You may feel differently. Hey, go start your own blog.
With my cast bullet loads, there was no leading. My cast bullets had gas checks (the little copper cup on the bullet base), which helps to prevent leading.
The Lyman cast bullet book showed a minimal 5744 load to be the accuracy load for the 210-grain Montana cast bullet. I did not find that to be the case.
Both the Hursman 173-grain and the Montana 210-grain cast bullets were extremely accurate with 17.0 grains of Trail Boss, at least at 50 yards.
The Winchester 150-grain jacketed bullet accuracy load, per the Lyman manual, was with 48.0 grains of IMR 4064. I found this to be a very accurate load. I didn’t do a lot of work developing a jacketed bullet load. I’m going to stick with this one for this rifle.
Orange bullseyes and aperture rear sights don’t work with my old eyes at 100 yards. They are okay at 50 yards, but not 100 yards.
Both of the jacketed bullet loads I tried (the Speer Garand load and the Lyman 150-grain accuracy load) are accurate. Without adjusting the rear sight from the 150-grain jacketed bullet setting, the Garand load shoots a little high and to the right, but the group size would fit into the bullseye if the sights were adjusted.
The cast bullets are not as accurate as the jacketed bullets at 100 yards. The cast bullets are comparabily accurate to jacketed bullets at 50 yards, but not at 100.
With regard to shooting both cast and jacketed bullets in the same rifle, I got lucky: As complicated as that 1903 Springfield rear sight is, I found that one rear sight position shoots to the same point of impact at 100 yards for both my cast bullet accuracy load and my jacketed bullet accuracy load. Yep, you read that right. With the rear sight crossbar secured as you see in the photo below, I can use the aperture (denoted by the right arrow) with the 150-grain jacketed bullet load. Or, I can use the lower crossbar notch (denoted by the left arrow) with the 210-grain cast bullet, 17.0 grains of Trail Boss load. Both will shoot to the same point of impact at 100 yards. A friend asked if I tuned the loads to do this. I wish I could say I had that kind of load development expertise. Nope, I just got lucky.
One size fits all (sort of). With the 1903’s rear sight in the raised position, I use the notch denoted by the arrow on the left for my cast bullet accuracy load at 100 yards. I use the aperature denoted by the arrow on the right for the 150-grain jacketed bullet load at 100 yards. I don’t need to move the rear sight cross bar up or down. Sometimes you just get lucky.
One final note that’s sure to set the Internet on fire: I know this is heresy. As much as I like my 1903, I think the 91/30 Mosin Nagant is a better rifle. My Mosin groups better at 1oo yards. But that’s a story for another blog.
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Wow: Hawaii is just full of suprises. The adventure on this fine Hawaiian morning was another National Historical Park, lava fields, a rugged downhill (and then uphill) hike over a jagged lava path, sea turtles, and a rotting meat flower (no kidding!). A rotting meat flower? You bet. Read on and you’ll see.
We asked the Park Ranger at the entrance if we would be able to see the sea turtles, and he told us it all depended on what they were doing. “They might be sleeping, they might be out to sea, or they might be eating…you never know until you’re down there.”
Down there meant taking the 1.3-mile hike to the Pacific’s edge, which we proceeded to do. We were lucky; the turtles were out in force munching on the algae that grows on the rocks. They were huge…their shells were maybe three feet long. It was really something to see. There were seven or eight turtles in the shallows when we arrived.
On the return hike Sue noticed an unusually attractive and large flower in a ravine next to the lava path. I had the 24-120 lens on my Nikon and I didn’t want to attempt climbing down the jagged lava to get closer, so I zoomed in and grabbed this shot.
What struck me as unusual about the flower was its size, the fact that it seemed to be growing out of a cactus plant, and the flower’s markings and vibrance. I wasn’t sure how to start researching a flower from a photo, but while I was looking at the photo Google popped up a Wikipedia link. The Wikipedia page had a photo, too, and no doubt about it, it was my flower. Here’s what it said:
Stapelia is a genus of low-growing, spineless, stem succulent plants, predominantly from South Africa with a few from other parts of Africa. Several Asian and Latin American species were formerly included but they have all now been transferred to other genera. The flowers of certain species, most notably Stapelia gigantea, can reach 41 cm (16 inches) in diameter when fully open. Most Stapelia flowers are visibly hairy and generate the odor of rotten flesh when they bloom. The hairy, oddly textured and coloured appearance of many Stapelia flowers has been claimed to resemble that of rotting meat, and this, coupled with their odour, has earned the most commonly grown members of the genus Stapelia the common name of carrion flowers. A notable exception is the sweetly scented Stapelia flavopurpurea. Such odours serve to attract various specialist pollinators including, in the case of carrion-scented blooms, blow flies of the dipteran family Calliphoridae. They frequently lay eggs around the coronae of Stapelia flowers, convinced by the plants’ deception.
I had heard of such flowers and I always wanted to see one. For me this was a first. I know what you are thinking, and no, I didn’t get close enough to take a whiff. Maybe next time.
Here’s the same flyer I showed in a previous post from Hawii. We weren’t on motorcycles on this trip, but rentals are available and I thought the pricing was reasonable.
One of the recent comments on a Joe Gresh blog post had a website address in it and I visited it. David Skogley’s East Goes West site is a good one. David is an American who lives and Germany and writes about his motorcycle travels in Europe. I wrote to David asking if I could mention his blog on ExNotes and here’s his answer:
Hi Joe,
Many thanks for getting in touch and for your kind words about my blog.
I started the blog about four years ago because I just felt like writing about some of the experiences I was having on bikes in and around Berlin, Germany. I’m certainly not a world traveller (other than long ago on a bicycle) but I figured there probably aren’t that many Americans writing about motorcycling in this neck of the woods, so thought I would give it a shot. In the end, it’s been fun and is interesting to see how my writing has slowly changed, even though I have a very small number of people reading what I put out there. It was never intended to be a money maker, just sort of an online diary, I guess. A way of not forgetting what has gone on in an important part of my life. The writing has become quite sporadic, however, as work (and lethargy) often gets in the way.
I’ve put in very little time or effort regading formatting, and requires a lot of scrolling to find the old entries. Have to change this at some point! Right at the beginning I wrote the following short description/explanation, which is only visible if you go way back to the beginning:
“I moved east to Berlin, Germany from the east coast of the US quite a long time ago. I started riding motorcycles not long after. The intention of this blog is to express some thoughts about motorcycles (and other two-wheeled modes of transportation) and things connected to them.”
A short blog about my blog sounds great! Many thanks for your kind offer.
I travel a lot. It’s all secret missions, you know. Litigations, defense industry work, secret manufacturing processes, and the like. Don’t tell anyone. Some of my clients insist that I fly first class. Hey, the customer is always right and if that’s what they want, that’s what I do. But first class air travel sure isn’t what it used to be. At least within the US. It used to be that first class meant you got on the airplane first, an attractive young person took your carry on stuff and put it in the overhead bin for you, that same attractive young person would take your jacket and hang it up for you, someone else would bring you a plate of heated nuts (on a real plate, not plastic or paper), they’d ask what kind of drink you’d like (I always went for 100% blue agave Tequila, whatever you have, please), and all this was within maybe 60 seconds of getting to your seat. And the meals…wow, they were heavenly. Like you’d get in a restaurant. Real food. Real dishes. More booze. Cloth napkins. It was real, you know, first class treatment.
Today? You gotta be kidding me, I thought when the guy came around with my “lunch.” It was a cardboard container with maybe four or five cellophane snack bags. Like Mom used to put in my lunch when I went to elementary school. I took the offerings the first time this happened, thinking it was a lot of snacks before they served lunch. As we neared our destination I realized: That was lunch. I asked if their catering service just knocked over a vending machine. I figured if they are giving me a first class snack, I’m going to give them first class sarcasm.
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ExNotes features a bunch of things (motorcycles, guns, watches, reloading, and more). We get way more hits on the gun pieces than we do on anything else, but truth be told, we’re old and we’re not motivated by hits, likes, tweets, or any of the other silliness introduced by the so-called social media platforms. Gresh and I write because we like to write. It’s that simple. Don’t get me wrong: We love it when you click on the pop up ads that appear on the site and in our blogs because that puts money in our pockets.
On occasion, we’ll hear from some left wing asshole (sorry for the redundancy) with his shorts in a knot when we do a gun blog. Hey, we get it: Some folks hate guns. My advice and response has always been simple: If you don’t like guns, don’t buy one. If you don’t like a gun blog, don’t read it.
But even a lifelong, died-in-the-wool shooting enthusiast like yours truly feels sick, disgusted, and unspeakably sad at the rash of mass shootings that have become common in the last few years. I knew a guy who lost a daughter in the Virginia Tech shooting. The aftermath is gut-wrenching. I’ve wondered: Should these high capacity weapons be outlawed? Then I remembered…guns that hold large quantities of ammo have been around for over a hundred years, and when I was a kid, we didn’t have these mass shootings. So what’s changed?
A friend sent this YouTube video to me a few days ago. I can’t remember ever having agreed with Bill Maher on anything (not that he or anyone else needs me to), but I think old Maher nailed it. Take a look:
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One of the influential people in my life was Woody Peebles. Woody worked at Admiralty Marine down on Shelter Island in San Diego, California. Woody lived on the ocean side of Point Loma in a beautiful, two story home that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. My memory is slightly faulty but I think he was one of the principals, or maybe the owner of, an electronics company called Wavetek. When I started working at Admiralty he was no longer involved with Wavetek and was essentially retired. Woody didn’t need any money; he was well off and I think he hung around boats just to be near people. He was an outgoing personality and chatted a lot.
Woody was an electronics genius, which is different from electrical wiring like the Saturn 5 is different from a bottle rocket. We didn’t work together at first. He did electronics and I worked in the mechanical side of Admiralty Marine. The shop began selling a lot of Onan generators and also installed Electroguard corrosion control systems. Woody was having a hard time keeping up with the growth in that end of the business so I’d get pulled off my mechanical duties to help Woody.
Helping Woody was about as much fun as you could have and still call it work. In the morning we would load up the truck for our day’s jobs and take off from the shop like we meant business. Within a block or two Woody would say, “I’m a little hungry. Want to stop and get breakfast?” Of course I did. We’d pull into a restaurant, settle into a booth, order coffee and shoot the breeze. That would be my second breakfast but I could eat all I wanted and never gain weight.
After an hour or so we would go to the actual job. At noon we would knock off early to beat the lunch rush and we haunted The Red Sails Inn nearly every day. They had a really good house salad with a great salad dressing that made me wheeze. Must have been the nitrates. Rosie was our waitress. We would ask which table was Rosie’s and then go sit at that table.
Besides eating, Woody would take the time to explain complex electronic circuits to me while we were supposed to be fixing some poor bastard’s boat. He was forever drawing out circuits on napkins that had nothing to do with the job at hand. It was like a free, college-level electronics course so I lapped it up. I learned about wave soldering, circuit board etching and to think of a printed circuit board as one component, a single part, instead of a collection of electronic bits.
Woody was never in a rush; his concept of time was a revelation to me. Before Woody I was always on someone else’s time, hurrying and stressing to not be late; pressing to meet some other guy’s idea of how long a job should take. I didn’t own my time. Woody had an entirely different way of marking time. He would step into or out of the workday with ease. Sometimes he would just leave the job we were on, “I’ll be back later.” and off he would go.
Working with Woody made me realize that my time was as important as the next guy’s. Jobs weren’t something you did in a fixed amount of time. In fact, time itself became irrelevant and you measured success by completing the work, not beating the clock. If we were taking too long on a particular job I’d start fretting and Woody would say, “Don’t worry about it, I won’t charge for my time.”
This fungible sort of timekeeping was a fundamental change in my concept of income. Before Woody, I was always trying to work more hours to make more money. Once I learned that I could bend time to my will I no longer needed an hourly job. I didn’t need a business to pay me by the hour. In fact, the hour, my benchmark for self worth, was nothing but a man-made denomination. Days weren’t 24-hours long any more, there was only breakfast, lunch and dinner.
My new way of thinking made it possible for me to quit Admiralty Marine and start a boat repair business. I still kept track of my time and charged by the hour but the pressure was off, I could always adjust the bill later. Customers didn’t tell me how long I had to do a job, I told them what I was going to charge them regardless of the hours involved. I may have run out of time on a job but I never fell behind again: I was always right where I should be.
Woody and I left Admiralty Marine around the same time. I started Gresh Marine and tripled my income on the very first day and I was still billing half of what Admiralty was charging for my time. Woody hooked up with Wayne and Walt, also known as the Gold Dust twins. The Gold Dust twins were independent operators who had a loose affiliation when one or the other needed a second set of hands. The three W’s formed a company called Associated Marine but it was mostly in their minds. Each W did their own thing and would bill each other if they assisted on a job.
Woody must have missed me because after a year or so the three W’s asked me to meet with them to discuss a merger. I went to the meeting. The deal was, Associated Marine was going to rent a building at a marina on Mission Bay. All four of us would split the rent, insurance and other business costs. We would still be independent operators with the added benefit of having a crew you could call upon if you needed help for a big re-wire project or a new boat build.
Wayne, a tall, gangly guy told me that I’d have to raise my rates to make them compatible with the rest of the Associated Marine members. They didn’t want me undercutting them. This meant another doubling of my income. Thus began a several year run of bliss. I loved having a shop to work out of instead of my tiny basement. I met my future wife. I bought a house and my first brand new motorcycle. I spent money as fast as I made it but I was young: that’s what young folks are supposed to do.
Bit by bit, Wayne and Walt sent Woody and I out on more of their jobs. They kept us very busy, so busy we never had time to build our own customer base. I began to realize I had switched from working for Admiralty Marine to working for the Gold Dust twins. Maybe that was their plan all along. Still, the money was good and I was having fun working with Woody so I kept at it.
We never had a receptionist at Associated Marine. An answering machine handled incoming calls and if anyone of us were in the shop we’d answer and take notes. One day I walked in the shop and Wayne’s daughter was in the office manning the phones. We didn’t pay her much but it was another cost of doing business.
Walt wanted an outboard motor dealership so he managed to get Suzuki to make us dealers. Then we needed inventory. With the Suzuki’s came warranty work, which was paperwork intensive. I became an outboard motor mechanic even though I hated the damn things. These changes happened without my input. I was too busy working on Gold Dust jobs.
Then came Woody’s son, Woody Junior. Junior had lost his sales job and crash landed at Associated Marine. Junior was outgoing and gregarious even more so than his dad. Now when we went to breakfast there were three of us. And here I was thinking I was the son, you know? But Junior was the real son. He knew nothing about what we were doing at Associated Marine yet he was charging the same rate as the rest of us. Three men on a job was a bit much so Woody and Junior worked together just like me and Woody used to. I worked alone.
There was a bit of tension in the air. I felt Junior hadn’t paid his dues and was starting on third base so to speak, a base that had taken me many years of hard work to step on. Besides, he stole my Daddy and talked too much.
The situation gnawed at me and I became disgruntled. I mentioned to Wayne that since Junior was charging the same as the rest of us he should pay one-fifth of Associated Marine’s expenses. This blew up big time. Woody charged into a boat where Wayne and I were working and grabbed me by the shirt. “You little shit, stirring up trouble!” Woody screamed at me. Junior was behind me sheepishly saying, “C’mon dad, leave him alone.”
Woody was old and had a dicky heart. I was young and strong. It would be no contest. I was getting angry at him shoving me around by my shirt. I balled up my fist to smack him in the jaw and when he saw that he got even more enraged. “Don’t raise your fist to me!” he shouted, like he was yelling at his own son. My fist went down on its own accord. I thought it would have been nice if my fist had informed me in advance that it wasn’t taking my side. My initial anger had subsided and I was sad and worried that Woody might have a heart attack. Woody stormed off the boat with Junior staying a safe distance behind. Wayne was dazed, “What the hell was that?” He said. I didn’t understand the situation at the time but I had gotten the attention I desired.
You know how they say to be careful what you wish for? After a week or so Woody cooled off and apologized for shoving me around. He told me that he’d thought it over and that I was right. Junior became a partner in associated Marine and assumed his fifth of the expenses. Junior had breezed into the Majors without spending a day in the minor leagues.
From then on I generally stayed out of trouble and just worked but it wasn’t nearly as much fun as the old days. Woody, Junior and I did a few big boats together but Junior’s work ethic grated on my nerves. Junior became a passable electrician when he applied himself except he was always talking. I didn’t mind carrying Woody because I could do the work of two men. Junior was one body too many. I finally drifted away from Associated Marine and restarted Gresh Marine as an independent business.
I tried to find Woody online but came up with nothing. . He would be around 100 today so he’s probably not with us. Junior is still alive and living in San Diego. When I first met Woody all I could see was dollars per hour. I wanted a job, any job. I wanted to work for someone. I needed someone to tell me what to do next. After Woody and I parted ways I felt that there was nothing I couldn’t do and I feared nothing business-wise. After Woody I never had a job for the rest of my life and I managed to stay busy the entire time. Thanks, old friend.
It’s been a long haul correcting double action misfires on my snubnose Smith and Wesson revolver, but the magnificent Model 60 is where I want it to be now. Here’s how I went about it.
My Model 60 had too much end shake (the cylinder had a lot of back and forth play). Shimming the cylinder with TriggerShim’s excellent shims quickly corrected that problem. Shimming the cylinder keeps it closer to the firing pin and that permits more energy from the hammer’s fall transferring directly into the primer. You can read our blog about correcting cylinder end shake here.
My reloaded ammo’s primers were not completely seated. When that occurs, some of the hammer and firing pin’s energy goes into fully seating the primer rather than firing it. You want ammo reloaded for use in double action revolvers to have very slightly flattened primers after the primer seating operation, and that can be achieved with Lee’s excellent primer seating tool. You can read about that here.
If a revolver is out of time the firing pin will hit the primer off-center resulting in unreliable ignition. If you shoot enough your revolver will go out of time. Correcting revolver timing typically involves fitting a new hand and you can read about that here.
If your revolver’s hammer spring has weakened over the years or as a result of use you can easily install a new Wolff hammer spring. We wrote a blog about that you can read here.
If you’re having problems with misfires in a double action revolver, the above areas are where I would look first.
The Big Island, Hawaii, was formed by volcanoes, like the other Hawaiian islands and nearly all others in the Pacific. Five volcanoes formed the Big Island, and one is still active. That’s the Kīlauea volcano. It’s the one you see above. It’s the one we visited recently.
The walk from the park entrance to the Kileaua crater.
It’s a bit of a hike to get to the Kīlauea volcano crater once you enter the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (the photo above shows the way in), but the hike is worth it. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is one of the few National Parks in Hawaii that charges admission. I have the brass pass (the senior citizen National Parks lifetime pass), which has to be one of the best deals ever.
The big photo at the top of this blog is the crater, and it was impressive. Hissing steam, a bit of lava flow, and a hint of what this planet is all about. It was only in the last 50 years that the US Navy completely mapped the Pacific floor. The Navy survey found many underwater mountains formed by volcanoes, all in a straight line. A theory emerged that these were formed by the same magma eruption (i.e., a volcano) that created the Hawaiian Islands (which are the end of that straight line). The eruption is a fixed point; the islands and underwater mountains that extend in a thousand-mile-long straight line occurred as a result of tectonic plate shift over this point. Fascinating stuff.
Lava in the Kīlauea crater.
The red glow you see in the photo above is lava in the Kīlauea crater. I was a good half mile or more away from it, but thanks to the 24-120 Nikon lens and a bit of PhotoShop cropping, it looks like I’m right there. Trust me; I wasn’t.
We stayed just outside the Park on Volcano Road in a bed and breakfast tucked away deep in a tropical bamboo forest. It was pretty cool and very remote. Think banana trees, palms, humidity, colorful birds, and everything you might expect to see in an equatorial jungle. We had a herd of wild pigs briefly wander into our yard one afternoon (and I, without a rifle or a camera, could only stare). Surprisingly, the nights were deafening thanks to the Coqui frogs. The Coqui frogs are an invasive species from Puerto Rico. A few evidently hitched rides on plants coming from Puerto Rico to Hawaii. The Coqui have no natural enemies in Hawaii, and they reproduced to levels previously unheard of (folks who know about this stuff estimate the Hawaiian Coqui population density at roughly 2,000 frogs per acre, and with no natural enemies, the levels are still climbing). Well, maybe “unheard of” is probably a poor choice of words. Believe me, at night, all you can hear are the Coqui. Their “croak” is a 100-decibel “Co Kee” and when you multiply that by 2,000 per acre…well, you get the idea. How a tiny frog the size of half your thumb generates that kind of noise is beyond me. It’s deafening and goes from dusk to dawn. The good news is that the Coqui are only in the jungle areas; we didn’t have that problem on the other side of the island.
To state the obvious, you can’t ride your motorcycle to Hawaii. But you can rent a motorcycle there. The going rate is about $200 for a day, and if you rent for several days, the rate drops a bit. The roads through Hawaii are scenic, and in a week on the Big Island you can pretty much take in most of what there is to see. I checked out the motorcycle rentals in Hawaii’s Waikaloa Village. Big Island Motorcycle Company had Harley big twins, Sportsters, and Suzuki V-Stroms, along with Polaris three-wheelers and other vehicles. Gas prices in Hawaii were high, but surprisingly, they were below what gas costs in California these days.
There’s not a lot of Internet noise on the revivified BSA motorcycle company and I don’t see any reason why ExhaustNotes.us shouldn’t try and create some buzz with wild speculation of our own. We haven’t got a test bike and if we did we’d be riding the wheels off the thing so we’ll just imagine we have a BSA to examine. If you haven’t learned by now not to trust things you read on the Internet then there’s really no hope for you and you can take everything I say in this review as gospel.
In the US market BSA is re-entering the motorcycle business at a bad time. Our customer demographic for street motorcycle riders becomes older by the minute. 1950’s-1960’s nostalgia-driven motorcycle sales simply must die off with the customers that lived that stifling, bland era. In just a few seconds I was able to gin up a statistic that said the average age for motorcyclists in America is 73 years old. That number shocked me even though I knew it was false because I was the one that made it up. Soon enough I came to believe that number because it was on the Internet in this ExhaustNotes.us story.
In the video below new-BSA’s Indian owners appear to realize the American market is awash with nostalgic motorcycle choices and don’t seem to be in any rush to lose money chasing the urine soaked, grey-haired, pony-tailed, ancient American rider even though that dried up shell of a man would appear to be the natural audience for such a bike.
The motorcycle might be built in Britain, but most likely will be made in India with a steadying British hand on the design choices. BSA has really nailed the look. The new 650 is as close to the old Gold Star style-wise as you can get without having survived the bombing of Coventry. To me, the bike looks great and is so much classier than the swoopy, exo-framed modern bike. BSA even made the engine clatter like an old British single even though it’s a liquid-cooled, double overhead cam, 4-valve engine. I looked on BSA’s website to see of it was fuel–injected but didn’t see that spec. I’m sure it is. Claimed compression ratio is 11.5:1 so hopefully the combustion chamber is shaped well enough to use regular unleaded gas. Finding high-octane gas is a problem out in the hinterlands.
The claimed 45 horsepower BSA thumper comes with all the modern conveniences like ABS, headlights, turn indicators and a hose bib for a washing machine. The bike is also equipped with a 23,000-watt inverter allowing the rider to power a typical suburban home for up to 5 days. The bike is fairly lightweight compared to your average adventure motorcycle clocking in at only 33-1/2 stone. One disc brake on each wheel should stop the light-ish BSA fairly well and with a claimed 70 miles-per-1024 dram you should be able to go roughly 210 miles on the 3240-dram tank. Of course, your mileage may vary depending of which rose-colored glasses you are wearing at the time.
BSA’s website doesn’t mention a counter balancer but one of the guys in the video says it has one so I predict a tolerable vibration level even with that big slug flying around between your legs. Traditional telescopic forks and two rear shocks are nothing earth shaking. I like simple things so I’m good with boring old suspenders. Spoke rims and what looks like tube-type tires are all well-trod design choices that leave plenty of space for improvements on subsequent model years.
As it should, my opinion means nothing to you but I like the new BSA. It looks right, and it has the bare minimum modern junk bolted on. I’ll go as far as saying it’s an honest motorcycle. The only thing wrong is the price. Even with the collapsing British pound, 10,000 British pounds is over $11,000 US dollars and that’s almost twice what Royal Enfield’s 650 twin sells for, a bike that is every bit as cool and most likely better. The Enfield even wins AFT flat track races. I won’t be buying one but don’t let that stop you from buying one.
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