ExNotes features a bunch of things (motorcycles, guns, watches, reloading, and more). We get way more hits on the gun pieces than we do on anything else, but truth be told, we’re old and we’re not motivated by hits, likes, tweets, or any of the other silliness introduced by the so-called social media platforms. Gresh and I write because we like to write. It’s that simple. Don’t get me wrong: We love it when you click on the pop up ads that appear on the site and in our blogs because that puts money in our pockets.
On occasion, we’ll hear from some left wing asshole (sorry for the redundancy) with his shorts in a knot when we do a gun blog. Hey, we get it: Some folks hate guns. My advice and response has always been simple: If you don’t like guns, don’t buy one. If you don’t like a gun blog, don’t read it.
But even a lifelong, died-in-the-wool shooting enthusiast like yours truly feels sick, disgusted, and unspeakably sad at the rash of mass shootings that have become common in the last few years. I knew a guy who lost a daughter in the Virginia Tech shooting. The aftermath is gut-wrenching. I’ve wondered: Should these high capacity weapons be outlawed? Then I remembered…guns that hold large quantities of ammo have been around for over a hundred years, and when I was a kid, we didn’t have these mass shootings. So what’s changed?
A friend sent this YouTube video to me a few days ago. I can’t remember ever having agreed with Bill Maher on anything (not that he or anyone else needs me to), but I think old Maher nailed it. Take a look:
As I mentioned above, we like it when you click on the pop up ads. We like it even more when you leave comments. We’re eager to hear from you, and if ever one of our posts deserved comments, this is it.
One of the influential people in my life was Woody Peebles. Woody worked at Admiralty Marine down on Shelter Island in San Diego, California. Woody lived on the ocean side of Point Loma in a beautiful, two story home that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. My memory is slightly faulty but I think he was one of the principals, or maybe the owner of, an electronics company called Wavetek. When I started working at Admiralty he was no longer involved with Wavetek and was essentially retired. Woody didn’t need any money; he was well off and I think he hung around boats just to be near people. He was an outgoing personality and chatted a lot.
Woody was an electronics genius, which is different from electrical wiring like the Saturn 5 is different from a bottle rocket. We didn’t work together at first. He did electronics and I worked in the mechanical side of Admiralty Marine. The shop began selling a lot of Onan generators and also installed Electroguard corrosion control systems. Woody was having a hard time keeping up with the growth in that end of the business so I’d get pulled off my mechanical duties to help Woody.
Helping Woody was about as much fun as you could have and still call it work. In the morning we would load up the truck for our day’s jobs and take off from the shop like we meant business. Within a block or two Woody would say, “I’m a little hungry. Want to stop and get breakfast?” Of course I did. We’d pull into a restaurant, settle into a booth, order coffee and shoot the breeze. That would be my second breakfast but I could eat all I wanted and never gain weight.
After an hour or so we would go to the actual job. At noon we would knock off early to beat the lunch rush and we haunted The Red Sails Inn nearly every day. They had a really good house salad with a great salad dressing that made me wheeze. Must have been the nitrates. Rosie was our waitress. We would ask which table was Rosie’s and then go sit at that table.
Besides eating, Woody would take the time to explain complex electronic circuits to me while we were supposed to be fixing some poor bastard’s boat. He was forever drawing out circuits on napkins that had nothing to do with the job at hand. It was like a free, college-level electronics course so I lapped it up. I learned about wave soldering, circuit board etching and to think of a printed circuit board as one component, a single part, instead of a collection of electronic bits.
Woody was never in a rush; his concept of time was a revelation to me. Before Woody I was always on someone else’s time, hurrying and stressing to not be late; pressing to meet some other guy’s idea of how long a job should take. I didn’t own my time. Woody had an entirely different way of marking time. He would step into or out of the workday with ease. Sometimes he would just leave the job we were on, “I’ll be back later.” and off he would go.
Working with Woody made me realize that my time was as important as the next guy’s. Jobs weren’t something you did in a fixed amount of time. In fact, time itself became irrelevant and you measured success by completing the work, not beating the clock. If we were taking too long on a particular job I’d start fretting and Woody would say, “Don’t worry about it, I won’t charge for my time.”
This fungible sort of timekeeping was a fundamental change in my concept of income. Before Woody, I was always trying to work more hours to make more money. Once I learned that I could bend time to my will I no longer needed an hourly job. I didn’t need a business to pay me by the hour. In fact, the hour, my benchmark for self worth, was nothing but a man-made denomination. Days weren’t 24-hours long any more, there was only breakfast, lunch and dinner.
My new way of thinking made it possible for me to quit Admiralty Marine and start a boat repair business. I still kept track of my time and charged by the hour but the pressure was off, I could always adjust the bill later. Customers didn’t tell me how long I had to do a job, I told them what I was going to charge them regardless of the hours involved. I may have run out of time on a job but I never fell behind again: I was always right where I should be.
Woody and I left Admiralty Marine around the same time. I started Gresh Marine and tripled my income on the very first day and I was still billing half of what Admiralty was charging for my time. Woody hooked up with Wayne and Walt, also known as the Gold Dust twins. The Gold Dust twins were independent operators who had a loose affiliation when one or the other needed a second set of hands. The three W’s formed a company called Associated Marine but it was mostly in their minds. Each W did their own thing and would bill each other if they assisted on a job.
Woody must have missed me because after a year or so the three W’s asked me to meet with them to discuss a merger. I went to the meeting. The deal was, Associated Marine was going to rent a building at a marina on Mission Bay. All four of us would split the rent, insurance and other business costs. We would still be independent operators with the added benefit of having a crew you could call upon if you needed help for a big re-wire project or a new boat build.
Wayne, a tall, gangly guy told me that I’d have to raise my rates to make them compatible with the rest of the Associated Marine members. They didn’t want me undercutting them. This meant another doubling of my income. Thus began a several year run of bliss. I loved having a shop to work out of instead of my tiny basement. I met my future wife. I bought a house and my first brand new motorcycle. I spent money as fast as I made it but I was young: that’s what young folks are supposed to do.
Bit by bit, Wayne and Walt sent Woody and I out on more of their jobs. They kept us very busy, so busy we never had time to build our own customer base. I began to realize I had switched from working for Admiralty Marine to working for the Gold Dust twins. Maybe that was their plan all along. Still, the money was good and I was having fun working with Woody so I kept at it.
We never had a receptionist at Associated Marine. An answering machine handled incoming calls and if anyone of us were in the shop we’d answer and take notes. One day I walked in the shop and Wayne’s daughter was in the office manning the phones. We didn’t pay her much but it was another cost of doing business.
Walt wanted an outboard motor dealership so he managed to get Suzuki to make us dealers. Then we needed inventory. With the Suzuki’s came warranty work, which was paperwork intensive. I became an outboard motor mechanic even though I hated the damn things. These changes happened without my input. I was too busy working on Gold Dust jobs.
Then came Woody’s son, Woody Junior. Junior had lost his sales job and crash landed at Associated Marine. Junior was outgoing and gregarious even more so than his dad. Now when we went to breakfast there were three of us. And here I was thinking I was the son, you know? But Junior was the real son. He knew nothing about what we were doing at Associated Marine yet he was charging the same rate as the rest of us. Three men on a job was a bit much so Woody and Junior worked together just like me and Woody used to. I worked alone.
There was a bit of tension in the air. I felt Junior hadn’t paid his dues and was starting on third base so to speak, a base that had taken me many years of hard work to step on. Besides, he stole my Daddy and talked too much.
The situation gnawed at me and I became disgruntled. I mentioned to Wayne that since Junior was charging the same as the rest of us he should pay one-fifth of Associated Marine’s expenses. This blew up big time. Woody charged into a boat where Wayne and I were working and grabbed me by the shirt. “You little shit, stirring up trouble!” Woody screamed at me. Junior was behind me sheepishly saying, “C’mon dad, leave him alone.”
Woody was old and had a dicky heart. I was young and strong. It would be no contest. I was getting angry at him shoving me around by my shirt. I balled up my fist to smack him in the jaw and when he saw that he got even more enraged. “Don’t raise your fist to me!” he shouted, like he was yelling at his own son. My fist went down on its own accord. I thought it would have been nice if my fist had informed me in advance that it wasn’t taking my side. My initial anger had subsided and I was sad and worried that Woody might have a heart attack. Woody stormed off the boat with Junior staying a safe distance behind. Wayne was dazed, “What the hell was that?” He said. I didn’t understand the situation at the time but I had gotten the attention I desired.
You know how they say to be careful what you wish for? After a week or so Woody cooled off and apologized for shoving me around. He told me that he’d thought it over and that I was right. Junior became a partner in associated Marine and assumed his fifth of the expenses. Junior had breezed into the Majors without spending a day in the minor leagues.
From then on I generally stayed out of trouble and just worked but it wasn’t nearly as much fun as the old days. Woody, Junior and I did a few big boats together but Junior’s work ethic grated on my nerves. Junior became a passable electrician when he applied himself except he was always talking. I didn’t mind carrying Woody because I could do the work of two men. Junior was one body too many. I finally drifted away from Associated Marine and restarted Gresh Marine as an independent business.
I tried to find Woody online but came up with nothing. . He would be around 100 today so he’s probably not with us. Junior is still alive and living in San Diego. When I first met Woody all I could see was dollars per hour. I wanted a job, any job. I wanted to work for someone. I needed someone to tell me what to do next. After Woody and I parted ways I felt that there was nothing I couldn’t do and I feared nothing business-wise. After Woody I never had a job for the rest of my life and I managed to stay busy the entire time. Thanks, old friend.
It’s been a long haul correcting double action misfires on my snubnose Smith and Wesson revolver, but the magnificent Model 60 is where I want it to be now. Here’s how I went about it.
My Model 60 had too much end shake (the cylinder had a lot of back and forth play). Shimming the cylinder with TriggerShim’s excellent shims quickly corrected that problem. Shimming the cylinder keeps it closer to the firing pin and that permits more energy from the hammer’s fall transferring directly into the primer. You can read our blog about correcting cylinder end shake here.
My reloaded ammo’s primers were not completely seated. When that occurs, some of the hammer and firing pin’s energy goes into fully seating the primer rather than firing it. You want ammo reloaded for use in double action revolvers to have very slightly flattened primers after the primer seating operation, and that can be achieved with Lee’s excellent primer seating tool. You can read about that here.
If a revolver is out of time the firing pin will hit the primer off-center resulting in unreliable ignition. If you shoot enough your revolver will go out of time. Correcting revolver timing typically involves fitting a new hand and you can read about that here.
If your revolver’s hammer spring has weakened over the years or as a result of use you can easily install a new Wolff hammer spring. We wrote a blog about that you can read here.
If you’re having problems with misfires in a double action revolver, the above areas are where I would look first.
The Big Island, Hawaii, was formed by volcanoes, like the other Hawaiian islands and nearly all others in the Pacific. Five volcanoes formed the Big Island, and one is still active. That’s the Kīlauea volcano. It’s the one you see above. It’s the one we visited recently.
The walk from the park entrance to the Kileaua crater.
It’s a bit of a hike to get to the Kīlauea volcano crater once you enter the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (the photo above shows the way in), but the hike is worth it. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is one of the few National Parks in Hawaii that charges admission. I have the brass pass (the senior citizen National Parks lifetime pass), which has to be one of the best deals ever.
The big photo at the top of this blog is the crater, and it was impressive. Hissing steam, a bit of lava flow, and a hint of what this planet is all about. It was only in the last 50 years that the US Navy completely mapped the Pacific floor. The Navy survey found many underwater mountains formed by volcanoes, all in a straight line. A theory emerged that these were formed by the same magma eruption (i.e., a volcano) that created the Hawaiian Islands (which are the end of that straight line). The eruption is a fixed point; the islands and underwater mountains that extend in a thousand-mile-long straight line occurred as a result of tectonic plate shift over this point. Fascinating stuff.
Lava in the Kīlauea crater.
The red glow you see in the photo above is lava in the Kīlauea crater. I was a good half mile or more away from it, but thanks to the 24-120 Nikon lens and a bit of PhotoShop cropping, it looks like I’m right there. Trust me; I wasn’t.
We stayed just outside the Park on Volcano Road in a bed and breakfast tucked away deep in a tropical bamboo forest. It was pretty cool and very remote. Think banana trees, palms, humidity, colorful birds, and everything you might expect to see in an equatorial jungle. We had a herd of wild pigs briefly wander into our yard one afternoon (and I, without a rifle or a camera, could only stare). Surprisingly, the nights were deafening thanks to the Coqui frogs. The Coqui frogs are an invasive species from Puerto Rico. A few evidently hitched rides on plants coming from Puerto Rico to Hawaii. The Coqui have no natural enemies in Hawaii, and they reproduced to levels previously unheard of (folks who know about this stuff estimate the Hawaiian Coqui population density at roughly 2,000 frogs per acre, and with no natural enemies, the levels are still climbing). Well, maybe “unheard of” is probably a poor choice of words. Believe me, at night, all you can hear are the Coqui. Their “croak” is a 100-decibel “Co Kee” and when you multiply that by 2,000 per acre…well, you get the idea. How a tiny frog the size of half your thumb generates that kind of noise is beyond me. It’s deafening and goes from dusk to dawn. The good news is that the Coqui are only in the jungle areas; we didn’t have that problem on the other side of the island.
To state the obvious, you can’t ride your motorcycle to Hawaii. But you can rent a motorcycle there. The going rate is about $200 for a day, and if you rent for several days, the rate drops a bit. The roads through Hawaii are scenic, and in a week on the Big Island you can pretty much take in most of what there is to see. I checked out the motorcycle rentals in Hawaii’s Waikaloa Village. Big Island Motorcycle Company had Harley big twins, Sportsters, and Suzuki V-Stroms, along with Polaris three-wheelers and other vehicles. Gas prices in Hawaii were high, but surprisingly, they were below what gas costs in California these days.
There’s not a lot of Internet noise on the revivified BSA motorcycle company and I don’t see any reason why ExhaustNotes.us shouldn’t try and create some buzz with wild speculation of our own. We haven’t got a test bike and if we did we’d be riding the wheels off the thing so we’ll just imagine we have a BSA to examine. If you haven’t learned by now not to trust things you read on the Internet then there’s really no hope for you and you can take everything I say in this review as gospel.
In the US market BSA is re-entering the motorcycle business at a bad time. Our customer demographic for street motorcycle riders becomes older by the minute. 1950’s-1960’s nostalgia-driven motorcycle sales simply must die off with the customers that lived that stifling, bland era. In just a few seconds I was able to gin up a statistic that said the average age for motorcyclists in America is 73 years old. That number shocked me even though I knew it was false because I was the one that made it up. Soon enough I came to believe that number because it was on the Internet in this ExhaustNotes.us story.
In the video below new-BSA’s Indian owners appear to realize the American market is awash with nostalgic motorcycle choices and don’t seem to be in any rush to lose money chasing the urine soaked, grey-haired, pony-tailed, ancient American rider even though that dried up shell of a man would appear to be the natural audience for such a bike.
The motorcycle might be built in Britain, but most likely will be made in India with a steadying British hand on the design choices. BSA has really nailed the look. The new 650 is as close to the old Gold Star style-wise as you can get without having survived the bombing of Coventry. To me, the bike looks great and is so much classier than the swoopy, exo-framed modern bike. BSA even made the engine clatter like an old British single even though it’s a liquid-cooled, double overhead cam, 4-valve engine. I looked on BSA’s website to see of it was fuel–injected but didn’t see that spec. I’m sure it is. Claimed compression ratio is 11.5:1 so hopefully the combustion chamber is shaped well enough to use regular unleaded gas. Finding high-octane gas is a problem out in the hinterlands.
The claimed 45 horsepower BSA thumper comes with all the modern conveniences like ABS, headlights, turn indicators and a hose bib for a washing machine. The bike is also equipped with a 23,000-watt inverter allowing the rider to power a typical suburban home for up to 5 days. The bike is fairly lightweight compared to your average adventure motorcycle clocking in at only 33-1/2 stone. One disc brake on each wheel should stop the light-ish BSA fairly well and with a claimed 70 miles-per-1024 dram you should be able to go roughly 210 miles on the 3240-dram tank. Of course, your mileage may vary depending of which rose-colored glasses you are wearing at the time.
BSA’s website doesn’t mention a counter balancer but one of the guys in the video says it has one so I predict a tolerable vibration level even with that big slug flying around between your legs. Traditional telescopic forks and two rear shocks are nothing earth shaking. I like simple things so I’m good with boring old suspenders. Spoke rims and what looks like tube-type tires are all well-trod design choices that leave plenty of space for improvements on subsequent model years.
As it should, my opinion means nothing to you but I like the new BSA. It looks right, and it has the bare minimum modern junk bolted on. I’ll go as far as saying it’s an honest motorcycle. The only thing wrong is the price. Even with the collapsing British pound, 10,000 British pounds is over $11,000 US dollars and that’s almost twice what Royal Enfield’s 650 twin sells for, a bike that is every bit as cool and most likely better. The Enfield even wins AFT flat track races. I won’t be buying one but don’t let that stop you from buying one.
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Maybe it’s me. I just can’t get excited about $40K motorcycles. I’ve seen the uber-offerings from Harley’s Custom Vehicle Operations (kind of sounds military, doesn’t it?) and that supercharged Kawasaki a few years ago. Those are and were priced in the stratosphere, too. The whole thing just reeks of people who have more money than brains. Way more. Like I said, maybe it’s just me.
The latest obscenely expensive bit of garage jewelry comes from Ducati in the form of the 2022 Ducati Panigale V4 SP2. It’s that rattle-can primer gray Ducati you see in the photo above. The Panigale V4 SP2 is an enhanced version of the V4 SP that shaves a bit over two pounds off the weight of the motorcycle. Can two pounds really make a difference? Yes, Ducati and the magazine writers breathlessly exclaim, if it’s two pounds taken from the right places.
Give me a break.
Especially give me a break when you consider the dilettantes who buy these machines. I’ve seen them up on Angeles Crest Highway in the parking lot at Newcomb’s. They are the same types who add carbon fiber bits and pieces to their Gixxers. Most of them, like me, are afflicted with Dunlap’s Disease (you know, when your belly done lapped over your belt buckle), so the point of shaving a few ounces here and there off the motorcycle is lost on me. Skip a meal, dude. Get to the gym. You’ll accomplish more.
So, I’ll set my benchmark: A $40K motorcycle that costs $40K because it has a miniscule amount of extra horsepower and weighs 2.2 pounds less than the standard model…well, that’s too much. You don’t need to spend stupidly (I can think of no other word) to buy a motorcycle you can have a lot of fun with. But that’s a topic for another blog.
With the pandemic more and more in the rearview mirror, local car shows are making a comeback. If you’re into cars and photography, this is a great way to spend a morning. We recently visited a show at the local Ford dealer. It was hot, but it was fun, and I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.
The 55 and 56 F-100s you see above were awesome, as was today’s cover image. My favorite was probably the baby blue Galaxy convertible you see above.
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From time to time Gresh and I have written about a few of the great people we worked with over the years. For me, Gordon Smith is at the top of the list. Gordon was the real deal: Movie star good looks, charisma, Ivy League credentials, war hero, successful senior executive, successful entrepreneur, and a man who deeply understood what leadership is all about. I worked for Gordon in the early ’90s, lost track of him for a couple of decades, had dinner with him about 3 years ago, and learned of his passing about a year and a half ago. Gordon had 92 years on this planet so I guess he got his money’s worth, but knowing he is gone makes the world seem a lot emptier. He was a little frail when we last met, but he still had his razor sharp mind, his Boston accent, his full head of hair, and his amazing wit and gracious charm.
Gordon Smith as a young naval aviator.
Gordon Smith was a naval aviator (a carrier pilot and commander) who flew 244 combat missions in Korea and Vietnam. He’d been shot down, he’d been run over by an aircraft carrier after a failed catapult launch (keel hauled, he called it), he’d been decorated for valor numerous times, he was one of the top people in Naval Intelligence, and the list goes on. I can’t do his Navy career justice here, but I strongly suggest you take 5 minutes and read the tribute one of his fellow admirals wrote. I’ll give you a couple of links at the end this blog. Trust me on this: Gordon Smith was one hell of a man and a true leader.
Commander Gordon Smith in action aboard the USS Oriskany.
How I met Gordon is an interesting story. I had been laid off at Aerojet Ordnance and I took a lower level job at Sargent-Fletcher, another So Cal aerospace company. Sargent-Fletcher was a nice company but I wasn’t happy with the culture there and after six months, another offer floated in for a VP-level job in Orlando (it came about as a result of my earlier job search). So off I went to make my mark in Florida building military lasers, where I loved the work but hated the area. Central Florida, to me, was heat, humidity, and cockroaches so big they fought you for the covers at night (the Floridians call them palmetto bugs, but you can’t fool me; those things were cockroaches). I knew I had to get back to southern California. I don’t mean to insult anyone with my comments about Florida, but it is what it is. You’re young; you’ll get over it. Mea culpa.
The call came in from Sargent-Fletcher early one Friday morning after I’d been in Orlando for six months. They hired a new president (that would be Gordon Smith), he heard about my brief pre-Orlando stint at Fletcher, and he wanted to meet me. On Saturday, the next day. It was a redeye flight, I forgot to bring my dress shoes, and the next morning I was in Gordon’s office in a suit and tie and my running sneakers. We had a good interview and he asked me what I wanted. I gave my Miss America answer: A meaningful position, a chance to make a contribution on a winning team, you know, the standard Miss America “I like long walks on the beach and I want to work for world peace” bullshit interview response.
Gordon smiled. “I mean money,” he said, rubbing the fingers of his hand like he was counting cash. “How much do you need?”
Gordon Smith around the time I worked for him. His leadership skills were incredible.
Hmmm. I guess I should have thought about that earlier, but truth be told, I had not. I gave an obscenely high answer, which I regretted even before I finished saying it. I was desperate to get back to southern California, and I just blew it, I thought, by being greedy.
Gordon smiled. “The number I had in mind was…” and then he offered $2K more than what I had said. I kind of locked up mentally. Let’s see, I thought, he asked how much I wanted. I said X. He came back with X plus $2K. I had studied negotiation tactics. It wasn’t supposed to work that way. I didn’t know what to say. Gordon smiled. He knew.
You should never accept a job offer immediately, but what could I say?
“I’m your boy.”
“What are you doing for dinner?” Gordon asked. My mind was still thinking about what had just happened. I had a flight back to Orlando the next day. I told Gordon we hadn’t made any plans, and he said, “Good, come to my restaurant for dinner.”
“Sure,” I said. “You already have a favorite restaurant here in So Cal?” I knew he had just become the president at Sargent-Fletcher.
“I own a restaurant here,” Gordon answered.
“You own a restaurant?” Sometimes, I can be incredibly smooth.
Gordon’s restaurant was the Nieuport 17, and it wasn’t just a restaurant. It was one of the swankiest dining experiences in the world. It had (as the name implied) an aviation motif. When Sue and I pulled up and gave our keys to the valet, a tall, elegant man in an exquitely-tailored suit approached. “You must be Joe, and you must be Sue. I’ve heard so much about you.” It was Wilbur, Gordon’s Nieuport 17 partner and co-owner. Wilbur escorted us in to the lobby, which was decorated with photos of famous aviators and astronauts. Gordon’s picture hung on that wall. Wilbur saw me eyeing the photos. My gaze fixed on one autographed by Neil Armstrong. Yes, that Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. “Neil is usually here,” Wilbur said. “If he’s in tonight, I’ll introduce you.”
Gordon joined us and asked if we’d like a tour of the restaurant. It was awesome. All the wait staff were dressed in some sort of pseudo-Navy nautical uniform. The chefs and their helpers damn near snapped to attention when we entered the kitchen. It was “Good evening, Admiral,” and “How are you this evening, Admiral?” all around. All hands were on deck.
When we (we being me, Sue, and Gordon) sat down for dinner, Wilbur came over and asked if he could join us. “I haven’t had dinner yet,” he explained. Sure, no problem. Wilbur asked what we liked best from our prior visits, and I explained it was our first time in the Nieuport 17. Wilbur showed some surprise, and then he held his arm up and snapped his fingers. Suddenly, there were at least eight waiters and waitresses at our table. “Bring Sue and Joe a sampler of everything on the menu,” Wilbur ordered, and the wait staff went to battle stations following those orders. We weren’t hungry after sampling literally every main course, but hey, I couldn’t be impolite. We both went with the chicken with Morel mushrooms. It was heavenly.
I spent four years at Sargent-Fletcher, and on every one of those days I couldn’t wait to get to work in the morning and I always stayed late in the evening. I hired on as the QA director, and then one morning Gordon called me to his office to tell me he had just fired the engineering director. “Wow, that’s a bold move,” I said. “Who’s going to run Engineering?” Gordon looked at me and smiled. I knew. I had a new job. “Okay,” I said, “but who’s going to take over Quality?” Gordon continued to look at me and smile without speaking. Okay, so I’d be wearing two hats for a while. A year or so later, I had another call to come to Gordon’s office, and he told me he had just fired the Operations director. “Wow,” I said. “Who’s going to run the plant?” Another Gordon smile, and now I was wearing three hats. I loved that job, we had the plant back on schedule in short order, and Gordon kept showering me with raises. His idea was to pay people more than they thought they were worth. It worked. But that wasn’t the best part. Gordon would tell me what he felt the company needed; he never told me how to go about making it happen. He knew how to lead. Find the right people, pay them more than they think they want, then get out of their way. It was awesome.
Here’s the link about Gordon’s career I mentioned earlier. If you would like to read about Gordon’s decorations for valor (including the Silver Star), those are here. Rest in peace, Admiral Smith. You earned it.
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The .35 Whelen is an interesting cartridge. A wildcat formed by necking .30 06 brass up to .35 caliber, it’s been called the poor man’s .375 H&H, but the price of ammo would suggest it’s anything but a poor man’s cartridge. A box of 20 factory rounds when I checked just a few minutes ago ranged from a low of $50 to a high of $72. For 20 rounds? Gimme a break!
My .35 Whelen Ruger No. 1. They didn’t make too many of these and mine has exceptional Circassian walnut. It’s not for sale.
I like to shoot, but I’m a cheap SOB and truth be told, I don’t like beating my self up with factory .35 Whelen recoil. Roll that up with the good luck I’ve been having with good buddy Ralph’s Boudreau Bullets in several handguns and I wondered: Could I have Ralph make .35 caliber powder-coated pistol bullets sized to .359 inches? You see, cast pistol bullets for the .38 Special or .357 Mag are ordinarily sized to .358 inches (the sizing operation occurs after the bullets are cast when they are swaged down to the desired diameter). But .358-inch diameter bullets probably wouldn’t work in the Whelen. The .35 Whelen rifle has a bore of .359 and shooting bullets sized to .358 would allow the propellant gases to escape around the bullet as it traveled down the barrel. That would melt the sides of the bullet and create God-awful leading. A tighter fit (with .359 bullets) ought to work better, and powder-coated cast pistol bullets are inexpensive. Inexpensive is good. Did I mention I’m a cheap SOB?
Boudreau 158-grain powder-coated pistol bullets with candy apple green powder coating. These are sized to .359.
I’ve loaded jacketed pistol bullets in the .35 Whelen before, I’ve loaded cast pistol bullets, and I’ve also loaded cast rifle bullets from Montana Bullet Works. The Montana bullets are great and the Whelen performed well with them. The jacketed pistol bullets worked well. The cast pistol bullets I tried before didn’t work well (you can read about that here). The premium cast Montana Bullet Works bullets are not cheap (nor should they be). I wanted something inexpensive so that I could play with the Whelen at recoil levels comparable to a .22. Maybe Ralph’s powder-coated pistol bullets would work.
Montana Bullet Works cast rifle bullets. These are very accurate, but they cost as much as jacketed rifle bullets.
Ralph obliged, and when my .359 158-grain cast semi-wadcutters arrived, the fun began. I did my research on the Internet about what loads other folks had used with cast pistol bullets in the .35 Whelen, or at least I attempted to. Like everything else on the Internet, opinions were all over the map.
I make .35 Whelen brass from older .30 06 brass that I had already reloaded a few times by running the cases through a .35 Whelen full length resizer. Not every case survived the neck expanding operation.Loaded .35 Whelen ammunition with Boudreau’s 158-grain powder-coated bullets. Later loads seated the bullets out further for an overall cartridge length of 2.910 inches. I don’t use a crimp on these bullets and I neck size only.
I initially went with what one forum commenter fervently quoted: Low charges of Trail Boss were the way to go with 158-grain cast bullets. He was wrong, as least as far as my Ruger No. 1 is concerned. I tried 13.0 grains and the groups at 50 yards were (no kidding) about a foot in diameter. This might be okay for a shotgun, but not a rifle. The groups were lousy, but I noticed that the bore was clean. Ralph’s powder coating, which had worked well in keeping a handgun bore clean, worked well in the longer rifle barrel as well.
These groups were typical of all loads tried (except the last one).A nice clean bore with Trail Boss powder. There was no leading.
I next tried Unique propellant (first with 13.0 grains, and then with 15.0 grains), which had worked well for me in the past in a variety of cast rifle loads for other cartridges. Nope, both of these loads shot lousy groups, too, and they leaded the bore way more than Trail Boss. Trail Boss is actually a faster powder than Unique, so the slower-burning Unique was driving the bullets to higher velocities.
Bore leading with Unique. This stuff doesn’t dissolve with Hoppe’s or any other commonly-used bore solvent. You’ve got to scrub it out with a bore brush.
Then it was on to Bullseye. I found a few references to these loads in various forum comments, but Bullseye is a dicey powder and I wanted a better load data source than some yahoo on a gun forum. I hit paydirt when I found an old Ideal reloading manual and it had a Bullseye load for the .35 Remington (the .35 Whelen was still a wildcat cartridge when this manual was published and there was no load data for it). I figured with the .35 Whelen’s bullet weight and case volume, I wouldn’t get into trouble using the .35 Remington load. I tried it and I tried a few others with a bit more powder (there were no pressure signs), but nope, it was not to be. I still had terrible groups at 50 yards.
Loads from an old Ideal reloading manual. It was a place to start.Bullseye loads in the .35 Whelen produced no leading.
Hmmmm. Maybe it’s a powder position thing, I wondered. I called Ralph at Boudreau’s Bullets and chatted with him. Ralph explained that when the powder doesn’t fill the case, powder position makes a huge difference in accuracy even in a 9mm pistol cartridge. Okay, I can fix that, I thought. So after loading my brass again with the same light Bullseye loads, I inserted a cleaning patch in each cartridge to hold the powder up against the primer. Still no cigar, though: The groups remained stuck on atrocious. It was cool, however, seeing the cleaning patch threads dissipate downrange in the scope after each shot. One good thing that came out of the Bullseye loads was that they didn’t lead the bore. Well, maybe two good things: I didn’t blow myself up. Okay, three good things: None of the bullets stuck in the bore.
I was just about ready to give up trying to make the powder-coated .359 Boudreau bullets work in the Whelen when my mind returned to the powder position question. Okay, I thought, the cleaning patch wad trick (a noble thought) was a bust. But Trail Boss might still be the way to go, even though the lighter load wouldn’t group. Those earlier 13.0-grain Trail Boss loads left a lot of unoccupied space in the case. The beauty of Trail Boss is that you can load all the way up to the bullet base (thereby completely eliminating the powder position issue, as the case will be full) without overpressurizing the cartridge. So that’s what I did. I measured where the base of the bullet would be at a cartridge overall length of 2.910 inches and I filled a case to that level with Trail Boss. The magic number was 19.3 grains. I adjusted my powder dispenser and went to work.
19.3 grains of Trail Boss powder in my RCBS powder scale. The powder flakes look like little Cheerios.19.3 grains of Trail Boss in the .35 Whelen cases. The powder stack just touches the bullet base. The propellant is held in place and it provides a nice, even, repeatable burn.
The next day I was on the range at the West End Gun Club. I’d been reading more forum posts about 158-grain semi-wadcutter bullets in .35 Whelen and the feel I got from them was that most people were shooting at 25 yards. You know, turning a grizzly bear rifle into a close-range gopher grabber. Okay, that’s an old reloaders trick: You want tighter groups, just move the target closer. So for the first six of my 19.3-grain Trail Boss loads, I shot at a 25-yard target and wowee: Finally, a group!
19.3 grains of Trail Boss and the 158-grain Boudreau powder-coated bullets at 25 yards.
It wasn’t a great group (I’ve shot tighter groups at 25 yards with a handgun), but it was a group. It was a clear indication I was on to something. So I next set up a target at 50 yards.
The same 19.3 grains of Trail Boss at 50 yards. I can’t explain that flyer off to the right. But the other five rounds were looking better. More work is necessary. I have a path forward.
That group was gratifying. I can’t explain the one flyer off to the right (the trigger broke cleanly on that shot and it felt like it should have grouped with the others…maybe it hit a fly on the way to the target). The other five shots went into a group about the size of the bullseye, but biased to the right. That’s one thing I noticed with all of these light loads: They shoot to the right.
When I returned home, I photographed the muzzle. It’s the photo at the top of this blog. I was pleased to see how clean it was. It had the same appearance as occurred before with 13.0 grains of Trail Boss. There was a kind of swirly thing going on near the muzzle inside the bore; I think that is a combination of melted lead and powder-coating paint behind the bullet as it exits the bore. The rifling was clean, as in no lead.
There are a few more things I should mention: When you’re loading at these reduced levels, the brass doesn’t really expand or stretch. Neck sizing works just fine. Also, when you’re loading cast bullets, you have to flare the brass case’s mouth (I use a Lee tool for this) so that the bullet can get an easy start into the case. If you don’t flare the case, you’ll shave the powder coating and lead off the sides of the bullet, both of which will degrade accuracy. And one more note…you’ll see in these photos that I seat the bullets pretty far out for an overall cartridge length of 2.910 inches. The bullets are not contacting the rifling at that length, and there’s enough of the bullet in the case to keep it aligned. I’m not worried about setback (the bullets moving under recoil) because the Ruger No. 1 is a single-shot rifle.
The gray arrows point to a very slight flare. You have to flare the cases before seating the bullets or the case will shave the bullet as it is inserted into the cartridge case.The bullet seating and crimping die in my RCBS Rockchucker press. Seating and crimping are performed in two separate steps.
After I seat all the bullets to the correct depth, I then back way off on the bullet seater (again, denoted by the upper arrow in the above photograph). I’ll next screw in the die body (denoted by the lower arrow) until the reduced crimping radius in the die body interior contacts the mouth of the cartridge. At that point, I’ll adjust the die by screwing it in just a little bit further. What I’m doing is adjusting the die so that it removes the flare, but does not crimp the case mouth. You can see the results (i.e., the case mouth flare removed) noted by the red arrows in the photo below.
The upper arrows show the case mouth after the crimping die has removed the case mouth flare. These are not crimped; I adjusted the die to just remove the flare. The lower red arrow indicates the depth to wihch I neck sized these cases.
Back to the cost issue: As you read at the start of this blog, a box of 20 rounds of .35 Whelen factory ammo goes for anywhere between $50 and $72. By my computations, the reloads you read about here cost under $6 for a box of 20 rounds.
So what’s next? Well, the brass is in the tumbler and I’m going to load more. Same load, which kicks about like a .22. Then I’ll try reducing the load slightly to see if that improves things. Stay tuned; you’ll be able to read all about it right here on the ExNotes blog.
Another day on the range, and another set of test results. These are the first loads I’ve tried with Boudreau’s 158-grain powder-coated semi-wadcutter bullets. I loaded the Boudreau bullets into .38 Special cases for evaluation in a Colt Python and a Smith and Wesson Model 60. My first reloads were with Accurate No. 5 powder.
158-grain Boudreau bullets in candy green. Boudreau’s makes a good bullet.Fresh .38 Special reloads. The candy green color goes well with brass cases.
These days, you take what you can get when it comes to reloading components. I previously developed accurate .38 Special loads with Bullseye, Unique, Power Pistol, and WW 231 propellant (you can read about them on our Tales of the Gun page), but I haven’t previously loaded .38 Special with Accurate No 5. It was the only powder my reloading shop had in stock, so I bought a couple of bottles to try.
Classy-looking ammo.Accurate No. 5 propellant.
Finding data for powder-coated bullets is a bit dicey, and it’s even more difficult with Accurate No. 5. There’s load data on the Accurate website, and they recommended a load range of 5.3 to 5.9 grains for this powder with a 158-grain powder-coated bullet. I loaded at 5.4 grains (0.1 grain above the minimum) to try in both my Colt Python and my Model 60 Smith and Wesson (both of which have been massaged with custom triggers from good buddy TJ’s Custom Gunworks).
Colt Python results at 50 feet. Not bad for an initial load. Subscribe to the ExNotes blog for future load tests.Smith and Wesson Model 60 load results at 50 feet. This is not too shabby for a snubnose revolver.
I recently tried Boudreau’s 9mm 125-gr bullets and I was very pleased with the results (you can read about that here). I’m just getting started developing loads for the .38 Special with the Boudreau powder-coated bullets.
9mm ammo reloaded with Boudreau’s powder-coated bullets.
You may have noticed that Boudreau’s Bullets is now an advertiser on the ExNotes site. I like the product and we want to share the knowledge with you. You can call the number on their site; ask to talk to Ralph. He’s very knowledgeable and you will be in good hands.
