Author: Joe Berk

Cool Stuff Near Death Valley

By Joe Berk

I recently posted a couple of blogs about Death Valley, including a recap of my several visits over the last decade.  This blog is a little bit different.  it’s about some of the cool stuff near Death Valley.  I didn’t have any hard rules about how close “near” means.  I’m including the places I’ve visited and thought were worth a mention.  If you think there should be more, leave a comment and tell us about it.  We love hearing from you and we love when you click on the popup ads, so don’t forget to do so (and when you see that donate button at the bottom of this blog…well, you know what to do).

I shot most of the photos in this blog with my Nikon D810 and the 24-120 Nikon lens.  A few were with the Nikon N70 film camera I recently wrote about, and where that is the case, I’ll say so in the photo caption.

Baker

When visiting Death Valley from the south (as in southern Calilfornia), it’s likely you’ll pick up Highway 127 in Baker, just off Interstate 15.  There used to be a hotel in Baker, but it’s gone.  There are a couple of gas stations a couple of tacky fast food franchises, but don’t waste your time eating in a fast food franchise.  What you want is the Mad Greek.

The Mad Greek restaurant in Baker, California.

I didn’t eat at the Mad Greek on this trip (either coming to or leaving Death Valley).  Sue decided several trips ago she didn’t like the place, so I deferred to her wishes.  I never know when I might want to buy more reloading components, another gun, another watch, or another motorcycle, so we took a pass on the Mad Greek (Sue is of Greek ancestry; maybe that has something to do with it).  When I ever pass through Baker on my own, though, the Mad Greek is a sure thing.

The Baker thermometer. If you are going to visit Death Valley, the winter months are very comfortable (it was 68 degrees when I took this photo). It gets warmer in the summer.

The other thing Baker is famous for is its thermometer.  It’s 134 feet tall, in honor of reaching that record temperature in 1913 (I guess we had global warming back then, too).  If you go through Baker, you have to get a photo of the Baker thermometer.  It’s a rite of passage.

Highway 127

The signs are new; the Old Spanish Trail is not.

The ride north through the California desert from Baker to Death Valley is both beautiful and historic.  It follows the Old Spanish Trail, something I had never of until I saw the signs and did a little research.  Established in 1829, the Spanish Trail is a 700-mile long road that runs from Santa Fe to southern California.  It traverses New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California.  John C. Fremont and Kit Carson used it.  Serapes and other woven goods went to California from New Mexico; California’s horses and mules went to Santa Fe.  Indian slaves, contraband, and more used this same route.

Looking north on California Highway 127 after leaving Baker. You probably think I cranked up the saturation on this photo, but I didn’t. The CalTrans folks had recently repainted the yellow and white lines.  The dark blue skies are due to the polarizing filter I had on my 24-120 lens.

Shoshone

The first time I ever visited Shoshone was on the Destinations Deal ride.   I remember well the terror I felt on that stretch of road, leading a group of other riders after a long day through Death Valley.   We were heading south on Badwater Basin Road and I was relying on my cell phone and Waze to guide me.  I was worried about running out of gas, keeping one eye on the gas gage and the other on the road.  I should be okay, I kept thinking, but I’d never been this way before and I didn’t know.  Then my Waze program quit.  It had been running on stored info because I had no cell phone reception for the last 60 or 70 miles.  The gas gage was nudging closer to the “no more” line and I was sweating bullets.  It sure was remote out there.

Finally, Highway 178 ran into Highway 127 and a sign pointed to Shoshone.  I felt better, and then I realized I didn’t have the Shoshone Inn’s address where we would spend the night.  “How will I find it?” I wondered.  It wouldn’t be easy leading other riders while looking for the place (I’ve had to do this on other rides).  Then I was suddenly in Shoshone and I started to laugh.  You can’t miss the Shoshone Inn.  It’s one of only three or four buildings.  I’d say Shoshone was a wide spot in the road, but California 127 was no wider there than it was anywhere else.

Shoshone was founded by Ralph Fairbanks in 1910; initially, it was primarily a mining town (old Ralph was a Death Valley prospector and entrepreneur).  Charles Brown (yep, Charlie Brown) married Fairbanks’ daughter.  Charlie and Stella moved away, but they returned in 1920 and further developed the town.  Charlie became a California state senator and he turned ownership of Shoshone over to his son (who was also named Charles Brown).  I guess you might say Shoshone is a Charlie Brown kind of place.  I been there a few times, always looking for a girl named Lucy, but so far, I’ve had no luck.

The sign lies.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the Population 31 sign lied.  It’s only 13 people now.  The lady who runs the hotel (Jennifer, not Lucy) commutes from Pahrump (Pahrump is about 45 minutes east on the other side of the Nevada state line).  She told us about the sign lying.  The rest of the people either died or moved away.  None of them were named Lucy.

Shoshone is the last town before the southern entrance to Death Valley National Park.   One woman, a Mrs. Sorrells, inherited the town.  There’s a school that handles kids from K through 12th grade, some of whom commute from up to 120 miles away.  There’s a general store (including a gas station), a museum, a restaurant (the Crowbar Cafe and Saloon), a nature trail, an RV park, and an unmanned airstrip.  I guess if you are flying to Shoshone, you have to make a pass or two over the runway to make sure it’s clear.

The Shoshone Inn

A film photo taken with the Nikon N70 and tweaked in Photoshop.

The Shoshone Inn is surprisingly nice, although it’s probably time for it to be refurbished.  There’s a gas-fired fire pit outside in the unpaved parking lot; when I rode into Shoshone with the Destinations Deal crew we spent a nice evening drinking Joe Gresh’s beer, which he bought from Shoshone’s next-door Charles Brown general store.

I got up early the next morning to take pictures with my film camera (the N70 my sister gave to me) and I saw that the fire pit was still going; I think the Shoshone Inn desk clerk may have forgotten to turn it off (they will be surprised when they get their gas bill).

The Charlie Brown Rocks

A view of the Charlie Brown rocks.

When I Googled what else was around Shoshone, the Charlie Brown rocks appeared.  Highway 178 east intersects with Highway 127 right at the southern edge of Shoshone.  When I saw the Charlie Brown rocks on Google, I wasn’t sure how far east on 178 I’d have to go, but when I approached Shoshone, I saw it was not far at all.  The rocks are what appear to be sandstone formations and they are kind of in your face as you approach Shoshone.   I could see the cave openings I’d read about, but there were signs to ward off trespassers and I didn’t want to wander in.  A few photos were good enough.

A shot from Highway 178.

The Crowbar Cafe and Saloon

An N70 photo of the Crowbar Cafe and Saloon. It’s diagonally across the street from the Shoshone Inn.

Sue and I had two meals in the Crowbar.  As I had experienced on previous visits (especially if you get there later in the day) it’s good to have three or four meal choices ready when the waitress takes your order.  Hamburgers?  No hamburgers, we had a busload of Chinese tourists come through and they ate all the hamburgers.   Trout?  No trout.  Tacos?  Yep, the Crowbar had tacos and they were surprisingly good.

The same restaurant, but with the D810 Nikon. Digital is superior to film. Duh.

When we left after lunch that first day, we spotted a small airplane on the runway at the town’s southern edge (the runway is tucked into the southeastern corner of the Highway 127/178 intersection).  There’s no tower or buildings or anything else there, and you only see that it’s a paved runway when you look (you wouldn’t notice it otherwise).  We think the four young guys who were sitting one table over from us at lunch flew in from somewhere to eat at the Crowbar.

We sat at the bar the next night and the one-man-band lady who handled everything (waitressing, barmaiding, dishwashing, etc.) asked if I wanted a beer.   You bet, I answered.  There were four taps, all unmarked.  She didn’t know which tap had which beer, so she poured me a small sample of each and I opted for a craft-brewed dark beer.  The bartender/waiter/dishwasher told me was made in nearby Tecopa. It was good, as were the chicken fajitas Sue and I shared for dinner.

The Shoshone Museum

An N70 photo of the Museum. Not too bad for an old film camera.

We didn’t go into the Shoshone museum because it was closed the two times we visited the Crowbar (it’s right next door).  It didn’t look as if there was much there; it was all housed in a very small building.  I took a picture of an old Chevy, an old fuel pump, and a bit of junk in front of the museum.  I’m guessing the museum used to be a gas station.  I’ll bet Charlie Brown owned it.

Tecopa Springs

Tecopa Springs is short drive east of Shoshone on Highway 178.   We went there twice.  We saw quite a few RVs but we only saw a few people in front of Tecopa’s two restaurants.  A young fellow we spoke to at the Crowbar the previous night told us he lived in Tecopa for six months each year and worked remotely (he was a digital nomad like Mike Huber).  I imagine he spent winters in Tecopa and found someplace cooler in the summer.  He said he came into Shoshone once a week for dinner because he wanted fried food and he couldn’t make fried food in his RV.

The two restaurants in Tecopa are a barbeque place and a combined bar and pizza place.   The digital nomad we spoke with in the Crowbar said Wednesday (the day we rolled into Tecopa for dinner) was the best night at the barbeque place, but that restaurant was closed when we rode by.  We rode on to the beer and pizza palace. When we entered, I asked the guy at the bar about the dark beer I’d had the night before in Shoshone (which was made in Tecopa), but they didn’t serve that brew there.  He gave me a small sample of their dark beer (also brewed in Tecopa).  It had kind of a peanut flavor to it and I thought it was okay, but the beer the previous night was better.  The bar only had two seats; there were other people drinking and smoking at tables outside the restaurant.

What can I say? Folks in Tecopa don’t have a lot to do, I guess.   This is an N70 photo.

When I asked about their dark beer, the one guy who was seated at the bar told me,”it’s this one…the dick.”  I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly until I looked at the tap (which I hadn’t noticed).  It was, indeed, a dick.  I had to grab a photo.

Tecopa pizza, via the N70. There’s a whole lotta PhotoShop tweakin’ goin’ on in this photo.

We ordered a pizza that seemed to take forever.  When the guy finally brought it out, it was cold.  It had probably sat for a while. Trust me on this: You wouldn’t want to make the trip to Tecopa for the pizza.  Maybe the photo ops, but not the pizza.

There’s also a date farm somewhere beyond Tecopa.  Sue and I rode out there after dinner, but it closed at 5:00 p.m. and we were too late.  They had date shakes and I was looking forward to one, but that will have to wait until my next visit.

The Amargosa Opera House

After poking around a bit more on the Internet, I read about the Amargosa Opera House in Death Valley Junction.   It was 50 miles north of Shoshone.  The pictures on the Internet looked like the Opera House theatre’s interior would make for an interesting photo stop, so I called a couple of days before.  I mentioned that I was doing this for the ExhaustNotes website and possibly, a travel article for Motorcycle Classics magazine.

My free photo. Saved $500 on that one, I did.

A young lady answered the phone and told me I needed to email their Director of Operations.  She promised he would get back to me that day.  That sounded like a plan and the Director of Operations did indeed get back to me with this message:  I could take their daily tour (at a cost of $15 per person) or I could pay $500 for one hour to photograph the theatre.  Gulp.  I can’t remember ever paying anyone anything for something like this.

Sue and I rode to Death Valley Junction anyway, and I grabbed a few photos from the outside.  When we first saw the place, it looked run down.  It’s hard to believe anyone would stay their hotel, but I guess people do.  A few photos and a $500 savings later, we were back on the road.

Pahrump

After spending another half day in Death Valley National Park, we decided to head over to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.  That’s near Las Vegas.  On the way over, we crossed into Nevada and entered Pahrump.  Pahrump is a much bigger town than anything around Death Valley.  It has been one of the fastest growing towns in the entire U.S., with 15% year-over-year population growth for each of the last several years.  We thought Pahrump would be a good place to have lunch, and we were right.

Mom’s: A great restaurant in Pahrump.

Sue found a place called Mom’s on her cell phone, it had great reviews, and we had to wait a few minutes to get in (which is always a good sign).  Trust me on this:  If you ever find yourself in Pahrump, Mom’s is where you want to eat.

I had a corn beef hash omelet for lunch at Mom’s. It was magnificent.

As I mentioned above, we went through Pahrump on our way to the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.  I was going to squeeze that in here, too, but this blog is getting a little long.  I’ll save Red Rock for another blog.

On the ride out of town on our way back to Shoshone, we stopped for gas in Pahrump.  It was $3.68 per gallon.  That’s a good two bucks cheaper than what we pay in California.  After filling up and on the way out of town, we saw a gun store creatively named Pahrump Guns and Ammo.  Sue won’t let me drive past a gun store without stopping, so we did.  It was a small place and we had a nice visit with the two guys who worked there.  I told them we were from California and we were collecting campaign contributions for Hillary Clinton.  We had a good laugh.  People in Pahrump have a sense of humor.

Barstow’s Del Taco Restaurants

You probably think I’m crazy including the Barstow Del Taco restaurants in this blog.   I’m listing it here because if you’re going to Death Valley from southern California, it’s a safe bet you’re going to pass through Barstow, and if you’re going to pass through Barstow, you need to stop at one of the three Del Tacos there.

There’s a story behind this.  About 15 years ago I had a bad motorcycle crash and I had to spend a month in the hospital.  One of the guys I shared a room with was the son of Ed Hackbarth, the entrepreneur who founded the Del Taco restaurant chain.

One of the three Barstow Del Taco restaurants.  Trust me on this: You want to stop at Del Taco in Barstow.

Ed Hackbarth is a real prince of a guy.  He started Del Taco in Barstow, the restaurant chain was riotously successful, and it spread all over the U.S.  Ed sold the Del Taco chain way back in 1976 to a group of investors and it continues to thrive.  But there’s a big difference between the rest of the Del Taco empire and the three Del Tacos in Barstow.  When Ed sold Del Taco, part of the deal was that he kept the original three Barstow Del Tacos.  Ed would continue to use the Del Taco name on those three restaurants, but he didn’t have to use the Del Taco menu and he could serve food the way he wanted.  And that’s what Ed does.  The portions are bigger (they’re huge, actually), everything is fresh (nothing is ever frozen), the restaurants are immaculate, and the staff is super friendly.  The Barstow Del Tacos have some of the best tacos and burritos I’ve ever had.  We won’t drive through Barstow without stopping at one of Ed’s three Del Tacos, and there’s been times we’ve made the 80-mile trek from my home to Barstow just for a taco.  You should try one.  You can thank me later.

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ExNotes Book Review: Finding Home

By Joe Berk

I’ll bet you never thought you’d find me reading (much less writing a review about) a romance novel.  You might be thinking we’re getting desperate for ExNotes content.  Nope, it’s not that at all.  We’re into our sixth year publishing ExNotes, and somehow content just keeps jumping over the transom and into the boat.  It’s been an enjoyable ride with no signs of slowing down.

So back to the main attraction and the topic of this blog:  Finding Home.  It’s a romance novel, and it’s the first book in this genre I’ve ever read.  If you promise not to tell anyone, I’ll share with you that I enjoyed it.  You might be thinking there’s no way in hell you’d ever read a romance novel, and that’s okay.  But what about your significant other?  Would she enjoy a good read?

Finding Home is a great story about a woman who finds a new life, a new location, and a new love. Discarded after a long marriage by a callous and selfish husband, Katherine (the main character) makes a somewhat impulsive decision to relocate to Rehoboth Beach during a 6-month sabbatical. She finds new friends (a group of successful businesswomen) and a new man in her life, and then faces a new set of challenges when her sabbatical ends. Building on the success and confidence Katherine gained in the Rehoboth Beach move, she is faced with another set of life altering decisions. I won’t reveal the ending (no spoilers in this review), but I will tell you that Katherine’s new circle of friends sets up a continuing line of novels from this new author (which I look forward to reading).

Deborah Smith Cook’s interests and expertise in several areas are skillfully woven into the novel, including bicycling, cooking, fine wines, fine dining, Nikon photography, creative writing, and more. This (along with a good story line, superb character development, and great writing) make Finding Home‘s substantive heft (380 pages!) move along quickly. The chapters are light and frequent, and for me that made reading several each evening a well-anticipated treat.

In the interests of full disclosure, you should know that I know the author. Deborah Smith Cook was one of just under 200 classmates with whom I graduated high school.  I’ve seen Deborah every 10 or 30 years or so at high school reunions (the most recent being our 50th reunion).  I bought Finding Home because I knew the author and I thought it would be cool to support another writer’s efforts (rather than always asking folks to support mine).  Then I found I enjoyed the story.  I think you will, too.  And I know your wife, girlfriend, sister, mother, or daughter will.

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Death Valley 2024

By Joe Berk

I guess I like Death Valley, because when Sue and I learned we had to use or lose some of our airline miles (and that we could use them for a hotel stay), we opted for a couple of nights at the Shoshone Inn in Shoshone, California (Shoshone is a little town just below Death Valley’s southern edge).  Plus, I wanted to play with the N70 Nikon (a film camera) a little more and compare some of its photos to the digital pics from my Nikon D810.

The 2024 Death Valley Adventure Run route. We took a couple of days to do this and more. You could cram it all into a single day, but what be the point?

The plan was to roll in to Shoshone through Baker, and hit Dante’s View, Zabriskie Point, Artist’s Palette, Badwater Basin, the Ashford Mill ruins, and then head back to Shoshone.  If we had enough time, we wanted to explore other points of interest, too.

When we checked in to the Shoshone Hotel on this visit, I asked about the 31 people who lived there. The hotel clerk told me the sign lied. The current population was 13 (not 31) people.

Dante’s View

The sign up at Dante’s View, nicely oxidized.

Our first stop the next morning was at Dante’s View.  This spot gives a good overview of nearly the entire Death Valley basin and the surrounding mountains.  Here’s the view looking northwest:

You can see that Death Valley was flooded, and that the floodwaters in the basin were receding. No kayaking allowed by the time we arrived.

The vantage point at Dante’s View is really a panorama from nearly due north to nearly due south.  I took several photographs from that vantage point and stitched them together in Photoshop.   The photo below is a link.  If you click on it, it will open a larger version.

Go ahead and click on this photo…I dare you.

Zabriskie Point

From there, it was on to Zabriskie Point.  We backtracked from Dante’s View back to Highway 190, turned left, and then headed to Zabriskie Point.  The ride through the rolling desert was nice, and the views were spectacular.

Walking up to Zabriskie Point. This is another scenic location, with lots of California and Death Valley geology on display.
A view of the different strata at Zabriskie Point.
Looking across Death Valley to the snow-capped mountains on the other side.
Zabriskie Point badlands. You can have a lot of fun with a camera at Death Valley. This was a good time of year to be there, too.

Artist’s Palette

Artist’s Palette. There are different elements present in these mountains, which provide an array of color.

From there it was on to Artist’s Palette and then Badwater Basin.  Artist’s Palette is a on a road that cuts off of Badwater Basin Road.  The name is based on the fact that the hills in that area are multicolored.  I plan to do another blog in the near future just on Artist’s Palette and the geology that gives the place its many hues.

PhotoShop, artificial intelligence, fake lightning, and Artist’s Palette.

You might be wondering about the photo at the very top of this blog (I repeated here so you wouldn’t have to scroll up).  No, I didn’t just happen to trip the D810 Nikon’s shutter when lightning struck.  This is the same photograph of Artist’s Palette two pics up, but I had a little fun with a c0uple of PhotoShop features.  I used the program’s artificial intelligence selection feature to select the sky (which, as you can see from the earlier photo was nice and sunny), and then I told PhotoShop to replace the sky with dark clouds and lightning.  PhotoShop gave me three options; I selected the one you see here.  What’s kind of cool is that it also shaded the mountains a bit, as they would appear under a dark and cloudy sky.  I’m still on the fence on this topic of artificial intelligence and its uses.  I’d prefer just plain old actual intelligence in more of my fellow mammals, but hey, I’m a grumpy old man who likes to shout at the clouds.  What’s nice is now I can use AI to make the clouds appear whenever I want to.

Badwater Basin

After Artist’s Palette, we were back on Badwater Basin Road, headed south to Badwater Basin.  Death Valley, as most folks know, is below sea level.  As you ride through different parts of Death Valley, there are signs showing how far you are below sea level.  It’s cool.  Badwater Basin is the lowest of the low at 282 feet below sea level.

Looking up from Badwater Basin at the mountains to the east. Our location was 282 feet below sea level.
Fellow tourists walking out into Death Valley’s Badwater Basin.

We had a lot of rain in southern California this winter, and in Death Valley, that resulted Badwater Basin being submerged.  There was enough a couple of weeks before our visit that the National Park Service allowed kayaking in Badwater Basin.  By the time of our visit, though, the Park authorities had put a lid on that.  There was still water present, but it had receded enough that people would have to walk through the muck at the edges, which would damage the area.  It’s too bad; a photo of folks kayaking in Badwater Basin would have been cool.

One of the nice things about traveling to places like Death Valley is that you meet people from all over the world.  We had a nice conversation with a young guy from Beijing who was an exchange student in the Cal State system.  I asked where he was from and he was hesitant to tell me at first, which I chalked up to nervousness induced by the tense(r) situation between the US and Chinese governments.  I told him about our travels through China and that broke the ice.  He was impressed.

Sue and I hamming it up with the cameras. The guy next to her is the young man from China mentioned above.

When you stand at the edge of Badwater Basin, there are mountains to the left and mountains to the right.   I took nine photos and stitched them together in PhotoShop, just like I did for the Dante’s View panorama above.  If you click on the photo below, it will open a larger version, which gives a small hint at the grandeur of the Badwater Basin vantage point.

Go ahead…make my day: Click on this photo.

Ashford Mill Ruins

There’s not much to the Ashford Mill Ruins.  It’s the shell of a building that processed gold prior to shipment out of Death Valley.  It was on the road back to Shoshone, so we stopped to grab a few photos.

All you ever wanted to know about the Ashford Mill ruins.
What’s left of the Ashford Mill. Working here in the summer must have been brutal.

We wrapped up our ride through Death Valley late in the day, continuing south on Badwater Basin Road and then east as it became Highway 178.  It was back to Shoshone for us, with dinner that night in Tecopa Springs.  I’ll tell you more about that hopping locale in the next blog.

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A Recap: Previous Death Valley Visits

By Joe Berk

As I mentioned in a recent blog, Sue and I recently spent a couple of days in Death Valley.  I love the place.  I lived in California for 30+ years before I ever made the trip out there on my KLR 650, and since then, I’ve been back several times.  Here’s a short recap of those previous visits.

The Teutonic Twins Run

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My KLR in Death Valley on that first visit. I loved my KLR; it was a great motorcycle.
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Good buddy Dennis, who won the chili-eating contest at Brown’s BMW.

That first ride on the KLR 650 didn’t just happen because I decided to finally get out there to see the hottest place on the planet.  It came about because the guys at Brown BMW had a chili cookoff and eating contest followed by a two-day ride to Death Valley.  If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have made it out there.  I was the lone KLR rider; all the other guys were on big BMW twins.   I’d ridden with those guys before and they were too fast for me.  Nope, I was happy as a clam poking along on my 650cc single.  I left right after the chili cookoff because I planned to meander along through other parts of the Mojave before spending the night in Baker, which was to be our jumping off point the next morning.   It was fun, that ride out to Baker was.  Just me and the KLR.   I explored the desert around Kelbaker (southeast of Baker) and the old train depot there.

The next morning, we all had breakfast at the Mad Greek (a Baker and southern California icon), and then rolled out on California State Route 127 to the lower end of Death Valley.  That’s a good highway that cuts through the desert.  There’s nothing else out there, and the Teutonic twin crowd quickly left me in the dust.  They were running well over 100 mph; the KLR might touch 100 on a good day.  But I didn’t need to run at those speeds that day.  I was enjoying the ride.

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The charcoal kilns in Death Valley, I’m sure glad I didn’t skip seeing them on that first Death Valley foray.

When I left Death Valley on that first trip, I left through the northwestern part to pick up the 395 back down to southern California.  That was a good thing.  I saw a sign for Wildrose Canyon Road and another sign for the charcoal kilns pointing down a dirt road.  I was by myself and I was in no hurry.  I didn’t have any idea what the charcoal kilns were all about, but I was interested in learning more.  I took that road, and I’m glad I did.  Every time I’ve been in Death Valley since that first trip, the road to the charcoal kilns was closed, including on this my recent trip.  If you are ever out there and the road is open, you might consider seeing them.   The kilns are interesting, and Wildrose Canyon Road (as the name suggests) is a beautiful ride.

The Hell’s Loop Endurance Run

Following Arlene and TK on 150cc California Scooters into Death Valley.

Another ride in was when good buddy TK, good buddy Arlene, and I rode in the Hell’s Loop endurance rally on the 150cc California Scooters.  That was a challenging day.  We rode 400 miles into and through Death Valley and then returned to Barstow.  It was cold and the hardtail CSC 150 beat me up, but it was fun.  That little 150 never missed a beat.

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We had lunch at the Furnace Creek Inn, and shortly before turning off the road, we saw this guy. He is obviously well fed.
As soon as we sat down for lunch at the Furnace Creek Inn, this guy landed a couple feet away. We had just seen the coyote. I asked the roadrunner if he owned anything made by Acme, or if he was being chased by old Wiley. He responded with but two words: Beep Beep.

My next Death Valley adventure was a photo safari with Sue.  We did that one in my Subie CrossTrek in a single day.  It was a long day, but the photo ops did not disappoint.  What was kind of cool about that trip is that when we rode through Badwater Basin, we saw a coyote loping along the road headed north, and a short while later when we stopped at the Furnace Creek Inn, a roadrunner landed right next to us as we enjoyed lunch on the patio.  Was the roadrunner running from the coyote? Cue in the Warner Brothers: Beep beep!

The Destinations Deal Tour

The Destinations Deal crew overlooking Death Valley from Dante’s View. We covered a lot of territory on that trip.

A few years ago we rode through Death Valley on RX3 motorcycles.  That was part of a promotion we ran when I was working with CSC.  We took a half dozen riders through a handful of southwestern states, and Death Valley was the last of several national park visits.  It’s where I first met Orlando and his wife Velma.   Joe Gresh was on that ride, too.  It was fun.

The “My Sister Eileen” Trip

A 20-mule-team borax train.
Just like the theatrical title: My sister Eileen. We had a great time on that trip.

After the Destinations Deal run, Sue and I and my sister Eileen had a road trip through California and Nevada, with a run down the 395 through a major league snowstorm.  We went through Death Valley the next day (the snowstorm had ended) and it was awesome.  I didn’t do a blog on that Death Valley visit (I have no idea why), but trust me on this:  Like all trips to and through Death Valley, it was awesome.

That gets me caught up on my prior Death Valley visits.   If you want to see more photos and read more about those earlier visits, here are the links:

Watch for a series of Death Valley blogs.  The first will be about our most recent visit, and then I’ll post blogs about Death Valley history, Death Valley geology, things to do around Death Valley, Shoshone, nearby Red Rock Canyon National Park, and maybe more.   Stay tuned.

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Paul’s New .40 Caliber Flintlock

By Joe Berk

Good buddy Paul recently told me about a custom crafted flintlock rifle he bought from rifle maker Tom Caster at a steep discount because the stock had been broken.  A stock break sounds like a major defect, but actually it is not that uncommon and repairing the broken stock, if done correctly, makes the stock stronger than new.  Paul is a serious black powder shooter and he builds custom rifles, so he knows what he is doing here.  Both Paul and Tom gave me permission to share this story.

Here’s what Paul wrote to me about this rifle:

When I first saw it I had the same reaction as you. It ticked off all my boxes for a rifle of this style and caliber as I did not have a .40 caliber muzzle loading rifle. They are supposedly an accurate target rifle. He sent me a target that he shot at 25 yards and seven of the ten shots were around a 2-1/2″ cluster which is not bad for the first time the rifle was shot.

I asked Paul about the accuracy.  Here’s what he said:

That flintlock target is good for the first outing of the rifle. From there you will test out different powder amounts, different patch thickness and ball diameters if you want better groupings. The .40 caliber is mostly a 50-to-75-yard gun so you would be hunting squirrels or small game up to small deer. A lot of states only allow .45 caliber and bigger for deer hunting, so the .40 caliber is used for varmints and target work.

Here’s the story on this rifle from Tom Caster:

I finished up this pretty little .40 cal Armstrong rifle last week and was putting a coat of wax on the stock when it slipped off my table and broke in two at the wrist!

Scrapping was never really considered (too much work into it) because I have always been about fixing things that happen on the job or in the shop. It was a pretty clean break, so I set it up in my two vices and glued it back together with Tite-Bond II. After that set up, I drilled a 3/8″ hole from the breech down thru the wrist 8″ deep and glued in a 3/8″ hickory RR in place. After drilling out the holes in the rod for lock screws and the sear area, I sealed the inside up with epoxy.

The crack barely shows now but it is there when you look close. The stock should be fine to use now.

Some guys would use a steel threaded rod instead of wood dowel, but I didn’t want to add any more weight to a 7.6 lb. rifle.

I plan to sell it after the first of the year at a discounted price if anyone is interested.

After another inquiry about the rifle, Tom added the following:

As far as the wood choice goes, I purchased this “in the white” from the estate of my old friend Fred Schelter. He purchased the Getz barrel and had Fred Miller (I believe) inlet it and pre-shape the stock in 2000-2001. Whether it was his wood or Miller’s, I don’t know. He had two Armstrong stocks done this way at the same time, one was a .50 cal (sold) and this .40 cal, rifle. Fred S. did the carving and inlay of the patchbox, butt, toe plate, nose cap, and trigger and guard. He had made the forend escutcheons for the barrel keys but didn’t inlay them.

Both stocks were inletted and drilled for a large Dlx. Siler Flintlock, but only one lock existed and it was curiously interchangeable. So I had to buy a second lock to complete this one. I fashioned a new trigger for a lighter pull and made a patchbox release, side plate and sights. Then I did the engraving and finish work.

…so, now you know…the rest of the story!

Tom Caster

In his email to me, Paul included several photos from Tom. As the photos show, the detail and workmanship on this rifle are stunning.  Take a look:

It will be interesting to see if Paul shoots this one.  I’m going to visit with him again (hopefully in the not too distant future) for a trip to the range.  I’ve never fired my Colt Walker (it is a black powder revolver) and I know very little about shooting these weapons.   Paul knows a lot, and I hope to get educated.

As I mentioned at the start of this blog, repaired stocks are not that big a deal.  I had an experience where a seller did a poor job packaging a Ruger No. 3 he sent to me.  I had the repair accomplished and the stock refinished by a competent shop, the rifle looks better than new, and it is now one of my favorites.  It is exceptionally accurate, too.  You can read that story here.

More Tales of the Gun stories are here.

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Nikon’s N70 Film Camera: Part 2

By Joe Berk

This is a follow up to the recent post on my recently reacquired Nikon N70 film camera.

In the prior blog, I mentioned the N70’s rear door gooification issue and that I had read on an Internet forum it was a common issue.  My camera’s rear door was like fly paper, with all kinds of debris stuck to it.  I used the approach the forum commenter mentioned:  A shop rag and alcohol, a little elbow grease, and the goo came off.  The plastic underneath has a nice glossy black finish that matches the camera’s other exterior surfaces.  It looks good.  Here’s a pair of before and after photos:

Good buddy Greg spotted me three rolls of ISO 400 35mm film.  He told me the film was 6 or 8 years old, but he thought it still might be good.  I loaded a roll in the N70.

I don’t like UV filters and that’s what the Tamron 28-105 lens had on it when I took it home from New Jersey.  I prefer a polarizer unless I’m shooting at night or using the flash.  At one point I probably had a 62mm polarizer, but I tossed a bunch of camera debris and detritus a few months ago and if I ever had a 62mm polarizer (which is what the Tamron takes), it went out with that batch.  No problem; I found a 62mm polarizer and a 62mm lens cap on Amazon.  I ordered both, along with three rolls of ISO 200 35mm film.  I figured if the film Greg gave didn’t work out, this film would because it was brand new.  Even if Greg’s film was good, I’d need more eventually.

You know, it’s not easy to find 35mm film in stores like it used to be.  Costco used to have a big area stocked with all kinds of 35mm from Fuji and Kodak, ranging from ISO 100 to ISO 1600 (with everything in between).  They also had a huge section for processing film and making enlargements.  The Costco film developing and printing services were inexpensive, they did a great job, and they turned it around in under an hour.  It’s all gone now.  Wiped clean from the face of the earth, as they say.  Sometimes I feel like turning around, walking out, and shouting at the clouds.  I’m an old man, so I can do it.  But I don’t.

Anyway, to get back to the Nikon story, I shot up that first roll of expired ISO 400 film.  Just silly stuff…pictures of the house (which immediately caused my neighbor to come over and ask if we were listing the house), my office area, and a couple of motorcycles.  The roll of film provided just 24 exposures and it went quickly.  When I shoot digital, I might take a hundred shots in a single stop.  Shooting film, though, is like shooting a single-shot  rifle.  You think more.  You have to make each shot count.

A quick Google search on film developers near me showed that there weren’t too many, but there was a guy across the street from Costco.  I had used him once before to get some older negatives scanned for a magazine article, so I knew he was good.  I rolled over there and to my surprise, I had to stand in line.  What do you know?  There are other people who still shoot film.  As I patiently waited my turn, I thought that this guy probably doesn’t mind Costco exiting the film business.

When I was my turn, David (the guy behind the counter) remembered me.  He asked if I wanted the negatives and the prints.  At first I said yes, but then I remembered I have gobs of old prints and negatives stuffed away all over the house.  So I said no, I just want the scanned images.  David’s shop scans in either of two resolutions (medium or high); he didn’t know what the DPI (dots per inch) for either.  My digital Nikon shoots at 300 DPI, but I have to knock the images down to 72 DPI in PhotoShop for the ExNotes blog (everything you’ve ever seen on the blog is 72 DPI).   David told me the digital images (scanned from my negatives) would be in my Dropbox account the next day (he actually delivered them that same night).  The medium resolution images were at 256 DPI.

When I opened the scanned images, at first I thought that the expired film may have, in fact, expired.  The images were faded, and because I was shooting ISO 400 film, they were also somewhat grainy. Okay, so the film guys were serious about that use by date.  I played with one, though, to see if I could bring it to life.  Here’s what it looked like initially:

Here’s what it looked like after I worked on it a bit in PhotoShop:

The next step was to try the new ISO 200 film.  Sue and I spent a couple of days in Death Valley, and I tossed the N70 into my overnight bag for that trip.

I don’t think it’s possible to have a bad stay in Death Valley, although I understand that the folks who named the place might have thought otherwise.  I love it there.  This time, we explored the surrounding areas, including Tecopa Springs a few miles away.  Tecopa Springs sounds a lot more exotic than it really is.  There’s a bar and pizza place so I ordered one of their craft beers and a pizza.   I took a photo of it before we dug in and when I received the scan after I returned home, it was depressingly bland.  Here’s what it looked like:

The scan with this roll of new 35mm ISO 200 Fuji film, as delivered, looked about the same as the stuff I had shot with the expired film.  Maybe the developer didn’t automatically tweak it to highlight the colors.   I opened the scan in PhotoShop, cropped it, adjusted the levels and curves, cranked in a little vibrance, deleted the distractions in the upper left corner, and hit it with the shadows feature to brighten the image’s upper half.  That brought it to life a little better.

Here’s another set of before and after images in Death Valley’s Artist’s Palette area.  This is the photo on the road heading there before any PhotoShop trickery:

Here’s that image with its levels and curves adjusted:

In the photo above, the mountains and the road look exactly as I remember them.  The sky is a bit too vibrant, but that’s the polarizer earning its keep.

This is another pair of images at Artist’s Palette.  The first is the scan as I received it from the developer:

This is the image above with its curves and levels adjusted:

Again, the sky is too deep, but the rest of the image is true to how I remember it.    The guy in the image is using his iPhone, which probably returned the bright colors you see in the PhotoShop-tweaked photos without him doing anything.  That’s because the iPhone does all the mods automatically.

So what’s the bottom line?  Digital, my brothers.  Film photography is fun, but for me it’s a huge step back.  I’ll take my Nikon D3300 or D810 over film any time I’m out.  The N70 is interesting, but it’s digital all the way for me.  With two or three exceptions, and those are the other film cameras I brought back from New Jersey, including a very nice Honeywell Pentax ES (if I can find the right size battery for it).  Stay tuned.

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ExNotes Movie Reviews: Zone of Interest and The Assistant

By Joe Berk

From time to time, Gresh and I have posted movie reviews here on ExNotes.  Working from an admittedly flaky memory, I think all our reviews have generally been positive. I remember the review on Operation Mincemeat, for example. That movie was one of the best I’ve ever seen (I liked it so much I watched it a third time this weekend). But not everything is golden. Susie and I watched two movies on MAX (one of our subscription services) this weekend and they were two of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.  I thought maybe it was a guy thing, but Sue had the same opinion.  The miscreant motion pictures are The Zone of Interest and The Assistant.

Both The Assistant and The Zone of Interest were terrible for the same reasons:  They had no plot, no beginning, and no ending.  Did you ever start to watch a movie and switch it off because nothing was happening in the first 15 minutes or so?  In these movies, that continued for the duration of the entire show.  Both were train wrecks, not in the sense that they had lots of action, but because we didn’t stop looking at them.  We could have, but we hung in there waiting to see if anything would happen. There was this feeling that something has to happen soon, but it never did in either movie.

The Zone of Interest is a story about a Nazi concentration camp commandant and his family living the good life in a nice home just outside the camp walls.  I suppose the contrast between how well they lived and what was going on inside the camp was supposed to heighten the dramatic effect, but you never saw what was happening on the other side.  The cinematography (if that’s the right word) was off, too.  The imagery mostly looked overexposed, and in a few instances, the film makers switch to images of people being portrayed as white empty spaces, almost as if they had just discovered the select-and-delete feature in their video editing software.  It didn’t work for either Sue or me.  The critics loved this movie (if you believe the advertisements), but take it from me, they’re lying.   When the credits flashed on the screen at the end, we were both surprised.  “That’s it?” Sue asked.  Yep.  There was no ending.  It just stopped and the credits popped up. This porker of a motion picture would put the Hoover vacuum cleaner company to shame: It sucked big time.

The Assistant suffered from the same ills:  No plot, no action, no ending, and bad exposure control.  I think it was a cheap and hurried effort to cash in on the #Me, too movement, sort of depicting a young female assistant (played by Julia Garner) being humiliatingly treated by a Harvey Weinstein-like boss (who you never saw in the movie).  It’s a pity, really.  I wanted to like this movie when I saw that Julia Garner was in it.  She was brilliant in Ozark and the Inventing Anna series.  Garner’s acting was good in this one, too, but the lack of a beginning, an end, and any semblance of a plot were deficiencies even her considerable acting  skills couldn’t overcome.

Unlike the exposure control failures in Zone of Interest, The Assistant erred in the other direction:  Everything was underexposed.  I’m guessing that was to emphasize the dark nature of the movie, but it didn’t work for me.  Give us a good story line, a plot, and proper exposure. We’ll figure it out. I knew you people in movieland can afford a lightmeter or two.

There was one good scene in The Assistant.  Matthew Macfadyen, who also starred in Operation Mincemeat and the Succession series, played a human resources executive.  In this scene, Julia Garner attempted to complain about her invisible man boss (invisible at least to us viewers) and Macfadyen played a two-faced, deceptive HR executive perfectly.  I thought his portrayal was brilliant.  In more than 40 years of working in industry, I found all human resources executives to be two faced and deceptive (with one notable exception at Sargent-Fletcher Company).  Macfadyen nailed it, but that one scene does not justify the time I wasted watching this dog of a movie.

We realized The Assistant had ended when the credits popped up.  There was no other indication in the way the plot had been progressing, and that’s because there was no plot (as had been the case with The Zone of Interest).  I give both movies two thumbs down, and that’s only because I only have two thumbs.

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Four .45 ACP Revolvers

By Joe Berk

When most folks think of the .45 ACP cartridge, they think of the 1911 and other semi-auto handguns.  The big .45 also makes an ideal wheelgun cartridge, especially in N-frame Smith and Wessons.  I own four (the ones you see above) and I shoot them all.

The .45 ACP Revolver Story

Smith and Wesson forayed into the .45 ACP revolver business when Colt couldn’t keep up with the demand for its 1911 semi-auto in World War I.  The Army asked both Smith and Colt to make .45 ACP versions of their large-frame double action handguns, both manufacturers did, and the Army designated both revolvers as the Model 1917.

After the World War I, the 1917 revolvers became available to civilians.  Colt left the .45 ACP revolver business, but Smith and Wesson soldiered on, and to this day Smith still offers several different models.

Shooting .45 ACP ammo in a revolver requires a clip.  You have to snap the rounds into the clip so they will fire and extract in a revolver.  At one point, the 1917 revolvers were popular enough that Remington introduced the .45 AutoRim cartridge, which is a rimmed version of the .45 ACP that allows use of the cartridge in a revolver without the clip.

.45 ACP rounds in a star clip. I have a tool that makes it easy to insert cartridges in the clips and remove the empty cases after shooting. In World War I, clips held only three rounds (you needed two to load six rounds in a 1917 revolver).
A .45 ACP round (left) and a .45 AutoRim cartridge (right). Note the difference in rim configuration at the base of each cartridge.  I’ve experimented with both ACP and AutoRim brass in my .45 ACP revolvers; both deliver comparable accuracy.

Over the years Smith and Wesson has manufactured several .45 ACP revolver models.  I’d like to own them all, but there’s only so much room in the safe and Susie’s willingness to indulge my gun collecting.  The four this blog addresses are:

      • The Model of 1955
      • A Jovino snubnose
      • Smith’s reincarnated and Turnbull-finished Model 1917
      • The Performance Center Model 625.

Info on each follows.

The Model of 1955

Smith introduced the Model of 1955 as an alternative to the 1911 semi-auto for bullseye target competition.  Mine was made in the 1970s.   I bought it from Rutgers Guns in Highland Park, New Jersey shortly after I left the Army (Rutgers Guns had no connection to Rutgers University other than geography).  I paid around $200 for it new.

A typical Model of 1955 three-shot 50-foot group. This gun shoots everything well.

The Model of 1955 has Smith and Wesson’s target trigger and target hammer, and it has target sights (with a Patridge style sight in front).  It originally had checkered grips, but shortly after I bought it I put a set of smooth grips on it.  I think the smooth grips both look and feel better.  Back in the day, you could purchase those grips new for around $25.  Today, a set from that era (like the ones you see above) would fetch $300 to $400.  The Model of 1955 has the highly polished and deep blue finish that is the hallmark of earlier Smith and Wesson revolvers.  It is a beautiful handgun.

I never tried a load in the Model of 1955 that didn’t do well; every powder and every bullet combination I loaded grouped well.  In the nearly 50-years that I’ve owned this revolver, I’ve only seen one other guy on the range with the same gun.  I asked him what load he used and he told me the gun likes everything; every load he ever tried shot well, too.  That said, the load I use is typically 4.2 grains of Bullseye and a 200-grain semi-wadcutter bullet.  I use Lee’s Deluxe 4-die set and I crimp the bullets with their factory taper crimp die to assure easy chambering and to prevent bullet pull under recoil (although recoil with this load is light).

The Jovino Snubbie

The Jovino snubnose revolver is a rare animal, one of 650 customized by New York City’s John Jovino Gun Shop (which no longer exists; when it closed, Jovino was the oldest gun shop in the country).

The Jovino snubnose .45 ACP revolver. It’s a real rarity.

Back in the 1980s, Jovino’s built custom guns.  Their main clients were the NYPD and other police departments, so many of the Jovino customs tended to be duty-oriented carry weapons.  Jovino bought 6 1/2-inch barreled Smiths like the one you see above and turned them into 2 1/2-inch snubnose revolvers. The conversion was not just a simple chop job, though.  Here’s what Jovino did to these guns:

      • Shortened the factory barrel to 2 1/2 inches.
      • Installed a crane lock to replace the ejector rod lock.
      • Relocated the red ramp front sight.
      • Rounded the butt to the S&W K frame round butt configuration.
      • Tuned the double and single action trigger.
      • Radiused the hammer spur.
      • Polished the trigger face.
      • Fitted Pachmayr rubber grips.
      • Reblued the cut barrel (the new bluing is actually a bit darker and more polished than the stock bluing).

The original grips that came with the Jovino snubbie were rubber Pachmayrs, but I wanted the look of ivory grips. That’s when I found out that the Jovino guns did not have a standard N-frame rounded grip profile.  It took a lot of patient sanding and polishing to get the fake ivory grips to fit.  I like the look.

The grips look good. So does the revolver. One of the Jovino custom touches was to round the hammer spur profile. I like what they did.

The double action trigger on the Jovino is incredibly smooth.  The slick trigger and the red ramp and white outline sights work together well, and the gun is very accurate. I’ve never seen another one of these guns on the range, so the exclusivity factor is there, too.

Smith and Wesson’s Reincarnated 1917

Smith’s resurrected Model 1917 .45 ACP revolver, shown here with AutoRim ammo.

About 20 years ago Smith and Wesson introduced a reissue of its World War I Model 1917 for a very short time, and as part of that deal, the new Smith included Turnbull color case hardening.  I saw one of the Turnbull 1917 revolvers at a local Bass Pro and it sat in the display case for months.  Bass Pro had it marked down to $695 and it still hadn’t moved.  I asked the kid behind the counter what they would take for it; he read the price tag and told me $695.  Would you consider less, I asked.  I’d have to ask the manager, he said, looking at me and not moving.  Why don’t you do that, I answered.  He finally realized his job was to sell stuff and I was a real live customer, so he took off in search of the boss.

“We’ll take 30 off,” Junior said when he returned.

“Is that percent, or dollars?” I asked.

He smiled.  “Dollars.”  It was still a hell of a deal, so I pulled the trigger.  Today if I wanted to sell this gun I could probably get $1500 for it.  But I don’t want to sell it, and I never will.

Another view of the 1917, its glorious Turnbull color case hardening, and .45 ACP ammo loaded in clips.

I don’t shoot my Turnbull 1917 all that often; my preference is the Model 625 described below.  The 1917 groups well, but its small checkered grips are punishing.  This is another cool gun.  I’ve never seen another one on the range.

Smith’s Performance Center Model 625

The Performance Center is Smith’s marketing shtick for guns that have been slicked up a bit, which is Smith and Wesson’s way of saying they build Performance Center guns with the attention to detail that used to be standard on all Smith and Wessons.  This one has a good trigger, a different barrel contour, blended edges on the front of the cylinder, and probably a few other niceties I can’t remember right now.

This revolver originally had clown-like, awkward, red-white-and-blue grips.  I quickly swapped the goofy factory grips for what were advertised as rosewood grips from a third-party vendor (they weren’t rosewood at all; they were instead fabricated of cheap laminated and dyed wood, as I found out when I refinished them).   But my custom grips fit my hands much better, and this is an extremely accurate revolver.  I also installed a red ramp front sight and a white outline rear site.  The white outline rear sight Smith sells today has barely-visible gray lines and the red is not as bright as it used to be, but they are better than the gold dot front sight and plain black rear sight that came on the gun (I don’t like gold dot front sights).

Six rounds at 50 feet, standing, from the Performance Center .45 ACP Model 625.  This revolver has grips I refinished and a red ramp and white outline set of sights.  The target shown here was shot with the 200-grain semi-wadcutter bullet and 6.0 grains of Unique.

My usual accuracy load for the 625 is a cast 200-grain semiwadcutter bullet (sized to .452 inches) over 4.2 grains of Bullseye.   Another load that works well is the same bullet with 6.0 grains of Unique (it’s the load I used on the target above).

After reading about the above Smith and Wesson .45 ACP revolvers, you might have two questions:

      • Which is my favorite?
      • Which do I prefer:  A .45 ACP revolver or a 1911?

The answer to both questions is:  Yes.

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It’s Always About The Motors

By Joe Berk

For me a motorcycle’s appearance, appeal, and personality are defined by its motor.   I’m not a chopper guy, but I like the look of a chopper because the engine absolutely dominates the bike.  I suppose to some people fully faired motorcycles are beautiful, but I’m not in that camp.  The only somewhat fully faired bike I ever had was my 1995 Triumph Daytona 1200, but you could still see a lot of the engine on that machine.  I once wrote a Destinations piece for Motorcycle Classics on the Solvang Vintage Motorcycle Museum and while doing so I called Virgil Elings, the wealthy entrepreneur who owned it.  I asked Elings what drove his interest in collecting motorcycles.  His answer?  The motors.  He spoke about the mechanical beauty of a motorcycle’s engine, and that prompted me to ask for his thoughts on fully faired bikes.  “I suppose they’re beautiful to some,” he said, “but when you take the fairings off, they look like washing machines.”  I had a good laugh.  His observation was spot on.

A 1200cc Harley Panhead motor I photographed at the Rock Store in Malibu.

My earliest memory of drooling over a motorcycle occurred sometime in the 1950s when I was a little kid.  My Mom was shopping with me somewhere in one of those unenclosed malls on Route 18 in New Jersey, and in those days, it was no big deal to let your kid wander off and explore while you shopped.  I think it was some kind of a general store (I have no idea what Mom was looking for), and I wandered outside on the store’s sidewalk.  There was a blue Harley Panhead parked out front, and it was the first time I ever had a close look at a motorcycle.  It was beautiful, and the motor was especially beautiful.  It had those early panhead corrugated exhaust headers, fins, cables, chrome, and more.  I’ve always been fascinated by all things mechanical, and you just couldn’t find anything more mechanical than a Big Twin engine.

There have been a few Sportsters that do it for me, too, like Harley’s Cafe Racer from the late 1970s.  That was a fine-looking machine dominated by its engine.  I liked the Harley XR1000, too.

A 1000cc Harley Cafe Racer photographed at one of the Hansen Dam meets. When these were new, they sold for about $3,000.

I’ve previously mentioned my 7th grade fascination with Walt Skok’s Triumph Tiger.  It had the same mesmerizing motorrific effect as the big twin Panhead described above.  I could stare at that 500cc Triumph engine for hours (and I did).  The 650 Triumphs were somehow even more appealing.  The mid-’60s Triumphs are the most beautiful motorcycles in the world (you might think otherwise and that’s okay…you have my permission to be wrong).

A 1966 Triumph Bonneville and it’s 650cc twin-carb engine. My Dad rode a Bonneville just like this one.

BSA did a nice job with their engine design, too.  Their 650 twins in the ’60s looked a lot like Triumph’s, and that’s a good thing.  I see these bikes at the Hansen Dam Norton Owners Club meets.  They photograph incredibly well, as do nearly all vintage British twins.

A late1960s BSA at Hansen Dam. These are beautiful motorcycles, too.

When we visited good buddy Andrew in New Jersey recently, he had several interesting machines, but the one that riveted my attention was his Norton P11.  It’s 750cc air cooled engine is, well, just wonderful.  If I owned that bike I’d probably stare at it for a few minutes every day.  You know, just to keep my batteries charged.

Andrew Capone’s P-11 Norton. You can read about our visit with Andrew here.

You know, it’s kind of funny…back in the 1960s I thought Royal Enfield’s 750cc big twins were clunky looking.  Then the new Royal Enfield 650 INT (aka the Interceptor to those of us unintimidated by liability issues) emerged.  Its appearance was loosely based on those clunky old English Enfields, but the new twin’s Indian designers somehow made the engine look way better.  It’s not clunky at all, and the boys from Mumbai made their interpretive copy of an old English twin look more British than the original.  The new Enfield Interceptor is a unit construction engine, but the way the polished aluminum covers are designed it looks like a pre-unit construction engine.   The guys from the subcontinent hit a home run with that one.  I ought to know; after Gresh and I road tested one of these for Enfield North America on a Baja ride, I bought one.

The current iteration of Royal Enfield’s 650cc twin. I rode this bike through Baja and liked it so much I bought one when I returned from Mexico.  Here’s more (a lot more) about that adventure.

Another motorcycle that let you see its glorious air-cooled magnificence was the CB750 Honda.  It was awesome in every regard and presented well from any angle, including the rear (which is how most other riders saw it on the road).  The engine was beyond impressive, and when it was introduced, I knew I would have one someday (I made that dream come true in 1971).  I still can’t see one without taking my iPhone out to grab a photo.

A 1969 or 1970 Honda CB 750. This is the motorcycle that put the nail in the British motorcycle industry coffin. I had one just like it.

After Honda stunned the world with their 750 Four, the copycats piled on.  Not to be outdone, Honda stunned the world again when they introduced their six-cylinder CBX.  I had an ’82.   It was awesome.  It wasn’t the fastest motorcycle I ever owned, but it was one of the coolest (and what drove that coolness was its air-cooled straight six engine).

A Honda CBX engine photographed at the Del Mar fairgrounds near San Diego. The CBX was a motorcycle that added complexity where none was required. It was an impressive machine.

Like they did with the 750 Four, Kawasaki copied the Honda six cylinder, but the Kawasaki engine was water-cooled and from an aesthetics perspective, it was just a big lump.  The Honda was a finely-finned work of art.  I never wanted a Kawasaki Six; I still regret selling my Honda CBX.  The CBX was an extremely good-looking motorcycle.  It was all engine.  What completed the look for me were the six chrome exhaust headers emerging from in front.  I put 20,000 miles on mine and sold it for what it cost me, and now someone else is enjoying it.  The CBX was stunning motorcycle, but you don’t need six cylinders to make a motorcycle beautiful.  Some companies managed to do it with just two, and some with only one.  Consider the engines mentioned at the start of this piece (Harley, Triumph, BSA, and Norton).

I shot this photo at Hansen Dam, too. I always wanted a mid-’60s Moto Guzzi. Never scratched that itch, though. They sound amazing. Imagine a refined Harley, and you’d have this.

Moto Guzzi’s air-cooled V-twins are in a class by themselves.  I love the look and the sound of an air-cooled Guzzi V-twin.  It’s classy.  I like it.

Some motorcycle manufacturers made machines that were mesmerizing with but a single cylinder, so much so that they inspired modern reproductions, and then copies of those reproductions.  Consider Honda’s GB500, and more than a few motorcycles from China and even here in the US that use variants of the GB500 engine.

The Honda GB500, Honda’s nod to earlier British singles. It’s another one I always wanted.

The GB500 is a water cooled bike, but Sochoiro’s boys did it right.  The engine is perfect.  Like I said above, variants of that engine are still made in China and Italy; one of those engines powers the new Janus 450 Halcyon.

The Janus 450 Halcyon I rode in Goshen. That resulted in a feature story in Motorcycle Classics. It’s engine is by SWM in Italy, which is a variant of the Chinese copy of the GB500 engine.  I liked the Janus.

No discussion of mechanical magnificence would be complete without mentioning two of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made:  The Brough Superior SS100 and the mighty Vincent.  The Brits’ ability to design a visually arresting, aesthetically pleasing motorcycle engine must be a genetic trait.    Take a look at these machines.

The Brough Superior SS100. Its engine had a constant loss lubrication system. This is the same motorcycle Lawrence of Arabia rode. One of my grandsons is named T.E. Lawrence.
The mighty Vincent. This and the Brough Superior above were both photographed at Hansen Dam.

Two additional bits of moto exotica are the early inline and air-cooled four-cylinder Henderson, and the Thor, one of the very first V-twin engine designs.  Both of these boast American ancestry.

Jay Leno’s 1931 Henderson. He told me he bought it off a 92-year-old guy in Vegas who was getting a divorce and needed to raise cash, and I fell for it.

The Henderson you see above belongs to Jay Leno, who let me photograph it at one of the Hansen Dam Norton gatherings.  Incidentally, if there’s a nicer guy than Jay Leno out there, I haven’t met him.  The man is a prince.  He’s always gracious, and he’s never too busy to talk motorcycles, sign autographs, or pose for photos.  You can read about some of the times I’ve bumped into Jay Leno at the Rock Store or the Hansen Dam event right here on ExNotes.

A Thor V-twin photographed at the Franklin Auto Museum in Tucson, Arizona. You almost need a four-year mechanical engineering degree to start one of these. Thor made the first engines for Indian.

Very early vintage motorcycles’ mechanical complexity is almost puzzle-like…they are the Gordian knots of motorcycle mechanical engineering design.  I photographed a 1913 Thor for Motorcycle Classics (that story is here), and as I was optimizing the photos I found myself wondering how guys back in the 1910s started the things.  I was able to crack the code, but I had to concentrate so hard it reminded me of dear departed mentor Bob Haskell talking about the Ph.Ds and other wizards in the advanced design group when I worked in the bomb business: “Sometimes those guys think so hard they can’t think for months afterward,” Bob told me (both Bob and I thought the wizards had confused their compensation with their capability).

There’s no question in my mind that water cooling a motorcycle engine is a better way to go from an engineering perspective.  Water cooling adds weight, cost, and complexity, but the fuel efficiency and power advantages of water cooling just can’t be ignored.  I don’t like when manufacturers attempt to make a water-cooled engine look like an air-cooled engine with the addition of fake fins (it somehow conveys design dishonesty).  But some marques make water cooled engines look good (Virgil Elings’ comments notwithstanding).  My Triumph Speed Triple had a water-cooled engine.  I think the Brits got it right on that one.

My 2007 Triumph Speed Triple. Good buddy Marty told me some folks called these the Speed Cripple. In my case, that turned out to be true, but that’s another story for another blog.
My 2015 CSC RX3. Before you go all nuts on me and start whining about Chinese motorcycle quality, I need to tell you I rode these across China, through the Andes Mountains in Colombia, up and down Baja a bunch of times, and all over the American west (you can read about those adventures here). It was one of the best and most comfortable bikes I ever owned.

Zongshen is another company that makes water-cooled engines look right.  I thought my RX3 had a beautiful engine and I really loved that motorcycle.  I sold it because I wasn’t riding it too much, but the tiny bump in my bank account that resulted from the sale, in retrospect, wasn’t worth it.  I should have kept the RX3.  When The Big Book Of Best Motorcycles In The History Of The World is written, I’m convinced there will be a chapter on the RX3.

The future of “motor” cycling? This is the CSC RX1E. I rode it and liked it. The silence takes some getting used to.

With the advent of electric motorcycles, I’ve ridden a few and they are okay, but I can’t see myself ever buying one.  That’s because as I said at the beginning of this blog, for me a motorcycle is all about the motor.  I realize that’s kind of weird, because on an electric motorcycle the power plant actually is a motor, not an internal combustion engine (like all the machines described above).  What you mostly see on an electric motorcycle is the battery, which is the large featureless chingadera beneath the gas tank (which, now that I’m writing about it, isn’t a gas tank at all).   I don’t like the silence of an electric motorcycle.   They can be fast (the Zero I rode a few years ago accelerated so aggressively it scared the hell out of me), but I need some noise, I need to feel the power pulses and engine vibration, and I want other people to hear me.  The other thing I don’t care for is that on an electric motorcycle, the power curve is upside down.  They accelerate hardest off a dead stop and fade as the motor’s rpm increases; a motorcycle with an internal combustion engine accelerates harder as the revs come up.

Wow, this blog went on for longer than I thought it would.  I had fun writing it and I had fun going through my photo library for the pics you see here.  I hope you had fun reading it.

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Black Powder Gatling Guns

By Joe Berk

Did you know the original Gatling gun (the Model 1862) used a blackpowder and percussion cap firing system?   And did you know that all modern Gatlings (the guns arming the F-15, the F-16, the A-10, the AC-130, and more) are based on the original Gatling gun design?  This is a chapter from our book, The Gatling Gun, that addresses the first iteration of Dr. Gatling’s famous weapon.  Many of you are blackpowder enthusiasts and I thought you might find the Gatling gun’s blackpowder lineage interesting.  I sure did.

Figure 1.  The Gatling Gun, by yours truly.

The Percussion Firing System

When most people think of loading a gun, they visualize it as a simple operation in which cartridges are inserted into the weapon (or a magazine). Most understand that the cartridges of modern weapons include both the bullet and the gunpowder. This simplicity of operation was not always the case. Earlier shooters had to use a much more complex percussion firing system. Unlike today’s guns (most of which use metallic cartridges), shooters with percussion firing guns could not simply load a cartridge into their guns and fire. Instead, percussion shooters had to load the primer, gun powder, and bullet into their guns separately for each shot.

Figure 2 shows the basic elements of a percussion firing system, which consists of a gun barrel and a nipple (the nipple is an extension with a channel).

Figure 2. Percussion firing system operation.

Loading began by placing a percussion primer on the nipple (as shown in the upper left portion of Figure 2). Black powder was then loaded into the barrel from the muzzle and tapped down prior to installing the bullet. The bullet (usually a round lead ball) was pressed into the barrel, again from the muzzle end (for this reason, percussion weapons are often referred to as “muzzleloaders”). Once the bullet was fully seated against the powder, the weapon was ready to fire.

A percussion weapon was fired by cocking the hammer and then releasing it to strike the percussion cap. The percussion cap contained a small quantity of an impact-sensitive material, which detonated when the hammer struck the cap. This detonation sent shock and heat waves through the channel in the nipple to the black powder. When the black powder ignited, it developed high pressure, which drove the bullet through the barrel with enough velocity upon exiting to continue its flight to the target. As the bullet moved down the barrel, it was engaged by spiral grooves machined into the barrel’s inner surface (these grooves are called “rifling”), which imparted a spin to the bullet. The spin stabilized the bullet, making it more accurate. Once the bullet had left the bore, the spent percussion cap could be removed and the loading and firing process could begin again.

Army Weapon Preferences

During the Civil War, percussion weapon systems were standard-issue items (even though completely self-contained metallic cartridges had already been invented, the Union army had not yet adopted the concept). A refinement of the percussion priming system that bridged the gap between percussion priming and metallic cartridges had been at least partially accepted by the Union army. It involved the use of integral paper-patched bullets and powder charges. Figure 3 shows the paper-patched bullet and powder concept. Paper-patched bullets and powder charges were loaded as a single unit into the muzzle of the gun (thereby eliminating the need to carry and load bullets and powder separately). When a gun loaded with these cartridges fired, the percussion primer gas jet perforated the paper bag attached to the bullet to ignite the powder. The gun then operated in the same manner described earlier.

Gatling recognized the futility of proposing a gun with metallic cartridges to the Union army and therefore opted to develop his first Gatling gun with paper-patched bullets and powder charges. He developed the first Gatling gun in 1862, accordingly designating it the Model 1862. It was to be the only variant of the Gatling gun that did not use the more modern metallic cartridges, and because of that, certain features of its operational sequence differ from later models. Nonetheless, its operation is worth studying, as it provides insight into the mechanical genius behind the weapon and a fundamental understanding of the operational concepts behind all future Gatling guns (including those used in many of today’s modern weapon systems).

Gatling Gun Operation

As the above description demonstrates, the loading and firing of percussion weapons was a slow and cumbersome operation that left the gunner essentially defenseless during the reloading operation. This disadvantage was primarily responsible for the advent of metallic cartridges. The complexity of the reloading process was also a major design challenge in developing a high-rate-of-fire weapon, as were the cocking, hammer release, and recocking actions. The elegance of the Gatling gun design is that the steps involved in loading and firing occur automatically. To understand how this occurs, one must first be familiar with another important mechanical concept, the principle of the cam.

Figure 3. Paper-patched bullets. The paper bullet patch engaged the rifling and also contained gunpowder to propel the bullet. When the gun fired, the primer burned through the paper to ignite the powder.

A cam is simply a device that translates motion in one direction into motion in another direction (see Figure 4). It involves the motion of an inclined surface, which is then used to drive a follower. If the inclined surface is wrapped around a rotating surface, the rotating element can be used to create a back-and-forth (or reciprocating) motion in the follower. This is the concept Dr. Gatling used to drive the mechanism of the Gatling gun.

The problem Dr. Gatling solved was generating the reciprocating motion required to step through the actions of firing a gun. This cam-driven concept is shown in Figure 5, wherein the position of the gun mechanism is shown at successive stages of the firing process. In the first position, the gun drive mechanism is near the most narrow portion of the inclined cam surface.

Note that there are two ways a cam can be used to create reciprocating motion: the cam can be driven to actuate the followers, or the followers can be driven while the cam is held stationary. Dr. Gatling chose the latter approach, for reasons that will soon become obvious. As the gun mechanism moves with respect to the cam, the hammer is pushed back, compressing a spring and cocking the gun. When the hammer is fully rearward (and its drive spring fully compressed), it encounters a sharp step on the cam profile. The cam step is a release, and it allows the drive spring to snap the hammer into the percussion cap. This fires the gun.

Figure 4. The concept of a cam. As the cam moves with respect to the cam follower, the cam follower will move in accordance with the profile of the cam.
Figure 5. Gatling firing sequence. As the gun mechanism rotates, the bolts are driven back and forth by the elliptical cam path.
Figure 6. Gatling cam-path-driven operation. As the gun mechanism rotates, the cam follower moves the bolt back and forth, accomplishing the Gatling gun firing sequence.

In our discussion above (and in Figure 5), we depicted a stationary cam surface, as well as a gun barrel and firing mechanism that moved with respect to the stationary cam. It involved a flat cam surface and a lateral motion of the gun along this surface. Let’s take this one step further. Suppose the entire gun mechanism (moving gun barrel and action and cam) is wrapped around a shaft parallel to the gun barrel (as shown in Figure 6). The barrel, hammer, and other elements of the gun’s action would then revolve around this central axis. Suppose further that the cam is wrapped around the interior of a stationary cylindrical housing at the rear of the gun. We’d then have a design in which the gun barrel and action spun around, and the action was driven through the firing steps by the stationary cylindrical cam inside the rear housing. While completing its journey around the inside of the housing, the cam would cock and release the hammer, just as described earlier.

Once the gun operation and rotary gun mechanism/stationary cam concepts are understood, the remaining theory of the operation of the Gatling gun is straightforward. All that’s involved are the additional actions required to load the gun prior to firing and eject the spent cartridge after firing.

The design need not be restricted to only one gun action and barrel. Other actions and barrels can also mount on the central axis, and these can make the circular journey around the stationary cam simultaneously. The number of additional actions and barrels is constrained only by size (how many will fit around the axis and the stationary cam) and weight (if the gun design is limited to a specified weight). The first Gatling gun (the Model 1862) had six barrels, but it could just as easily have had more or fewer.

To simplify our discussion, let’s follow the path of one barrel and action around the circular cam. The Model 1862 operated with five basic steps:

• loading
• compression
• locking and firing
• unlocking
• ejecting

Each step occurred as the Gatling gun mechanism revolved inside the stationary, circular cam path. The mechanism was driven by the familiar small hand crank at the rear of the weapon. When the crank was turned, a small pinion gear on the end of it engaged a larger ring gear on the cluster of gun barrels and actions. This large ring gear was fixed to the main shaft of the gun. When the main shaft rotated, the entire barrel assembly and all of the other moving parts (each barrel’s actions, etc.) rotated counterclockwise (as viewed from the muzzle end). As these components moved, followers in each barrel’s action followed the circular cam path in the stationary rear housing.

Loading

At the beginning of this chapter, we described how a basic percussion-fired weapon operates and then progressed into an explanation of paper cartridges. As you will recall, the first steps required placing a percussion cap on the nipple and a paper cartridge and bullet in the barrel. Gatling recognized that these actions could not be easily accomplished while the gun mechanism he envisioned was spinning around a circular cam path. It would be difficult to ram paper cartridges into a spinning barrel and delicately place the percussion caps on moving seats. Gatling solved the problem by preloading steel chambers with paper cartridges, bullets, and percussion caps, and then loading these into the Gatling gun feed mechanism.

These preloaded steel chambers have been described as miniature guns. In a sense they were, but they could perhaps be more accurately described as predecessors to the metallic cartridge. They were self-contained units with a projectile, propellant, and primer, invented solely to simplify loading. Metallic cartridges were smaller and easier to load, but the concept was nearly identical.

The Model 1862 Gatling gun had a small hopper on top of the gun mechanism (near the rear). A quantity of the preloaded steel chambers was placed into the hopper, and as the gun mechanism turned, the chambers fell into grooves in the gun’s rotating mechanism. The gun had a grooved slot for each barrel. When each groove passed approximately through the two o’clock position, one of the preloaded chambers from the hopper dropped into place. The groove aligned the preloaded chamber with the bore of the gun barrel so that when the chamber fired, the bullet had a straight shot into the barrel. As the gun mechanism turned, each preloaded chamber traveled with its barrel, remaining in constant alignment with it.

Compression

As the gun mechanism continued to rotate, a protrusion on the hammer engaged the cam surface. At this point, the lock cylinder actuated. The lock cylinder consisted of a tube containing a hammer and a compression spring. A protrusion on the hammer extended through a groove in the lock cylinder tube to contact the circular cam path. As the gun mechanism continued to rotate, the hammer spring approached full compression (near the twelve o’clock position).

Locking and Firing

Just prior to reaching the twelve o’clock position, the rear of the lock cylinder contacted a small raised surface in the rear of the housing, formed by a hardened steel insert in the plate behind the gun mechanism. The insert was designed to force the lock cylinder forward, which in turn forced the preloaded chamber against the rear of its gun barrel. This caused the forward surface of the preloaded chamber to bear down against the barrel, “locking” it into position and forming a better seal. The concept was to effect a better seal, thereby minimizing the escape of propellant gases and providing for higher bullet velocity.
As soon as locking occurred, the hammer protrusion (in the locking cylinder) reached a sharp forward step on the cam surface, which released the hammer. The hammer spring drove it into the percussion cap, firing the preloaded chamber.

Unlocking

Once the barrel had fired, it had to be unloaded so it could be reloaded and fired again. Before this could be done, though, the locking action had to be unlocked. This was governed by the proper sizing and positioning of the small insert described above. Once the lock cylinder passed the insert (as the gun mechanism continued to turn) another spring on the outside of the cylinder pushed it slightly to the rear. This relieved some of the pressure holding the preloaded (and now fired) chamber against the barrel. The remaining force holding the chamber against the gun barrel came from the hammer spring, which now (in the fired position) held the hammer against the percussion cap and the chamber against the barrel. Dr. Gatling included another small raised surface on the cam path to back the hammer away from the steel chamber just enough to allow the chamber to float freely. This occurred as the gun progressed from the eleven o’clock position to the ten o’clock position.

Ejection

The chamber could be ejected once it had unlocked. This occurred as the rotating cluster of barrels and actions positioned the now-fired chamber near the bottom of the gun. The chamber simply fell free through an opening in the base of the mechanism, where it could be picked up for later cleaning and reloading. To prevent the chambers from getting hung up in the gun mechanism, a guide bar forced them out as the chamber groove passed through the six o’clock position.

Once the five steps described above were complete, the now-empty chamber groove (in the rotating cluster) continued its circular journey up to the hopper, where a new preloaded chamber fell into position and the load, compress, lock, fire, unlock, and eject process began again. As mentioned earlier, the Model 1862 Gatling gun had six sets of barrels, actions, and grooves. These spun as a set, with each of the steps described above occurring sequentially. The gun fired six times with each rotation of the barrel cluster.

The Model 1862 was the only Gatling gun to use the separate preloaded chambers. There were several problems inherent to this approach, which were corrected in subsequent versions of the gun. These problems and others (as well as the solutions and subsequent Gatling guns) are discussed in the next chapter. The use of metallic cartridges in the Model 1865 significantly changed the manner in which the Gatling gun operated. Though many of the detailed mechanical actions changed, all were actuated through the rotating-barrel-cluster and stationary-circular-cam approach. As will be seen in subsequent discussions on contemporary Gatling guns (starting with Chapter 6), all modern variants of the Gatling use this approach.

Want to learn more about the Gatling gun, both the early versions and the ones that arm today’s high performance military systems?  Hey, for just $12.95, we can help you with that!

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