On occasion, I’ll post a blog that’s a general update and a peek into what’s coming down the pike. I’ll be on another secret mission to Asia next month, returning to one favorite Far East locale and visiting another for the first time. They each have a vibrant motorcycle and auto culture and I’ll get as many photos as I can. You can bet I’ll have several blogs on both places. It’s going to be fun.
We’re quite happy to welcome British Motorcycle Gear as an ExNotes advertiser. BMG is a New Jersey moto shop with very high quality motorcycle clothing, parts, and more. Good buddy Andrew Capone is the owner and he’s good people. In addition to being a Jersey Boy (as is yours truly), Andrew is a serious rider, a motojournalist, and a world traveler. He’s Motorcycle.com’s “go to” guy on all things related to the Isle of Man, and there’s a chance he may even pen an article or two for us here on ExNotes. Gresh tested and reviewed British Motorcycle Gear products here on ExNotes and it’s good equipment. And here’s even more good news: Andrew is offering an exclusive discount to ExNotes readers. Just punch in the code BMGJOES when checking out, and you’ll get an 11% discount on everything (except gear that’s already on sale, and Halcyon mirrors and goggles). Check out the British Motorcycle Gear website; I know you’ll enjoy it.
Joe Gresh is headed to a New Mexico vintage motorcycle show and the Motorado event in the near future, and you’ll read about that right here. I’m looking forward to reading all about it. Mike Huber, Bobbie Surber, and Rob Morel all have more stories in work for you. Mike is BMWborne on a transcontinental blitz, Bobbie is headed off on another motoexpedition to points south (as in way, way south), and Rob is working a few more projects up in Washington.
One last note: Our request for financial site support (or, as some would call it, my high tech begging) is doing quite well. Thank you to all our supporters. We appreciate it greatly.
I don’t go to the movies very often because it seems like superhero stuff is all that plays at our local cineplex, so it’s unusual that I’ve gone to the talkies twice in the last couple weeks. After seeing the big movie of the summer, Barbie, CT and I decided to go to the second big movie of the summer: Oppenheimer. I’ll be dropping a few spoilers so click out of this blog if you plan on going to Oppenheimer.
I became interested in the United States atomic program about 15 years ago. It may seem gruesome to some, but the mechanics of the Manhattan Project intrigued me. Those old-timey scientists did some amazing stuff way back in the 1940s. Everything they were attempting to do was based on theory and done for the first time.
I went to New Mexico’s Los Alamos to tour that once forbidden city and visited Trinity Site, where the world’s first atomic bomb was exploded. For an insider’s perspective of the super-secret project the book, Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman by Richard Feynman has a lot of Manhattan Project stuff along with other excitement from the anything-is-possible era. I liked the landforms in New Mexico so much we ended up moving here.
As it turns out I really didn’t know all that much about the dawn of the atomic age. Oppenheimer the movie is mostly about the adversarial relationship between Oppenheimer and Lewis Strauss, a man that I never saw name-checked in the information I had read. This kind of smoke-filled-room stuff doesn’t interest me although Strauss caused a lot of trouble for Oppenheimer after the war.
From my limited research I thought Oppenheimer was sort of a figurehead for the Manhattan Project but the movie portrays him as critical to the project’s success. Luckily for New Mexico (or unluckily if you were downwind of the blast) he loved the state and picked a site west of Santa Fe for the new atomic age.
CT and I drove down to El Paso, Texas, to see the movie in large format Imax. An old-style mall, set 25 feet lower in elevation than El Paso’s Montana Avenue, was the closest place we could find. The mall was interesting in that the entire commons area was filled with a flea market. You could find hand-made crucifixes or plastic crucifixes made in China. There were places to get your car key battery replaced and a bar of colorful, homemade soap. We had an hour or so before our show started so we went into a madhouse called Dave and Buster’s. Dave and Buster’s is a huge, chain gaming center with a restaurant attached. The place looked mostly like a Las Vegas casino except it’s ok for kids to go because you can only lose.
The restaurant was not too bad. CT and I split a turkey club sandwich. The racket was so loud I needed a gin and soda to calm my nerves. I can see a parent at the end of their rope taking the kids to Dave and Buster’s and turning them loose while mom or dad get plastered at the bar. Really a great business model if you think about it.
I don’t know if it’s due to the lack of employees or matinees are so sparsely populated that there is no need for employees, but we waltzed past the unmanned snack bar into the Imax theater unmolested. The Imax had very steep steps leading to steep seats with plenty of space for mid-aisle stragglers to wander in front of the punctual people. No need to worry about a lady with a fruit basket on her head sitting in front; you’ll be able to see the screen.
My ears were still smarting from Dave and Buster’s when the movie started with an ear-splitting explosion followed by thousands of random lights racing towards a center point roughly 3 feet in front of my head. The room thundered and shook. I thought the place was coming down but this was just the Imax theater showing us what it was capable of doing and had nothing to do with the Oppenheimer movie. I began to see the reason there were no ticket takers. The usual series of advertisements you see in a theater were not shown, maybe because there are so few Imax theaters it’s not worth shooting the ads in their large format.
Oppenheimer’s story is told out of sequence with scenes jumping forward and backward in time. Maybe this is a nod to quantum physics and the impossibility of knowing the true state of matter at any particular time? The jump scenes are mixed in with fantasy sequences that represent Oppenheimer daydreaming. The film switches between color and black and white. All this jumping to and fro, along with the deafening audio levels and rattling chairs, kept me disoriented. I’m mostly deaf in my left ear and still it was actually painful at times. CT wanted to stick wadded up tissue paper in my ears. I should have done it.
Actors playing famous physicists make cameo appearances throughout the movie. You never know who will pop up at a dinner party. Matt Damon plays a loud General Leslie Groves with a comical Jackie Gleason style. Robert Downey is Oppenheimer’s antagonist. He does a good job for most of the film even if he did fall into a paranoid Captain Queeg riff near the end.
The early, red-scare communists were the beautiful people in the movie and their party meetings were more like cocktail socials. Even though it appears he went to the meetings solely to pick up chicks, this dabbling in communism would prove to be a problem for Oppenheimer later in his career.
I like 40-foot tall ta-tas as much as the next guy, but the nude scenes in Oppenheimer seemed to be there to bump the rating and didn’t really contribute to the story in any meaningful way. Which is exactly what you want from gratuitous sex scenes. I feel the director went a little light in this area. There should have been 15 or 20 more. During the kangaroo court to take away Oppenheimer’s security clearance there was a creepy fantasy sequence with Oppenheimer’s dead lover staring at Oppenheimer’s wife while straddling him naked on the witness chair. She wasn’t decomposing with her nose falling off or anything, but it did seem weird.
The director had a tough job making Oppenheimer exciting enough for our 2-second attention span populace. It’s a story that wants to be told slowly and with great detail. I fear that movie will never be made and if it was would not earn much money for the studio. Instead, we get clip after clip that somehow are supposed to make sense at the end. Those Superhero movies have ruined us.
Oppenheimer was sort of a let down. I was expecting a more nuts and bolts experience, like I would be able to build my own small thermonuclear weapon after seeing the movie. Don’t let that deter you from seeing the film; it’s probably just me. I had a hard time following the story and it took 75% of the run time before I began to connect all the disjointed scenes. I think in a regular theater I would have done better. The Imax experience was too overwhelming for me. The constant shaking of seats and booming audio put me in a fight or flight mode. Picture reading a good book, and every few minutes a guy walks up, shakes your shoulders, and shouts “You’re reading a book!” in your ear. It’s that kind of annoying. Imax never lets you forget that you’re in a movie theater.
Joe Gresh’s “Call to Arms” post had a lot of positive results for us (thank you, everyone who contributed), and we’ve had a lot of folks ask us to make it easier to support the site. So that’s what we’ve done.
There’s no obligation, there’s no subscription required, you’ll still have access to everything on the site, and if you choose not to donate, that’s okay, too. We still love you. But we’re making it easier (as you have requested) to support ExhaustNotes and our blog. PayPal, credit cards, whatever. 100% of anything you contribute will go to the writers.
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Sponsored content is a way for publications to earn money. How it works is companies pay cold hard cash for bloggers to write a story about the products they’re selling. Most reputable websites and magazines print a notice letting you know the story is paid advertising. We’ll never have to worry about that because we don’t write sponsored content.
Not writing sponsored content is not the same as not having sponsors, though. Sponsors pay money for advertising on our website but don’t have any say about what we write. Sponsors support the website because they feel the content will attract the sort of people who they want to reach. For ExhaustNotes those people will be motorcyclists, shooters, travelers (especially Baja travelers), and concrete finishers. I know, it’s an odd mix of topics, but both Berk, me, and our other contributors write about what we know.
So here’s the pitch: If you have been reading ExhaustNotes and think the eclectic collection of stories we create might appeal to your customers, by all means become one of our sponsors. If you just like reading the website and want to help support us, become a site sponsor even if you have nothing to sell. Maybe we’ll make a wall of names for people who sponsor the site. We want sponsors to support ExhaustNotes.us because they think that the writing we are doing is worthwhile.
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After seeing Joe Berk’s article on the .22 bolt action Springfield rifle, I thought about my recent project Model 69 Winchester. I bought it from my favorite gunstore. It was in pretty bad shape when I bought it and it was obviously well used. The Winchester had a screw for a bolt handle that did not work well, a homemade peep sight, the rifle was rusty, and it had a dinged-up stock with a lot of miles on it. I bought the rifle for $150 knowing it would make for a good project. I wanted to fix and preserve it as a plinker.
The Model 69 Winchester is an old magazine fed rifle made in 1936. It is an interesting vintage .22. I believe it was made around 1935 based on the exposed side magazine release and the exposed screw that holds the barrel to the stock (as shown in the above photo). These two features make it one of the earlier Model 69 rifles Winchester produced.
The finish on the barrel and the receiver had left the building a long time ago. It exhibited what might be called an authentic patina, but to me it was just rust and I wanted to prevent it from heading further down that road. I sanded it very lightly and used Birchwood Casey cold blue to preserve it. That turned out well eonugh, but it was not as good as a hot blue job would have been. Maybe I will clean it better and redo it someday. But my cold blue approach had the rifle looking good (I think for now the steel finish is good enough), so I continued fixing other things.
The rifle’s original peep sights had been “fixed” (read: Bubba’d) by a shade tree gunsmith. The sights worked, but they looked terrible. Bubba had drilled out the original aperture and tapped it to a larger thread. Then he took and sawed off a length of all thread (all thread is threaded rod) after drilling a small hole way off center. Maybe he did that to allow for windage by rotating it in the threads…who knows? Or maybe he was just sloppy.
I machined a nicer-looking knurled retina (see the picture above), but I ended up putting a scope on it, so for now the peeper looks good but is not used. I’ve seen comparable sights on Ebay for over $225, so I’ve got that going for me.
The old bolt handle was a standard screw from someone’s grandpa’s blacksmith stable. It didn’t work. The handle needs to go through two sleeves to cock the firing pin properly. It wasn’t too hard to make a new one that works well. I had the little ball end you see above in my tool box for years. It was waiting for me to use it on something, and it looks like it belongs on this rifle.
The rifle’s wood stock showed its 85-plus years of use, so I sanded it lightly, stained it, and gave it a clear varnish finish. I similarly cleaned up the buttplate and its screws. I think it all turned out well.
After doing the above work, it was time to sight the rifle in. Waiting until it was dark, I clamped the rifle in a cleaning rest so it wouldn’t move on the table. With the bolt taken out I could look through the barrel at a distant streetlight. I then looked through the scope and adjusted the scope’s windage and elevation so it was right on the streetlight several hundred yards away. After making sure the barrel and scope were secure, I tried the rifle on the farm the next day. The rifle can shoot .22 Short, Long, and Long Rifle ammunition. I could hit dirt clods fairly consistently from 40 to 100 yards away. That’s good enough for now. After shooting it for the first time, I had to go out and celebrated with a Yoo-Hoo and a new box of 50 rounds. I’ll next shoot at a paper target from a rest to hold it steadier then my 66-year-old arms can.
Overall, resurrecting the Model 69 Winchester has been a fun and satisfying project. It didn’t cost very much and gave life back to this 85-year-old firearm that is a hoot to shoot. It would be great for a youth rifle and for teaching kids to shoot. The rifle is small and light, and it can be taken apart for cleaning and reassembling quickly.
Meet our newest contributor: Rob Morel
Rob Morel is a good guy…a considerate, literate, and motorific kind of man. I first met Rob on the Western America Adventure Ride, when guys who owned Zongshen RX3 motorcycles joined Joe Gresh, a group of Chinese riders, a couple of guys from Colombia, and yours truly for our 5,000-mile romp around the US. Rob joined us in Idaho, and I knew I was going to like him the minute I saw the guy seated by the side of the road, waiting for us, somewhere before we crossed into Hells Canyon. It said a lot about Rob: He would be ready, he wouldn’t hold the rest of the group up, and he put others ahead of himself. Like I said, I liked him instantly. Rob has ridden with us a number of times…on that first Western America Adventure Ride, in Baja, on another ride through the Southwest, and more. He’s a machinist, a motorcyclist, a shooter, and a writer. This is Rob’s first piece as an ExNotes contributor. Welcome aboard, Rob, and thanks for this story!
California’s Pacific Coast Highway is one of the best motorcycle roads on the planet, and I never miss an opportunity to travel it. One of my favorite destinations on the Pacific Coast Highway is Hearst Castle. We’ve written about it previously here on ExNotes.
As the title of this blog implies, base camp was in Cayucos, California, instead of Cambria (more on that below). And from a photography perspective, instead of lugging around my boat-anchor, full-frame Nikon D810, I took the smaller and lighter Nikon D3300 with a “walking around” 18-55mm lens and a Rokinon 8mm (a super wide angle). I’ve been using that combination more and more lately.
The Rokinon 8mm super wide angle lens. Manual everything, it’s fun to use and it does a surprisingly good job.There’s not much in San Simeon, so people who visit Hearst Castle usually stay in Cambria. We stayed a stone’s throw away from Cambria in Cayucos, which is just north of Morro Bay.
Most folks who visit Hearst Castle stay in Cambria, a touristy, kitschy spot just down the road from San Simeon (the Hearst Castle location). This time we tried Cayucos, a tiny town that’s a bit further south down the Pacific Coast Highway. It’s friendlier, less expensive, and for my money, a lot nicer and more enjoyable than Cambria. Sue and I stayed in the Sunset Inn, a bed and breakfast in Cayucos. If you’re in Cayucos, the Ludano restaurant is the place for dinner (William Randolph Hearst was a regular here while building Hearst Castle). For a more casual Cayucos dining experience, Duckie’s (near the Cayucos Pier) is an awesome walkup seafood restaurant (try the fish and chips; they were great).
Hearst Castle, as seen through the Rokinon 8mm super wide.The Neptune swimming pool at Hearst Castle.One of the Hearst Castle’s guest bedrooms.The Hearst Castle dining room.Hearst Castle’s indoor swimming pool.
The Rokinon lens is strictly a manual affair. It doesn’t autofocus and it doesn’t work with the camera’s automatic metering features. It’s manual everything…focus, f stop, ISO, and shutter speed. The focus part was easy…I simply cranked the focus ring all the way over to infinity (with a wide-angle lens, that works). For ISO, shutter speed, and f stop, I used the camera’s histogram. Shoot, check the histogram, adjust, shoot again, check the histogram, adjust, and keep going until things are just right. Too dark, and I adjusted the shutter speed, the f stop, and the ISO until the histogram showed everything between the histogram upper and lower limits. Too light, and I made adjustments in the opposite direction. For the money, the Rokinon lens is a lot of fun, and I like the effects I get with a wide -angle lens. Some folks don’t. That’s okay. It’s my gear and these are my photos.
As mentioned earlier, I also used the Nikon 18-55mm lens on this trip. It’s not the sharpest lens but that’s okay. I’m not the sharpest matzoh in the box, either, and a matching lens fits me well. When I shoot in RAW (the camera’s capture everything, sort-it-out-later-in-Photoshop mode), the 18-55mm lens works surprisingly well, like in the photo at the top of this blog. It’s a shot of the Cayucos Pier, in which I did a little bit of post-processing to darken the sky and the water. I’m pleased with the results.
While we walked the pier, we talked to folks who were fishing from it. The fishing was good: Halibut, perch, and one fellow had landed a 4-foot shark earlier in the day (I wish I had been there when that happened; that would have been a hell of a picture).
The Nikon D3300 digital single lens reflex camera and the 18-55mm zoom lens that comes with the camera. It’s not a super sharp lens, but it’s not super expensive, either.
I took the photo below with the 18-55mm lens just a few miles up the Pacific Coast Highway. These are elephant seals and I liked how this photo turned out, too.
One of several elephant seal vista points along California’s magnificent Pacific Coast Highway. The two in the water was grunting loudly at each other in a domination contest. These seals can weigh up to 5,000 pounds.
You know, the discussions about lenses, cameras, and photography can go on endlessly. Sometimes all you need is a cell phone. I was blown away by the photos Joe Gresh grabbed when he recently visited Laguna Seca after riding his Kawasaki ZRX from New Mexico. Joe shot all of those with his iPhone, which is a much easier way to go on a motorcycle. When I travel with a digital single lens reflex camera on a motorcycle, the camera and a couple of lenses steal a lot of saddlebag space. There’s advantages and disadvantages to everything, I guess.
Old Creek Road out of Cayucos is a fun ride.
Riding the Pacific Coast Highway is a bucket list ride, and if you get an opportunity to do so, you should grab it. The area I’m describing in this blog is roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The Pacific Coast Highway is currently closed around Gordo (well north of San Simeon), but that still leaves a lot of nice riding on the table. One of the best rides is Old Creek Road northeast out of Cayucos. It’s a lightly traveled and grand road, full of twisties, and it cuts through the California wine country to link up with State Route 46 (another fine road through the wine country). A few miles further east, 46 intersects Highway 41, and that’s where James Dean lost his life in a car accident (there’s a sign marking the spot). There are a lot of interesting things and a lot of interesting roads in California.
Rifles, that is…two Ruger rifles. I’ve written about them before, but it’s been a while since I shot either one and with the stream crossing to the West End Gun Club almost manageable these days (more on that later), I thought I would take them out to the 100-yard range. I shoot handguns regularly (at least a couple of times a week) on the indoor 50-foot pistol range closer to home, but there are times when the high-powered-rifle-on-a-football-field-length-range itch needs to be scratched.
The two Ruger rifles in this article are two of my favorites: A Davidson’s Circassian-stocked Mini 14 (the one in the photo above) and the Ruger GSR (GSR stands for Gunsite Scout Rifle). The Davidson’s Mini 14 1was a 2009 offering with (as the name implies) a Circassian walnut stock. Back then the Circassian Mini’s $700 price seemed high, but I’ve been at this for a while and I know that when a gun’s price seems high it only means I’m buying too soon. The price will always catch up with the calendar, and that’s certainly been the case with this rifle. It originally came with two 30-round mags and a flash suppressor. California being what it is meant I couldn’t own the rifle as Ruger built it. I had to leave the 30-round mags with the out-of-state dealer, and because of the flash suppressor, it had to ship to the Class III dealer here in La La Land.
Circassian walnut from the port side. It sure looks good.The California-legal muzzle brake. I wonder what the California legislators were smoking when they passed that law.
The California Class III dealer replaced the flash suppressor with a muzzle brake (which I think looks even more intimidating and I had to buy a 10-round La-La-Land-legal magazine for my Mini.
Circassian walnut from starboard side. This is the fanciest Mini 14 I’ve ever seen.
You might be wondering: Where can I get a Mini with a stock like this one?
The short answer is: You can’t. I watched the gun sale websites for months looking for a Davidson’s Circassian Mini 14 until I found one with nice wood (most had straight-grained, broomstick grade wood). When I saw the one you see here, I pounded (and I’m glad I did). You just don’t see Mini 14 rifles with wood like this one. It’s all mostly black plastic stuff on the range these days, which is almost a crime against nature.
The Techsites rear sight on my Mini 14. It has a slightly smaller aperture and better adjustability than the stock Mini 14 rear site.
I’ve done a few mods to my Mini 14 to improve its accuracy, and I’ve detailed this in prior blogs (I’ve provide a link at the end of this article). The Reader’s Digest version is I’ve added a Techsites rear aperture sight to replace the Ruger sight, I’ve glass-bedded the action, and I’ve done a fair amount of experimentation to find the right load.
So how does the Circassian Mini 14 shoot? It does very well. I grabbed two loads: A full metal jacketed load with Hornady’s 62-grain bullet, and another with Hornady’s 55-grain V-Max bullets. You can see the results below.
A bunch of shots at 100 yards with one of my favorite loads: The 62-grain Hornady full metal jacket boattail bullet and 25.0 grains of XBR 8208 propellant. This ammo was necked sized only, which usually is more accurate in my Mini 14. I held at 6:00 on all targets shown here.Another 100-yard Mini 14 target with two different loads, both using the 55-grain Hornady VMax bullet and 24.5 grains of ARComp propellant. The very tight 5-shot group was shot with bullets that were not crimped. The larger group was the same load, but the bullets were crimped. Surprisingly, both loads were full length resized. As mentioned in the photo above, neck-sizing usually provides better accuracy in this rifle.
The second rifle in this Tale of Two Rugers story is the Ruger GSR in .308 Winchester. This is an amazing (and amazingly accurate) rifle, but it didn’t start out that way.
How I purchased this rifle is kind of a funny story. I had oral surgery to start the process of installing two fake teeth, and the doc knocked me out with anesthetics. They warned me I would be in no shape to drive home, so good buddy Jim Wile volunteered to do the driving. Jim’s gone on to his reward (RIP, Jim). On the ride home, in a drugged but conscious state, I told Jim about this new GSR rifle Ruger had introduced, and we somehow managed to convince ourselves we each needed one. They say you should not buy guns when you’re under the influence. Like Hunter Biden, though, I didn’t heed that advice and Jim followed my lead.
The Ruger GSR on the range at the West End Gun Club.
The GSR is Ruger’s interpretation of the Scout rifle concept first put forth by a gun writer named Jeff Cooper. Cooper’s concept was a short-barreled rifle that would hold a scope in a forward location and make for a sort of do-anything long gun. Steyr built the first commercially available Cooper-inspired Scout rifle, and then about a decade later Ruger followed suit. Mossberg has one now, too (good buddy Johnny G has one). The Steyr is crazy expensive, the Ruger started out at a reasonable price but has since gone kind of crazy (along with everything else), and (in my opinion) the Mossberg is the best value (it’s a fine rifle and one I’ll probably own some day).
The left side of the Ruger GSR. Note the laminated stock, which provides a very stable bed for the barreled action.The GSR as seen from the right.A Ruger .308 selfie.The Ruger’s aperture rear sight. It’s similar to the original Mini 14 site. Techsites doesn’t offer a replacement rear site for the GSR; if they did, I would have a Techsites rear sight on this rifle.The Ruger GSR flash suppressor. It’s the same type that originally came on the Mini 14. On a bolt action rifle, it’s legal in Calilornia; on a semi-auto, it is not.
When I first took delivery of the GSR, it was a real disappointment. As had been the case with half the guns I bought in the last couple of decades, it had to go back to the manufacturer. The problem was that the rifle printed way to the right, and there wasn’t enough adjustment in the rear aperture to get it back to the point of aim. I returned it to Ruger, they greatly relieved the stock around the barrel, and I had it back in about a week. When I took it out to the range the same week it was returned, I was astonished by its accuracy.
A target I shot a few years ago. The GSR can be amazingly accurate. The difference between the two groups is probably due to how I held the rifle. The upper group is one of the best I’ve ever shot with open sights.
But that group above was then and this is now. I had not fired the GSR in a few years. I grabbed two loads for this rifle (a load I had developed for my M1A Springfield, and a box of Federal factory ammo with full metal jacket 150-grain bullets).
Federal American Eagle .308 ammo. I bought a bunch of this a few years ago for the brass; this ammo was about the same price as .308 brass.My reloaded ammo. This load shoots extremely well in my Springfield Armory M1A.
I only fired a couple of 5-shot groups at 100 yards with the GSR. It was getting late in the day, I was getting tired, I had not fired the rifle in a long time (shooting is a perishable skill), and I realized I wasn’t giving the rifle a fair shake.
With the same rear sight adjustment used for the previous GSR target shown a couple of paragraphs above, the Federal factory 150 grain load shot high and to the left. The group is considerably larger than the load with 180-grain Noslers and Varget propellant.Another 5-shot group, this time with 168-grain Sierra hollowpoint bullets and IMR 4064 propellant (the accuracy load for my Springfield M1A). The load doesn’t perform as well in my GSR as it does in the M1A, but it’s still substantially better than the Federal factory ammo. It’s why I reload.
That stream crossing I mentioned at the start of this blog? Lytle Creek flows across the dirt road going into Meyers Canyon, and it can be a real challenge at times. With all the rain and snow we’ve had this past winter, the reservoirs are full and the snow up in the San Gabriels is still melting. You may remember the blog I wrote about the time I high sided my Subie attempting a crossing. The stream is down a scosh since then, but it’s still not an easy crossing. Here’s a video I made on the way out on this trip after visiting the range with the Mini 14 and the Ruger GSR.
I’ll be shooting the GSR more in the coming weeks now that I’m back into the swing of shooting a .308 off the bench, so watch for more stories on it. I think I can do better than the groups you see above.
I’ve gotten an undeserved reputation as a China booster. Some Internet wags think I work for China and must be getting a cut from the sales of products I test. Any time you guys want to get serious and ban all products from China let me know. I’m with you, man. I wish I got a cut from the sale of Chinese imports but the truth is, many times Chinese stuff is the only stuff I can afford. Take this Vevor welding table I bought on Amazon. At $62 including shipping it was even cheaper than the Harbor Freight welding table that looks like the exact same unit.
For fun I tried to find a similar sized, made-in-USA, welding table and the cheapest one I could find was from a company called Siegmund. The Siegmund table is way, way nicer than the Vevor and it comes with a bunch of clamping accessories included. The Siegmund costs $2569.00 plus shipping. For me, the choice isn’t made-in-USA vs made-in-China: the choice is a cheap welding table or no welding table at all.
Maybe if I ran a welding shop I’d bite the bullet and get the Siegmund, but that’s not exactly true. If I ran a welding shop I’d probably make my own welding table. It doesn’t matter for this product review because I don’t run a welding shop and I never will.
My previous welding table was a small, outdoor side table made from expanded metal mesh. It was too low and I was on my knees to do the welding. Everyone knows you have to be in a comfortable position to lay down a steady bead, more so when you can’t weld very well in the first place.
The Vevor welding table is one of those generic designs that are manufactured by many different factories in China. It has a tilting feature that I don’t foresee using but you never know. Out of the box the table comes complete with all the nuts, bolts, and screws needed for assembly. It’s easy to put together. It took me only 45 minutes and I’m a slow learner.
As delivered, the table worked fine, but there were several tiny modifications that made the thing much better. The tilting arc has two wing nuts and two plastic knobs on each side to lock the table in position. It’s almost impossible to get these fasteners tight enough to prevent the table from slipping when you push on the edge. It’s probably not a problem for welding but I replaced the factory hardware with acorn nuts. Once the acorn nuts are tightened with a wrench the table no longer slips.
I like my welding table high so that I have a better chance of seeing what I’m doing. The Vevor comes with two pins that allow height adjustability but even in the highest setting it was too low. If you weld from a chair it would be ok. I extended the table another inch and drilled the upright for a bolt/screw. To lower the table, I’ll have to remove the bolt but it will only take a moment.
I added two side braces to take a little side to side wobble out of the table. It’s relatively stable now.
The Vevor table folds for storage and came with wheels to roll the thing around. I didn’t use the wheels as the table is not very heavy and you can lift it easily.
The feet on the Vevor are an odd setup. Four plastic pieces fit into the ends of the legs and two crossbars with rubber tips snap into the plastic pieces. The crossbars fall out of the plastic easily so I drilled and added 4 screws to hold them in place.
Once I modded the Vevor welding table it felt sturdy. There are a few neat and not so neat features. The tabletop has slots for clamps but is not very thick metal (it’s about 2.4mm). It racks pretty easy until you flatten it out and tighten the tilt nuts. For electric welding it will probably be okay; gas welding may warp the top. On the sides are fences that you can raise beyond the tabletop to provide a handy place to clamp your work. Lowered, the fences are out of the way and razor sharp so watch your elbows. The lower cross brace on the Vevor comes with several size holes for tool/clamp storage and a couple loops to hang whatever you want to hang.
For a measly $62 you get a lot of welding table from Vevor. I’m satisfied with the thing and as soon as I clear out all the flammable stuff lying around the shed I’m going to test the table under real life conditions. Watch this space for a follow up report.
Springfield Armory has a new .22 bolt action rifle. It looks interesting from several perspectives. One, it’s a bolt action rimfire, so that has my attention immediately (I love bolt action rifles and I love rimfires). And two, it is being offered in both a composite stocked (read: Tupperware) competition version (something in which I have negative interest) and any of several grades of walnut. Fancy walnut…that works for me.
The Springfield Armory 2020 rimfire rifle stocked in what they call AAA walnut. It comes with a Picatinny rail for mounting a scope, or you can remove the rail and use conventional scope mounts.A view from the right. If that’s AAA walnut, I’m the Pope.Another shot of the Springfield 2020 rifle with fancier walnut and a Leupold scope. It is a good-looking rifle.
It’s the last part about the fancy walnut that has my attention. Springfield’s graded walnut runs from standard (they call it satin select) all the way up to AAA (or finely figured) walnut. That’s cool, as most manufacturers don’t give you a choice on the quality of the walnut figure. Judging by the photos on the Springfield website, I’d say they are grading their lumber way too generously; what they show as AAA walnut I would classify A grade stuff, but hey, it’s a start, and it’s a move in the right direction.
A Springfield 2020 rimfire rifle with satin select (or plain) walnut.As mentioned above, Springfield is also offering their new rifle with two versions of a composite stock. One is black, the other is a speckled charcoal affair.
The Springfield .22 with a black composite stock. These are on Gunbroker for as low as $389.
The Springfield 2020 .22 rifle wearing a sage wtih black webbing stock (their description, not mine).
I’ll be watching the Gunbroker.com and Gunsamerica.com listings. These rifles are already up on Gunbroker. When the listings that include photos of the actual rifles (and not just a standard print media photo) are up, I’ll pay attention. The gunshops will show the wood if it’s really good, and if it is, it’s likely I’ll pull the trigger (pardon the pun). If that happens, I’ll write about it here.
High end rimfire rifles appeal to me, and I own two or three that have exceptional wood. You can read about them here.
I had no interest in seeing the new Barbie movie; after all, I’m a boy. Dolls are for girls. We boys don’t play with dolls, we play with Action Figures which are completely different things…entirely. I started reading about a backlash to the movie, how it was anti-male and subversive to the natural order of things. I read demons made Barbie and if your kid watched it they would be swapping genders faster than you can pop the plastic, unborn fetus from Pregnant Midge’s® removable belly.
Settle down now, as I have some mansplaining to do here. I’ll try my best not to reveal too much of the Barbie plot. I must warn you that spoilers lie ahead so stop reading now if you’re going to the movie.
In my mind a subversive thing acts in subtle ways to upset the status quo. Under that definition Barbie is not subversive: It’s a sledgehammer and telegraphs its intentions so that there’s no confusion where the movie stands on a women’s place in today’s society. The opening scene of Barbie mimics 2001 A Space Odyssey’s monolith/monkey bit but instead of sticks and a large, mysterious block it’s a 50-foot tall Barbie and baby dolls. I imagine people who prefer traditional male/female roles will never make it past this first sequence.
Barbie lives in Barbieland, a place inhabited by universally beautiful women named Barbie and universally handsome men. Except for Allen. Women run Barbieland and the men (all named Ken) are merely decorative accessories who spend their time at the beach flexing. The cast represents many races and body types (but mostly thin and fit) and I suspect this blatant, utopian dreamscape won’t go over well with the one-drop-of-blood, you-will-not-replace-us crowd.
Barbie’s perfection begins to crack as a result of events in the real world. Instead of frozen in the high-heel position, her feet go flat. She develops cellulite. She contemplates her own mortality. That chick from SNL sends her off to sort things out. Barbie and Ken end up in the real world where Ken realizes for the first time that men control most of the levers of power. This is reinforced when Barbie meets the all-male corporate officers at Mattel. Hilarity ensues as Ken becomes Alpha-Ken and Barbie tries to find her real-world owner (it’s a long story). Ken goes back to Barbieland and introduces the other Kens to horses, bandanas and giant trucks. Barbieland rapidly becomes a hyper-male version of the real world.
As usual, when men get involved, things get aggressive. There is a jealousy-war between two Ken factions fighting over the Barbies. In the end Barbie saves the day and Barbieland is restored. Barbie has to solve Ken’s mental issues as well (a woman’s work is never done). You’ll hear complaints about the emasculated men in Barbieland, but since neither Ken nor Barbie have sex organs it’s kind of moot.
I give kudos to the Mattel Corporation for having a sense of humor and allowing their name and corporate logos to be used in this movie. I’m sure there will be a backlash against Mattel as there is against any corporation that shows consideration towards others. The suits at Mattel made a shrewd move and are getting billions of dollars of free advertising from the Barbie media frenzy.
Look, at this politically polarized moment in time I can’t tell you how to feel about a woman-centric movie that has boy problems as one of its major themes. It may be that the patriarchy is so ingrained there is simply no way to avoid it. You’ll need to look inward to understand what triggers your feeling of lost or gained status. It’s just a movie.
Barbieland is painted in simple, bright pastels but real life is much more complicated and dull. There are many women who navigate the patriarchy with apparent ease, like my wife CT, although it may not be as easy as it looks for her. I’ll have to talk to her about her feelings on the subject one day. Maybe a day I’m not pouring concrete or looking at big tires for diesel trucks.
Some people might think the playing field is equal, that women have arrived and are treated as equals all the time. I’d say we’ve come a long way baby (stolen from Virginia Slims cigarettes), but being male, I would say that. Despite frequent setbacks, progress trends towards justice and this is where the Barbie movie succeeds. Barbie has even me talking about women and their lot in the world we have created. That’s progress. Does that make me Ken?
