Motorcycles, Scooters, Guns, Adventures, Opinions, and More
…and we haven’t posted in a few days. Mea culpa, and all that. Yep, we’re touring in the Subie this time, as the forecasts were just too wet and cold to take a bike. Those forecasts were right, too!
Our regularly-scheduled programming will resume shortly.
If you’re into large touring bikes and you want to get a realistic assessment of what their capabilities are, there’s no better place to go than the annual Michigan State Police test report. These folks can ride and you’ll see what Harley, BMW, and Yamaha motorcycles can do in capable hands.
Good buddy Mike is a retired police director who was right in the middle of this kind of stuff, and he sent the link for the latest MSP report to me. There’s no advertising and it’s all presented clearly and in a way that’s easy to understand. It’s fascinating reading and the results are presented in a no-nonsense engineering format. Check out this table of results for the 0-100 mph acceleration tests:
The Michigan State Police report has similar displays for 0-60, 0-80, top speed, braking distances, fuel economy, lap times, and more. I couldn’t put the report down. In their best days (days that are way back in the rear view mirror), none of the motorcycle magazines did this kind of outstanding work. And there’s more…they have all of the above and more for police cars, too. Check out the stats on the Ford EcoBoost vehicles.
The best part? The report is free, and you can get to it here. You can thank me later.
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Our good buddy Art has another gun story for us, this time about owning a 1911 .45 auto in the UK. The 1911 is one of my all time favorite firearms. I enjoyed reading Art’s story and I’m sure you will, too.
On March 10th, 1984, 39 years after its manufacture, the Colt 1911A1 with serial number 2322134 became all mine, along with a mere 150 FMJ rounds and a bottle of Hoppe’s No. 9 (ah, that sweet aroma). My new addition cost me the grand sum of £150 ($192) for the gun, the total bill being £183.65 ($236) for the ammo and cleaner.
The Southern Armoury at 171 New Kent Road in southeast London was a small, nondescript shop tucked in between others. Far from salubrious, the battered front door and dirty shutters belied the fact that its owner, Tom Collins, would stock some very obscure ammo and classic guns from the bellicose Victorian era right up to the latest in firearms. To keep it all low key and to prevent wannabees and Walter Mittys, his drudgey shop window would uninvitedly be filled with airguns, pellets, targets and old shotguns. This small, honest-to-God shop was always busy with a throng of two-or-three deep patiently waiting people. Tom and his wife used to live upstairs from the shop which had an old clock outside that everyone used as a marker point. It held good time and was too high to be vandalized or stolen.
Whenever I used to ring up and ask for the price of something, Tom would think for a second and mumble “about £20.” I would then offer to send him a check for “about £20” which would have him scuttling away for the proper price. It never failed.
Tom had a penchant for the most obscure adverts via the shooting press. We’d all stand around discussing this at the shooting club and wonder what the hell had gotten into him for producing some seriously mercurial stuff, sometimes involving cartoon balloon texts, barrels of black powder, an old sailing vessel and a circus elephant.
The other aspect also open for frequent and frivolous discussion was Tom’s toupee, which seemed to have a life of its own. Ill-fitting would not even begin to describe it. At first it looked like his head was nursing a few semi-comatose gray squirrels, such was the thing’s mobility when perched on top of his head. We swore that it would stay in one spot every time he turned his head, and we’d place silent bets where the parting would be from one day to the next. It was doubtful that Tom knew which was the front or rear.
The quality of Tom’s math was suspect and as he refused to use a calculator, quite a few clients walked out of his shop having been undercharged. Some of these actually bought from him again, hoping he’d make the same mistake.
One of my shooting club members, Bob Wade, gave me a handwritten note about the serial numbers range of all the contracted 1911A1 manufacturers. Mine was about 6000 away from the last Colt batch in 1945. My gun was nothing special, although the slide and frame numbers were matched, it seemed that most of the other parts weren’t. Not that it mattered much. The original grips were discarded for some Pachmayrs and my clunker shot well. I don’t think I ever bought more ammo for it. Another club member reloaded for me but the solid lead bullets he had were never supposed to be used in an auto and just wouldn’t cycle properly. The guy was also known for not taking a double load too seriously, so I never asked him again. When he later died in a scuba diving accident and the facts of his miscalculations became known to us, none of us were surprised.
My wife and I took a long weekend in Yorkshire and my .45 with two full mags came with me just in case there was an opportunity for some unofficial target shooting. This came in the shape of a little ensconced lay-by at the side of a quiet country road with 12′ high sloping chalk walls. As I was busy examining my shot placements on a small discarded gas canister, the crunching of gravel alerted me to see a very curious cyclist who arrived out of nowhere and was wondering where the hell those shots had come from. He took off when he saw me and so did we – in the opposite direction. My only visual memories exist in saving four distorted slugs out of the chalk.
In 1987 the Southern Armoury closed its doors for good. Tom and his wife were getting old and tired, and it would only be a few years later that Tom hung up his toupee for good, leaving behind a plethora of old memories that the old dogs like myself are only too fond of recollecting. The old clock is no longer there and the last time I drove past there, the shop had sacrilegiously become a hairdresser.
Although I sold my Colt around 1990, the new owner must have been one of the 40,000 pistol shooters who had to say farewell to their belongings during the 1997 pistol ban. My old .45 is probably part of a manhole cover somewhere in China where its American spirit continues to be part of the old guard who will never retire or capitulate.
I think all of us with a few miles under our belt have a story or two about a favorite old gunstore, a favorite old gunstore proprietor, or a favorite old gun. Mine cover places like Barney’s in El Paso, the Rutgers gun shop in Highland Park, Treptow’s in Milltown, Starkey’s (another El Paso shop), and more. They’re mostly all gone today, but wow…the memories.
Do you have a favorite memory? Hey, drop us a line in the Comments section, or maybe even write a guest blog for us (send it to us at info@ExhaustNotes.us). We love hearing from our readers. And Art, thanks for another great tale!
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A swing and a miss is the way I’d describe it. Formulaic. I know what the Italian quattro (Scorcese, Pacino, DeNiro, and Pesci) were thinking: Hey, it worked before; maybe it will work again. The mob. The Kennedys and Castro. DeNiro as an Irish hit man. Hoffa. Music from the 1950s. Voiced-in explanations from the main characters giving the lowdown on each mob dude. Over-restored ‘50s and ‘60s cars. Let’s throw it all against the silver screen for 3½ hours and maybe something will stick (yeah, you read that right: 3½ hours). I know what they were thinking: Goodfellas, The Godfather (and all of its Roman-numeraled follow-ons), and Casino. Yeah, it worked before, so maybe it will work again. Except it doesn’t. Those earlier mob flicks were great. The Irishman is not.
Guys, at some point you have to realize there’s not any milk left in the cow. Even with your digital filtering to make old guys look young, all you gave us were weird, slitty-eyed visions of a younger DeNiro with the body and gait of a senior citizen (where’s Fredo when you need him?). And Pacino playing Hoffa? Another swing and a miss (you should have let the ump call a strike). Jack Nicholson will forever be Jimmy Hoffa; Pacino just wasn’t believable in this role. If you can see it, then hey, I’m the Pope. Al, go back to threatening Mr. Trump. You’re not believable in that role, either, but you apparently know what they say about bad publicity.
Save your money, folks, and hang on to that 3½ hours of your life I’ll never get back. The Irishman is one that should sleep with the fish.
I love this time of year. The temperatures are nice (although it’s raining here in So Cal today and for the next couple of days), it’s good to get together with friends and family, and like most folks fortunate who live in the US, I have a lot for which I am thankful.
Earlier this week, I picked up a screw in one of my Subie’s tires, so it was off to America’s Tire, where they fix these things for free. The idea is that you’ll think of them first when it’s time for new tires, and in my case, you can bet that’s going to happen. It was a 2-hour wait, and I used that time to go for a walk. Our local Harley dealer is just up the street from the tire place, I hadn’t been in a Harley showroom in a while, so I stopped by to check things out.
Things have changed from when I rode a Harley. In those days, any Harley dealership was a hopping place. When I walked over to the dealer this week, the place was mostly empty, they didn’t have a ton of T-shirts, and there were plenty of motorcycles. It’s a world gone mad, I tell you.
I haven’t kept up with the latest from Harley, other than the headline-grabbing stuff about the Livewire. I guess they had a hiccup with the initial rollout, but that sort of thing happens and I hear it’s been fixed. What hasn’t been fixed is the Milwaukee notion that any Harley is worth $30K, and I think that’s one of the major reasons the bar-and-shield folks’ best days are in the rear-view mirror. I haven’t heard that Livewires are flying out of the showrooms, and judging by the looks of the dealer I visited, neither is anything else. It’s not just me saying this…the stock market shows a Harley trend that is downright scary. Harley has ridden their rebel reputation big time since the early 1990s, but one place you don’t want to buck the trend is in the stock market.
The Harley sales guy was eager to help, so I asked him about the Bronx 975 (Gresh did a piece on it not too long ago). My guy never heard of the Bronx, so I asked if they had any Sportsters (there was one, so maybe they are selling better). I then asked about Harley’s Street models (the 500 and 750 V-twins), and he told me there were none. “They didn’t sell too well,” he said. I thought that was unfortunate. I’m conceited enough to think that if Gresh and I had ridden those bikes in Baja, if Harley offered guided Baja tours to Street buyers, and if Harley had an effective blog, that bike could have been a winner. We sure sold a lot of motorcycles at CSC with those Baja tours (including to folks who didn’t ride with us in Baja). It was just the idea that they could (that, of course, and the CSC motorcycles’ price). Good buddy Dan is adventure touring in Tunisia right now along with a bunch of other Guzzistas on a ride organized by Moto Guzzi. I think that’s brilliant (and I’m jealous). Tunisia! Damn, that’s exotic!
I don’t think there’s much of a future in two-wheeled, 900-pound, 114-cubic-inch dinosaurs, but hey, what do I know? That’s a rhetorical question…I think my lack of knowledge is right up there with the industry wizards who continue to ponder the “what can we do about the sad state of the motorcycle industry” question, and then continue to offer 114-cubic-inch, $30,000 motorcycles that sit for presumably extended periods on showroom floors. And like I said earlier, I don’t think ebikes are the answer.
So, what do you think? Let us know with a comment or two. We love hearing from you. And I think the folks in Milwaukee would, too. They read these pages, I think, judging by what I’m seeing on Google Analytics. Let us know.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about new bullets I had purchased for the Garand. They are Speer 168-grain Target Match bullets, and they’re designed to go head-to-head with the benchmark bullet in this arena, the Sierra 168-grain jacketed boat tail hollow point bullet. As you will recall, I talked to the Speer engineer and he recommended bumping the IMR 4064 propellant charge up from what I had tried previously and seating the bullets out a little further.
I only had 20 Speer bullets left from the box of 100 I initially purchased and Phillips, my local dealer, didn’t have any more. I also had a couple of boxes of 178-grain Hornady AMAX bullets in my stash and my Hornady reloading manual had a Garand-specific load for these, so I loaded some of them for testing in the Garand as well. You can’t just use any .30 06 load for the Garand; the loads have to be specific for the Garand. If you go outside of what’s recommended for these rifles, you can damage the rifle.
It was windy out at the West End Gun Club this past weekend, so I don’t know if my results were the result of the load, or the wind, my shooting abilities, or all of the above. Take my results as an indication of what might work, not the ultimate authoritative conclusion on either bullet’s inherent accuracy. And as regards my propellant charges, work from your own manual. You will want to develop your own loads, starting at the bottom of the range and working up.
My testing for this session was limited. I had two loads for each bullet (both the Hornady and the Speer bullets), and all were with IMR 4064 propellant. I did all of my testing from the bench at 100 yards.
For the 178-grain Hornady AMAX bullets, I used 45.0 and 46.4 grains of IMR 4064, and a cartridge overall length of 3.240 inches. This load came right out of the Hornady reloading manual. For the 168-grain Speer bullets bullets, I used 47.0 and 48.0 grains of IMR 4064, and a cartridge overall length of 3.295 inches (as recommended by Speer). All loads were with Remington brass and CCI 200 primers. I trimmed the brass to 2.500 inches. This was the 6th firing of these cases in the Garand with these cases.
I reloaded and fired a total of 40 rounds for this test. I reload for the Garand in multiples of eight cartridges (because that’s what the en bloc clip holds), and like I said above, I only had 20 of the Speer bullets left. So bear with me (this is going to get a little complicated). I had one clip of eight rounds with the 168-grain Speers at 47.0 grains of IMR 4064, and one clip of eight rounds with the 168-grain Speers at 48.0 grains of IMR 4064. Then I did another clip of eight with the 178-grain Hornady bullets at 45.0 grains of IMR 4064, and a fourth clip of eight with the 178-grain Hornady bullets at 46.4 grains of IMR 4064. That left four of the Speer 168-grain bullets, so I loaded those four with 47.0 grains of IMR 4064, and then I loaded another four rounds with the Hornady 178-grain bullets and 45.0 grains of IMR 4064. Yep, you read that right. That en bloc clip had two different loads in it.
I had a concern that the plastic tips on the Hornady 178-grain AMAX bullets might be damaged sliding up the Garand’s feed ramp, but that didn’t occur. At the seating depth Hornady recommended, the bullets are pointed into the chamber and the tips never touched the feed ramp.
None of the 40 cartridges exhibited any pressure signs. There were no flattened primers, no excessive muzzle blast, no case ruptures, no extraction issues, or anything of that nature. Everything fed and ejected normally.
I fired the mixed clip of Hornady and Speer bullets first, and surprisingly, it was my best group of the day (it was also the only group I fired where there was a lull in the wind that morning). The first four shots were with the Hornady bullets, and of these, only one was just outside the bullseye (it might have been the first round fired from the cold, oiled barrel). All the remaining seven rounds shot into a pretty tight group, with six of the seven in the 10 ring. The bottom line based on this one group to me was that either load (the 178-grain Hornady load at 45.0 grains of 4064, and the 168-grain Speer load at 47.0 grains of 4064) were awesome, and both shot to the same point of impact.
The next group up was the 168-grain Speers with 47.0 grains of IMR 4064. I couldn’t duplicate my prior results as shown in the above photo. Six shots were in the black, two were out, and of these two, one was down in the 6 ring. It could have been the wind, or it could have been me. Most likely it was me (the wind wasn’t blowing down).
Then I fired the clip of eight with the Speer 168-grain bullets and 48.0 grains of IMR 4064. Five shots were in the black and three were outside, with one low at 7:00 in the 6 ring again.
It was on to the Hornady 178-grain bullets, first at 45.0 grains of IMR 4064. Five shots were in the black, one was in the 8 ring at 9:00, one was in the 7 ring at 10:00, and again, I had one shot go low in the 6 ring at 7:00. The group was biased to the left. That was probably the wind.
And finally, I shot the Hornady 178-grain bullets at 46.4 grains of IMR 4064. 6 were in the black, 1 was in the 8 ring at 9:00, and yet again, 1 was in the 6 ring at 7:00. These were a little more tightly clustered favoring the left side of the bullseye, consistent with the wind pushing the shots to one side (the wind at the West End Gun Club always blows northeast to southwest, pushing the shots to the left).
The bottom line is that any of loads could be good, but that first clip of mixed bullets was (for a guy at my low talent level) phenomenal. The wind no doubt distorted my results (along with my lack of consistency shooting the Garand). I have 180 of the Hornady bullets left, and I’m going to load them at 45.0 grains of IMR 4064. I’ll buy more of the 168 gr Speer bullets because they did well, too, and I’ll load them at 47.0 grains. I’m just not that good to say with certainty which load is best; the variability in group size you see here is probably more me than anything else.
The Speer bullets are the least expensive of the three brands I’ve tried in the Garand at $25/100. Next up are the Hornady AMAX bullets at $32/100. The Sierra 168-grain MatchKing bullets (not tested yesterday, as I had used all of them previously) are the most expensive at $37/100. If there’s a difference in performance between the bullets, I’m not good enough to see it. I have 180 of the Hornady bullets left, and I’m going to load them at 45.0 grains of IMR 4064 later today. I’ll buy more of the 168-grain Speer bullets because they did well, too, and I’ll load them with 47.0 grains of IMR 4064.
So which bullet works best in the Garand? Any of these are better than I am, and for a guy like me, evaluating accuracy at 100 yards with iron sights is subjective at best (my old eyes ain’t what they used to be). But I’m having fun, and I love shooting my Garand.
Read more on the Garand (and many more) rifles and handguns here.
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Gresh’s review of Ford versus Ferrari had my attention, and SWMBO wanted to see the movie, so off to the theatre we went. My take on it was pretty much identical to Joe’s: Grand entertainment, lots of grimaces and Hollywood liberties with the facts, but overall, an entertaining if not entirely accurate flick.
Later that evening, we were channel surfing and we flopped over to Netflix, and what do you know, a documentary titled The 24 Hour War popped up. I know Amazon, Facebook, and others use all kinds of spyware to figure out what to pitch to us next, but wow, this was amazing. That very day, and a pop up for another movie about the great Ford versus Ferrari war and Le Mans. Hey, in for a penny, in for a pound, so we watched The 24 Hour War.
Unlike Ford v. Ferrari, The 24 Hour War took no liberties with the truth, the facts, the timelines, or the vehicles themselves. It was a damn fine bit of actual, factual reporting, and I enjoyed it more than the movie we had seen earlier that day. If you get Netflix, it’s free, and if you own a microwave and a refrigerator, you won’t have to pay $15 for popcorn and a couple of Cokes (like Gresh did).
A few more good things about The 24 Hour War: It went into much more detail about Henry Ford and Enzo Ferrari (I found that interesting), and portions of the show were narrated by A.J. Baime. Mr. Baime does a series on interesting cars people still drive in The Wall Street Journal and I love his writing. I’m just finishing up a book by Baime about our industrial mobilization prior to and during World War II, and it, too, focuses heavily on the Ford family. The guy is a great writer, and I’ll have a review here on Baime’s book, The Arsenal of Democracy, in the near future.
One more thing regarding the cars themselves: To me, it’s not really a contest and I don’t much care who won Le Mans. Given the choice between owning a Ford GT or a Ferrari, to me the answer is obvious: It’s Ferrari all day long.
But I digress. Back to the review. The bottom line? Ford versus Ferrari was an entertaining movie, but the The 24 Hour War is an absolutely outstanding documentary. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Good buddy J, with whom I’ve ridden a lot, is selling his old KLR. I had to laugh when I read his ad, and with his permission, I’m printing it here for you to enjoy as well (and if you ride a GS, my apologies in advance). J and I have ridden big miles in Baja (those trips were on the CSC RX3 motorcycles), as well as northern Nevada and California in the Lake Tahoe area (we both rode our KLRs on that ride). They were all awesome rides.
Okay, that’s enough of a stroll down memory lane. Here’s the ad for J’s KLR:
2005 KLR650 project for sale
$800
49,509 miles
Do you have big adventure-bike dreams but a very small adventure-bike budget? Have you got some basic mechanical skills, a strong desire to learn more, and a dry place to work over the winter? If so, this is perfect for you.
This is a Kawasaki KLR650. The OG adventure motorcycle.
Show up at any gathering of adventure riders on a well-traveled KLR and hold your head high. While a guy on a BMW GS has to put up with constant Starbucks jokes, when you ride a KLR you just climb on and go look for a good taco stand. In Baja.
I’ve done this. I rode this bike all the way to Cabo San Lucas and back. In winter. To a Horizons Unlimited meet in Mariposa. I rode it to Overland Expo in Flagstaff a couple of times and had a beer with Ted Simon. All of those were amazing trips. I want you to have trips like that.
The best thing about this bike is that you’ll know everything about it. Because you overhauled it yourself. Imagine sitting around the campfire, under a big desert sky, telling the story of how you brought this bike home, tore it down, put it back together, and rode it to somewhere awesome, far away. You need that experience in your life.
The bike has been sitting in my garage since June, 2016. I haven’t tried to start it since then. It ran well enough when I stopped riding it. I know the clutch was slipping under load. And the fork seals were leaking. I quit riding this because I got something newer that I liked better. I’m not aware of any major issues that aren’t easily fixed.
Somebody who really knows what they are doing could probably have this thing roadworthy in a few days. I don’t have the time nor the motivation to make that happen. So I’m offering it as a project, at a price much lower than I would ask if I didn’t just want it out of my way.
Clean title in hand.
First person who shows up with $800 in cash, and a truck or trailer to haul the bike and all the extra parts away, gets everything.
Farkles:
Progressive Suspension adjustable rear shock with remote adjuster
Doohickey done at Happy Trails headquarters in Idaho
Happy Trails soft panniers with waterproof liners
Happy Trails pannier racks
Happy Trails engine guard and highway pegs
Happy Trails engine guard bags
Happy Trails skid plate
Happy Trails rear master cylinder guard
Moose Racing handguards
Bike Master heated grips
Powerlet accessory power outlet on handlebars
RAM mount ball mount and double-socket mount
Sargent gel seat, needs to be recovered
Spare parts and extras:
New Shinko 705 front and rear tires, still in the shipping packaging
Slightly used Michelin T63 front and rear tires, lots of life left
New clutch kit, still sealed in the original packaging
New clutch cover gasket, still sealed in the original packaging
New clutch cable, in original packaging
New front and rear brake pads, still sealed in original packaging
Spare engine, needs to be rebuilt
Spare carburetor
Lowering links
Shortened sidestand
Clymer shop manual
You know, after reading that ad, I’m tempted to buy that KLR myself. But I’m in the same boat as J: I don’t have the time or the motivation to bring it back to life. But wow, it’s one hell of a deal and the Kawasaki KLR was one hell of a motorcycle. I had a lot of fun with my KLR, and I often wish I still had it. But it went to a good home, and good buddy Daniel is putting it to good use.
The ride J and took with a bunch of other motojournalists in the northern Sierra Nevadas was grand. The riding through that part of the world is about as good as it gets.
Oh, hey, one more thing: If you have an interest in J’s KLR, here’s the link to the ad.
Susie and I were up in Seattle earlier in the year for a wedding and while we were there, we visited the Museum of Flight. It’s one of the world’s great museums, and the $25 admission fee was money well spent. We were lucky on our visit: It was the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, and the museum had a special exhibit focused on that. It was awesome.
The Apollo special exhibit was only a fraction of what the Museum of Flight displayed. The main hall had all kinds of aircraft.
We spent nearly a full day at the Museum of Flight, and we could have spent more time there. We visited the Apollo display, the Main Hall, the Personal Courage Wing, and the Red Barn (the original Boeing airplane factory). As were left the airport, we saw an enclosed pedestrian walkway over the road, and it led to an area with several aircraft parked on the other side of the road. We could have spent another day there. We’ll save that for our next visit to Seattle.
Seattle’s Museum of Flight is a 20-minute ride out of downtown Seattle, and it’s a great way to spend a day.
I’m not the Joe in this story, nor is Joe Gresh. Nope, this is something altogether different…a guest blog by our good buddy Art, and it touches on a topic near and dear to my heart, the .44 Magnum Smith and Wesson Model 29. Let’s get right to it, and that would be Art’s blog on his friend, Joe, and their experiences with the mighty Model 29.
Joe Abbott was one of South London’s finest characters. Probably in his mid-fifties, this tough looking, gruff-talking individual of which at least one in three words was an expletive, was also a man of many diverse talents. He’d been in the fruit & vegetables and meat trade, blue movies, and had settled in the more lucrative scrap metal trade.
But what made Joe such so endearing was that he always came to the shooting club with a 6.5” barrel, lusciously-blued, S&W Model 29 tucked away in a suitable shoulder rig. This unloaded piece was also kept in fine company by a bullet belt with about 8 rounds.
Joe always graciously allowed people to handle his .44 Magnum. This experience was always accompanied by lurid stories about just how many engine blocks it could destroy and the unsavory whack the shooter would receive.
It was 1975, and I had not yet seen “Dirty Harry,” but the repeated references were made and after coming out of the cinema, I realized that I really needed one.
Getting a Firearms Certificate (FAC) in the UK is a drawn-out procedure and you must join a reputable shooting club. Once done, I obtained a ‘slot’ on my FAC for a 6”, Model 29-2 which I bought through “The Saddlery & Gunroom” in Biggin Hill, Kent – and which still exists today.
And so it came to be that on one fine October evening in 1981 I found myself on the “Stone Lodge” shooting range in Dartford, southeast of London – now long defunct due to the UK’s continuing anti-gun stance.
The dozen or so, pistol booths, divided by plywood walls had battered wooden counters which bore a few scattered marks of various NDs over the years.
With some trepidation, I partially loaded op the cylinder with 240-grain Federal JHPs, took my stance and gently bought the gun up one-handed as I had been taught for slow-fire. Joe Abbot’s biblical warnings returned to me when the next thing was a thunderous muzzle blast, a blinding flash that seemed to light up the skies and a mule’s kick to my right hand, which was still clutching my 44 in a near-vertical position.
“You OK, mate?” came a voice from the booth next to me. It seemed that the flimsy plywood had not been sufficient in dampening the 44’s roar.
When my fellow shooter peered into my booth, he found me gazing open mouthed at my new piece which I had placed on the counter, wondering what the hell I had just bought. That evening I only put five more rounds through it, the standard Goncalo Alves grips with its sharp checkering not giving any quarter.
The .44’s reputation preceded me, so every time I took it to any range, there was always a healthy line of people wanting to shoot it, and who offered their pieces in return to fire, which allowed for a good experience with a wide range of guns. One of the club’s members downloaded my brass into .44 Special loads, easing up the load on my gun and my wrist.
In 1997, the whole thing came to an end when the British government banned all handguns in private possession. Along with 40,000 law abiding sports men and women all over the UK, I was commanded to go to a local police station of their choice and hand in my 44 and Walther GSP .22 target pistol, never to be seen again.
As rumors persisted that the higher end guns would be stored for some years and then sold to lesser restrictive countries, I had written my full name and address inside the grips of both guns.
In 2015, I became a proud ‘Documented-American-In-Waiting’, my AZ residence allowing me to enjoy an unprecedented freedom that no other world country could dream of offering. I would continue to dream of owning another part of identical S&W history, despite the steep prices to which they had climbed over the years.
In the ever-increasing universe of polymer self-loaders, the appreciation of the traditional steel has begun a steady upwards trend. Revolvers with their near-clockwork mechanism are becoming increasingly in demand, especially from the younger shooters. Ex-police guns, predominantly the stainless autos, have found their way into the civilian market and are hungrily bought by discerning citizens who are swayed by historical interest and the very affordable prices.
One fine day, and at half the price of the blued ‘Dirty Harry’ model, a 6” stainless .44 Magnum Hunter Classic with unfluted cylinder followed me home from one of the Phoenix shows. The continued underlug, ventilated barrel rib, resembling the beautiful Colt Python, and Pachmayr grips sounded the bells of seduction. I was well and truly on the rocks.
Those 38 years must have dulled my initial reactions to Joe Abbott’s apocalyptic performance figures since I pointed my Model 29-2 downrange for the very first time. Perhaps it was the increased weight of my new piece that seemed to have tamed the ferocious recoil, or having fired a great many handguns of various calibers. Whatever, happy days are here again and I’m privileged to enjoy the 228-year-old rights and privileges that all Americans are born with. Long may it continue.
Art, I could not have said it better myself. Well done, and thanks for your guest blog. I enjoyed reading it and I’m sure our readers will, too. We’re glad you’re here in America with us, and it’s always good to hear from a fellow .44 aficionado (how’s that for alliteration?). Please shoot us a copy of your snail mail address, Art, and we’ll send to you a signed copy of 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM as a small thank you for helping us make the blog a success.
And to the rest of our readers: Do you have an idea for a guest blog? It can be any topic: Motorcycles, watches, guns, bicycles, travel, photography, and more. We’d love to hear from you. Write to us at info@exhaustnotes.us!