Boolits

Bullets = Commercially made mass production projectiles .

Boolits = Hand cast, home made , custom sized projectiles for hand loading ammunition .

A while back I picked up an old single shot Harrington and Richardson Model 58 Handyrifle in 44 Magnum . Upon doing some research I learn it has the less than optimal Marlin 1 in 38 micro-grove rifling that is known to be over bore beyond the normal .429/.430 thousands . From what I read due to the slow rifling they seem to perform best with projectiles under 250 grain .

When I slugged the barrel with a soft lead weight and measured it we show .431 thousands

Before I bothered to do that I had ordered a Lee 429-200 RF mold . . . that is , four hundred and twenty nine thousands diameter , two hundred grain , round nose , flat point mold .

Looks like this . So after doing some digging I knew it might drop under size pills for my rifle and some additional fiddling might be needed to make them work . Either powder coating them or honing out the mold with some valve dressing compound might be in order .

 So I fired up the hot plate and the casting pot and figured I might as well find out what it does .

Needed some extra heat to get things going in the cold garage . Yes, I was next to the window and had a fan extracting the fumes .

Poured and sprue cut off

After some initial fumbling I got in to a rhythm .

An hour of work gets me a nice pile of decent looking 44 mag pills .

Half a cashew tub full .

They measure out between .430 thousands . . . .

. . . . and .428 thousands . . .  hmmmmm

They weigh out from 206.7 grains . . .

 . . . . to 209 grains as cast with my wheel weight lead mix .

I pushed a couple down the barrel with a dowel, and though a bit undersized according to the micrometer, they appear to be engaging the rifling well . So they might work just like that without resizing . Still have to see how they do for accuracy . If they don't work I might get a sizing die and size them all to .429 thousands and try my hand at powder-coating them to gain a couple thousands of an inch .  
http://isserfiq.blogspot.com/2015/10/shake-and-bake-powder-coated-bullets.html
Alternatively I could hog out the mold using one of these boolits with some valve grinding compound and a screw in the base chucked in a drill .

02/24/17 Addendum: 
Referencing crimp question by Harry

 The Lyman cast bullet handbook does call for a heavy crimp on 44 mag for the reasons I mentioned in the comments.

Fricking mess . . .

I don't understand those that say they love winter. I think that's rather like the faithful wife who loves her husband despite the fact he beats her.
Last week we had bare patches of grass in the back yard. Then we got about ten inches of snow last Tuesday and another foot on Thursday. Saturday we spent three and a half  hours digging out of Friday night's twelve inches. Sunday morning was overcast and more snow expected. Made a quick dash up to Freeport and by the time we made it back home it started spitting snow again.

By two pm it was looking like this

By four pm there was enough our neighbor Tim across the street got plowed out.

And the town public works dept was knocking back the tops of the snow banks

By ten pm there was about ten inches on my grilling pad

It is gonna be a big one

Coming down in buckets

And more forecast for Wednesday

Eight am on Monday looking out the bathroom window. Must be sixteen inches on the grill pad.

Birds were desperate for food

Truck is buried

Had to dig ourselves out the back door. It was about three feet deep when I started.

Took ten minutes just to make it out to the garage

Yardstick on the cement grilling pad

Fifteen inches.

Three hours later I got the back . . .

 . . . and driveway cleared out,

 Annie dug out the truck and I took another hour and half to clear the roof

Will need a couple more hours of work before I am ready to get beat again on Wednesday

Honda Odyssey strut change

So last week I took the Honda Odyssey for the state motor vehicle inspection and they failed it on three counts.
1) Left front tire was unevenly worn, due to...
2) a broken suspension coil spring, and ...
3) the right hand outer tie rod end was worn.

The shop estimate was:
Two new front quick struts 580$ (can't change just one)
Labor 300$
One outer tie rod end 100$
Labor 100$
Two new tires mounted and balanced 160$
Vehicle alignment 90$
=============================
Total 1330$ plus sales tax

Given that we have some steep medical co-pays this month we need to do something about that expense. Besides I am getting bored of all this sitting around waiting to heal from my spinal surgery.

Checked Ebay and found the struts for 137$ shipped to my door.

Just don't tell the doctor each one of those is about twenty pounds.
A quick check on Youtube on how the job is done
 https://youtu.be/Ii2TfKubzrs

Seems easy enough even for my feeble brain and lame neck.

So this afternoon I got motivated and fired up the wood stove in the garage and after some struggle finding my impact wrench sockets right where I had put them on my peg board on my work bench right in front of my nose, I pulled the offending part on the driver side. Note the broken coil spring.

And installed the new one

Button up the sway bar link and other loose bits and torque the big bolts to spec.

Switch sides and pull the passenger side strut

And put the new one in on that side. Bottom through bolts torqued to 130 foot pounds, top to 30 ft/lbs. Took it for a test drive and it no longer pulls to the left, so I may not even need the alignment. Total labor time? three hours, OK two and a half if you discount the time wasted looking for the stupid sockets and messing with the wood stove.

That's 730 U$ saved.
Next week I will tackle the tie rod end and take it back to the shop for some new tires and we'll see if they give me an inspection sticker.

A bit early for tomatoes

January is a bit early to start sprouting tomatoes, but since we have this store bought volunteer that started sprouting I figured what the heck...

we might just have tomatoes before September

Posterior Microdiscectomy Foraminotomy

.... or what Santa is bringing me for Christmas in two days time. It is supposed to provide some pain relief to my left shoulder and arm as well as eliminate the tingling in my hand and arm... in 90% of the cases it does anyhow. Hopefully the doc don't mess it up, and the anesthesiologist manages to wake me up afterwards.

https://youtu.be/sgHQas9VeLA

More closet work

It's the job that never ends. Not a bad thing really. The smaller hallway closet in my customer's house needed some shelving. But it had to serve both as a coat closet and a place to park large kitchen counter-top appliances. Nothing to it.
So I picked up some birch ply, some #2 pine and fired up the wood stove in the garage.

It would barely keep the place above freezing while it was in the single digits outside and blowing 40mph

A couple of hours later, once I got some of the cold knocked out of the garage I started to put together a kit as it would need to come apart in order to get it in the closet.

About 4 hours of fiddling got me this far.

  I was out of the shelving pegs so I ran to Lowes to pick up some more and bought a small bag with 20 count of them. When I got home and opened it I found this Chinese coin in among the shelving pegs. I figure some poor slave worker in China is trying to send me a message.

On Friday afternoon before the storm I took it all apart and brought it over to the house. With some degree of fuss I was able to assemble it inside the closet. The whole thing sits on the top edge of the baseboards and there are screws that go in from the underside to fix the bottom to the sides of the shelving unit. I used the shelves to elevate the whole box temporarily while I got those screws in from underneath along with some liberal use of expletives.

The shelves on the left are on moveable pegs can be adjusted for height as needed.

Murphie's food bucket even has a place to live.

Then Saturday morning we woke to winter.

Doves were huddling on the patio fence.

There were a few fools driving around.

Yuck

Welfare bums were helping themselves to the spoils.

I hear tell those doves make for good eating.

Pearl had the right idea.