Every once in a while we do a blog that covers a bunch of topics, and this is one of those times.
Good buddy Mike Huber and his friend Bobbie motorcycled Mexico (Baja, to be specific, almost another country all by itself), and he most recently published an excellent story about being stranded down there by the Covid 19 pandemic. It’s not often that we recommend another blog, but hey, Mike’s writing is outstanding and it’s a great story. Take a look; it’s very good.
My favorite motorcycle magazine (that would be Motorcycle Classics) sends out marketing emails on a regular basis, and in those emails they include links to past (and sometimes recent) articles. I write for MC, and the most recent email that slipped into my inbox included a link to my Destinations piece on Hearst Castle. You might want to read that story; I love Hearst Castle. It’s closed for the pandemic, but the pandemic won’t last forever. Hearst Castle will be there when it’s over.
We’re having a heat wave (both here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia and at Tinfiny Ranch). That prompted us to start a piece on riding in extreme heat. My first recommendation would be: Don’t. But things don’t always work out the way you want them to. I once rode the length of Baja on a Mustang replicas with several friends, and due to a lack of research on my part we did the ride in Baja’s hottest month (and that’s September). You can read about the 150cc Baja ride through Hell here. Do you have any advice for riding in high temperatures? Please share them with us (info@exhaustnotes.us) and we’ll include your recommendations here on the blog.
We have more motorcycle, gun and other stuff coming up, including info on Ruger’s new Custom Shop and their Super GP100 .357 Mag revolver, favored loads in the Henry .45 70 Single Shot, a piece on Turnbull’s iconic color case hardening and restoration services, a stunning (and tack-driving) Kimber with exhibition grade French walnut, the wrap-up of our ride through the Andes Mountains in Colombia, the Canton Fair, and for you fans of The Ten Commandments, making bricks without hay and mortar. And a whole lot more.
Sacramento is a cool town. I’ve lived in California for more than 40 years now, but until recently, I’d never visited Sacramento other than for quick “in and out” business trips. All that changed last year, when we spent a weekend in town to take in the Capitol, the restaurants, Old Town, the American River, and more. That “and more” part included a real gem: The California State Railroad Museum.
There are only about 45 steam locomotives built before 1880 still in existence here in the United States. The California State Railroad Museum has eight of them. The one you see below is the Virginia and Truckee Railroad No. 12 Genoa. It was a wood-burning locomotive that was shipped by the Baldwin Locomotive Company of Philadelphia in 1873. This was a popular steam locomotive configuration back in the day. In its day, more than half the locomotives in the United States were of this design.
The locomotive below is an unusual one, and a configuration that I had never heard of or seen before: It’s the Southern Pacific’s No. 4294 cab forward articulated locomotive. This one has the engineer’s cab on the front of the locomotive. You’ve got to look at it for a moment to realize what’s going on.
It’s easy to see why this locomotive weighs a cool one million pounds.
The photo below is the Virginia and Truckee Railroad’s No. 13, originally ordered in October of 1872 and delivered in 1873. Somewhere along the trajectory of its life the railroad changed it to No. 15 (you know, 13 being an unlucky number). This one was once torn down to the bones for salvage, but the team at the California Railroad Museum resurrected it to the condition you see here using period photographs as their guide. It’s brilliantly displaced with a mirror underneath so you can catch all the details.
Here’s another cool old steam locomotive, also designated as No. 12. It’s the North Pacific Coast Railroad’s called the Sonoma. This one ran in service from the 1870s all the way to 1938, and then in 1939 it was restyled to look like the Central Pacific’s Jupiter (one of the two locomotives that met at Promontory Point upon completion of the Transcontinental Railroad; see Golden Spike National Historic Site) at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. It was later restored to its original condition and colors, and ultimately donated to the California State Railroad Museum.
Here’s the inside of a mail carrier. This is cool stuff.
The museum also had a cool cutaway of a diesel locomotive, a configuration we’ve all seen. A few years ago I had a consulting gig at a locomotive manufacturer in Idaho, and I was surprised to learn that “diesel” locomotives are hybrids. The diesel engine turns a generator, which keeps a huge battery bank charged. The batteries power electric motors located at the wheels, which drive the locomotive. You could see all that in this cutaway locomotive.
The California State Railroad Museum had several cars on display that you could enter. The one below is a dining car. Back in the day, the railroads had their own fancy china with each railroad’s logo in the dishes. It was pretty cool. The guy you see on the left is one of the museum’s docents.
Here’s the kitchen in that same dining car. Many of the old “diners” (popular roadside restaurants in the eastern US) started their lives as dining cars. When they reached the end of their service as rolling rail cars, they were moved to highway locations and became restaurants. Then the architectural style caught on and new restaurants were constructed to resemble dining cars.
In the early days in the American West and elsewhere, the snowdrifts could get quite deep across the tracks. We saw this dramatic photo of one actually in service, and then we saw the real thing.
The California State Railroad Museum has a pretty cool Lionel train exhibit, too, including a wall full of collectibles. One was the Pennsylvania Railroad GG-1 electric locomotive. The Pennsy mainline ran about a half mile away from where I grew up, and when I was a kid, we used to spend a lot of time playing around those tracks and watching the trains fly by. I remember seeing the GG-1 locomotives and they were really something. The GG-1 was a sort of an art deco design from the 1930s, and they were still in service when I was a youngster in the ’50s and ’60s. The Lionel version is a real collectible. My buddy Steve has one that is new in the box.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the California State Railroad Museum. If you’re a gearhead or a history buff, I think you will, too. While we were in Sacramento, we stayed at a hotel right at the base of the drawbridge that brings you into the downtown area (see the photo at the top of this blog), and the museum was within walking distance. You can easily spend a half a day or more in the California State Railroad Museum. It’s worth a visit.
All of the photos in this blog were shot handheld with available light (no flash), and Nikon’s 16-35 lens on a Nikon D810. It’s a heavy rig and it’s tough lugging it around, but it sure does a good job.
Want more rail stuff? Hey, we’re here for you! Check these out:
McMurtry wrote Lonesome Dove in 1985. It was loosely based on the true story of Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, and their third cattle drive north. I have a copy of Lonesome Dove that I bought when it first came out, and I’ve probably read it a half dozen times. Sometimes a few years will go by before I see it tucked away in the bookshelf, and I’ll pull it down and take a few days to read it again Even though I know what’s coming next (I almost have it memorized), I still enjoy reading it. It’s that good.
Motown Productions did the Lonesome Dove four-part television mini-series in 1989. Most of the time a movie based on a book gives up a lot, but this one did not. When it pops up as a re-run, I’m in. I’ve probably watched it no fewer than five times.
The scenes in both the book and the TV series (which stayed faithful to the novel) are well crafted and memorable. Several stood out, including the river crossing water moccasin attack, McCrae’s taking out a group of renegades while rescuing Lorena, Call’s horse-collision-takedown of an arrogant and abusive cavalry officer, and the bar room scene in which McCrae puts his Colt Walker to good use teaching a surly bartender western etiquette (that one is my favorite).
If you’ve read the book or seen the TV series, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, you need to. Trust me on this one one, folks. The next time Lonesome Dove is on TV you’ll want to see it, and if you have a chance to grab a copy of Lonesome Dove, you should do so.
My daughter buys books for me, and she has a knack for finding great ones she knows I will enjoy. The latest in a long line of successes is Jim Rasenberger’s Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America. I enjoyed the book on many levels because I’m a shooter, I like biographies, I’m a student of business success, I like to read about mechanical things, and I love history (especially the history of the American West). Revolver checked all the boxes.
Samuel Colt was anything but an overnight success, but successful he sure was. He was one of the key figures in our Industrial Revolution, and he made the concept of interchangeable parts and mass production work well before Henry Ford came along. Colt started out as sailor on a merchant vessel, he became a huckster selling laughing gas exhibitions, he failed at his first attempt to build a firearms manufacturing business, and then he succeeded wildly when he worked with Samuel Walker, the Texas Ranger who guided Colt’s design of the famous Colt Walker. Revolver delves deeply into all this, including the Colt Walker story, and a grand story it is.
On that topic of the Colt Walker: The Walker was the .44 Magnum of its day, a gun so over-the-top in size and power that as Colonel Colt observed, “it would take a Texan to fire it.” I always thought it would be cool to own a Walker, but Colt only made 1,100 of them, and originals don’t come up for sale too often. The last one that did went for over a million dollars. The blogging business is good, folks, but it ain’t that good.
Robert Duvall as Gus MacCrae in Lonesome Dove, the greatest story ever told (in my opinion). Gus carried a Colt Walker.
Uberti, a company in Italy, manufactures a replica of the original Colt Walker, and reading Revolver gave me the push I needed. I ordered one this morning. Good buddies Paul and Duane are both black powder aficionados, and I figure they can give me the help I’ll need learning how to load and shoot these historical weapons.
Uberti’s modern copy of a Colt Walker (one of these is headed my way). Colt manufactured just over a thousand Walkers in 1847-1848. Originals sell for something north of a million dollars.
If you’re looking for a good read, pick up a copy of Revolver. I believe you’ll enjoy it.
Good buddy Greg and I (along with about a gazillion other people) are long term Ruger Blackhawk fans, and last week we were on the range with a new .357 Magnum Blackhawk Greg recently acquired. It’s one of a limited run offered by Talo, a distributor specializing in custom guns from a variety of manufacturers.
Greg’s Blackhawk has a 5 1/2-inch barrel (standard New Model .357 Blackhawks have either a 4 5/8-inch or 6 1/2-inch barrel) and really cool birdseye maple grips (most Blackhawks these days have black plastic grips). The birdseye maple grips contrast well with the Ruger’s deep bluing, and that 5 1/2-inch barrel just flat works on a single action revolver. At 40 ounces (one ounce heavier than a 1911 Government Model .45 auto), the Ruger balances well and feels right. Greg’s birdseye Blackhawk is beautiful, it groups well, and it has a superb trigger. This particular offering from Talo includes an extra cylinder chambered in 9mm, so Greg can use .357 Magnum, .38 Special, or 9mm ammo (I guess he won’t be running out any time soon).
Greg loads the same .357 Magnum ammunition that I do (a 158-grain cast lead bullet with 7.0 grains of Unique), which is the “go to” accuracy recipe in .357 Magnum. It sure shoots well. A target load that is superbly accurate in a Blackhawk is the .38 Special with a 148-grain wadcutter bullet and 2.7 grains of Bullseye propellant (that’s been a preferred .38 Special accuracy load for decades).
Ruger makes a beautiful revolver, and this Talo birdseye Blackhawk’s limited production run almost guarantees these will be investment grade guns. Most dealers are sold out, but if you poke around a bit on Gunbroker.com, you may still find one.
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Cars Datsun PL620 Pick-Up Datsun 200SX (78) Chevrolet Monte Carlo Pontiac Sunbird (78) Dodge Colt Levis Edition Datsun B210 Wagon Mazda B2000 Pick-Up Datsun 200SX Ford F-150 Pick-Up Chevrolet S-10 4X4 LB Dodge Colt Vista Van Pontiac 6000 Wagon Pontiac Fiero (84) Pontiac Sunbird (92) Pontiac Bonneville Ford Ranger Splash Ford Conversion Van Lincoln Continental Chevrolet Cavailer Z24 Jeep Cherokee Chevrolet S-10 Lowrider Chevrolet Astro Van Honda Passport Acura Legend Ford Mustang Nissan Frontier Chevrolet Trailblazer Honda Accord Dodge Grand Caravan Pontiac Grand Prix Pontiac Sunfire Nissan Xterra Pontiac Fiero (85) Chevrolet Cavalier (03) Chevrolet Cavalier (98) Chevrolet Camaro (97) Chevrolet Silverado Volkswagen Jetta Chevrolet Cavalier (00) Jeep Wrangler 4 Door X Chevrolet Cruze Chevrolet Camaro Chevrolet Volt Chevrolet Sonic Mazda Miata Jeep Wrangler (09) Buick Tour X Subaru CrossTrek
That includes some for spousal units and kids…..currently only have the Tiger 1050, Volt, and CrossTrek in the garage.
Except for the Fieros (!) each vehicle could store a sufficient amount of Yoo-Hoo.
I would send pictures of them all, but the Internet would break.
Fred, that’s a lot of cars and a lot of motorcycles. Thanks for sending the photos and the note!
So, how about it, ExhaustNotes readers? Do you have photos of your motorcycles that have gone down the road? Please send them to us (info@exhaustnotes.us) and we’ll post them here on the blog!
Do you dream about the motorcycles you used to own?
Yeah, me, too. I don’t have photos of all my bikes that have gone down the road, but I have a few and I’d like to share them with you.
My first motorcycle was a Honda Super 90. I bought it from Sherm Cooper, a famous Triumph racer who owned Cooper’s Cycle Ranch in New Jersey. My Super 90 was cool…it was white and it had an upswept pipe and knobby tires. Mr. Cooper used it for getting around on his farm (the Cycle Ranch actually started out there). I was only 14 and I wasn’t supposed to be on the street yet, but I was known to sneak out on occasion. I liked that Honda Super 90 motor, and evidently so do a lot of other people (it’s still being manufactured by several different companies in Asia).
Yours truly at about age 14 on the Honda Super 90. What’s that stuff on top of my head?
The next bike was a Honda SL-90. Same 90cc Honda motor, but it had a tubular steel frame and it was purpose-built for both road and off-road duty. I never actually had a photo of that bike, but it was a favorite. Candy apple red and silver (Honda figured out by then that people wanted more than just their basic four colors of white, red, black, or blue), it was a great-looking machine. I rode it for about a year and sold it, and then I took a big step up.
That big step up was a Honda 750 Four. I’ve waxed eloquent about that bike here on the blog already, so I won’t bore you with the details about how the Honda 750 basically killed the British motorcycle industry and defined new standards for motorcycle performance. The 750 was fun, too. Fast, good looking, candy apple red (Honda used that color a lot), and exotic. I paid $1559 for it in 1971 at Cooper’s. Today, one in mint condition would approach ten times that amount. I wish I still had it.
My first big street bike…a 1971 Honda 750 Four. It was awesome. It’s a miracle I never crashed it. I rode it all the way up to Canada and back in the early ’70s. Check out the jacket, the riding pants, and my other safety gear.
There were a lot of bikes that followed. There were two Honda 500 Fours, a 50cc Honda Cub (the price was right, so I bought it and sold it within a couple of days) an 85cc two-stroke BSA (with a throttle that occasionally stuck open), a 1982 Suzuki 1000cc Katana (an awesome ride, but uncomfortable), a 1979 Harley Electra-Glide Classic (the most unreliable machine I’ve ever owned), a 1978 Triumph Bonneville (I bought that one new when I lived in Fort Worth), a 1971 Triumph Tiger, a 1970 Triumph Daytona, a 1992 Harley Softail (much more reliable than the first Harley, and one I rode all over the US Southwest and Mexico), a 1995 Triumph Daytona 1200 (the yellow locomotive), a 1997 TL1000S Suzuki (a sports bike I used as a touring machine), a 2006 Triumph Tiger, a 1982 Honda CBX (a great bike, but one I sold when Honda stopped stocking parts for it), a 2007 Triumph Speed Triple (awesome, fast, but buzzy), a 2006 KLR 650 Kawasaki, and a 2010 CSC 150. Here are photos of some of those bikes:
My high school buddy Johnnie with a Honda 500 four I later bought from him. That sissy bar was the first thing to go. It was a fun bike.A Honda 50cc Cub, the most frequently produced motorcycle on the planet. In China and elsewhere, this bike is still being manufactured. I bought this one in the 1960s, mostly because I knew I could sell it and make a few bucks quickly.My ’79 Electra-Glide Classic. I called this one my optical illusion, because it looked like a motorcycle. I couldn’t go a hundred miles on that motorcycle without something breaking. And people badmouth Chinese motorcycles.Me with my 1982 Suzuki Katana. In its day, that was a super-exotic bike. Uncomfortable, but very fast, and way ahead of its time. I bought it new and paid over MSRP because they were so hard to get. I was a lot skinnier in those days.My ’92 Softail Classic Harley. This motorcycle was superbly reliable right up until the moment the oil pump quit at 53,000 miles. At about the time I shot this photo on a trip through Mexico, I started thinking that maybe a Big Twin was not the best answer to the adventure touring question. And I know, my motorcycle packing skills in those days were not yet optimized. That’s a Mexican infantry officer behind the bike.My buddy Louis V and me with our bikes somewhere in Arizona sometime in the mid-’90s. I’m not sure why Louis had his shirt off…we sure didn’t ride that way. Louis had an ’81 Gold Wing and I had an ’82 CBX Six. That old CBX was a fun bike…it sounded like a Ferrari!My ’97 Suzuki TL1000S on the road somewhere in Baja. Wow, that bike was fast. Here’s a story about my good buddy Paul and me featuring this motorcycle.The 1200 Daytona. I won it on an Ebay auction. It was an incredible motorcycle and you can read more about it here.I’d always wanted a KLR 650, and when I pulled the trigger in 2006 I was glad I did. Smaller bikes make more sense. They’re more fun to ride, too. It seemed to me that this was the perfect bike for Baja. That’s me and Baja John out at El Marmol.The ’06 Triumph Tiger. Fun, but a little cramped and very heavy. It was styled like a dual sport, but trust me on this, you don’t want to get into the soft stuff with this motorcycle.Potentially the most beautiful motorcycle I’ve ever owned, this 2007 Speed Triple was a fast machine. The joke in motorcycle circles is that it should be named the Speed Cripple. That’s what it did to me.My CSC 150. Don’t laugh. I had a lot of fun on this little Mustang replica. My friends and I rode these to Cabo San Lucas and back.
That brings up to today. My rides today are a CSC TT250, an RX3, and a Royal Enfield Interceptor 650. I like riding them all.
Do you have photos of your old bikes? Here’s an invitation: Send photos of your earlier motorcycles to us (info@exhaustnotes.us) with any info you can provide and we’ll your story here on the blog. We’d love to see your motorcycles.
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A 200th Year Ruger No. 1S in 7mm Remington Magnum. With factory-level jacketed bullet loads, recoil is attention-getting. With cast bullets, this magnum is a lot easier to shoot. I shot cast bullets for the first time in this rifle this week.
When I was younger, I made my own bullets by casting them out of molten lead. I cast bullets until I decided there wasn’t enough time to do everything I want to do. Shooting can be a full time hobby, reloading can be a full time hobby, and casting can be a full time hobby. There’s a little motorcycle riding and some writing thrown in there, too. Something had to give, so a few years ago I sold all my bullet casting gear.
I still enjoy reloading and shooting cast bullets, though, for a lot of reasons. Lighter recoil, cheaper bullets (usually), less barrel wear, and the big factor: It’s fun and it’s challenging. This fascination with cast bullets, for me, started when I ran with a bunch of gunsels in El Paso and one of the guys decided it would be fun if we had a cast bullet rifle bullseye competition. Being mostly engineers, we reckoned that big bore rifles would be the way to go, as the larger bullet diameters and weights would tend to make bullet weight differences and imperfections negligible. The first rifle I ever shot a cast bullet in was a .458 Win Mag. I was hooked after the first shot, mostly because there was far less recoil than shooting jacketed factory ammo and the experience was much more enjoyable. Then I fired four more shots and when I saw the 1-inch group at 100 yards (from a .458 Win Mag!) I was hooked. We all shot big bores in those days: .458s, .45 70s, .375 H&H Magnums, and such. Cast bullets in these big calibers can be amazingly accurate.
Anyway, I fell in love with cast bullets and I’ve been shooting them ever since, but these days I buy my cast bullets. I have a local source for cast bullets, and I have a few I like that I order online or pick up at my dealer (that’s Phillips Wholesale in Covina, California). I also poke around a bit on the Internet and a few weeks ago I found Gardner’s Cache, another commercial bullet casting operation. What had my attention immediately is that Jim Gardner’s prices are relatively low, he’s a veteran, and he had something I had not been able to find elsewhere at a decent price: 7mm cast rifle bullets. I wanted to try cast bullets in a couple of 7mm rifles (one being the Ruger No. 1 that you see at the top of this blog), so I ordered a box of 250. Then USPS lost the shipment. I filled out an online lost shipment report, the boys in blue located my bullets, and a few days later they arrived. The Gardner bullets look great.
Beautiful cast Gardner 7mm bullets. Casting quality is high, and I was hoping accuracy would match. It did. I’m a happy camper.
I could see that the casting quality was high, so just for grins I measured 30 projectiles to get a feel for the variability.
In 30 bullets, the range of weights did not exceed 1.6 grains. The mean is the average weight, and the standard deviation is a measure of the variability around the average value.
It was good. You ordinarily get a lot more variability with cast bullets then you do with jacketed bullets, but the Gardner bullets were more consistent than other cast bullets I’ve used. As I reviewed the data, it suddenly hit me that these were supposed to be 145-grain bullets. I could see from the bullets’ configuration that they matched the RCBS No. 82150 bullet mold, but what the mold maker tells you the bullet is supposed to weigh and what they actually weigh seldom line up. I had seen this before with other cast bullets.
The RCBS No. 82150 bullet mold. It’s not uncommon for the specified bullet weight to be different than what the mold actually throws, and that was the case here.I like these bullets so much I had to grab another photo of them. The copper cap at the bullet’s base is called a gas check. It protects the back of the bullet from hot propellant gases and reduces barrel leading. The blue stuff is bullet lubricant, which eases the bullet’s passage through the bore and also helps to reduce leading.
I loaded several configurations with my new Gardner cast bullets in virgin Remington brass I had on the shelf, and the cartridges looked good.
Loaded 7mm Remington Magnum ammo, waiting to be range tested. You can’t buy this kind of ammunition; you have to reload your own.
I went to the range the next day with the 7mm Remington Magnum Ruger No. 1 and my new cast bullet load, and after getting set up I fired the first load (with Unique propellant) at a single pistol target at 50 yards. The rifle had been zeroed for a factory equivalent jacketed load, and the results were very predictable. Whenever I’ve taken a centerfire rifle zeroed for factory ammo and shot cast bullets in it, the load is always about 10 inches low at 50 yards.
Two good groups (both around 1.5 inches) at 50 yards. The low group was fired with the scope still adjusted for jacketed ammo, and it was predictably 10 inches low. 80 clicks up on the Weaver and we’re in the money.
The required telescopic sight adjustment in going from jacketed to cast is something I know by heart: 80 clicks up. You can see the first five-shot group at 6:00 in the 5-ring on the above target. Windage looked about right, so I went 80 clicks up on the Ruger’s Weaver 3×9 scope. Each click is 1/4-inch at a hundred yards so that means a click is 1/8-inch at 50 yards, and I had to go up 10 inches. 10 inches is 80 clicks. I made that adjustment and oila, the second group was right where I wanted it. It was exactly the same as the amount of elevation I had to crank into my .30 06 Browning B78 when going from jacketed to cast bullets.
Then I moved over to the other targets I had set up at 50 yards. I’d like to tell you that all groups were tight, but hey, you do this to find out what works and what doesn’t. My best group of the day was with 18.0 grains of Trail Boss propellant, but it wasn’t as consistent as the Unique load was.
Not bad, but not consistent. The next group with this same load was 3.140 inches. Was it me, was it the rifle, was it the bullet, or was it the load? We’ll find out on the next outing. This might have been a 1.6-inch group at 100 yards, and that ain’t bad.
Here’s what I experienced with the first six loads I’ve tried with these bullets. Yep, there’s a lot of variability on some, but I’m encouraged.
Accuracy results from the first six loads I tried with my 7mm Remington Magnum cast loads. I’ll focus primarily on Unique and Trail Boss, and seat the bullets out a little further for a longer overall cartridge length on the next set of loads.
I’ve already loaded more 7mm ammo with the Unique and Trail Boss loads, and I’m also going to try IMR 4227. I don’t think that 4227 will do as well as the first two loads, though. We’ll see. After that, I’m moving the targets out to 100 yards. That will be interesting, and when I do, you’ll see the results here on the ExNotes blog.
I already used about half of the 250 Gardner bullets that came in the first box. The results in my Ruger No. 1 made me a happy camper and I ordered another 1000 7mm rifle bullets a few days ago. If you want good cast bullets at a great price, you might take a look at Jim’s website.
I had a hard time selecting the title for this blog. I ultimately went with the one you see above because I think it will show up better on the search engines. But I almost went with Stupid is as Stupid Does (you know, from the Forrest Gump movie). Read on. You’ll see.
I am a big fan of the Ruger Blackhawk, and I wanted to try something different a few years ago, so I bought an older .30 Carbine Blackhawk on Gunbroker. I was excited about getting it, but I have to tell you that revolver had issues, one of which led to its ultimate destruction. One issue was that every case stuck in the cylinder after firing, and the other issue was that the cartridges dragged on the frame and the cylinder wouldn’t turn freely.
The first Ruger .30 Carbine I owned. It was the original design, informally referred to as the Old Model. It was a beautiful handgun, but it had problems.
I doped out the cylinder drag issue fairly quickly. You have to trim the brass after nearly ever firing, and you have to make absolutely certain the primer is at or below flush after seating (something you should do for all cartridges). The .30 Carbine is a cartridge that is unusually sensitive to all this in the Blackhawk. .30 Carbine cases shrink in length when fired, and then they grow in length when you resize them. The cartridge headspaces on the case mouth so case length is critical, and the .30 Carbine case seems to grow and shrink more than others. Let it get too long, even by just a few thousandths, and the based of the cartridge will drag on the frame and the cylinder won’t turn freely. I learned to check case length every time I reload this cartridge, and I usually have to trim about half of them.
I use a old Lyman case trimmer I’ve had since the 1970s. It’s a little manual lathe (I’ll let Gresh handle the big ones). That’s a .30 Carbine case you see in there.
The next issue is primer seating. Even though I clean the primer pockets each time I reload, I found that a handheld priming tool won’t always fully seat primers in a .30 Carbine case. Hey, I’m not looking for an argument here and if you can do this with your hand priming tool, more power to you. I’m telling what my experience has been. I have another priming setup (also made by Lee), and it’s the Auto Prime tool that mounts on the press. It positively seats the primer below flush on every cartridge. It’s what I use now when priming .30 Carbine cases.
A Lee Auto Prime tool mounted on an RCBS Rockchucker reloading press. The shell holder mounts on top of the tool (upper arrow). A ram (lower arrow) pushes a machined rod that seats the primers.A .30 Carbine brass case in the shell holder waiting for its primer.A Winchester Small Rifle primer properly seated in a Federal .30 Carbine cartridge case.
All the above is a prelude. I fixed the cylinder drag issue on my first .30 Carbine Blackhawk using the reloading process shown above, but I still had the extraction problem. The cases just did not want to leave the cylinder. The extractor rod was bending and the cases still wouldn’t extract. It was so bad that I usually had to take the cylinder out of the revolver to drive the cases out with a cleaning rod. I tried everything to fix that problem. I polished the chambers and I swabbed them with alcohol to remove any traces of oil (an oily chamber or cartridge case allows brass to flow into any machine marks in the chamber, locking it in place), but I still had the extraction problem.
Then I tried lighter loads. A little bit lighter wasn’t doing it with the propellants I had been using, so I went to Trail Boss (a powder known for working well with lighter loads). That’s how I got in trouble. You have to understand that reloading manuals don’t include data on Trail Boss for many cartridges, and in particular, there was no data in any of the several reloading manuals I own on using this powder with the .30 Carbine. The Trail Boss manufacturer’s guidance is to load to the base of the bullet for a max load, and not less than 70% of that amount as a minimum load. I loaded at just under the max load.
I thought I was doing pretty good when I fired the first Trail Boss load and ejected the case. It extracted easily. This is progress, I remember thinking. Things are looking good. So I fired the remaining four rounds. Then I walked downrange to check the target.
Hmmmm. That’s odd. Not a single shot was on the target. My first thoughts were the load was either terribly inaccurate, or it was so light the bullets were hitting below the target. Then, when I walked back to the firing line, I saw it: A sickening glint of copper peeking out of the Blackhawk’s barrel. A stuck bullet. Five of them, actually. I got a bullet stuck in the bore and didn’t realize it. Then I had fired another, and another, and…well, you know. They liked that barrel, those bullets did, and that’s where they stayed. I felt even worse when I ran my fingers along the length of the barrel. I could feel the swells in its diameter from each bullet to the next. Good Lord, they build Rugers tough (that’s why I’m here to tell this story). Forrest Gump has nothing on me. Like I said at the beginning of this blog, stupid is as stupid does. The weird part to me was that I couldn’t feel anything different when firing the gun.
I was embarrassed and thoroughly disgusted. It was the dumbest thing I’d ever done. When I got home I put the gun in the back of my safe and I left it there for a year. I didn’t want to think about it and I didn’t want to see it. But I knew it was there, bearing silent witness to my stupidity. I wanted to get it fixed, but I didn’t want to admit to anyone I had done something so dumb. The barrel was toast, and the revolver’s frame looked a little distorted to me. Best to just forget about it. Maybe save it for a gun buyback program.
Then one day I figured I had waited long enough, and I called Ruger. I told them my story and the nice lady on the other end told me I wasn’t the first one to call with stuck bullets in the barrel. I felt a little better. I asked if they could re-barrel my Blackhawk. Sure, she said, and off it went. A few days later Ruger called me, and that same nice lady told me a new barrel would be $400.48, but they weren’t too sure about the gun’s structural integrity. Or, they could sell me a brand new Blackhawk. How much would that be, I asked. $400.48, she said. Ah, I get it. What they were really telling me is to buy the new gun at the steeply-discounted price (MSRP on a new .30 Carbine Blackhawk is $669). I was in. Here’s my credit card number. Send me the new gun.
So I received the Blackhawk, but like its predecessor it went in the safe. I still didn’t want to be reminded of what I had done. And, I had managed to convince myself that shooting a 40,000 psi M1 Carbine cartridge in a handgun maybe was just not meant to be. What I was really afraid of was that the new Blackhawk would have case extraction issues like the first one.
Another three years went by, and then something clicked: I woke up and felt like shooting my .30 Carbine revolver. I can’t say why it took three years. It just did. I had the urge and I loaded a box of .30 Carbine ammo in different flavors to test what worked best. And a couple of days ago, we went to the range.
How did it go? In a word, awesome. Take a look:
Six different loads tested on two targets each. All groups are 5 shots, and all are at 15 yards.The loads. My .30 Carbine New Model Blackhawk seems to like everything.
This new .30 Carbine Ruger Blackhawk revolver liked every load I tested. One was exceptional:
The secret sauce: 13.0 grains of 296 and the 110-grain Hornady jacketed soft point bullet. It’s consistent, too.
Shooting a .30 Carbine Blackhawk is fun. You get massive muzzle blast, a huge muzzle flash, and major noise (hey, 40,000 psi is 40,000 psi), but little recoil. And, as the above target and load data show, it is accurate. This puppy can shoot.
You know what else? The spent brass practically fell out of the cylinder when I emptied it. The extraction problem is gone. I’m wondering if something was wrong with the first .30 Carbine Blackhawk that caused the pressures to go excessively high and seize the brass cases in the cylinder (the chamber exit bores could have been too small, or maybe the barrel was undersized). I’ll never know, but I don’t care. This new Blackhawk is a honey.
A bit about the gear I use in my .30 Carbine reloading activities. I use Lee dies, although just about .30 Carbine reloading dies will do the trick. I normally stick with RCBS reloading gear, but I could get the Lee dies quicker so that’s what I bought. I like them. Most of my other reloading gear is RCBS, including the RCBS powder dispenser, the RCBS Rockchucker press, and the scale. Again, any brand will work. In looking at the prices for RCBS gear, I notice that it has become fairly expensive. If you want to get into reloading for a lot less, you might take a look at this LEE PRECISION Anniversary Challenger Kit. It contains most of what you need except for the dies. Knowing what I know after having been a reloader for 50 years, it’s what I would buy if I was starting out all over again.
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The other day while surfing the offerings on Prime, we found Slow Ride Home, an indy movie about eight scooter dudes riding 3,700 miles from Jacksonville, Florida to Seattle. The bikes were Yamaha Zumas, the displacement was 125cc, the top speed was 40 mph, some of it was kind of silly, and the language was crude, but hey, it was a good flick. What struck me immediately were the similarities between this ride and the long-distance group rides I led for CSC Motorcycles. Listening to the complaints about getting everybody on the road each morning was pure deja vu. If you rode with me on any of those rides, you’ll really appreciate this one, and even if you didn’t, you’ll still like Slow Ride Home. There’s no hidden messages and this is not a movie that makes you think, and that’s what made it fun.
. We’ve touched on it before with our book review on 
