First up today…our good buddy Gary’s Vintage Yamaha Enduro site. Gary alerted me to it a few days ago, I’ve enjoyed poking around on it, and you will, too.
This is a cool site about cool bikes. Spend some time here; you’ll be a better person for doing so!
I’ve always admired those vintage Yamaha enduros. Gresh has one and it’s one his favorite motorcycles. I remember the maroon 360 Yamaha offered back in the early 1970s (I was still in college then). I always wanted one, but it’s an itch I haven’t scratched yet. Maybe someday. I’m still young.
Good buddy Buffalo, a world-class artist who rode with us on one of the Baja rides, created a line art RX3 motorcycle and it’s available in several formats. Buffalo loves riding and he loves his RX3. Hey, what’s not to like?
This is muey cool, and it’s from a muey cool dude.
Buffalo is a very cool guy who’s done some very cool things. We’ve written about Buffalo before here on the ExNotes blog. Buffalo also has a very cool blog (MotoFritz.com), and it’s another I recommend you visit. Buffalo (along with his cousin and niece) recently toured Vietnam on motorcycles, and there are cool videos on the MotoFritz blog from that trip.
I’m going hunting. Deer this time, in Idaho. Good buddy J invited me to head up north with him later this year to chase Bambi, and I’ll be posting about that here on the ExNotes blog.
Good buddy J and the Power Wagon on an earlier Baja expedition.
I mentioned J recently when I described his new website (Sierra Mountain Passes), but J and I go back a few years. We first met when we were involved in manufacturing high performance sails for ocean racing yachts. Think a million bucks for a set of sails for one boat (and the sails are only good for one season). Good times, those were.
Whoa! Talk about adventure!
But back on the deer quest…I’m starting to research venison recipes (yeah, I know, it’s a little early for that and I am counting my chickens before the eggs have hatched). I’m really looking forward to this adventure. We may get a deer, or we may get skunked. Either way, it’s going to be fun. I’m thinking I’ll take my .300 Weatherby Vanguard. It’s way more power than I’ll need, but we’ll be in some rugged country, the Vanguard is my only composite-stocked rifle, and the thing is a tack driver.
The Weatherby Vanguard in 300 Weatherby Magnum.
More cool stuff…you’ve seen the series we did on the 2005 Three Flags Classic Rally from Mexico to Canada. I rode with good buddy Marty, and it was a hell of an adventure.
Good buddy Marty on the left and yours truly at Lake Louise in Canada during 3FC05. There were signs warning us of grizzlies in the area!
The 3FC is one of the world’s premier motorcycle events, and it’s sponsored by one of the world’s premier motorcycle clubs: The Southern California Motorcycle Association. As it turns out, the SCMA is one of our biggest ExNotes fans. They’ve run our ExNotes stories in the SCMA newsletter and they follow our zany ramblings daily. Good buddy Gonzo, their president, suggested that I join the festivities again this year for the 3FC19 rally, and you know what? I’m going. I’ll be on a new CSC RX4 (one from the very first shipment), and I’ll be blogging the hell out of the ride the entire way from Mexico through the United States and on up into Canada. And then I’ll do the same thing on the way home, for which I’ll take a different (to be determined) route.
The CSC RX4 up in the San Gabriel Mountains.
The CSC RX4 is an exciting motorcycle. There was a recent article on this bike in Adventure Motorcycle magazine, but I thought that review was a bit on the short side. (How about that? A review of a review!) You can read a lot more about the RX4 right here on ExNotes, and you’ll see a whole lot more when I do the 3FC19 on one of the new CSC 450cc RX4 adventure bikes.
The Bullet in Baja. The new 650 Interceptor was a strong and reliable motorcycle. The Bullet, not so much, but it wasn’t the bike’s fault. Read the article, and learn more…
Some say the adventure doesn’t start until something goes wrong; by that measure, the Bullet was every inch an adventure bike…
Ah, quoted again. That’s my line, and you can read it online in the latest issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine.
Good times and great bikes in Baja, and the story is in the current issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine.
Our story of the Baja Enfield adventure is now available online, and you can read it here. Joe Gresh and I rode the new 650 Interceptor and an older Bullet, and we had a blast. Great food, great riding, beautiful people, and we said hi to the whales. It was awesome!
Yes, it really was like that. Somewhere along the Silk Road (the actual Silk Road) in China. I parked my RX3 when I saw the double rainbow, thinking someday I might use the shot in a blog about this adventure.
Almost 40 years ago, I saw my first Indiana Jones movie and it affected me profoundly. I started traveling the world stumbling upon lost empires. Things that have been swallowed by time, as they say. My motorcycle ride through Colombia had some of that. The Baja adventures have a bit of it, too. But none of the rides had more of an Indiana Jones flavor than did the ride across China. That ride was three years ago this month, and I still think about it every day. There were several things we saw in China that would have been right at home in an Indiana Jones movie. One was Liqian. I can best tell you about it with an excerpt from Riding China, the story of the ride with Joe Gresh across the Ancient Kingdom.
Gobi Gresh, aka Arjiu, stopping to smell the sunflowers in China.
The ride in the morning was just like yesterday. We rode the Silk Road at high speed, making great time in magnificent weather. I knew we were going to Wuwei (you could have a lot of fun with that name; it’s pronounced “woo wee”), but that was really all I knew about that day as we started out that morning. Boy, would this day ever be an interesting one!
It was to be a very full day, and Wuwei would be another one of those cities of several million people that seem to pop up in China every 50 to 100 miles. It was a huge city I had never heard of. China is an amazing place, and I was going to learn today it is more amazing than I could have imagined, and for a reason I would have never guessed. I’ve mentioned Indiana Jones movies a lot in this book. Today, we came upon something that could easily be…well, read on. This is going to be good.
After riding for a couple of hours, we left the freeway and entered a city called Yongchang. It seemed to be pretty much a regular Chinese city until we stopped. I needed to find a bathroom and Wong helped me. Wong is a big, imposing guy. He’s a corrections officer supervisor in Xi’an. He has a friendly look, but he can turn that off in a New York minute and become an extremely imposing figure. I saw him do that once on this trip, and I’ll tell you about that episode when we get to it.
Corrections Officer Supervisor Wong. He looks like a mischievous guy. This guy’s command presence was amazing. I saw him stop a car just by looking at it. Here, he’s enjoying the attention in Yongchang.
Anyway, I followed Wong through a couple of alleys and businesses until we came to an empty restaurant (it was mid-morning, and it had no customers). Wong spoke to the lady there, she nodded her head and smiled at me, and pointed to the bathroom. When I rejoined the guys back on the street, several women at a tailor shop (we had coincidentally stopped in front of a tailor shop) were fussing over Wong. He needed a button sewn on his jacket and it was obvious they were flirting with him. Wong seemed to be enjoying it. Like I said, Wong is a big guy, and I guess you could say he’s good looking. I think the women who were sewing his button on were thinking the same thing.
Beautiful young Chinese ladies. Mostly Chinese, anyway. The one on the left is entering my phone number in her contacts list.
Three teenage girls approached us and wanted to know about our bikes. Like many young Chinese, they spoke English (in China, you learn English as a second language in grade school; it is a strong advantage in Chinese society if you can speak English well). They wanted to practice with us. It was the routine stuff (“how are you?” “hello,” and things like that) until one of the teenaged girls looked directly at me and asked, “Can I have your phone number?” Gresh and I both had a good laugh over that. I actually gave her my phone number and she carefully entered it into her phone (and no, she hasn’t called me yet).
I was enjoying all of this immensely, taking photos of the girls, the seamstresses flirting with Wong, and the rest of China all around me. There was something different about one of those teenage girls. I couldn’t quite recognize what it was, but to me she definitely looked, well, different.
Yongchang statues. They don’t look as Chinese as you might think they should. There’s a reason for that.
It was at about that time that Sean approached me and said, “Dajiu, do you see those three statues over there?” He pointed to three tall statues that faced us, perhaps 300 yards away. I nodded yes. “If you look at their faces, you will see that they have Roman features.” Truth be told, I couldn’t really see it in the statues because they were too far away, but I grabbed a photo and later, on my computer, I could see something different. But before I looked at the photo, it all clicked for me. That’s what had my attention with that girl. We were literally in the middle of China and she didn’t look as Chinese as her two friends. She looked different.
All right, my friends, I need to go tangential here for a minute or two and share this story with you. Hang on, because this is real Indiana Jones stuff. No, scratch that. I’ve never seen an Indiana Jones movie with a story line this good (and I’ve seen all of them).
More than 2,000 years ago, before the birth of Christ, the two most powerful empires on the planet were the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty. These two superpowers of their time enjoyed a brisk trade relationship along the Silk Road. Yep, the very same trail we had been riding for the last few days. Between them (in what became Iran and its surrounding regions) lay a smaller empire called Parthia. For reasons only the Romans understood, Rome thought it would be a good idea to attack Parthia. They sent several Roman Legions to war (and to put this in perspective, a Roman Legion consisted of about 5,000 men). To everyone’s surprise (including, I would imagine, the Romans), the Parthians kicked Rome’s butt.
Wow, imagine that. Rome, defeated on the field of battle by the much smaller Parthian Empire. To put it mildly, things did not quite go the way the Romans thought they would.
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All of this severely disrupted trade between the Han Dynasty and the Romans, and nobody liked that. “Why the hell did you do that?” the Han Dynasty asked Rome. “We had a good thing going and you screwed it up.” At least that’s what I’m guessing the conversation went like. You get the idea.
Cooler minds prevailed and the Romans realized, yeah, that was a dumb move. The Romans told the Parthians, hey, it’s over, let’s be friends again. The war ended, the Chinese were happy, the Romans were happy, the Parthians were happy, and trade resumed. All’s well that ends well.
Well, sort of. There was still that matter of those pesky Roman legions that had invaded Parthia. They didn’t come back from that war, and for two thousand years, no one knew what happened to them. The Romans probably assumed their Legionnaires had all been slaughtered. No one knew until an Australian dude and a Chinese guy, both University archeologist types (starting to sound a little like Indiana Jones yet?) put a theory together in 1957. Hmmm, maybe those Romans had not been killed after all.
The Parthians, being bright enough to defeat the Romans, were not about to let the Legionnaires go home and perhaps attack them again in some future war. They didn’t want to kill the Romans, either. I guess they were kinder, gentler Parthians. Here’s where those two Aussie and Chinese archeologists enter the picture. They hypothesized that the Parthians told the errant Legionnaires, “Look, we don’t want to kill all you guys, but there’s no way we’re going to let you go back to Rome. And there’s no room for you here, either. Your only option is to keep heading east. Go to China. Maybe you crazy warmongering Italians will find nice Chinese girls and settle down.” With that, and as one might imagine, a hearty arrivederci, the Romans continued their eastward march straight into the middle of China.
And folks, the prevailing wisdom today is that is exactly what happened (although the prevailing wisdom evidently hasn’t prevailed very far, as I had never heard the story until that morning in Yongchang). In fact, prior to this theory surfacing, folks wondered why the Chinese referred to the area around Yongchang as Liqian. That’s not a Chinese word, and it’s unlike the name of any other Chinese town. The folks who know about these things tell me it is an unusual word in the Chinese language.
Liqian is pronounced “Lee Chee On.”
Get it yet?
Lee Chee On? Liqian?
Doesn’t it sound like “legion?” As in Roman legion?
A Chinese man in Liqian. This guy could be the Marlboro Man for a Chinese cigarette company!
I found all of this fascinating. I saw more than a few people around the Liqian area that had a distinct western appearance, and they all consented to my taking their photos when I asked. They recognize just how special their story is. The Chinese government is taking note of this area, too. They are developing a large theme park just outside of Yongchang with a Roman motif. We visited that theme park, and while we were there, Sergeant Zuo gave a book to me (printed in both English and Chinese) about the place. It is one of the two books I brought back from China, and that book is now one of my most prized possessions.
Imagine that: Roman legions, resettled in the middle of China, in a town called Liqian. And I rode there. On an RX3.
Watch for our next Indiana Jones episode in China. It’s about the lost Buddhist grottos at Mo Gao in the Gobi Desert. There’s more good stuff coming your way. Stay tuned!
Want to read more about the ride across China? Pick up a copy of Riding China!
A few weeks ago, blogmeister Joe Gresh vented on Bonnier and Motorcyclist magazine. It was a great piece of writing (not a surprise, seeing as it was coming from Gresh) and it garnered more than a few comments.
I thought that Motorcyclist had already gone belly up. I used to subscribe, and I thought my subscription had already ended, so I was more than a little surprised when I received the final issue in the mail last week. We checked our records and whaddaya know, we had renewed for a year, so now I’m annoyed that I’m apparently going to get stiffed for the last two issues (Motorcyclist didn’t say anything about reimbursing folks like me who are owed another issue or two). I guess the reason I was surprised was that with Motorcyclist’s recently-adopted quarterly print schedule, it had been so long since I received the last issue I assumed the subscription had already expired. Truth be told, the last few issues of Motorcyclist were terrible, I hadn’t read most of their articles after glancing at them initially, and I’m not missing Motorcyclist at all. It had become a collection of snowflake fluff.
Anyway, I looked through the last issue (the one I received last week) to see if they were making this a special issue (you know, because it was the last). Nope, not really. There was a brief article (less than a page) near the beginning that explained this was the last issue and it stated what I believe to be not more than a couple of half-assed excuses: The motorcycle industry has been in a permanent funk since the recession and nobody with any brains advertises in print media. It’s a digital world, Motorcyclist said, and motorcycling (as an interest, an endeavor, and an industry) is on life support (my words, but that’s essentially the Motorcyclist message). My take? These guys are good at making excuses. They’re right up there with that world-class, place-the-blame-anywhere-but-on-me hack who wrote What Happened. Blame it on the Russians, I guess.
The rest of the articles in the final Motorcyclist made no mention that this was the last issue, so my take on the whole affair is that it was a decision made suddenly. It’s a pity, as Motorcyclist used to be good. Really good. They had superb writing (including a regular column by a guy named Joe Gresh). But they failed to adapt. The market was changing and the coffee-table format and fluffy content Motorcyclist switched to a few years ago missed the mark by a mile. To their credit, they realized they had a problem, but their diagnosis and prescribed course of treatment was wrong. It’s that old joke: What do you call the student who graduates at the bottom of their medical school class? The answer, of course, is Doctor. Just having the title, though, doesn’t mean you know the right answers.
In the final analysis, I don’t buy what Motorcyclist said for the most obvious of reasons: There are good motorcycle magazines out there that are thriving. They’ve done a far better job of picking the right content, format, and market niche, and they are serving it well. One is Motorcycle Classics, with a focus on classic motorcycles. Another is RoadRUNNER, with a focus on touring. Rider may be in that category, too (I haven’t looked at them lately). And there’s Buzz Kanter’s American Iron magazine, with a focus on custom and vintage mostly-made-in-America motorcycles. I believe there are several things that inoculate these publications to the double whammies of a depressed motorcycle market and the brave new digital world. The first is that each is led by passionate riders. Think Landon Hall at Motorcycle Classics, the Neuhausers at RoadRUNNER, and Buzz Kanter at AIM. These are folks who ride, who tour, who love motorcycles, and who live in our world (and that comes across in their magazines). The second huge factor is that each of these magazines found a niche that doesn’t need to scoop the competition. If you’re in the printed magazine business and you need to be the first to publish breaking news, you’ll never beat the Internet. Nope, each of these magazines went a different route. Vintage bikes aren’t bold new graphics or the latest race results (let the Internet break that kind of baloney). Touring is not breaking news and that’s why RoadRUNNER does well. And custom, or vintage, Harleys and Indians…well, that’s the same deal: American Iron has what is essentially a timeless topic. And then there’s one last factor, I think, and it is that each of these magazines has superior editorial direction. The articles are profoundly interesting, well-written, error-free, and skillfully presented. Landon, Florian, and Steve are gifted editors who take their life’s work seriously, and if you didn’t know, they are the editors of Motorcycle Classics, RoadRUNNER, and American Iron.
Nope, the demise of Motorcyclist is unfortunate, but it’s of their own doing. Cream always rises to the top, flawed strategies ultimately fail, and the Russians had nothing to do with it.
I belong to a small circle of good buddies who, like me, are into shooting military surplus rifles and other cool old guns. We get together every two months or so for an informal match at the West End Gun Club. It’s a fun match, nothing terribly formal, and the winner has to buy lunch for everyone (and it’s usually me or Greg shelling out the cash for the fine Mexican lunches that follow our get-togethers). Those events are a lot of fun and you can read about them (and the milsurp rifles) on our ExhaustNotes Tales of the Gun page.
Lots of times, though, it’s just me and good buddy Greg out there on the rifle range, and this past Friday morning was one of those days. When that happens, we’ll usually send an email around to the other guys in our milsurp squad talking about what we shot, the loads we used, and how we did. We did that last week, and I thought I’d share the emails with you. First, my email to the boys…
Guys:
Every once in a while I get this feeling I need to sell a few guns, and that happened again earlier this week. I thought one of the ones I would sell was a pristine Model 43 Winchester Deluxe in .22 Hornet. This rifle is in as new condition with the original bluing. It was manufactured in 1949, 2 years before I was born. I took it out of the safe with the idea of taking a few photos for Gunbroker.com, and then I realized: What was I thinking? I don’t want to sell this rifle. Nope, a far better idea would be to load some .22 Hornet ammo and take it to the range.
The Model 43 Winchester, in .22 Hornet. This is the Deluxe version, with cut checkering and a deep blue finish. It’s hard to believe this rifle is 70 years old!An elegant rifle, to be sure.
I bought the Model 43 about 6 years ago and until this morning I had never fired it. It found it on the consignment rack at Turner’s in Covina. After seeing the rifle there, I stopped by every other week for a couple of months, and then on one visit I saw they had dropped the price. I thought it was fairly priced at the original number they had on the rifle, but I was initially hesitant. It’s a beautiful rifle, but it didn’t really fit in with the other stuff in my modest collection and I didn’t want to shell out big bucks for another toy that would just sit in the safe. When they dropped the price, though, I pounced. The gun department manager there was mildly annoyed because he wanted to buy it and it a weird sort of way that made me feel good. Hey, you snooze, you lose.
I knew I had waited too long to finally get around to shooting the old Winchester, but the Hornet’s day in the sun was today. The Model 43 and I found our way to the WEGC range this morning, and as you might imagine, it was a good day. Hell, any day on the rifle range is a good day.
22 Hornet ammo. It’s the original 22 centerfire cartridge, and in its day, it was the ultimate varmint round. Plus, it’s just cool.
About that .22 Hornet ammo: Good buddy Michael B sent some Hornet brass to me a few months ago. I loaded the brass Michael sent to me yesterday with a mild 4227 load (the powder came from Paul) and a box of 45 grain Sierra bullets that have been on my reloading bench since God was a roadguard. (Thanks, Michael…I put your brass to good use!) Good buddy Greg was there with me. He can verify that everything you read here is true, unless he takes the 5th.
[Note for our blog readers…you’ve heard me talk about good buddy Paul, who was my next door neighbor when we were kids. So was Michael. He’s Paul’s little brother.]
Here are a few more shots of the Model 43…it is a beautiful little rifle. Clean, rare, collectible, and in fantastic condition. I mean, do any of you think you are going to look this good when you are 70 years old?
The Model 43’s front sight. It and the barrel are machined from one piece of steel.
In examining the front sight and its ramp, I was surprised to see that it was a not a separate piece attached to the barrel. Nope, these barrels started as a giant hunk of steel, and were hogged down to shape. The front sight ramp is an integral part of the barrel. That had to be expensive to manufacture. Note the stippling on the ramp. Things were different in 1949.
I’m pretty sure that the bluing is original…the lettering and roll marks are all very crisp.
Note the checkering, a feature of the Deluxe version of the Model 43.The rear sight and the fore end. This thing looks like could be brand new.
The stock may have been refinished, or at least had a coat or two or TruOil added to spruce it up somewhere along its life’s journey. The checkering is sharp, though. It might be the original stock finish. Overall, the rifle is in excellent condition.
And finally, a photo of Michael’s brass reloaded by yours truly in the original Model 43 magazine…I can’t imagine what a replacement magazine (if you could even find one) would cost for this rifle…
Good-looking ammo in a good-looking (and original) magazine. It’s a magazine, not a clip.
The Model 43 shot well this morning. It had already been zeroed in by the previous owner and it shot roughly 1-inch above point of aim at 50 yards, which is about perfect for a rifle like this. Recoil was very moderate, as you might imagine with a 45-grain bullet at 2400 fps. The groups were about 1.5 to 2.0 inches, which is, as they say, close enough for government work. Not too shabby for a 70-year-old Winchester.
Joe
So that was my email, and it was quickly followed by a response from Greg. Here’s what old Greg had to say…
Every word Joe says is true, I swear. That gun looked like someone just took it out of the box. And that machined ramp at the front sight was very unexpected. Anyone familiar with manufacturing techniques will immediately recognize the difficulty of machining that final few inches of the barrel. Eh, times gone by. You won’t find that on any guns today I think.
Greg firing his 7mm Mag Ruger No. 1 on an earlier outing.
My story-of-the-day is the 7mm Remington Magnum Ruger No. 1 I took out. I had the normal power loads that did about as they usually do at 100 yards, roughly an inch and a half. But the surprise was a very low power load I jinned up with Trail boss. I had a 140 grain Sierra Game King sitting on top of 20 grains of Trail Boss (I know, it sounds weird). The Hodgdon site has a data sheet (attached) that has loads all the way up to a .416 Remington Magnum. But for the 140 grain bullet in a 7mm RemMag they list a load starting at 17.2 grains and going up to a max load of 24.5 grains, so my 20 grains was somewhere near the middle.
Anyway, I had just put away the Mini-14 and thought I’d start the Ruger No. 1 off with the low recoil Trail Boss loads. I was stunned to see the five shot group pictured below (at .685”). It was easily the best group of the day for the rifle, though it ended up on paper about 12” below, and 1” to the left, of the “normal” loads for that beast. Recoil was extremely mild as you would expect.
A reduced-velocity 7mm Mag load loaded with Trail Boss propellant. This is a 5-shot group at 100 yards. It’s a phenomenally accurate load in Greg’s Ruger No. 1.
My problem with this Trail Boss load is that the scope, as mounted, doesn’t have the adjustment range to accommodate the 12” drop at 100 yards, so I may end up shimming its mount to enable the use of Trail Boss. Time will tell…
Greg
And there you have it. More good times, good guns, good shooting, and good loads. Stay tuned…because we’ll keep the Tales of the Gun stories coming!
Back to back earthquakes in the last two days…that’s what’s been happening here in So Cal. A 6.4 and a 7.1, to be precise, and they occurred in an area I know will. Both were centered near Ridgecrest, which most folks have never heard of, but the adjoining Navy base is China Lake Naval Weapons Station, which most folks have heard of. And that area is near Death Valley, which every knows about. It’s about 150 miles from where we live.
On the road near Ridgecrest and Death Valley, California. There’s not too much out there.
About 8 years ago good buddies TK and Arlene, and I, rode in a one day scooter endurance rally, in which we racked up 400 miles on the California Scooter CSC-150s. One of the towns we passed through was Trona, the epicenter of yesterday’s 7.1 quake.
TK and Arlene out in front on the CSC-150 Mustang replicas.My old Baja Blaster CSC-150. It was a good-looking little scoot. I rode it to Cabo and back.Trona, the epicenter of yesterday’s shaker. It’s a mining town…a small, desolate spot out in the Mojave Desert.
Trona is a town in the middle of a stark landscape just outside the western edge of Death Valley. It’s a place I’ve thought of visiting again just to grab a few photos. There’s not much out there, and the desolation and jagged edges would make for interesting pictures, I think. But this is not the time to go.
I was reloading .22 Hornet ammo for an upcoming blog on a cool and very vintage Winchester Model 43 when the first quake hit two days ago. I felt dizzy and nauseated for an instant, and than I realized the world really was swaying around me. That quake, the 6.1 centered near Ridgecrest, went on for perhaps 15 seconds. I could see things moving around and that’s a weird feeling. It’s like being out in the ocean on a small boat. Dry land is not supposed to behave like this. Usually earthquakes don’t last that long, and many times, our So Cal shakers are sharp cracks (almost like a detonation) that last for but an instant. But not these recent shakers. The second one hit yesterday evening while we were watching television, and it went on for even longer. It was 7.1, which is pretty significant in the earthquake business. Again, there was no sharp crack, and again, the rocking and rolling lasted for perhaps 20 seconds.
We came through both quakes just fine, so mark us safe here in So Cal.
This post wraps up our tutorial on reloading .45 ACP ammunition, although from time to time we’ll be posting favored .45 loads as we continue to add Tales of the Gun blog posts featuring this fine old cartridge. If you’d like to catch up by reading the first three parts of this series, here they are:
We’re in the home stretch now, folks, with the last steps in creating our custom-crafted .45 ACP ammunition. The tools and components we’ll use in these remaining reloading steps are the propellant, the powder dispenser, our previously prepped-and-primed .45 ACP brass cases, bullets, the third reloading die, a reloading scale, a caliper to measure cartridge overall length, and boxes and labels to hold and identify the ammo we’ve created.
That’s the powder dispenser on the left, and Unique propellant on the right. I use an RCBS dispenser. Several reloading equipment companies offer these.
My preferred propellants for .45 ACP ammo are Unique or Bullseye, and of the two, I prefer Unique. Some folks prefer Bullseye. Others may use different propellants. One of the more enjoyable aspects of the reloading process is you can try different recommended propellants (and different charges of these propellants) to find the secret sauce that works best for you.
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What does that mean? For a revolver, it usually means the load that is the most accurate. For a semi-automatic handgun (like the 1911), accuracy is not the only requirement. You also need to have a load with enough energy to cycle the action. Usually, the loads shown in a reloading manual are powerful enough to cycle the action. You should never go above the maximum propellant charge listed in any reloading manual, and you should only approach that by testing loads at the lower end first, and then working up to a higher level if you feel a need to for accuracy or functionality reasons (but never go above the max load).
Adding Unique propellant to the powder dispenser.
Here’s another important point: Whichever powder you choose to use, never have any propellant other than the one you are using on your reloading bench. You don’t want to get the propellants mixed up, or mistake one for another.
After you’ve added propellant to the powder dispenser, tap the dispensing handle against the lower stop several times to settle the powder. What we’re going to do next is to adjust the throw weight (the weight of powder dispensed) by adjusting the dispenser with the threaded adjustor shown in the photo below.
The dispenser’s adjustor. You can screw it in to dispense less powder, or out to dispense more powder. Once it dispenses the correct amount, lock it in place with the locknut.
What we do at this point is get our reloading scale, set it to zero grains, and make sure the indicator (the balance arm) is in a neutral position (as indicated on the left side of the balance arm against the graduations on the scale markings on the left of the scale. Once the scale is zeroed, use the sliding and turning adjustors for the weight of propellant you wish to use. After years of accuracy testing and shooting, I’ve settled on 5.8 grains of Unique as the load I use with a 230-grain cast roundnose bullet.
My RCBS reloading scale set to 5.8 grains.
Note in the photo above that the sliding weight is at zero grains, and further note in the photo below that the rotating adjustor wheel is set to 5.8 grains. For anything under 10 grains, you leave the sliding weight at zero and set the weight with the rotating barrel as shown below. For most .45 ACP loads, we use the rotating barrel only.
The rotating barrel adjusting wheel is set to 5.8 grains.
After adjusting the powder dispenser’s adjustor and checking the weight with the scale, we now have the dispenser releasing 5.8 grains of Unique propellant every time the dispenser is actuated. I’ll throw several charges to make sure the dispenser is dispensing consistently, and once I’m satisfied it is, we’re now ready to dispense 5.8 grains of propellant in each of the prepped and primed cases we prepared in Part III of of our .45 ACP reloading series.
There are 5.8 grains of Unique in each primed case. Note that the propellant levels are approximately equal in all cases, and no cases have been missed.
When you dispense powder, it’s important to be consistent. I don’t like to stop until I’ve done the entire tray of prepped and primed cases, and I don’t like to be interrupted while I’m doing this. After you’ve dispensed the propellant in each cartridge case, visually inspect the tray to make sure every case is charged with propellant, and all propellant heights are approximately equal. We’re looking for missed cases here (if that happens, the primer will push the bullet into the barrel just a bit, which requires disassembling the firearm to hammer the bullet back out with a rod, and that’s basically the end of your shooting session that day). We’re also looking for any cases that are double-charged (i.e., cases that have two charges of powder in a single case). A double charge is real serious and dangerous business, as it will most likely blow up the gun, injure you, or worse. You have to pay attention to what you’re doing here. Like I just said, this is serious business.
So, after we’ve charged the cases with propellant, we now ready to move on to the next step, which is seating the bullets.
.45 ACP 230-grain cast roundnose bullets. I like this bullet design and weight. It’s accurate, and it feeds reliably in just about any .45 auto.
We’ll now use the seating die, the last of the three dies in our die set. This part of the operation requires a bit of adjusting and a bit of finessing on our part. We’re actually doing two things with this third and final die. We’re seating the bullet to the correct depth in the cartridge case (to meet the cartridge overall length requirement, which is found in your reloading manual), and we’re removing the cartridge case bellmouth that allowed the bullet to enter the case.
The business end of the seating die. The red arrow points to the part of the die that interfaces with and pushes the bullet into the case.
In order to make both adjustments, we’ll work with how far we thread the entire die into the reloading press (this affects both bullet seating depth and crimp), and we’ll also work with the bullet seating adjustor. These two parts of the die are shown by the red arrows in the photo below.
The bullet seating die in the reloading press. The upper threaded adjustor (denoted by the upper red arrow) adjusts bullet seating depth. The crimp or bellmouth removal adjustment is made by how far the entire die is threaded into the press (denoted by the lower red arrow), Once the crimp (or bellmouth removal for the .45 ACP cartridge) is set and the cartridge meets the desired overall length, lock both the die and the bullet seating adjustor in place with the two locknuts.
Here’s how I do this. I first screw the bullet seating adjustment all the way into the die, and then I’ll use this to seat the bullet to the right depth by threading the entire die into the reloading press, a little at a time. With each adjustment, I’ll run the charged case (with a bullet on top) into the die with the press. I keep doing this until the cartridge overall length is where I want it to be. For a 230-grain roundnose bullet, I adjust the seating depth such that the cartridge overall length is 1.250 inches, as specified by my reloading manual. That cartridge overall length is good, as it allows the cartridge to feed into the chamber, and it allows the cartridge to fit into the magazine.
Once I have the bullet seated to a depth that provides the correct cartridge overall length, I then back the bullet seating adjustor all the way out. Then I’ll start the crimping adjustment process by threading the entire die deeper into the press, a little bit at a time, running the cartridge into the press with each incremental downward die adjustment. The reason I ran the bullet seating adjust all the way out is that I don’t want it to push the bullet in any further while I adjust the crimp.
Here’s what going on here. Remember that I said the seating die does two things: It seats the bullet to the correct depth, and it crimps the cartridge. In the case of the .45 ACP, we’re not really crimping the bullet into the case. We just want to remove the brass case bellmouth that we previously added to allow the bullet to start into the case. The inside of the seating die has a reduced circumference step. Our purpose in making this adjustment is to thread the die into the press just enough to have the case make contact with the inner die step. That will remove the bellmouth. We’re not crimping here; we’re just removing the bellmouth so that the brass case becomes a straightwall case around the bullet.
Once I have adjusted the die body by screwing it into the press enough to remove the case bellmouth (and with the press ram raised to position the cartridge all the way up in the die), I then run the bullet seating adjustor all the way down, such that it contacts the top of the bullet. This will position the die such that it removes the case bellmouth, and simultaneously seat the bullet to the correct cartridge overall length. At this point, I can lock everything in position with the two locknuts (one for the die body in the press, the other for the bullet seating adjustor in the die) while the ram is in the raised position with a cartridge in the die. At this point, I’m ready to finish the rest of the cartridges.
A case with the bellmouth removed, and the bullet seated to the correct depth. The cartridge overall length is 1.250 inches. Life is good. I can hit a gnat in the ass at 25 meters with this cartridge.
At this point, what I do is put a bullet on each charged case, and then I start running each cartridge, with a bullet on top, thr0ugh the reloading press.
Charged cases topped with bullets, ready for the bullet seating operation.
With each run up the press, I’ll create a reloaded cartridge. Here are three reloaded rounds…
Reloaded .45 ACP ammo. It’s good looking ammo, and I know it will provide superior accuracy and reliability in my 1911. It will perform way better than factory ammo, and that’s what this reloading game is all about.
As I produce each round, I place it in one of the plastic boxes I use for my ammo.
Once the above steps are done, I then take the propellent remaining in the powder dispenser and return it to the propellant container (in this case, the Unique bottle). That’s one of the reasons it’s important to only have one bottle of propellant on the reloading bench. You don’t want to dump the leftover powder into the wrong propellant container. If that happens, you can’t use the container of propellant you just emptied the leftover powder into because now it contains a mix of two different propellants. The only thing you can do is throw it away. It’s just to risky to use it. And yeah, I’ve had to do that before.
Reloaded .45 ACP ammo, ready for the range. It looks good, doesn’t it?
There’s one more step, and that’s labeling each box of reloaded ammo with cartridge, bullet weight and type, cartridge overall length, propellant type and charge, primer type, brass type, brass trim length, and the date I manufactured the ammo.
At this point, I’m good to go. It’s off to the range…
So there you have it. Reloaded .45 ACP ammo, as good as or better than what you can buy anywhere. I just returned from the range a few minutes ago, where I shot some of the ammo you see in the photo above, and yeah, it functioned flawlessly and hit the target every time.
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Just in case you missed it, Joe Gresh’s story about riding with that friend all of us seem to have is running on Motorcycle.com! Classic Gresh, this story is. Enjoy, my friends.
Good buddy Grant Longenbaugh over at Janus Motorcycles just sent this to us:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 1, 2019
Janus Motorcycles to Represent Indiana in Made in America Product Showcase at the White House
Goshen, Indiana – On Monday, July 15, 2019, Janus Motorcycleswill participate in the third annual Made in America Product Showcase at the White House.
Companies from across the country will join President Donald J. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and members of the Administration to showcase their products. Janus Motorcycles will showcase three of their 229cc motorcycles during the event. Richard Worsham (co-founder), Devin Biek (co-founder), and Bruce Korenstra (partner), plan to represent the company. “We’re honored to represent our city and state, as well as the rich manufacturing heritage we’re a part of in northern Indiana,” Janus co-founder Devin Biek said.
“We are excited to once again host businesses from all 50 states at the White House to highlight and celebrate American-made products,” a White House official said. “In today’s booming economy, President Trump and his Administration are proud to tout businesses that create jobs and support our local communities.”
ABOUT JANUS MOTORCYCLES:
Founded by Devin Biek and Richard Worsham in 2011, Janus Motorcycles builds made-to-order production motorcycles out of their Goshen, Indiana headquarters. Their classic designs have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, the Discovery Channel, and in multiple industry publications. They strive to create motorcycles that riders of all experience levels can enjoy and understand.
Janus Motorcycles draws on the rich pool of manufacturing and fabrication shops in northern Indiana. Their three models of lightweight 229cc motorcycles feature hand-formed tanks, locally welded components such as frames, hand-bent stainless handlebars, hand-painted trim, and a proprietary anti-dive suspension developed by the Janus team. They are fully registrable in all fifty states with EPA and California ARB certification. All three models start at $6995. They plan to produce just 250 units out of their Goshen facility this year.
Guys, that’s impressive. Janus has been hitting it out of the park consistently on several fronts…great motorcycles, great leadership, and in particular, great public relations. These folks had the foresight to advertise here on the ExNotes website, they took a flyer on a fabulous Baja trip with us, they recently had our story about that trip in ADVMoto, they had a great article in the NY Times, and now, this. Our good buddy Grant is doing a fantastic job, as is everyone at the Janus plant. Our congratulations to Janus and our best wishes for continuing success!
Devin Biek, mixing it up in the desert on our Baja ride…Devin Biek and Richard Worsham founded Janus Motorcycles.
It was one of the ones that got away, that Colt 1917 was, and I regretted it for years. I like to describe some of the firearms I’ve let get away as ones I’ve stupidly sold but I don’t like being redundant, so let’s just say I sold it. It was stupid to sell any of them, and having been on a quest for a decade or so to replace the ones I’ve stupidly sold (oops, there I go again), I can tell you that I’m not selling any of my guns. You might be wondering where I’m going with this story, but wonder no more. It’s all about a magnificent score, in this case, a US Army Colt Model 1917 .45 ACP revolver. To jump ahead for just a second, this is the one that is on its way to being mine…
A magnificent original finish Model 1917 Colt revolver. Those are genuine elk antler grips. What appears to be an unblued area near the front sight is not…read on for more information.
The 1917s are interesting handguns, and yeah, that’s plural. There were two of them: A Colt, and a Smith and Wesson. In a very real sense, they are handguns that were never meant to be. The 1911 Automatic came on the scene in 1911, and the plan was to ultimately incorporate it throughout our Armed Forces. But life is what happens when you’re making plans, and the US Government generally moves slowly. When we entered World War I in 1917, there weren’t enough 1911s to go around, so the US Army turned on Smith and Colt to make their large frame revolvers in .45 ACP, and that’s how the 1917s came to be. It was an emergency measure to make up for what we didn’t have yet, and that was enough 1911s to go around.
Major General James E. Rudder, who carried a Colt 1917 when ascending Normandy’s Pointe du Hoc cliffs on D-Day.
When World War II happened, the US military had plenty of 1911s, but there was at least one soldier who preferred the 1917. Interestingly, I recently read an account in American Rifleman magazine (yeah, I’m a strong NRA supporter and I watch Fox News, too) about 34-year-old Lieutenant Colonel James E. Rudder, who led the U.S. Army Rangers when they scaled the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc in Normandy on D-Day. Colonel Rudder carried a 1917 Colt instead of a 1911 auto (presumably, a 1917 that had been through the arsenal refurb and wore a Parkerized finish). Rudder was an interesting man. He held numerous awards for valor, he retired from the Army as a Major General, and he then went on to become president of Texas A&M University. The American Rifleman article was about Rudder’s 1917 Colt, which he preferred to the 1911 auto because of its greater reliability. Ah, if these guns could talk…
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In the 1970s, when I was in the US Army stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, I bought a 1917 Colt revolver at the El Paso gun show. I didn’t know too much about these guns then, except that they were large frame revolvers and they didn’t cost too much. I think I paid something like $125 for mine. It was cool. Big, heavy, Parkerized, and it shot the .45 ACP cartridge, a round I had already recognized as the ultimate handgun chambering. I had a .45 auto (a Government Model 1911), and having a revolver chambered for the same round felt like it was the right thing to do. My 1917 had interesting markings…it said US Army, United States Property, and all kinds of cool stuff. I liked it. I shot that revolver for a while, I had fun with it, and then I sold it to someone who wanted it more than I did. I think I got $200 for it, and in those days I fancied myself a Texas wheeler dealer gun guy.
But that 1917 danced around in my head for decades. I liked it and I missed it, and I wished I had kept it. Finally, a few years ago I started hunting for a replacement. The problem is, living here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia, I couldn’t look outside the left-leaning anti-gun liberal looney bin we call home, as the Model 1917 isn’t on our roster of handguns approved for sale here. If I was to find one, it would have to be one already here in LeftyLand, and that cut my options considerably. I kept an eye on the local gun shops (it’s okay if the gun is already in California, but the way the law is written I couldn’t bring in a 1917 from out of state). I checked Gunbroker.com (the premier site for gun sales) every few weeks. And I watched a California-specific site, Calguns.net. I kept looking, but none of the 1917s I saw looked nice enough for my tastes, or they were out ot state, or they were priced in the stratosphere.
Then I hit paydirt. Big time. I saw the 1917 you see in the photo above in a post on the Calguns.net site a couple of weeks ago. It looked to me like it had been reblued (because my earlier 1917 had been Parkerized and I’d never seen one that wasn’t) and the genuine stag grips were appealing (the 1917s originally wore uncheckered walnut grips). Those genuine stag grips all by themselves are a big ticket item and to me they look like they belong on a 1917. Unoriginal, yeah, but they sure looked good. The reblue (I thought) and the elk grips took away from the gun’s authenticity, but I liked the look. In fact, I liked it a lot.
I sent a message to the advertiser (who became my new good buddy Jim), and I learned that the gun had not been reblued. It wore its original brushed blue finish, and the direction of the brushing was an indication of its originality. The 1917s went through an arsenal refinish between the wars, Jim explained, and that’s when they were Parkerized. The original finish is the one you see in the photos here. I researched what Jim told me, and yup, he had it right. That made the gun even more appealing. (That brushed blue original finish and the brushing direction is what made the area on either side of the front sight look unblued when the camera’s flash hit it, but it is, in fact, blued). This particular 1917 is unfired other than proof rounds at the Colt factory, and this particular handgun was manufactured in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1918. Yep, it is 101 years old. And it’s essentially a new gun.
All right, I decided, I’d most likely never get an opportunity like this again. Jim and I met at Imbert and Smithers in Redwood City to legally transfer ownership, and I was blown away when I saw the revolver in person. It is stunning. The guy behind the counter, a dude about my age, was similarly impressed. “I’ve never seen one in this condition,” he said, and he called the gunsmith over to look at it. I’ll admit it: I like having a gun that’s the center of attention in a circle of folks who know guns. It’s a cool feeling.
Okay, enough bragging with words. Let me do so with a few photos I shot yesterday at the start of my 10-day cooling off period…
The 1917 Colt, chambered in .45 ACP, wearing the factory original finish.The view from the left. The elk antler grips work. It’s an elegant handgun.The Prancing Pony. Colt more properly calls its logo the “Rampant Colt.” Prancing Pony works for me. It’s one of the world iconic logos.The proof mark, showing that the revolver had been fired with a proof pressure test round at the factory.Yep. US Army Model 1917. Lanyard ring. I love the look of this thing.Good buddy Jim explained the brush blued finish on these guns to me. They have a unique pattern, and you can see some of it on the right side of the 1917’s frame. It’s beautiful.The Colt roll marks on top of the 1917’s 5.5-inch barrel.United States Property, the rollmarked lettering on the barrel’s underside.
You might be wondering: Am I actually going to shoot this revolver?
You bet. And you’ll read about it here when I do. Just 9 more days, and I’ll be fully cooled off. And then this puppy is mine.
