I love warm weekends in January
After reworking a Russian capture K98 and Zastava M24/47 for Mike I had been working slowly on getting my own M48 cleaned up. The warm weekend finally let me get the last of the finish on it. Today I got it all back together after the final rub down. It’ll still need a good bees wax rub down after the finish has cured a few weeks.
I don’t know what kind of wood this was, softer than the normal European walnut and no where near as dense as either the 24/47 or the K98 laminate. Maybe some type of Elm? Anyway, being a post-war export production rifle the wood was quite … rough… couldn’t even drag a cloth down it without it snagging. But it was was clean, very little oil or cosmo soaked into it.
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Normally I don’t like sanding down milsurp rifle stocks and prefer to keep them as close to original as possible. But some rifles are not worth a plug nickle but for their shootability and this one was so rough it wasn’t very shootable. So while the wood wasn’t good enough to give the full treatment I would have given an 1957 FN European Walnut G1 FAL butt stock it did get considerably more surface prep than say a 1917 Enfield No 1 MkIII… |
| If the next few weekends hold the pattern for warmer weather it’ll be back to the task of prepping for the 2006 shooting season. So far I’ve cast almost 100 pounds of wheel weight and range recoved lead into 200gr SWC’s and 255gr RNFP’s for my hungry stable of .45 caliber pieces. |  |
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Fortunately I’m well on my way with a couple thou of each. But around here, much to the chagrin of my few neighbors, the shooting season doesn’t really have any sort of annual beginning or end - just a constant eb and flow that follows Indiana weather. What that means is that even in the winter it is sometimes hard to have this much still in the bins come “spring” because if I’m comfortable outside in only fleece or flannel its warm enough to shoot! |
But there are advantages of the occassional cold weather weekend shoot. This is the time for me to experiment when I only need to shoot a few strings at a time and return to warmth! For example something that has been bothering me for awhile about the lube I use for my cast bullets, Thompson Blue Angel. A fairly hot .45 ACP load leaves little to no lube on the recovered bullets.
| But as I start loading down the .45 Colt with the .255 grain bullets I’m finding way too much lube still on them. Though the leading isn’t really noticable in my Vaquero it may still be time to try some 110 degree lube or head back above 800fps for the plinking loads. Its too bad the .45 Colt isn’t particularly efficient with lighter weight bullets. |  |
Not that the .45 Colt won’t do 200gr bullets, it’ll shoot them well enough if you don’t mind the blow-by making a real sooty mess of the cases, gun and shooter at the lower pressures. And by the time a 200gr bullet is cranked up enough to get a better seal the felt recoil isn’t enough different than a slow 255gr to worry about.
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I suppose its a good thing that I’m one of “those” who enjoys the time at the reloading press almost as much as the time spent behind the trigger. Occassionally I find spending an afternoon sorting thousands of pieces of brass by headstamp or running a few thou bullets through a luber-sizer a more pleasurable way to pass time than most anything else. |
I seriously doubt I could afford to sustain my annual rate of fire if it were any other way.