Youberty? You bet!

That would be my tuned Taylor Uberti in .45 Colt, the Italian Stallion Single Action Army revolver that has graced these pages in a few earlier blogs.  It was a good day…a couple of my good buddies stopped by with brass they didn’t want (including the ultra-tough-to-get-these-days .45 Colt), and I was hard at it on the reloading bench shortly thereafter.  My go to fun load in .45 Colt is 6.4 grains of Trail Boss, a 200-grain cast bullet (in this case the truncated roundnose thrown by the Lee mold, although just about any 200-grain semi-wadcutter works equally as well), and a crimp for an overall cartridge length of 1.595 inches.   It was 5 shots at 50 feet, and I was putting them pretty much into one ragged hole just about exactly at my point of aim.  You just gotta love a good Single Action Army revolver…I sure do!

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About the only thing I don’t like about Trail Boss powder is that it doesn’t obturate well, although you wouldn’t know it from the accuracy this load delivers.  Trail Boss soils the cases and they take longer to come clean in the tumbler, but it’s a small price to pay for this kind of accuracy.

The nice thing about the Trail Boss load mentioned here is that it shoots just about to point of aim for me at 50 feet.  Another nice thing is there’s almost no recoil…this load in a Single Action Army is a real powder puff.   Yeah, I could go hotter, but what would be the point?

More Uberti blogs?  Hey, take a look…

Colonel Colt and Captain Walker

Men of a Certain Age

And of course, there’s all the other Tales of the Gun stories!


Motorcycle stuff?  Right here, folks!


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ExNotes Product Comparo: Mitsubishi Mirage versus the Milwaukee Eight

Have we finally lost our marbles?  A Mitsubishi Mirage?  I’m comparing it to a Harley Big Twin? No way!

One of the nice things about business travel is the opportunity to sample different cars.  That’s something I like…extended test drives to find out if a car fits.  I’ve rented cars I thought I would really like only to find out I hated them (saved a lot of money on a Jaguar doing that), and I fell in love with a few by accident…mostly because because they were the only thing available and they surprised me in a good way.

My first time for a rental car romance was in August 1972 when I rented a VW Beetle one weekend at the Benning School for Boys (jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia).  (When I say a rental car romance, I’m referring to falling in love with the car, not any sort of an illicit parking lot relationship.)  The Beetle was a blast and I bought one.  I had a cool picture of it somewhere but it was taking too long to find, so you’ll have to trust me on this one.

The same thing happened again when I rented a Subaru (back when Subaru penetrated the US market with dirt cheap rental agency sales).  I was blown away by the Subie’s overall quality and I’ve owned four since (including my dynamite WRX you see below).

A 2006 Subie WRX near the marigold fields above Santa Barbara. That was a fun car.

And then it happened again recently when the only thing left in the Atlanta Enterprise lot was a Mitsubishi Mirage.

Mitzi. More fun than any $14K car has a right to be.

The Mirage is a car that would have never been on my radar, but I liked it.  Oh, it’s tiny and it didn’t have a lot of power, and it only has three cylinders, but somehow that made it even more appealing.  The three-cylinder thing made me think of my old Triumph Speed Triple, but as soon as I stepped on the gas, it was all Harley.  You know…open the throttle and there’s lots of noise and not much else.  But I was in no hurry, and I kind of enjoyed hearing Mitzi’s howling protestations when I poured the coal to her.  Harleys ain’t the only motor vehicles focused on converting gasoline to noise!

Three’s a crowd? Not with my old Speed Triple. Good lord, that was a good-looking motorcycle!

Mitzi.  Yeah, I gave my rental car a name…and that’s a first.

A sparse interior, but the car had cruise control, air conditioning, a heater, a radio, Apple car play, and an automatic transmission. She drove like a comfortable go kart.

Mitzi’s road noise was a subdued sort of thing…not the screaming tire whine like the Chevy Traverse I rented earlier in Houston (I think a more apt name for the Chevy might have been the Travesty).

Mitzi’s ride was firm and the seats were a bit on the hard side, but I liked it.  And Mitzi is most definitely not a lard butt.  She weighs a scant 2,095 pounds, or just a little more than twice what a Harley Electra-Glide weighs.  And you get air conditioning, power windows, Apple Car-Play, and a heater with the Mirage.  The best part?  I rolled all over Atlanta and the surrounding areas for the better part of a week, used nearly a full tank of gas, and when I filled up before turning her back in at the rental agency, she took just 7 gallons for a whopping total of $21.  I like that.

7 gallons. $21. I could learn to live with this.

Mitzi kind of reminded me of a motorcycle, but better.  I mean, think about it.  The new Harley Icon, a beautiful motorcycle to be sure, but damn, it’s $30K and 863 pounds!  Yeah, you get the Milwaukee Eight motor, but there’s no air conditioning, no heater (other than what rolls off the rear cylinder, as Harley riders know all too well), no spare tire, no windshield wipers, no rain protection, no automatic transmission, it only seats two, and the Harley gets lousy gas mileage compared to the Mitsubishi.  And the Mitsubishi will clock an honest 100 mph (don’t ask how I know).  Maybe the Milwaukee Eight will, too, with that 34-cubic-inch advantage it has over my old Harley’s 80-incher.  My ’92 Softail wouldn’t hit 100 mph.  Maybe this 114-cube Milwaukee monster will.

The Harley Icon. All $30K and 863 lbs of her. 863 lbs!

So I started researching Mitzi’s stats online, and our relationship deepened.  Mine was a no frills model (she actually had hubcaps on her tiny wheels, not the cast wheels you see in the photos above).  The base model I drove clocks in at a starting price of $14,625.  That’s not even half what the new Harley costs.  The Mitsubishi has a three-cylinder, 74-cubic inch engine (compared to Harley’s 114 cubic inch twin).  The Harley is mostly made in ‘Murica; the Mitsubishi comes from Thailand.

More Mitzi magic?  How’s a 10-year powertrain warranty sound?  10 years!  That’s  longer than most folks get for murder!  As an aside, when I owned my Harley Softail, Harley wouldn’t even work on the bike when it hit the 10-year mark.  The Mitsubishi would just be coming off its warranty!

I know I like a motor vehicle when I start thinking about what it would be like to take it through Baja, and that’s what I found myself doing as I was tooling around Georgia in my Mitsubishi.  It’s most likely not going to happen, but it sure would be fun to get lost for a few weeks in Baja in an inexpensive, light, air conditioned car that gets 40 miles per gallon on regular fuel.  With a price that starts under $15K, that leaves a lot of money for Tony’s fish tacos.

Tacos by Tony in Guerrero Negro…bring it on!

Don’t run out and buy a Mirage based on this ExNotes blog.  To balance my rose-colored outlook on life in general and the Mirage in particular, consider this opening paragraph from Consumer Report’s review…

The Mitsubishi Mirage lives up to its name. While its low $16,000 sticker price and good fuel economy of 37 mpg overall may conjure up an inviting image of a good, economical runabout, that illusion quickly dissipates into the haze when you drive this tiny, regrettable car. The Mirage comes as a tiny hatchback or sedan, built in Thailand and powered by a small three-cylinder engine.

Eh, Consumer Reports.  What do they know?  I wonder how the CR folks would rate the Harley Icon.  Funny how all this has come around…I used to refer to my ’79 Electra-Glide as my optical illusion.  You know…it looked like a motorcycle.  When it was running.  Which wasn’t very often.

My take? The Mitsubishi Mirage is one of the least expensive cars out there, it has one of the best automobile warranties ever offered, and it was fun to drive.  No frills here, folks.  It’s just an honest car that’s not trying to pretend it’s something it is not.  I like it.  If I buy it instead of the Harley Icon I could pay cash and still have enough left over for a little more than 20,000 fish tacos!


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Air Travel, Social Distancing, and Full-Figured Flyers

First things first…I enjoyed Gresh’s last blogs on his cataract surgery, but I’m sure glad he didn’t get a hemorrhoid removed.  Ah, the selfies he might have posted…the horror of it all.

So the topic du jour is air travel (and I sure have had a bunch of it in the last 30 days) and masks.  The secret mission business has come back with a vengeance, and what that’s meant for me is the air travel has been nonstop.  It’s all been domestic (I hear travel overseas is a bit dicey still).  It seems the Covid thing is still a problem in other countries…

Covid?  What Covid?  We don’t need no stinkin’ Covid.  And the 6-foot social distancing thing?  As Tony Soprano might have said: Fuhgeddabout it.  The airports and the airplanes are packed, and you’d be lucky to get 6 inches (let alone 6 feet) of social distancing.

I’ve been on about a dozen domestic flights crisscrossing the country in the last four weeks, and every plane has been full (as in completely full, with not a single empty seat).  I always seem to be seated next to fat folks, and to make a long story only slightly less long, those tiny airplane seats make the experience more intimate than most of my high school dates.  There’s a lot of full-figured folks in America, and it’s only gotten worse during the pandemic.

Yeah, the Covid thing is still around and I’m a bit apprehensive about being herded into tiny places with an amazing array of strange and oversized mammals (it’s what flying has become), but I guess the good news is that we’ve been kicking Covid’s butt.  If we weren’t, the air travel thing would be in one mainstream media story after another about super spreader events.  But it is not.  The rates are continuing to come down (the Covid rates, that is…not the ticket prices or the media’s fear mongering), so the vaccines and the masks seem to be making a difference.

Ah, the masks.  God, I hate those things.  Breathe out and the world fogs over.  Without realizing it, I have adjusted my vision and worldview to seeing the world only when I inhale.  But the masks and the vaccines, I think, have helped us.  I’m not looking for a political argument here.  I’m just stating my thoughts.  Hey, it’s America.  You’re free to be wrong if you think otherwise.

Seven Mini 14 Accuracy Tips

I love shooting and writing about the Mini 14.  Having said that, let’s get to today’s main attraction, and that’s how to get the best accuracy out of a Ruger Mini 14.

Tip 1:  Refine Your Shooting Techique

There’s a lot to say here.  I won’t spell it all out, as we’ve covered this topic before.  Focus on the basics and refer to our earlier post on Mini 14 Marksmanship.

Tip 2:  Reload Your Own Ammo

Ah, this statement will light up the trolls:  There is no great factory ammo for the Mini 14 and bulk ammo is generally inaccurate.  That said, mark my words:  Some troll will post that he shoots 200-yard half-inch 10-shot groups offhand using iron sights with (fill in the blank) bulk ammo.  Why such individuals aren’t competing at the international level instead of wasting their time posting comments on Facebook I can’t say.  Trust me when I delicately suggest they are not honest information brokers.

You might consider my experience and that of many others when I state that you really need to reload your own ammo to attain optimal accuracy.  For starters, there’s the issue of the chamber size.  With the exception of the short-lived Mini 14 Target Model, all .223 Mini 14 rifles are actually chambered for the 5.56 mm NATO round, and that chamber is actually slightly larger than .223 Remington ammo.   For this reason, neck sizing brass that has been fired in your Mini 14 will assure a much better chamber fit and accuracy will improve significantly.  You can read more about that here.

Regarding the specifics, I’ve had great luck with Hornady boattail full metal jacket bullets of either the 55-grain or 62-grain persuasion crimped in the cannelure with the Lee factory crimp die.  I’ve also found that the more expensive Hornady V-Max bullets are quite accurate.  As for powders, my best results are with IMR 4320 (no longer available unless you have a stash), ARComp (a superb powder), IMR 4198, and Winchester’s 748.  Other folks report good results with Varget (I have that powder, but I haven’t tested it in my Mini 14).  My most accurate Mini 14 loads are with charges near the upper end of the charge spectrum.  As always, start low and work your way up watching carefully for pressure signs as you increase the charge.  I never go above the max charges listed in my load manuals (and neither should you).

To get the best reloading results, you might also consider:

    • Sorting your brass by manufacturer.
    • Trimming the brass.
    • Cleaning the primer pockets.
    • Cleaning the brass.

As you read this part of today’s blog you might be thinking “but I don’t reload.”  If that’s the case, I have but one word:  Start.  You can get a good handle on the reloading process and the equipment you’ll need in our prior posts on this topic.

Tip 3:  Let the Barrel Cool

This might have been listed under Tip 1 (Refine Your Techniques), but I see so many Rambo wannabees on the range I want to include it as a separate point.   You know the kind of inbred I’m talking about:  The guy (it’s always a guy, and typically a younger guy) who wears camo gear (but has never been in the military).   He’s the guy who loads 20 or 30-round magazines and rapid fires all of them as if the ability to shoot 30 rounds in under 3 seconds somehow equates to shooting skill.

I think that guy’s name is most likely Richard Rambo, and you don’t want to be like him.  Don’t be a Dick.

I only shoot 5-round magazines, and I let the barrel cool between shots and between magazines.  The Mini 14 has an assymetrically-contacted, relatively thin barrel.   Heat that barrel up via rapid fire and your rifle will string its shots.  If you’re shooting for accuracy, let the barrel cool.

Tip 4:  Install A Tech-Sights Rear Sight

There’s an after market rear sight manufacturer, Tech-Sights, who offers a dramatically better rear aperture sight than the stock Mini 14 setup.   Get a set.  They are more easily adjusted and they will make your rifle easier to shoot accurately.  Make sure you LocTite them in place during the installation; if you don’t, they will shoot loose.

You could put a scope on your Mini 14, but I’ve never had good luck with a scope on a Mini.  Even with LocTite, the scope mounts always loosened after surprisingly few rounds, and before they did so, the group sizes really weren’t any smaller.  Tech-Sights is the way to go.

Tip 5:  Clean the Rifle

The good news about the Mini 14 is that it seems to run forever without cleaning, and the bad news about the Mini 14 is that it seems to run forever without cleaning.  I say that because accuracy will degrade long before reliability does, and if you’re fundamentally lazy like me, you’ll shoot hundreds (and sometimes a thousand or more) rounds before you clean your rifle.  Yeah, it will keep shooting, but the accuracy won’t be there.  Clean your rifle (including the bolt’s innards, the action, and the bore) after every range session.

Some folks will tell you the bore needs to be fouled before the rifle will attain its best accuracy.   They suggest you shoot a couple of magazines through a clean bore before testing for accuracy.  I haven’t found that to be the case; my Mini 14 is accurate with a freshly-cleaned bore.  In fact, my rifle doesn’t even display the typical first-shot-through-a-clean-bore flyer that other rifles exhibit.

When you clean your Mini 14, take care not to let the cleaning rod drag at the muzzle’s edges while doing so.  Give it a good soaking with Hoppes No 9 using a cleaning patch, let it soak for an hour, and repeat that until all the black powder residue is out.  Then let it soak for a few hours with Hoppes No 9, run a patch through the bore, and repeat that over the next two days to get the copper traces out.  I know I’m done when there’s no green or turquoise on the patch.

For the bolt, I spray the hell out of it with carb cleaner.  Taking the bolt apart is a nonstarter for me (you need special tools to do so), so I just spray it well (outdoors, of course).  Then I go to work on the other action components, using a brass brush on the piston and its surrounding areas to get all the carbon residue gone.  When everything is squeaky clean, I’ll lightly oil it all as I’m reassembling the rifle, except for the firing pin in the bolt.  I leave that dry.

Tip 6:  Glass Bed the Action

After seeing the positive accuracy impact on my M1A from a glass bedding job, I did the same on my Mini 14.  I use AcraGlas from Brownell’s when I bed a rifle.  Other folks have had good luck with Marine-Tex.

Bedding a Mini 14 is different than bedding a bolt action rifle.  The Mini 14 action beds along inside edges of the stock, and along the top edge of the stock where it contacts the bottom edge of the upper receiver.  It doesn’t take a lot of bedding material, and you don’t want to slop it all over.   You just want capture some at the rear of the receiver where it interfaces with the top of the stop, and under the receiver interior rails where they interface with the stock’s interior near the magazine well.

You’ll feel movement between the receiver and the stock of a Mini 14 that hasn’t been glass bedded; once you glass bed the action that movement disappears (if you’ve done the bedding job well).   That’s what you want.  This is one of the more significant tips in this article; a good bedding job will improve accuracy significantly.

Tip 7:  Practice (A Lot!)

You want realize your rifle’s accuracy if you are an occasional shooter.  I find if I don’t shoot my Mini 14 for a few weeks, my edge disappears and I need a couple of range sessions to get back in the groove.  When I take my Mini 14 out every week, the groups get smaller and they stay small.  It’s funny how that works.

Parting Shots

Some folks like to use a barrel brace under the Mini 14 barrel just forward of the stock.  It’s the thing that resembles an M1A gas chamber and makes the Mini look like an M14.  I’ve never tried those, so I can’t say if they work or not. It seems gimmicky to me.  Folks (including yours truly) have tried shimming the receiver where it mates with the stock, with the idea that this will remove any play between the stock and the barreled action.  I’ve tried that (before I went with glass bedding) and I found that the shimming approach made no difference in accuracy.  If you want to get rid of the play between the barreled action and the stock, glass bedding is the way to go.  I’ve also played around with smaller gas plugs.  More testing showed that while these did reduce how far the Mini 14 tosses spent brass, accuracy stayed the same while reliability decreased, so I went back to the stock Ruger gas port.

A lot of folks ask about my Mini 14 and its Circassian stock.  A dozen years ago Davidson’s (a large Ruger distributor) commissioned a run of Mini 14s with Circassian walnut.  Most had plain, straight-grained lumber, but a very small number were superbly figured.  I watched Gunbroker.com for several months and when the one you see here appeared, I pounced.  I bought it new for $699.  My attitude has always been you can’t pay too much for a gun; you can only buy it too early.  And no, this one is not for sale.


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Memorial Day

Today is a special day.   Memorial Day is an official American holiday, always falling on the last Monday in May.  The holiday was originally called Decoration Day, it started in the years after the Civil War, and it became an official Federal holiday in 1971.   The concept was at first intended to honor those lost during the Civil War, but as our nation soldiered on, Memorial Day came to recognize and pay tribute to those lost in all our wars.

The Vietnam War dominated the news and our lives in my earlier years.  I missed that one by a fluke of timing, but I knew three fine young men who made the ultimate sacrifice:  Stephen Ponty (he was only 19 when he died in Vietnam), Timothy Ochs (who was 21 when he died over there), and Gary Buttenbaum (who was 23 when he was killed in action in Vietnam).   All three were from my neighborhood in central Jersey, and they were just a bit older than me.  I never met Colin MacManus (Captain MacManus was 25 when he was killed), but I feel like I know him and I think about him a lot, too.  I think about all of them, and I wonder what they might have become had they returned from Vietnam.  I’ve seen their names (along with more than 58,000 others) on the Wall in Washington, DC.  Not that I need to. I know who they are.

You don’t thank veterans for their service on Memorial Day (that’s what Veteran’s Day is for); you remember and think about those who did not come home.  I usually head to the range on Memorial Day with two of my favorite military weapons (the Garand and the 1911), and I think about Tim, Steve, Gary, and Colin.  Rest in peace, my brothers.  Your memories live on.

BMW’s R 18: The UberCycle

A colossal motorcycle, and I generally don’t like colossal motorcycles, but the BMW R 18 is somehow strangely appealing to me.  It’s beautiful, actually.  It’s the first one I’ve seen.  Gresh did a Dream Bike piece on this bike when BMW first released the concept.   Unlike most concept vehicles, the R 18 crossed the great divide and made it into production.   This was the first one I’ve seen.   I wouldn’t buy an R 18, but that doesn’t stop me from admiring it.

Did I mention this thing is colossal?

I recently stayed in Alpharetta, Georgia, while on my latest secret mission.   While on the Alpharetta assignment, my digs were a fancy hotel called the Avalon.  It’s in a high end mall with outdoor shops and a setup intended to evoke feelings of an earlier time.  You know, Main Street USA, with downtown shops and apartments above the shops.  It’s a trend in new shopping malls that I like and apparently so do a lot of other people.

In the evening the Avalon mall is a place to be seen with high end driveway jewelry, and the R 18 seemed right at home parked between a Mercedes UberWagen and a Rolls Royce SUV while Ferraris, Lambos, and McClarens growled by at 10 miles per hour.  For you BMW types, not to worry:  Avalon has the requisite Starbuck’s.

I did mention this motorcycle is huge, didn’t I?  How’s a 68-inch wheelbase and a 761-pound weight sound?

The idea behind the R 18 was to create an obese cruiser evoking BMW’s earlier history.  Not too far back, mind you.  They didn’t want to put swastikas on the thing (something BMW doesn’t really mention in their history…I suppose it wouldn’t be “woke”), but the ’60s were safe and the R60 styling works.  Take a look at this R60 I photographed at Bob Brown’s So Cal BMW shop and you’ll see what I mean.

BMW is obviously positioning the R 18 against Harley and other lardass cruisers, and they more than succeeded. In fact, I’d say they out-Harleyed Harley. To me, the last Big Twin Harley that had the right look was the Evo-engine Softails.  Everything since from “The Motor Company” looks out of proportion to me.  And for the uninitiated, “The Motor Company” is how rugged individualists who dress alike, have the same belt size and tattoos, and shop at the same do-rag supplier refer to Harley-Davidson.  The implication, of course, is that there is only one company that matters manufacturing internal combustion engines.  Ah, ignorance is so bliss.  Anyway, the R 18 is kind of like the Evo Softails: It is colossal, but all the pieces seem to fit well with each other and it successfully chasm crosses to an earlier, presumably better, Horst-Wessel-free time.  I like it.

A few more styling comparisons between the old and the new…

Like Harley and the whole Made in ‘Murica shtick, BMW is capitalizing on a “Berlin Built” mantra.

Berlin Built.  Seriously?

Berlin Built.  I can’t make this stuff up, folks.

I was getting into photographing the R 18, and as I was doing so, I hoped the owner would appear so I could ask him a few questions about the motorcycle (maybe that’s sexist; for all I knew, the owner might be a woman).  That didn’t happen, but I sure had fun working my iPhone magic on this two ton Teutonic twin…

The R 18 styling works for me.   I like the old-style BMW roundels, the steelhead trout mufflers (my term, not Berlin’s), the exposed shaft drive, and more.  If it were me, I would have made the bike a bit smaller, I would have found a way to incorporate a finned version of the GS1250 engine, and maybe I would have used Earles forks rather the R 18’s telescoping front end.  But hey, I don’t sell zillions of motorcycles a year and the Boys from Bavaria do.  As UberCycles go, the R 18’s approximately $20K entry ticket doesn’t seem out of line.  It’s not my cup of kartoffelsuppe, but I think the bike is beautiful.


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The Rodolfo Fierro Revolver

By any reasonable measure, Rodolfo Fierro was a world class SOB.  I know it’s not nice to speak ill of the dead, but old Rodolfo shucked this mortal coil more than a hundred years ago and I’m going to take a chance.  Bear with me.

I am a big fan of the Colt and Smith and Wesson 1917 .45 ACP revolvers and all their modern derivations.  You’ve read my scribblings (or tappings?) here on the ExNotes blog about the virtually new 1917 Colt I scored a couple of years ago, and you know I’m not above bragging about a group or two I’ve shot with my Model 625 Smith.  You can read all about that sort of thing on our Tales of the Gun page.


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Anyway, to get back to the main attraction (which is the beautiful nickel-plated and engraved 1917 you see here), a few years ago I bought a very cool Marlin from Collectors Firearms in Houston, Texas.  They are good people and as luck would have it, I had a secret mission in Houston a week ago.  Hmmm, I thought.  As long as I was headed to the Lone Star state it might be a good idea to stop in at Collectors, and before we left the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia I went online to see what Collectors had in stock.  That’s when the revolver in these photos appeared.

Wow!  My life suddenly somehow felt incomplete.  I needed that revolver.  Nickel plating.  Engraving.  Ivory grips.  .45 ACP.  An Army 1917.  Want.  Need.  Gotta have.  I was a dog in heat.

I studied the photos, of which there were many, and I noticed the following on the revolver’s frame:

General Rodolfo Fierro.  Who the hell was he?  So I Googled the name, and wow, what a mean bastard he was.  Turns out old Rodolfo was Pancho Villa’s darker side, and he was the one who handled the dirty work for Villa.  I won’t belabor all his dastardly deeds (you can Google the name yourself), but as dastardly bastards go, this guy was as bad as it gets.

But wow, the gun was a 1917 Colt (a favorite), it was highly engraved, it was advertised as being in good shape, and I wanted it. At $4950, the price was way out of my range.  But the provenance…the provenance of this Colt was incredible.   And the photos…take a look:

Collectors Firearms had a brief description on their website that was even more enticing:

Colt 1917 .45 ACP caliber revolver. Beautifully engraved and chiseled Colt .45 ACP revolver. This revolver is extensively engraved with traditional Colt style scroll work. The right-side of the frame has a relief chiseled figure of the Mexican Seal of an eagle and snake with cactus in the foreground. The left-side of frame is a relief chiseled figure of a puma braced on a rock. Bore is excellent. Action works perfectly. Barrel length is 5½”. The grips are of old mellow ivory. The backstrap is engraved “Gral Rodolfo Fierro” AKA “The Butcher.” Fierro was a known associate of Pancho Villa. Revolver has 100% of its nickel finish. Barrel has a relief chiseled figure of a longhorn steer. Very handsome and striking revolver!

So I was about 80% of the way there, thinking I could probably Presbyterian these guys down (it’s an inside joke shared by Members of the Tribe), sell a bunch of other stuff, and I would ride with Rodolfo.  Visiting Collectors Firearms became an imperative and after finishing my secret mission stuff, Sue and I rolled in to that magnificent firearms emporium on that fine Texas morning.

Collectors Firearms is huge, possibly the largest high-end gun store I’ve ever visited.   Folks, trust me on this…if you’re ever in Houston and you want to see some really cool stuff, you absotively have to see this place.

It took the kid who attended to us a few minutes to locate the Rodolfo Fierro revolver, and when he did, I was stunned.  The nickel plating and engraving were absolutely magnificently executed, far more so than revealed by the website photos above.  Somehow, the nickel finish and engraving made the revolver seem even larger than it actually is (and it’s a big gun).  I shot a few photos with my iPhone, and I’ll share one with you here:

So I thought about that revolver the rest of the time I was in Texas and then I thought about it more when I returned home, the gears turning with what I might have to sell to get it.

And then it hit me.  In researching old Rodolfo and all the evil he brought to those in his orbit, I found out that while there is some uncertainty about his date of birth, there’s none whatsoever about when he died.  That was in 1915 when he drowned in quicksand after being thrown from his horse, weighed down by gold he had presumably stolen.

1915.  Got it?  That’s the year old Rodolfo had to stand before his Maker and answer for all his sins.  You see, 1915 was two years before Colt introduced the 1917 Army .45 ACP revolver, and that tells me there’s no way this gun was carried by that bloodthirsty SonuvaYouKnowWhat. Whew! Just saved myself $4950 on that one.


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My 1st International Motorcycle Adventure, Eh?

Everybody has their preferred riding schtick and for me it’s international motorcycle travel.  Anyone can ride their cruiser to a local hangout for a beer or their GS to Starbuck’s for a $6 cup of coffee.  My riding is all about crossing international borders and collecting cool photos in places most two-legged mammals only dream about.  Just to make a point, I once rode a 150cc scooter (my CSC Mustang) to Cabo San Lucas and back.  The day after we returned, I needed something at Costco and I rode the little CSC there.  When I parked it, a beer-bellied dude in a gigondo 4×4 pickup told me, “that’s a little cute bike.”  He didn’t intend it to be a compliment.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I ride a (brand name deleted to protect the guilty),” he announced, his chest swelling with Made in ‘Merica pride to the point it almost equalled his waistline.   “We ride all over.”  He emphasized the “all” to make sure I got the point.

“Cool,” I said.  “Where do you go?”

Cook’s Corner, the ultimate So Cal burger/biker stand.

“Last week,” he told me, “we rode to Cook’s Corner!”

Cook’s Corner is a southern California burger joint about 40 miles from where we were talking.

“Where do you all go on that little thang?” He actually said “you all” and “thang,” but he didn’t have the accent to match the colloquialisms.  Okay, I had the guy dialed.

“Well, we rode to Cabo San Lucas and back last week.” I said.

Mr. 4×4’s jaw dropped.  Literally.  He looked at me, speechless, dumbfoundedly breathing through his open mouth.  Without another word he climbed into his big truck and rode off.  Our conversation was over.  So much for the biker brotherhood, I guess.

My 150cc CSC Baja Blaster. I had a lot of fun and covered a lot of miles on that little Mustang.

The international motorcycle travel bug bit me when I was still in school.  I had a ’71 Honda 750 Four back in the day (that’s me 50 years ago in the big photo up top).  One of my Army ROTC buddies had the first-year Kawasaki 500cc triple.  It was a hellaciously-fast two stroke with a white gas tank and  blue competition stripes.  We were in New Jersey and we wanted to do something different, so we dialed in Canada as our destination.  They say it’s almost like going to another country.

And so we left.  Our gear consisted of jeans, tennis shoes, windbreaker jackets, and in a nod toward safety, cheap helmets (ATGATT hadn’t been invented yet).  We carried whatever else we needed in small gym bags bungied to our seats.  Unfortunately, in those days “whatever else we needed” did not include cameras so I don’t have any photos from that trip.  That’s okay, because all they would have shown was rain.

A 1969 Kawasaki 500cc, two-stroke triple. Widowmakers, they were called, in a nod to their often unpredictable handling.

As two Army guys about to become Second Louies, we joked about being draft dodgers in reverse.  We were looking forward to active duty (me in Artillery and Keith in Infantry).  We were going to Canada not to duck the draft, but as a fling before wearing fatigues full time.  We didn’t really know what we were doing, so we took freeways all the way up to the border. It rained nearly the entire time.  All the way up and all the way back.  We bought sleeping bags because they looked cool on the bikes (it was a Then Came Bronson thing), but we stayed in hotels.  It was raining too hard to camp, and besides, the sleeping bags were soaked through and we didn’t think to bring a tent.  We got as far as Montreal, which seemed far enough to give us Canada bragging rights.  We spent that single Montreal night in a cheap dive and pointed the bikes south the next day.

These days, I know to check the weather, bring rain gear (even if none is forecast), and study a map to find the most interesting roads (rather than the fastest).  But hey, we were young and dumb, it was an adventure ride, it crossed an internationational border, and riding four days in a steady cold rain was a lot of fun.  I didn’t think so at the time, but that’s how I remember it today.  In fact, I remember that ride like it was last month.  And it got me hooked on international motorcycle adventures.  Canada was to be the first of many.


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More epic international rides?  Right here, folks!

The 2021 MacManus 1911 Award

Earlier this month we had a quick trip back to New Jersey for the 2021 MacManus Award.  You’ve read about the MacManus Award earlier on these pages.  It’s the presentation of a 1911 .45 Auto to the outstanding Rutgers University Reserve Officers Training Corps graduating cadet.

US Army Captain Colin D. MacManus, Rutgers University ’63.

The award honors Captain Colin D. MacManus, a US Army Airborne Ranger who was killed in action in Vietnam in 1967.  Good buddies Dennis, Tim, Javier, and I revived the MacManus Award, and it’s a tradition we will keep alive.

The 2021 MacManus Award, a Colt 1911 presented to Cadet Joseph Hom.
The 1973 Colin D. MacManus 1911 and a couple of 5-shot, 25-yard hand held groups I fired with it.

You know, I sometimes hear people my age talk about younger folks in a disparaging manner and lament a notion that young people today are somehow less motivated than we were.  When I meet people like Joe Hom and his classmates, I know that’s not true.  It’s reassuring and invigorating to meet these folks and when I do, I know our future is in good hands.


You can read more about the MacManus award and other Tales of the Gun here.


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The Mini 14 and Lee’s Factory Crimp Die

I love the Ruger Mini 14 and I’ve written several blogs on it (I’ll give you a link at the end of this blog).  The Mini 14 is not the most accurate rifle I’ve ever shot, but there’s something about it that just makes it fun.  I think if Ruger had introduced the Mini 14 a few years earlier it might have been the next US service rifle instead of Mattel’s M-16.  That statement might get a few trolls’ shorts in a knot, but hey, they’re young.  They’ll get over it.

Photos from the original GunBroker.com ad for my Mini 14. It was a limited production item with a Circassian walnut stock. Very few had wood this highly figured.

I took my Mini to the West End Gun Club a couple of weeks ago to see what impact (if any) a new Lee factory crimp die had on accuracy.  Usually when I reload rifle cartridges with jacketed bullets I don’t crimp.  Part of this is because it’s a bit difficult to get a consistent crimp if the brass is not trimmed to exactly the same length, and part of it is I often find I don’t need to trim my brass to get good accuracy.  That’s not to say case neck tension isn’t critical (it is; lube a couple of bullets before seating them and see how far out of the group they print).  But it you don’t crimp, you rely on friction between the case neck and the bullet to control the case’s grip, and friction is a tough thing to control.  Crimping should make the grip on the bullet more consistent (or so the theory goes).  Crimping is also thought to provide more complete combustion, reducing pressure variability and the inaccuracies associated with it.

Conventional reloading dies rely on a reduced diameter in the bullet seating die, which rolls the case mouth into the bullet to achieve a crimp (such a crimp is called a roll crimp).   Lee’s factory crimp die uses a different approach.  It has four collets (each forms a quadrant) that work at 90 degrees to the case to crimp the brass.  The collets are activated by the die’s base during the reloading press upstroke.

A .223 Lee factory crimp die. This is the last step in the reloading process. The die is screwed into the press after the bullet has been seated to the desired depth (left photo); the amount the die is screwed into the press controls the interface between the shell holder and the die (center photo). When the ram is fully raised, the die has collets that compress the brass horizontally around the case mouth (right photo), thereby crimping the bullet in place in the same manner as factory ammunition.
The view from above. The collets squeeze the brass around the bullet to crimp it in the case.
A 7.65x53mm Belgian Mauser round with a cast bullet roll crimped in place (left), and a .223 Remington/5.56mm NATO cartridge crimped with the Lee factory crimp die. The difference is subtle, but you can see it if you look closely.

I loaded 15 rounds crimped in the Lee factory crimp die, and I used another 15 rounds without the crimp.  I shot two targets at 100 yards from a rest using iron sights, with 15 rounds for each target. The target on the left is with no crimp, the one on the right is with the Lee factory crimp die (and I used a heavy crimp). The brass was fireformed in this rifle and neck sized only to get a good fit in the Mini 14’s 5.56 NATO chamber, which (as you know) is slightly larger than the .223 Remington cartridge.  In prior load development work, I found that neck sized only brass is much more accurate in the Mini 14.

15 uncrimped .223 rounds at 100 yards (left target) and 15 rounds crimped with the Lee factory crimp die (right target).

The first five shots using uncrimped reloads all went into the left target’s 10-ring, so I thought I was doing pretty well. Then I switched to the Lee factory crimp die ammo on the right target. The first shot felt weird, and it did not fully extract. I think it was the one that went way low. The next four all went into the 10 ring. On the next five rounds (again, using the Lee die ammo on the right target), the first one did the same thing (it failed to extract and it went low).  I fired one more magazine of Lee crimped ammo and all five worked okay.

Somewhere in those first two magazines of the Lee crimped ammo, I had two light primer strikes that did not fire. I extracted and chambered them again and they fired on the second attempt.  I didn’t know why those two rounds had light primer strikes.  Maybe the round had not fully chambered? Maybe because the Lee factory crimp die distorted the case mouth or something and it didn’t fully chamber?  Or maybe something was interfering with the firing pin’s travel?  I didn’t know and I wouldn’t find out until I disassembled rifle.

Then I fired 10 more uncrimped rounds at the target on the left and I had one failure to eject. My Mini 14 sometimes acts funny like that with the neck sized brass. It’s not a duty gun, so I thought I could live with an occasional failure to eject.  But I don’t like it.

So back to those misfires.  In the past, I’ve had to clean debris from around the firing pin, and it looked to me like it might be time to do that again. That could account for the two light firing pin strikes I had.

One other thing…I had painted the front sight with red nail polish, and that actually made the front sight’s top edge harder to see.  I want to go back to the plain blued front sight.

I also want to adjust the Lee factory crimp for less of a crimp. These first rounds used a max crimp. I didn’t trim the brass for this test because it was only fired once, but I don’t know how even (in length) it was. I used bulk Remington loaded ammo to get the brass (having fired it previously in the Mini 14) because a couple of years ago that stuff actually cost less than unprimed brass.  But inexpensive bulk ammo is not precision made and I suspect the case length had some variation (my suspicions were later confirmed, as you’ll read below).

A Lyman case trimmer I’ve been using for nearly 50 years. The Lee factory crimp die does not require case trimming, but the cases had enough length variability that I decided to trim them anyway. Cases that are too long can interfere with the bolt fully closing and raise chamber pressures.

When I reloaded the rounds fired in this test, I checked a few case lengths after neck sizing. The “trim to” length (per the Hornady manual) is supposed to be 1.750 inches, with a max case length of 1.760 inches. These cases (after two firings and neck sizing) were all over the map.  They ranged from 1.752 to 1.780. That alone could account for some of the anomalies described above.  I ran them all through the trimmer and reloaded a hundred for the next range visit. I backed off a bit on the Lee factory crimp die, too, as my good buddy Robby suggested.

I gave the Mini 14 a good cleaning and I was surprised at how filthy it was. This is not a rifle that I clean religiously…I’ll shoot it on several outings before cleaning (heresy, I know, but hey…it is what it is).  I wanted to grab a few photos of what a funky Mini 14 can look like, but my hands were so dirty and greasy I didn’t want to handle my Nikon camera.  After the most recent range visit, I Hoppes No 9’ed the Mini 14 bore for a couple days to get all the copper out (you know, until the patches came out with no green).

There were bits of what appeared to be very thin sheet brass in the bolt around the firing pin as well as a whole bunch of greasy carbon residue in the bolt. That could account for the couple of misfires. Removing the firing pin is not an easy job (it takes a special tool I don’t have or want); the drill here was to shpritz the hell out of the bolt with carb cleaner and work the firing pin back and forth to push the nasty stuff out. The thin brass bits might have been primer cup material.  Or they might have been chips from the extraction operation that found their way into the bolt and were peened flat. There’s no way of telling, as some of that ejected brass ends up in the next county (a trait Mini 14s are famous for).  By the way, when you’re working with that carb cleaner, you need to do it outdoors where there’s plenty of fresh air.  It’s highly flammable and if I use that stuff indoors, I get lightheaded and nauseated pretty quickly.

There was a lot of carbon gunk in the stock channel clear back into the action.  There was also a lot of carbon in and on the guide rod, as well as around the extractor. This could account for the occasional failures to eject. I blew it all out with WD 40 (in the stock) and carb cleaner (for the metal pieces).  There was so much carbon residue in the stock’s barrel channel that I thought I might have a leak around the gas port, but I didn’t see any carbon residue around the gas port and I’ve got the Allen bolts around that part tightened as tight as I dare go. I tried the smaller diameter aftermarket gas ports last year, but every one of them gave me unreliable function, so I went back to the stock port.

I’ve got a little more than a pound of ARComp, and that has been my “go to” Mini 14 powder for several years. When things started to get tight last year, my reloading outlet had an 8-pound bottle of XBR 8208 (it was the last bottle of anything he had). I had never heard of that powder before but I figured it would work in something, and in poking around on the Internet I found that 8208 gets the nod as a great powder for the .223 cartridge. The hundred rounds I just loaded are with ARComp, but I think I will do another 100 or so with different 8208 charges to see how they do. I’ve still got several hundred 62-grain Hornady full metal jacket bullets and I have another 500 55-grain bullets that just arrived from Midway. And I have small rifle primers and a potful of .223 brass. Unlike a lot of folks, I’m in good shape for .223 for a while (and no, I don’t want to sell or trade any components).

What’s the bottom line to all this?  Did the Lee factory crimp die improve accuracy?  The short answer is: I don’t know yet. I think it does, but I had too many other things going on with the rifle and the brass to be sure. If you ignore the first two rounds that went low, I think the accuracy edge goes to the Lee crimped ammo. Bear in mind that I was shooting with iron sights at 100 yards, so the differences may be more due to me than anything else. There were only four rounds outside the 10 ring with the Lee ammo; the uncrimped ammo had six rounds outside the 10-ring. But again, it’s iron sights at 100 yards, so who knows?

I’m going to share this post on Facebook, and you can bet some yahoo will tell me that he shoots 1/2-inch groups at 200 yards with open sights on his Mini 14 all day long.  Hey, it’s the Internet.  You have to ignore those buttheads.  As far as the Lee factory crimp die’s accuracy edge goes, I think it’s real.  I’ll find out for sure (maybe) the next time I go to the range.  Everything in the Mini is clean, lightly oiled, and ready for action. We’ll see what happens on the next outing, and you’ll read about here on the ExNotes blog.


Those other Mini 14 blogs I mentioned above?  You can find them here!


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