Guns – Page 33 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

The .30-30 Model 336 Marlin

I’ve been a huge fan of the .30-30 since the mid-1970s, which is when I first owned a Marlin 336. I think I paid something like $50 for it, and it was an incredible rifle. We hunted jackrabbits in west Texas in those days and that rifle seemed to be laser guided. I just couldn’t miss, even when Bugs Bunny was on the run. The old Marlin had a front sight shroud, and it served as a good aiming device when Mr. Bunny was vigorously hopping down the bunny trail. I just held on the rabbit between the front sight post and the inner edge of that shroud, and whump! Yep, I did my duty as a soldier in the Great Bunny Trail Traffic Reduction Wars of the mid-1970s. As I recall, one of my friends offered me $70 for that first Marlin back in those days, and that ended my .30-30 career for the next several years. But I remembered the .30-30’s light recoil (it’s only about half that of a .30 06), its tremendous accuracy, and the off-the-charts fun factor.

Fast forward to about 10 years ago when I told the above story about that old Marlin to my good buddy Chris. I mentioned to Chris that I would like to own a .30-30 Marlin again. A week later, Chris emailed a link to a California sporting goods store’s online used gun listing, and there was a Marlin 336 for sale. The store was in Redondo Beach (about 60 miles away). I called and asked them to hold the rifle for me, but they wouldn’t do it. “You need to get in here if you want it,” the kid on the phone said.

Which I did. I told my boss I wasn’t feeling well, and his response was “Another gun?” Yep, you got it, Boss, and it was Subie WRX wheels-in-the-wells time. I was Redondo-Beach-bound.

I arrived at the store and explained to the kid the behind the counter that I was there for the Marlin. The gun department manager overheard me and told the sales kid, “Good! Take that damned thing off the Internet. The phone’s been ringing off the hook.”

I didn’t know it at the time (even though I considered myself to be a knowledgeable gun guy) but this particular Marlin was highly collectible. It wasn’t just a Marlin 336. It was a 336 Octagon. The story goes something like this: In 1970, Marlin produced a run of commemorative 336 rifles with fancy walnut, real cut engraving (not the rolled-in cheapo engraving you see on most commemorative guns), and octagonal barrels. The commemorative rifles were offered to celebrate Marlin’s 100th year in business. The Marlin wizards in North Haven had purchased a run of octagonal barrel blanks and after producing the commemorative rifles, they had a few octagonal blanks left over. The Marlin guys decided to use up the extra octagonal blanks, which they did with an uncatalogued run of standard Model 336 rifles. And that’s what this rifle was…one of the overrun 336 Octagon models that never made it into any Marlin sales literature. They’re scarce. The sporting goods store guys, not being experts (it was a chain store) didn’t understand what they had. Nor did I, at the time. I paid what they were asking for the rifle (which was $300, a fair price for a used Marlin .30-30). Then I found out what I had. Wowee! I’ve since turned down offers of $1000 for this rifle. My 336 Octagon was a real score, not that I’d ever be interested in selling it.

Yep. There are only about 300 of these in the world, all made in 1970. The Marlin 336 Octagon was a real score for me. Nope, it’s not for sale. Never will be.

The 336’s standard post front sight. The 336 I owned in the mid-1970s had a front-sight shroud. A shroud would look out of place on an octagonal barrel.

Caliber .30-30 Winchester. In the 1890s, Marlin didn’t use the Winchester designation for the chambering; Winchester and Marlin were competitors.

I added a Williams receiver aperture rear sight with oversized eyepiece, undersized aperture, and click adjustments. Even though it’s 50 years old, this is a very accurate rifle.

The .30-30 is as cartridge with a history. It was introduced in the mid-1890s as the .30 Winchester Smokeless for the Model 1894 Winchester. I’ve played with the 1894 Winchester and I don’t much care for it. The Winchester is a lever gun (like the Marlin), but it’s not as accurate (in my opinion) and it is a much more difficult gun to disassemble for cleaning and reassemble after cleaning (in everybody’s opinion). Nope, I’m a Marlin guy when it comes to lever action rifles. It’s a Ford versus Chevy, Republican versus Democrat kind of thing. I like Marlin.

My reloaded .30-30 ammo. This particular load used 22 grains of IMR 4198 powder and a 150 grain Speer flat point bullet. I have other reduced loads using Trail Boss and Unique powder with Extreme plated bullets. This is one of those rifles that seems to shoot everything well.

You might wonder about the .30-30 cartridge designation. It goes like this: The first .30 refers to the bullet diameter (it’s 0.308 inches in diameter), and the second 30 refers to the grains of smokeless propellant behind the bullet in the original factory loading. That’s another thing…this was the first cartridge to use smokeless powder (instead of the smoke-belching, corrosive black powder in use up to that point). It has a muzzle velocity of about 2400 feet per second. The experts say it is a good for deer up to 200 yards. I would pass on a shot at that range. I can tell you that in the 50-to-100 yard range, the .30-30 is awesome. I once shot a 5-shot, 1.25-inch group at 100 yards with this rifle (using open sights). I only did that once, but I’ve been bragging about it ever since.

In its day, the .30-30 was a real breakthrough cartridge, and even today, it is wildly popular as a deer cartridge (it’s estimated that more deer have been taken with the .30-30 than all other cartridges combined). It’s a hoot to shoot (especially in a rifle as classy as the one you see here), and it’s one of my favorites.

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How does this old Marlin compare to a modern one? Hey, check out this Marlin Texan!

A bad influence?

I may be that kid your mother always warned you about. You know, the bad influence. The one who might do something she wouldn’t like, and then you follow suit. Moms live in fear of guys like me.

Paul’s .45 70 Marlin 1895. These are impressive rifles.

When it comes to guns, I am pretty sure I’m the guy she had in mind. On more than a few occasions, I’ll get fired up about a firearm (no pun intended), and then several of my friends will buy the same thing. It’s happened with Mosin-Nagants, 1911 .45 autos, Ruger No. 1 rifles, and most recently, big-bore Marlins. Caliber .45 70 Model 1895s, to be precise. Several of my friends now own these rifles and they are a hoot. One of these days we’ll have one of our informal West End Gun Club matches and restrict it to .45 70 rifles only. That should be fun.

Paul and I both appreciate fine walnut, and Paul’s recent purchase of his brand-new Marlin is no exception. It’s unusual to see wood this highly figured on a production rifle. Take your time, peruse what’s available on Gunbroker.com on a regular basis, visit every gun store you can, and every once in a great while you find something like this.

I was in northern California last week and that’s always a good opportunity to visit with my good buddy Paul and send a little lead downrange. Well, maybe not a little. You see, Paul recently purchased a .45 70 Marlin 1895, and these rifles send lead downrange at the rate of 400 grains a shot. There are 7,000 grains in a pound. Do the math…that’s a big-ass bullet. Hell, they used to use these things for shooting buffalo.

There’s no way I’d ever shoot one of these magnificent creatures, but back in the day when the buffalo hunters did, more often than not they were using a .45 70 rifle. I grabbed this photo on a recent trip to Tennessee.

The Marlins are great rifles, and you can pick up a 45 70 Model 1895 for around $600 if you shop around for a bit. Marlin was acquired by Remington a few years ago, and their quality took a hit during the transition as they moved production from the old Marlin factory in Connecticut to the Remington plant in New York. Judging by the recent rifles I’ve examined (including Paul’s), the quality issues are all in the rear-view mirror now. The new Marlins sure shoot well, too.

A Williams peep sight on Paul’s Marlin. If you know what you’re doing (and Paul does) these can shrink your groups significantly.

Paul added a Williams aperture rear sight to his 1895, and this was the first time he shot it. I had spotting duties. The first round went low left about 10 inches, and then Paul walked succeeding rounds up and to the right by adjusting the rear sight as I called the shots to him. It didn’t take too many shots to zero the rifle, and from that point on, it was simply a question of evaluating which of several different handloads grouped best. Paul had prepared test rounds using Unique and IMR 4227 propellant, all using the Missouri 400 grain cast lead bullet. The winner was 13.0 grains of Unique behind the mighty Missouri slug. At 50 yards, this load grouped well.

The target. Low, adjust, a bit higher, adjust some more, and well, you get the idea. It took only a few shots to get the Marlin dialed.

We were at a Santa Clara County public range and it was a rainy day, but we managed to have fun on both the rifle and handgun ranges. We shot the .45 70 and then my personal favorite handgun, the 1911 .45 Auto. Yep, Paul had his 1911 out, and we had fun with it, too.

Paul shooting his 1895 at the local gun club.

Paul let me try the Marlin. He tried to capture the muzzle blast, but timing the camera to the shot is tough.

Yours truly behind the 1895. From the rear, Paul and I could be twins. We’ve been shooting buddies for more than 60 years. This photo shows the smoke just after I fired, and that’s good enough.

Paul’s “Mil Spec” model Springfield 1911. These are fine guns, way better than what I carried in the Army.

Other folks on the range are always intrigued by the .45 70 cartridge. Compared to the most common rounds seen on rifle ranges these days, they’re huge. The perception is that the recoil must be horrendous. It can be if you load near the upper end of the propellant charge spectrum, but at the lower powder charge ranges, these guns are a lot of fun. That’s a topic for another blog, one that will appear here soon. Stay tuned!

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A Tale of Two No. 1s

…and those two would be Ruger No. 1 single-shot rifles, arguably the classiest rifles on the planet. I smile when I hear folks talking about high-capacity magazines and black assault rifles. One shot, folks. That’s all it takes if you know what you’re doing. When you see someone hunting with a single-shot rifle, you know that rifleman knows how true sportsmen play the game.

My Ruger No. 1 in 7mm Remington Magnum. It has a period-correct Redfield Widefield 3×9 scope, and magnificent walnut.

Ruger introduced these rifles in the late 1960s, and they are still in production. In 1976, like I mentioned in an earlier blog, Ruger stamped every firearm they manufactured with a “Made in the 200th Year of American Liberty” inscription. I bought my first one back then, and I’ve had a soft spot for the Ruger single-shot rifles ever since. Both of the rifles you see in this blog (mine and good buddy Greg’s) are 200th Year Rugers.

Several years ago, I found a clean, used No. 1 in 7mm Remington Magnum. I had never owned a rifle in that caliber before, and I always wanted one. I bought it and I kept it for several years without shooting it, and then good buddy Marty gave me a stash of new-old-stock 7mm Mag brass. A few years before that, good buddy Jim had given me a set of 7mm RCBS dies. With the addition of Marty’s brass, all of a sudden I was in the 7mm game. I had the rifle, the dies, and the brass.

I loaded some 7mm ammo last summer and took the No. 1 to the range. I was disappointed but not surprised that it did not group well with that first load. It takes a while to find the right load, and the load I tried that day was only the first of many. It’s okay. These things take time.

Good buddy Greg’s No. 1, also in 7mm Remington Mag, and also a 200th Year Ruger. You just don’t see walnut like this on rifles today. The wood on Greg’s rifle is nicer than mine.

Good buddy Greg (I have a lot of good buddies) saw my No. 1 and he decided that his life would not be complete unless he owned one, too. He found one with even nicer wood than mine, and it, too, was a 200th Year Ruger. Yowwee, our load development time was cut in half! Greg was chasing the proverbial secret sauce and so was I.

So about this load development business: Every rifle is an entity unto itself. I’m not certain what that phrase means, but I like the way it rolls off the keyboard. I think it means every rifle is different, and if that’s the case, it sure is an accurate statement. What you do when you reload ammo (what most of us do, anyway) is look for a load that delivers superior accuracy. The gold standard is getting a rifle to consistently shoot three shots into an inch at 100 yards. Most of the time, factory ammo won’t do that. You’ve got to experiment with different combinations of bullet weight, bullet design, bullet manufacturer, bullet seating depth, crimp, powder type, powder charge, primer type, and brass case manufacturer, and if you get lucky, you might find that magic MOA load (minute of angle, or one inch at 100 yards) before you run out of money for reloading components. It is amazing how much difference finding the right load can make. It can take a rifle from 4-inch groups to the magic MOA.

In the case of my 7mm No .1, I’m getting pretty close. I tested a load this past weekend that averaged 1.080 inches at 100 yards. It shot one group into 0.656 inches…

Getting there…that old No. 1 sure likes this load!

I think I’m just about there. This weekend I was using old brass with old primers, it had not been trimmed to assure consistent length, and I did not weigh each powder charge individually (I just let the powder dispenser add the same volume with each throw). Those are all tricks we use to improve accuracy. If I resize and trim the brass, use new primers, and individually weigh each charge, things should get even better. That’s the next step. Then I’ll start experimenting with bullet seating depths. I’m thinking I might get this nearly-50-year-old rifle to shoot in a half-inch at 100 yards. That would be cool.

Like I said, it took awhile to get here. Here are the loads I tried before I shot that group above….

The best and most consistently accurate load is the second one from the bottom. The next steps will be to refine this load.

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A quick update…

Wow, we sure are generating a lot of interest, a lot of hits, and a lot of comments here on the ExNotes website and blog. We appreciate the comments, folks, so please keep them coming.

I need more form-generated junk emails like I need a summer cold, and I’m willing to bet you feel the same way. That said, please consider adding your email address to the list of folks we auto-notify every time we post a new blog. We try to post every day, and I know many of you probably just check in when it’s convenient. Getting on our email list, though, will add one advantage you won’t otherwise get. On a quarterly basis, provided we get at least another 200 folks sign up each quarter, we’ll give away a copy of either Moto Colombia, Riding China, or 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM to a name drawn at random from our email database. The first winner will be announced sometime around Christmas this year. Please encourage your friends to sign up, too. If you’re already on the list, you’re eligible for the first drawing. We don’t give or sell our email list to anyone, so your address is safe with us.

More news: The next Long Beach Moto Show is just around the corner. I’ll be there, and I’ll have lots of photos of Bold New Graphics from the Big 4, and interesting new models from everyone else. And yeah, I’ll get a few photos of the young ladies in the Ducati, Harley, and Indian booths, too.

Buy it online or at your favorite newsstand!

Make sure you check the newsstands for the latest offering from Motorcycle Classics magazine. It’s titled Tales from the Road, and it’s a dynamite collection of great travel stories that MC, one of the greatest motorcycle magazines ever, has run in the past. Two of my stories are in there, and I know you’ll enjoy them.

We’re going to be adding a couple more index pages to the ExhaustNotes site, as we have already done for the Resurrections, Baja, Dream Bikes, YouTube, Tales of the Gun, and Books pages. We’re thinking the next index pages will be on e-bikes, and another one for the CSC RX4. Those areas are getting a lot of attention and a lot of hits on the blogs we’ve done, and the idea is to make it easy for you to find all of our blogs on a particular topic. And speaking of resurrections, Joe Gresh tells me we may not be too far from hearing Zed, the star of the Resurrections page, fire up. I’m excited about that. Joe’s work on that barn-find Kawasaki Z1 sure is interesting. And there’s more good stuff in the works…a feature on an old Ruger rifle in 7mm Remington Magnum for which I finally found the secret sauce (a load delivering less than 1-inch groups at 100 yards), and a special feature on something that weighs more and has less power than a full-dress potato-potato-potato cruiser (I know you didn’t think that was possible, but I have the photos to prove it).

It’s getting dark what with the time change being in effect, and my keepers are telling me I have to take my pills and get ready for bed. Stay tuned; there’s more good stuff coming your way.

The Rimfire Series: A 200th Year Ruger .22

Purchased used in the early ’80s for $125, this super-clean 200th Year Ruger .22 semi-auto has sent a lot of lead downrange. A comparable Ruger today costs more than $400.

The story goes something like this: William Batterman Ruger (we all knew him as Bill) was a government engineer in the late 1940s who had a good idea for an inexpensive semi-automatic .22 handgun. Ruger’s design featured a grip frame constructed of two steel stampings (left and right sides) welded together, a tubular receiver, and a reciprocating bolt. Most folks think it looks like a Luger (the famed German semi-auto handgun of both world wars), and the name Ruger sounds a lot like Luger, but the new Ruger operation was nothing like the old P-08 Luger. Ruger’s new semi-auto was actually based on the World War II Japanese Nambu pistol. It’s where the idea of a simple back-and-forth bolt in a tubular receiver came from.

The profile is thought by most to be of the more widely-known German Luger, but the design is actually based on the Japanese Nambu.

Ruger left the government, hung out a shingle on a barn in Connecticut, and built 2500 of the things in 1949. They cost under $40 and they sold quickly. Ruger tweaked the design a bit and called the updated version the Mk I, and that version remained in production from 1950 to 1981 in both fixed-sight and adjustable-sight versions. The new Ruger was wildly popular, and for good reason: It was accurate, it was well built, it was nicely finished, and it was inexpensive. In 1976, every gun Ruger produced had a cool roll stamp: Made in the 200th Year of American Liberty. 1976 was the year I came back from an overseas US Army stint, and I started collecting Rugers with the 200th year stamp. One is the Ruger you see here.

Every Ruger manufactured in 1976 carried a 200th Year of American Liberty roll mark. They’re kind of cool, I think.

I picked up the Ruger you see here in the early 1980s, used, for $125 from a small gun shop in Pomona, California. The gun shop is no longer there, and it’s been so long I can’t even remember the name of the place now. You don’t see many small gun shops anywhere in the US anymore (the regulatory hurdles are just too burdensome for most small businesses) and these days, you don’t see too many gun shops of any size in California. Some think that’s a good thing. As you’ve no doubt guessed, I’m not one of those people.

This old Ruger is one of my all-time favorite guns, and I was out on the range with it yesterday. It’s fun to shoot. It was windy as hell out there (so much so, that ultimately the wind peeled the cardboard target board completely off the posts it was nailed to), but I managed to squirt through four boxes of ammo first (that’s 200 rounds). Even with winds gusting somewhere north of 50mph, this 40+ year old beauty (the handgun, not me)gave a good accounting of what a well-built American pistol can do.

Not too shabby for an old guy and an old gun on a windy day. That’s 50 rounds at 50 feet with up to 50 mph gusts. I think maybe I sneezed for that one lower left shot (the only one that didn’t break the 10-ring).

The Ruger 22 semi-auto is now in its fifth design iteration. There were the originals (the first 2500 referenced above). The Mark I followed. Then the Mark II in 1981. The Mark II had the bolt stay open after firing the last round (on mine, it closes on an empty chamber, so you have to keep track of how many shots you’ve fired). The Mark III arrived in 2004, and it featured a magazine release on the side of the grip frame, unlike the prior models’ latch release on the grip bottom (the Mark III’s mag release was more like a 1911’s). Ruger introduced the Mark IV a couple of years ago, and its claim to fame was a tilt-up receiver that made disassembly and reassembly a lot easier. Disassembly has always been easy on these guns; it’s the reassembly part that some folks find challenging.

The Ruger grip frame, formed from two welded steel stampings. The magazine latch is at the bottom of the grip frame.

I love my Ruger. That said, I really wanted a Mark IV when I found out a limited number were available with Turnbull’s color case hardening (which is a beautiful thing to behold). But alas, the Ruger Mark IV is not on the California list of approved handguns. Like I’ve said many times before, we have our share of nutty gun laws here in the Peoples’ Republik, eclipsed only by our healthy dose of nutty politicians.

A Turnbull color case hardened Ruger Mk IV. This is a beautiful handgun. It’s not available in California, unfortunately, or I would own one.

There are some collectors who focus exclusively on Ruger’s extensive array of .22 auto handguns. Lord knows there’s been a bunch of them, from the original through the Mark IV, in blued steel and stainless steel, some with plastic frames, different barrel lengths, bull barrels and tapered barrels, fixed sights, adjustable sights, one with a 1911-style grip frame, and many more. My fixed-sight 200th Year Ruger, the one you see in this blog, is one of the simpler ones and it has served me well. I’ve put a ton of .22 ammo through it in the last 40 years, and I aim to send another ton downrange over the next 40 years.

Good old .22 ammo. Check out the price on this box!

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A Ducati story, and more…

I get four motorcycle magazines: Motorcycle Classics, RoadRUNNER, American Iron, and Motorcyclist. Every once in a while, a story comes along that goes way beyond simply being good. The current issue of Motorcycle Classics has such a story: Tempting Fate: Around the World on Ducati 175 Tourismos. Landon Hall is the Motorcycle Classics Managing Editor, and he (along with Richard Backus, the head honcho) have a winning formula: A great team of writers and photographers, an eye for a great story, a focus on vintage bikes, and the ability to pull it all together in every issue. I once told Landon that each time I get the latest copy of Motorcycle Classics, I get concerned because it is so good I don’t know how they’ll be able to do better in the next issue. And then they do. Every time.

World travelers from the 1950s…two well-worn Ducati 175s.

The story, Tempting Fate: Around the World on Ducati 175 Tourismos , is about two young Italians (Leopoldo Tartarini and Giorgio Monetti) who went around the world on Ducati 175cc motorcycles in the early 1950s. The tale appealed to me immediately because it involved a long journey on small displacement motorcycles, and the writing and the photography sealed the deal (Hamish Cooper penned the story and Phil Aynsley did the photography). The details made it come alive, like this one: Ducati actually issued these guys handguns as part of their kit (Steve Seidner, are you getting my drift here?). And more. Lots more. Trust me on this: You’ll enjoy this article.

More good info…the index page for our ExhaustNotes gun stories is up, and you can get to it here:

Sniper!

A thing of great beauty…10 hand-rubbed coats of TruOil, glass bedding, a trigger job, and a consistent 10-ring shooter. My Mosin is 75 years old.

I’ve written before about the Mosin-Nagant rifle, and I thought I would return to that topic to tell you a little bit about how I got into playing with these fine old Russian infantry rifles.

I had seen Mosin-Nagants on the discount racks at what I had always considered low end gun outlets (Big 5 Sporting Goods and other general purpose stores), but I never considered purchasing one. The Mosins on the rack were filthy, caked in cosmoline with dinged-up stocks. They initially sold for $59 here in the US a few years ago, and they looked like $59 rifles to me. Cheap. Not up to my standards. I was and still am a gun snob. I thought the Mosins were too dirty to even handle, let alone purchase. Nope, not my speed, I thought. Any rifle that Big 5 was selling for $59 was not worth my time or consideration. Ah, if only I knew where prices were headed, and just how good these rifles are.

Fast forward a bit, and I was teaching a class on engineering creativity at Cal Poly Pomona. One of the techniques engineers can use to inspire their creativity is called TRIZ. It’s a technique that came to us from the old Soviet Union, and it involves looking at older designs in different product areas for ideas. A classic example is Paul Mauser’s bolt action rifle, which is said to have been based on a common gate latch (in fact, I used of photo illustrating this as the cover shot for Unleashing Engineering Creativity).

http://exhaustnotes.us/images/Books/UnleashingEngineeringCreativity.jpg

One of my young students approached me after class to tell me about the Mosin-Nagant he and his father had purchased (at Big 5) for under a hundred bucks, and how much fun they were having with it. That planted a seed, and when I stopped in for my weekly gun-gazing fix at a local gun shop later that week, I bought a Mosin they had on the rack for $129. The kid who showed it to me put it in the box when I started my 10-day waiting period (here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia we have a lot of goofy gun laws). What neither that young man nor I knew was that there was a bayonet in the Mosin-Nagant’s cardboard box, and when he slid the rifle into it, the bayonet scratched the hell out of the stock.

Live and learn, I guess. I wasn’t upset. In fact, I was glad. The rifle was inexpensive enough that I saw the bayonet scar as an opportunity to completely strip the rifle down, do a trigger job, glass bed the action, and refinish the stock. I did, and the rifle went from being a banged-up, gouged-up, cosmoline-encrusted derelict to…well, a thing of great beauty. I kid you not, as the saying goes. Every time I take my Mosin to the range, I get compliments. It’s the rifle you see in the photo at the top of this blog.

Russians like cosmoline, I guess. The cosmonauts apply it liberally.

But that’s not the whole story. The rest of this story is that the thing can shoot. I only shoot my own reloads, and the results are phenomenal. I have a jacketed bullet load I use and another load for cast bullets . Both are extremely accurate. My $139 Mosin is the most accurate open-sighted rifle I’ve ever shot. Who knew?

That accuracy thing is not unique to my rifle. My good buddy Paul bought a Mosin after listening to me rave about my Russky rifle (in fact, several of my friends bought their own Russian war horses after listening to me babble on and on about mine). Paul found out his rifle was a former sniper weapon, and he asked me to try it. I did. I put three of my reloads through it, and after firing the first shot, I thought I missed on the second two (the target was 50 yards downrange, and all I could see at that distance was one hole). When I looked through the spotting scope, though, it told a different story.

Paul’s sniper, after I put three rounds downrange. I offered to buy Paul’s rifle and start the 10-day People’s Republik waiting period immediately. “Nyet,” was his only reply.

The Mosin sniper rifles are amazingly accurate. When the U.S. military equips snipers, our armorers build the rifles from the ground up to assure extreme accuracy. The Russians did it differently. The Russians built approximately 17 million Mosin-Nagants from 1891 on, and they range fired every one of them. When they found a rifle that was particularly accurate, it was designated as a sniper weapon. It was one of those rifles you see in the photo above.

The price on Mosin rifles is climbing. Today they go for something north of $300. But trust me on this: They are still a bargain at that price. And wow, can they ever shoot. If you’ve ever thought about buying one, there’s no time like right now. I think prices are going to continue to climb.

We include gun stories here on the ExNotes blog because we like to shoot and we like to write about shooting. The feedback we get from you, our motorcycle blog followers, tells us you enjoy reading about gun stuff. The collection of ExNotes gun stories continues to grow, and we want to make it easy for you to find it. So, another bit of news…we’ve added a Tales of the Gun index page on the ExNotes site!

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A tale of three Garands…

This is a tale of three Garand-style rifles, told from my laptop while waiting to make a connection in Taipei. Yep, I have time on my hands (5 ½ hours, to be precise). I had this Garand tale from an earlier writeup, so I thought I would polish it up a bit and post a gun story on the ExhaustNotes blog.

The M1, the M1A, and the Mini 14

The three Garand rifles? They’re all based on John C. Garand’s brilliant rifle known as the M1, so I guess I’ll start with a description of that firearm first. The M1 Garand is a gas-operated, semi-automatic rifle, described by General George S. Patton as the greatest battlefield implement ever invented. In a period when all other armies were using bolt-action rifles, our ability to deliver serious semi-automatic firepower without having to turn a bolt was a major advantage.

The Garand design operates by porting a bit of the combustion gas to a cylinder that drives an operating rod, and then the operating rod unlocks and cycles the bolt. Garand’s genius is evident in the mechanical interactions between the bolt, the operating rod, and the rifle’s receiver. The angles and camming surfaces are such that when the operating rod pushes the bolt rearward, the bolt first rotates and unlocks before it extracts and ejects the spent cartridge case. After it has done that, the rifle’s main spring drives the operating rod forward again, the bolt picks up and chambers a new round, and everything locks into place. It’s very clever. There is no software and there are no electrons carrying any signals. It’s all driven by good old-fashioned, straightforward mechanical stuff.

Several armories and companies manufactured Garands, and serious collectors look for Garand rifles based on their manufacturing pedigree. My M1 Garand is nothing fancy or collectible. It’s a mutt, a hodgepodge of components with an Israeli-manufactured receiver, an Italian Beretta trigger group, and other parts of mixed origin. But it shoots well and I love shooting it, and the Garand is a rifle with a soul. It’s like taming a living beast when you shoot it. It roars, it kicks, it makes mechanical noise, and it sends things flying.

Check out the spent cartridge case just ejected…it’s in the lower center of this photo! My daughter took this photo with her cell phone.

M1 Rifles Standing Guard

I was surprised to see Garands still on guard duty a few years ago when I was on a secret mission in Turkey. I grabbed some cool photos of Turkish sailors and soldiers (young Turks, you could call them) guarding Ataturk’s tomb in Ankara…

Standing guard in Ankara, Turkey, with an M1 Garand.

Garand originally designed the M1 to fire a cartridge with a 0.27-inch diameter projectile, but when it was fielded, the Army opted to chamber it in .30 06. We already had machine guns and the Springfield 03A3 chambered in .30 06, and sticking with the same round made sense. The M1 Garand soldiered on during World War II and the Korean War for us, and it’s still soldiering on in ceremonial units (like those Young Turks you see above).

The M14 and M1A

After the Korean War, the US Army developed the M14 rifle to replace the Garand. The M14 is essentially a shortened M1 Garand with a magazine (you insert the ammo into the bottom of the rifle). The basic Garand operating concept is the same. The M14 switched from the mighty .30 06 round to the 7.62 NATO round (the .308 Winchester cartridge). The M14 shoots the same bullet, but the 7.62 brass cartridge case is a little bit shorter and the bullet is about 100 feet per second slower than it would be if it was fired from a .30 06. The shorter cartridge case allows the 7.62 NATO round to operate in a machine gun with a higher cyclic rate of fire, and that was one of the reasons we went with it.

The M14 started development in the 1950s and it officially replaced the Garand as the US Army infantry rifle in 1961. I first trained with the M14 when I joined the Army, and I loved it. It was a full-sized rifle with real sights and a real walnut stock (no black plastic silliness in those days), and it fired a serious cartridge. Unlike the Garand, the M14 had a selector switch that allowed it to fire full auto. With those features, what’s not to like?

In addition to being a great service rifle, the M14 was one hell of a target rifle. The M14’s .308 Winchester cartridge is inherently more accurate than the M1 Garand’s .30 06 round (heresy to some, I know, but I’ll stand by that statement). Civilian competitive shooters wanted the M14, but it wasn’t going to happen. So private industry did what America does best: It engineered a solution. The company was the Springfield Armory (not to be confused with the U.S. government’s Springfield Arsenal), and they created and sold semi-auto-only versions of the M14 to the public. Springfield Armory called the new rifle the M1A (not to be confused with the M1 Garand). I know, there’s a lot of “not to be confused” stuff here. It’s complicated.

I always wanted an M1A, and when I spotted one in our local gun shop with nice horizontal figure in the walnut stock, I pulled the trigger (pardon the pun). The finish on a standard Springfield Armory M1A is crude (it’s a single coat of boiled linseed oil on a not-very-smoothly-finished stock). The figure in my rifle’s stock indicated the wood had potential, so I went to work applying multiple coats of TruOil (one hand-rubbed coat each night, just like we used to do in the Army). It turned out well and it shot well, but I reasoned it could do better, so I sent it back to Springfield to have it glass-bedded and I added National Match sights. The glass-bedding stabilizes the action in the stock (it’s a technique for making a rifle more accurate), and the National Match sights have a smaller aperture at the rear and a thinner front sight (that makes it easier to shoot tighter groups). It worked for me; those two changes dropped my M1A’s 50-yard groups from 1.5 inches to 0.5 inches.

A modern Springfield Armory M1A, the civilian version of the M14, which was the successor to the M1 Garand.

10 coats of hand-rubbed TruOil and the M1A’s horizontal stripes stand out.

The thing about both of the above rifles is they shoot big cartridges. The Garand’s .30 06 and the M14’s 7.62 NATO rounds have serious recoil and muzzle blast. Again, American inventiveness to the rescue: Enter another mechanical genius and business leader extraordinaire, Bill Ruger. Ruger developed what is essentially a scaled-down version of the M14 chambered for the 5.56 NATO cartridge (which is essentially the .223 Remington round). That’s the same cartridge used in the M16. It fires a much smaller bullet than either the M14 or the M1, and the recoil and muzzle blast are substantially lower.

A Favorite: The Mini 14

Ruger called his Garand-based rifle the Mini 14 (it was a smaller version of the M14). It came on the market in the early 1970s and it was an instant hit. I’ve owned several Mini 14s (and fired several more) over the last 5 decades, and I love the things. They are not known for their accuracy, but they are accurate enough and they are a lot fun to shoot.

A Ruger Mini 14 with a muzzle brake and a Circassian walnut stock. This one is from a limited run Ruger made with Circassian walnut about 10 years ago. It’s very collectible and it always gets compliments at the range.

Not the world’s most accurate rifle, but accurate enough.

The Mini 14 never made it into the US military in a major way (it’s rumored that some special forces units were armed with Mini 14s), but it is used by many US police agencies (including the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, one of the best there is), the French military, and the militaries of a few other countries. I believe that if Ruger had come to market with the Mini 14 a few years earlier, it might have become the US Army’s standard rifle instead of the M16 (and that would have been fine by me). That last statement is bound to raise a few eyebrows, but hey, this is the Internet. If you disagree, that’s why we have a Comments section.

I’ve fired thousands and thousands of rounds through my Mini 14, and it is the cartridge I reload the most frequently. The small .223 bullets are inexpensive and reloading is as much fun as shooting. My Mini 14 is the rifle I shoot most and one of these days I suppose I’ll wear out the barrel, but I’m not worried. I’ll just have a new one fitted and shoot another zillion rounds.

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Aging like a fine wine: My Model 59

The Smith and Wesson Model 59. Mine is a very early one, with a serial number that puts it in the first year of production. These old guns can shoot!

Dial back the clock a cool 46 years (which would put us in 1972), and Smith and Wesson had only recently introduced its Model 59 9mm, double-stack, semi-auto handgun. The 59 was the latest and the greatest in ‘72…a high capacity 9mm with a double stack magazine (like the Browning Hi-Power, the only other gun of its day with this feature) and a double-action first shot (pulling the trigger both cocked and fired the weapon). It was cool. Nah, scratch that. It was super cool.

I first became acquainted with S&W semi-autos with their Model 39, the predecessor to the Model 59. Dick Larsen, a family friend, had a Model 39. Sergeant Larsen was on our local PD and to me he defined cool. I really looked up to Larsen and I loved talking guns with him. In one such discussion the conversation turned to the topic of the day: 9mm handguns versus the venerable .357 magnum revolver. I thought Larsen was a dyed-in-the-wool revolver man, until he showed me his off-duty Model 39. He had it on his belt under a Hawaiian print shirt. It was a cool thing…small and light. I wanted one. “The one to get today is the Model 59,” the good Sergeant said, “if you can find one.”

The Model 59 was a new limited-production item from Smith and Wesson in 1972, and they were tough to get. Rumor has it that S&W developed the 59 for the Navy SEALS (nobody outside S&W and the Navy knew this back then). That’s probably why they were so hard to get initially; nearly all the production was headed to Coronado Island. I was going in the Army and after that conversation with Sergeant Larsen, I wanted a Model 59. In those days, if you wanted to find a hard-to-get gun you either made a lot of phone calls or you visited a lot of gun shops (the Internet and Gunbroker.com did not yet exist). My Dad did both (plus, as a world-class trapshooter, he knew people). I got lucky. Dad found a distributer who could get a Model 59, and I had one before I shipped out for Korea.

I’ve had my Model 59 since 1973, and I’m guessing I’ve probably put something north of 30,000 rounds downrange with it. In my early days, I replaced the black plastic grips with cool tiger-striped exotic wood grips I bought at a Fort Worth gun show (who would want a gun with black plastic parts?), and I had to replace the safety once back in the ‘80s. Other than that, all I’ve done with my Model 59 is shoot the hell out of it and occasionally clean it. It’s surprisingly accurate, it feeds anything, and it’s just plain fun to shoot. It’s a gun I’ll never sell.

Zombies don’t stand a chance against the Model 59. My favorite 9mm load in the 59 is a 125 gr cast roundnose bullet over a max load of Unique propellant.

The good news is the Model 59 ultimately went into high rate production. More than a few police departments chose the 59 when the migration from revolvers to autos occurred in the 1980s. All of those PDs moved on to newer guns, and today you can still find used Model 59s for cheap.

Most folks today have either never heard of the Model 59, or they would smile quaintly at its mention and then tell you how great their plastic Glocks are. But don’t dismiss the Model 59. The 59 is a grand old handgun and I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut you’d love it. Mine just gets better with age (like a fine wine, I guess), and I love shooting it.

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The Atlantic Highlands…

New Jersey may not be a place you would ordinarily think of for a motorcycle ride, but I grew up back there and I’m here to tell you that you can have a good time on a motorcycle in the Garden State. One of the rides I particularly like is along the Jersey shore from Pt. Pleasant to the Atlantic Highlands. Once you’re in Pt. Pleasant, aim your front wheel north and do your best to hug the coastline. It’s Highway 36 for much of that run (it’s called a highway, but it’s really a nice non-highway ride all the way up). Your destination might be (as mine usually is) the Atlantic Highlands, Sandy Hook, and the Gateway National Recreation Area.

I have several recent photos from this area (I was there this past June), and rather than a long narrative, I thought I might simply share the captioned photos…

The view from Mt. Mitchill in the Atlantic Highlands, the highest point on the US east coast south of Maine. That’s the Manhattan skyline at the far horizon. The land across the bay is the actual “Sandy Hook.”

The 9/11 memorial atop Mt. Mitchill. The eagle is carrying an actual piece of I-beam from the Twin Towers. Everyone who lives around here knew people who died on that day.

Names of just a few who died in the Towers on the base of the 9/11 monument.

Another view of Sandy Hook Bay from Mt. Mitchell.

Sandy Hook Light, the oldest operating lighthouse in America. It was built in 1764, 12 years before American independence.

A Nike Ajax along Hartshorne Road, the entrance to the Gateway National Recreation Area, on the way into Fort Hancock.

The Nike Hercules air defense missile, directly across the street from the Nike Ajax shown above. These were a later missile, and they could be configured to carry a nuclear warhead.

Before Fort Hancock provided air defense for New York City, it used coastal artillery to protect the region from seaborne invaders. Some of these guns go back to the early 1800s.

Battery Potter, with steam-powered retractable hidden cannons. Sandy Hook was an early Army proving ground, and the advanced coastal artillery pieces hidden underground behind these walls were tested here. Boom boom!

Two young ladies checking out a hidden mortar base on Fort Hancock. The photo ops here are amazing.

An old Army building on Fort Hancock. Ah, the stories these places could tell…

And there you have it. I like visiting New Jersey, and I never miss an opportunity to ride the Jersey shore. I’m thinking it might make sense to keep a motorcycle back there.

Hmmmm…

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