Tag: Guest Blog

My Best Breakdown Story Ever

Nope, it’s not my breakdown story, and it’s not Gresh’s, either.  This one comes to us as a guest blog from good buddy Bob O, whom you may remember from his earlier blog about a custom handgun by TJ, another good buddy.  I’ll give you the link for that blog later.

Bob was a motorcycle messenger in an earlier life, and this story comes to us from those halcyon days of yesteryear.

Over to you, Bob!

It was some years ago, about 1983 or as kids today would call it, the ancient time before the common use of the Internet or social media. I was working as a motorcycle messenger here in Los Angeles. It was an interesting way to make a living. I had started out as an in-house delivery rider for a travel agency and then moved up to messenger services.  We were based in Century City in West L.A. on the land that had been 20th Century’s Film Corp’s back lot back before the movie industry shrank due to television.  I used to run all day long on the bike (typically about 200 to 250 miles a day). Pick up three messages in Beverly Hills going downtown, pick up one downtown going back to the west side, etc., etc., all day long.

Motorcycles are great for this kind of work in dense LA traffic. Lane splitting is legal in California and that in conjunction with ease of parking made bikes a lot more efficient than cars in both time and cost. I was running a Suzuki GN 400, a forgotten little 400cc single-cylinder street bike that they made for about 3 years. It was left over from the prior year’s production and they were being sold off at a bargain basement price. As I recall I paid $1123 for it brand spanking new. It wasn’t fast and it wasn’t flashy but it was fast enough for messenger work and was about as reliable as an anvil or the sun. And it just sipped fuel.  All in all it could have used a little more uumph power wise but it got the job done.

I lived in the Southbay area of LA which is in the southwest part of the county and the office was in West LA. If the dispatchers could they would try to get me a south run to help pay my way home at the end of the day.  This particular day I was in the office at about 4:30 that afternoon and the day was still frantic but winding down. My dispatcher called my name and told me he had an Orange County for me which was a good one money wise and also because it was southbound. The pick up was in Westwood going to Stanton in Orange County.

I took the dispatch ticket and went downstairs to my bike and off to Westwood I went with a big smile on my face. Got the pick up in Westwood and headed south on the notorious 405 freeway lane splitting merrily on my way through bumper to bumper rush hour traffic. I got to Artesia Boulevard in Torrance and doglegged across the Southbay to pick up the 91 freeway going to Orange County which is a distance of about 5 or so miles on the surface streets.

I was just getting on the 91 when suddenly my rear end started swinging wildly back and forth – Ugh!!!! Damn!!! I blew a rear tire!!  I made my way to the shoulder of the freeway and walked about a hundred feet to a freeway call box. Nobody in those days had cell phones then except rich people and they were the size of a brick so all we had were beepers duct taped to our back pack straps. I got on the phone with the Highway Patrol operator and was trying to get a driver to come and pick up the delivery I had as it had to be there. This was somewhat difficult as the office had closed and we were trying to arrange all this through relays of calls to a nighttime relief driver.

As I was waiting for the operator to come back on the line I heard a horn honking repeatedly. I looked down at the freeway onramp just below me and for some reason there was a guy in a white bobtail truck honking and waving at me. I ignored this friendly gesture as I was in the middle of a minor crisis and also had no idea who the hell it was and was still waiting for the Highway Patrol operator on the call box to come back on the line.

Much to my surprise, the truck did not continue onto the freeway but edged over onto the shoulder where my bike was and started backing up. Well, this required a bit of investigation as it obviously was more than just a friendly hello from someone just passing by, so I put down the call box phone and ran over to the bike while the bobtail reversed to about 20 feet away from the bike. I approached the cab of the truck and miracle of miracles it was a friend of mine who just happened to be getting on the freeway who looked over, recognized me, and stopped. “Hey didn’t you see me waving at you”? Um,…..well yeah but didn’t know it was you”. “So what happened”? “I blew a rear tire” “Hey, no problem, lets put it on the lift gate and I’ll get you home.”

Well, we did just that. Up into the bobtail the Suzuki went, it got tied down, and my bud took me to the stop in Stanton to drop the package and then dropped me off right in my driveway in Redondo Beach. As he drove away I was kind of thinking to myself “did that really just happen or am I dreaming?” Well, it did happen. Sometimes you just get lucky. Real lucky.

That’s a great story, Bob.  Thanks for sharing it with us.  Ride safe and keep your powder dry.

As promised, here’s the link to Bob’s other post.

Do you want to write a guest blog for ExNotes?  Let us know (info@exhaustnotes.us) and we’ll get right bactk to you!

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Bringing a 405 Ruger No. 1 Back To Life

Good buddy and fellow Inland Empire shooter Jose recently posted on Facebook about what has to be one of the best deals ever for a highly collectible Ruger No. 1 in .405 Winchester.  Ruger produced only a small number of these rifles (I’ve only seen one in person at a gun show a few years ago).  This one has exceptional walnut, which makes it even more desirable.

Here’s Jose’s story.  Enjoy, my friends.

I’ve never had any desire to hunt African game and I probably never will. But I’ve enjoyed reading about the African plains rifles since I was a kid in junior high school. Bringing a copy of Guns & Ammo magazine to school would probably get you a quick trip to the principal’s office these days…but I digress.

Exquisite walnut is often found on the older Ruger No. 1 rifles.

Quite a few years ago I saw an old Ruger No.1 Tropical in the consignment rack of a small gun shop that is now long gone. The owner said, “just pick it up and feel the heft.”  And of course, I did and the next thing you know we were talking price, knowing I would never pay $2,000 for a collectible Ruger No. 1.  Shaun confided in me that the rifle’s owner couldn’t find the obsolete 405 ammo for it anywhere and he wasn’t a handloader, so he wanted to sell the rifle. Another problem with the rifle was that a previous owner had cut down the front sight, probably because he had been shooting handloads with .41 caliber pistol bullets. So we settled on $500 and I became the owner of my first “unobtainable” Ruger No. 1!

In the gun shop years ago eyeing the Ruger No. 1. Salesman Shaun said, “hand me your phone and let me take a photo of you so you can see how good you look with that rifle!”  Shaun passed away a couple of years ago, but I know he smiled down from Heaven yesterday as I fired the Ruger No. 1H Tropical for the first time. And he was right, this gun was meant for me!

It took me a lot of searching over the past few years, but I finally located a set of 405 Win reloading dies, the shell holder, and all the components to bring this rifle back to life.

Hornady had made a run of new 405 Winchester brass and I was lucky enough to find a New Old Stock box of 50 shells. I also located some new Barnes .412, 300 grain TSX bullets.

The first step in restoring the old 1H Tropical was to contact Ruger and purchase a new gold bead front sight. That was a simple install as the blade is held in place by a small detent spring.

New Ruger NOS gold bead front sight blade installed.

Not wanting to use the expensive Barnes TSX bullets quite yet, lead bullets were cast from lead wheel weights with a bit of tin added using a Lyman 412263 plain base mold to cast 288 grain bullets. These were sized to 0.413 inch and lubed with Alox. Lyman has since discontinued this fine old bullet mold.

A Lyman 412263 bullet, lubed and sized.

Finally, yesterday morning I decided it was time to resurrect this old rifle! Besides, the project would give me the opportunity to test some old “salvage” Hodgdon 4198 powder I’ve had sitting on the shelf for nearly two decades. The powder is probably from the 1950s or early 1960s. I also had some ancient CCI 200 large rifle primers on hand.

Hodgdon “salvage” 4198 smokeless powder. The powder is probably WW II US Military surplus powder that Hogdon bought in bulk and repackaged in the late 1950s or early 1960s.
Vintage components for a vintage cartridge.

I loaded 20 rounds of 405 Winchester ammo using the cast lead bullets and a starting load of 38.5 grains of 4198 and headed down the hill with good friend Yvon to an informal shooting range on BLM land.

The obsolete 405 Winchester cartridge (left) and the popular 45-70 Government cartridge (right) used by 1880s plains buffalo hunters of the American west. I don’t shoot buffalo and never will. But I enjoy reviving and firing old guns!

Let me say that this Ruger No. 1H Tropical in 405 Winchester lives again. It shoots incredibly tight groups with the cast bullets and gold bead open sights.

My next project will be to develop a non-lead hunting load using the 300 grain Barnes TSX bullets.

Bringing life back into old obsolete rifles can be tons of fun.

That’s an awesome story, Jose, and thanks for allowing us to share it here on the ExNotes blog.  Your No. 1 has to be one of the best deals ever.   The dealer’s original asking price is probably what that rifle is worth if you could find one for sale.  Well done, my friend.

More Tales of the Gun!

45 Colt New Service (by Guy Miner)

Good buddy Guy Miner, former US Marine and retired law enforcement officer, enjoys following the ExhaustNotes blog and in particular, our gun stories.  Guy has a very cool 1909 Colt and he wrote a guest piece on it for us.

Pressed into service by the Army, Navy and Marines early in the twentieth century, the Colt New Service revolver also served in various police departments and of course as a sturdy handgun for many outdoorsmen. This particular revolver was my grandfather’s and I’ve been caring for it the past 35+ years. The old Colt is a big revolver, with a 5 ½” barrel and those gaping 45 caliber holes in the cylinder. Grandpa, a WWI veteran, got this Colt after it was sold as surplus by New York. The backstrap is marked NYST for New York State Troopers. He carried it as part of his WWII era security duties with the Home Guard.

When it became mine, I replaced the bulky custom grips that fit the frame poorly and my hand worse. A pair of recent manufacture, original looking grips better suit both the revolver and my hands. I wasn’t expecting much in the way of accuracy and was pleasantly surprised on my first trip to the range with it. The first ammo I used was Federal’s 225 grain LSWC hollow point which produced modest recoil and good accuracy.

All of the major ammunition makers support this wonderful old cartridge. It was originally a low pressure, big bore tossing a heavy lead bullet at modest velocity. For this revolver, that’s exactly how I load it. Typically I’ll use the soft swaged 250 grain Speer LSWC loaded with 8 grains of Unique and a CCI 300 primer for about 830 fps.

One caution when loading for these fine old revolvers – they’re not meant to handle the very stout 45 Colt loads intended for use in Ruger’s much newer and stronger revolvers. Stick with loads for the old 45 Colt, which approximate the power level of a 45 ACP.

I treat the old gun gently, shooting only a few boxes of ammo through it every year. Now and again I’ll shove it into a holster and haul it along with me on a camping or fishing trip, though I prefer a smaller revolver for those duties. Mostly it gets hauled along out of a sense of nostalgia. Handling it, I can’t help but think of my grandfather, of the trooper who carried it long ago, and of the history wrought by these grand big bore revolvers.

Guy, thanks very much for your guest blog.  I always enjoy reading about vintage revolvers.  Your Colt has an interesting provenance and a great family history, and the grips you put on it look great.  I always wanted a 1909, and your story makes me want one even more.  You write well, my friend.

Check out our other gun stories on Tales of the Gun!

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Joe’s .44 Magnum

I’m not the Joe in this story, nor is Joe Gresh.  Nope, this is something altogether different…a guest blog by our good buddy Art, and it touches on a topic near and dear to my heart, the .44 Magnum Smith and Wesson Model 29.  Let’s get right to it, and that would be Art’s blog on his friend, Joe, and their experiences with the mighty Model 29.

Joe Abbott was one of South London’s finest characters. Probably in his mid-fifties, this tough looking, gruff-talking individual of which at least one in three words was an expletive, was also a man of many diverse talents. He’d been in the fruit & vegetables and meat trade, blue movies, and had settled in the more lucrative scrap metal trade.

But what made Joe such so endearing was that he always came to the shooting club with a 6.5” barrel, lusciously-blued, S&W Model 29 tucked away in a suitable shoulder rig. This unloaded piece was also kept in fine company by a bullet belt with about 8 rounds.

Joe always graciously allowed people to handle his .44 Magnum. This experience was always accompanied by lurid stories about just how many engine blocks it could destroy and the unsavory whack the shooter would receive.

It was 1975, and I had not yet seen “Dirty Harry,” but the repeated references were made and after coming out of the cinema, I realized that I really needed one.

Getting a Firearms Certificate (FAC) in the UK is a drawn-out procedure and you must join a reputable shooting club. Once done, I obtained a ‘slot’ on my FAC for a 6”, Model 29-2 which I bought through “The Saddlery & Gunroom” in Biggin Hill, Kent – and which still exists today.

And so it came to be that on one fine October evening in 1981 I found myself on the “Stone Lodge” shooting range in Dartford, southeast of London – now long defunct due to the UK’s continuing anti-gun stance.

The dozen or so, pistol booths, divided by plywood walls had battered wooden counters which bore a few scattered marks of various NDs over the years.

With some trepidation, I partially loaded op the cylinder with 240-grain Federal JHPs, took my stance and gently bought the gun up one-handed as I had been taught for slow-fire. Joe Abbot’s biblical warnings returned to me when the next thing was a thunderous muzzle blast, a blinding flash that seemed to light up the skies and a mule’s kick to my right hand, which was still clutching my 44 in a near-vertical position.

“You OK, mate?” came a voice from the booth next to me. It seemed that the flimsy plywood had not been sufficient in dampening the 44’s roar.

When my fellow shooter peered into my booth, he found me gazing open mouthed at my new piece which I had placed on the counter, wondering what the hell I had just bought. That evening I only put five more rounds through it, the standard Goncalo Alves grips with its sharp checkering not giving any quarter.

The .44’s reputation preceded me, so every time I took it to any range, there was always a healthy line of people wanting to shoot it, and who offered their pieces in return to fire, which allowed for a good experience with a wide range of guns. One of the club’s members downloaded my brass into .44 Special loads, easing up the load on my gun and my wrist.

In 1997, the whole thing came to an end when the British government banned all handguns in private possession. Along with 40,000 law abiding sports men and women all over the UK, I was commanded to go to a local police station of their choice and hand in my 44 and Walther GSP .22 target pistol, never to be seen again.

As rumors persisted that the higher end guns would be stored for some years and then sold to lesser restrictive countries, I had written my full name and address inside the grips of both guns.

In 2015, I became a proud ‘Documented-American-In-Waiting’, my AZ residence allowing me to enjoy an unprecedented freedom that no other world country could dream of offering. I would continue to dream of owning another part of identical S&W history, despite the steep prices to which they had climbed over the years.

In the ever-increasing universe of polymer self-loaders, the appreciation of the traditional steel has begun a steady upwards trend. Revolvers with their near-clockwork mechanism are becoming increasingly in demand, especially from the younger shooters. Ex-police guns, predominantly the stainless autos, have found their way into the civilian market and are hungrily bought by discerning citizens who are swayed by historical interest and the very affordable prices.

One fine day, and at half the price of the blued ‘Dirty Harry’ model, a 6” stainless .44 Magnum Hunter Classic with unfluted cylinder followed me home from one of the Phoenix shows. The continued underlug, ventilated barrel rib, resembling the beautiful Colt Python, and Pachmayr grips sounded the bells of seduction. I was well and truly on the rocks.

Those 38 years must have dulled my initial reactions to Joe Abbott’s apocalyptic performance figures since I pointed my Model 29-2 downrange for the very first time. Perhaps it was the increased weight of my new piece that seemed to have tamed the ferocious recoil, or having fired a great many handguns of various calibers. Whatever, happy days are here again and I’m privileged to enjoy the 228-year-old rights and privileges that all Americans are born with. Long may it continue.

Art, I could not have said it better myself.  Well done, and thanks for your guest blog.  I enjoyed reading it and I’m sure our readers will, too.  We’re glad you’re here in America with us, and it’s always good to hear from a fellow .44 aficionado (how’s that for alliteration?).  Please shoot us a copy of your snail mail address, Art, and we’ll send to you a signed copy of 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM as a small thank you for helping us make the blog a success.

And to the rest of our readers:  Do you have an idea for a guest blog?   It can be any topic:  Motorcycles, watches, guns, bicycles, travel, photography, and more.   We’d love to hear from you.   Write to us at info@exhaustnotes.us!