Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad as The Song Goes…

Greetings and Salutations!
I was a wee bit run down yesterday evening after Jeopardy… I ended up going to bed at 21:00 which is unusual for me, but might be indicative of the Tuesday Meatfrenzy we had.

I swear I ate like I had two assholes.
I might have said that…
But the enquiring minds and your questions? Yeah we ALL had a ‘Meat-High’ and the Sweats. Then it was taking turns blowing up Ye Olde Outhoose. As I said a great meal. Now, to tonight’s biddness as it were.

I have not gotten the pictures and video that Cowboy shot of the various test fires today. I said he sent them, but as of now they haven’t shown up on the phone.. Good thing I took the target home with me, so I can at least give y’all an idea of how things went.

The Range Report itself:

The 1941 BSA Shirley: Great Shooter. The bore is good and pretty accurate. A few feeding problems from the magazine, which I -think- was due to using soft/flat-ish Serbian BeeBees. It fired like a dream. The holes from this are in green circles on the target pic.

The 1942 Longbranch Canadian: Well, it didn’t blow up. And it hit the target. It loaded fine, cycled fine, BUT: It’s keyholing like a mother. More shooting at a proper range where I can get some groupings done, as well as test my own hand-poured boolits, and this might alleviate the issue. The same issue that the SMLE had, as the rifling post-shooting shows it’s just worn out. Still not a bad rifle. The circles on the target are in blue

The 1884/1888 Springfield Trapdoor AKA ‘The Smoke Pole’:
OK. Where to begin? Well… first, all y’all who said it ‘pushes’ is full of shit. This fucking thing has a kick like a mule. The recoil also transmits down the length of it right into the palm of your shooting hand. As I type this, I got Biofreeze all over my poor put-upon dickbeater. Seriously. This thing is a Fucking Beast. It’s accurate AF too. The holes for this are in red and much larger than the others.

I LOVE IT!!!!

I did one bench test round to start as one should firing a 145 year old Cannon like this as staying alive is high on “Ye Olde Liste of Pryoritees”. I set it up, put a 10 pound shooters sandbag on the barrel to keep it from jumping too much, and cut loose. Thank the Lord Cowboy had suggested we move the stand a wee bit further to the front of the table we were using or it would have ended up in the dirt. LOTS of recoil. LOTS of smoke. HUGE fireball. LOADS of fun!

Then I took two shots. One aimed Center Mass, and the second at the Head. Two shots and man, I was bit surprised by the recoil. Guess I have to get used to it as I’m way more accustomed to the M-4/AKs and whatnot. Been a minute since I fired a ‘real rifle’

So The Target:

As I said, the two .45-70, the chest one I didn’t account for recoil, so it went high. The headshot? Well I over-anticipated the shot, and I pulled the muzzle hard right. With some practice, I’ll get proficient. I need to start loading my own before that happens. Either way, I think it’s a damned good rifle that I’ll need to dial in at the proper long distance range.

Not bad for a 145 Year Old Smoke Pole?

Now the other two rifles? You can see the keyholing in the blue (1942). I wasn’t paying that close attention to the second shot, and it went wild/wide. The ones in green are not bad (1941), but again, I wasn’t trying for extreme accuracy as much as a basic functionality test. Things like “Will this blow up?” and “Did anything fall/fly/shoot off when it fired?” were far more immediate concerns than accuracy.

When I go to Manatee I’ll actually go for the slow, measured short to intermediate distances, just to see the groupings and whatnot. If I’m forced to go to the local “Shoot Straight”… well I’ll do what I can with the limits that fucking shithole places on shooters.

So that’s all for tonight… the next project is doing the ‘dip’ on my 1911. I’ve stripped it down, and I’ll start doing pics of what I’m doing, so y’all can follow along. I’ll also cover some of the latest poly-tics if I feel like putting my 2cents in.

So far, OrangeManBad and SpaceManBad have been laying waste to all sorts of deeply corrupted shit… not that it was unexpected… EVERYONE with two brain cells knew EVERYTHING has been ‘fake and ghey’ to the point I’m not even remotely surprised.

Beyond that?
Wake me up when fuckers start getting hauled off to Guantanamo… and I don’t mean the rapefugees…

More Later
Big Country

21 thoughts on “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad as The Song Goes…”

  1. Q: Would you have to send someone the trapdoor Springfield via a FFL? Or, as it’s pre-1900 (I think that’s the cutoff, correct me if I’m wrong), it would be classified as a C&R (Curio & Relic) and be exempt from having to go through FFL hands to be sent to someone?

      1. In this case, B/C it fires what’s considered a ‘modern cartridge’ i.e. brass case modern primer fired, the Springfield is considered, despite it’s age, a C&R

        Not that I plan it going anywhere anytime soon….

          1. Man, you got me in trooooooooooouble!
            Spent $125 on 60 rounds of .45-70 “Fuck You!” Many Thanks Good Sir!

    2. The cutoff for antique status is 1898. Provided no state laws get in the way, an antique can be shipped to your doorstep without so much as a permission slip from your mommy.

      1. used to be that way anyway. had a couple of 1893 Mausers shipped to my door back in the 1990’s.
        I guess it depends on the ATF clowns at the time. or maybe how good the lawyers are at the place selling them ? seems like most today try like hell to keep the ATF clowns away from the door and
        try to ship everything thru a dealer. just to keep the assholes “happy”.
        but I don’t know anymore how it works with those clowns. (feds)

      2. That’s the terminology and date I was looking for.
        “Antique”
        “1898”
        So the Trapdoor should be ok to mail directly to the raffle winner, no FFL needed.
        Thanks.

  2. I’m at the point now where my Brazilian barbecue skills are at parity with Brazilians. The house we’re building in Brazil has a world-class rotisserie firebox. I regularly cook myself into a beef coma when I’m home from sea.

  3. The keyholing is, as you say, failure of the bullet to spin-stabilize because the rifling is gone. Prob can’t be fixed short of a rebarrel.

    Shot a deer once with an 1873 Trapdoor Springfield with handloaded black powder cartridges. Saw him flip through a thick cloud of smoke. 350gr cast bullet.

  4. Nothing like the Earth Shattering KA-BOOOM of a .45/70 Trapdoor. Your two (2) red shots WERE kill shots, the first by concussion from the passing round, the second (2nd)?…it woulda took out the next five (5) guys in the stick. I am officially in violation of one (1) of His Commandments in that I covet that piece. The Brit Boomers?…not so much. Tho, full disclosure…you put them (‘specially The Trapdoor) out there on an auction…Welp, we’ll see who has a deeper pocket than The King of Battle. You done good, Bigg’un…I’m impressed. Not that I didn’t think that I wouldn’t be. Keep up the skeer…You’re doing His Work, bringing these Classic Boom Sticks (aka…Shoulder Fired Arty) back to life.

      1. Back atcha, Tox. Been lurking here ever since you gave me the old linky way back yonder, chasing Big Country around the inherwebz and following his (mis)adventures. Don’t comment too much but I do visit everyday. On my next trip down to visit My Baby Girl and the Grands I plan on trying to visit BCE, shake his hand, buy him dinner, lift a glass to Absent Companions, Lust Out Loud over The Hair Diva, and droll over his collection. And not necessarily in that order. Putting all of the fiddly bit, pieces and parts together I figure that BCE is basically up the street and around the corner from Baby Girl. Hell, might even be in the same ‘hood. Too bad you’re 3/4s of the way across the Country. We could have us a large time iffen we all got together.

  5. So what load are you running in the trap door, BC?

    I can’t remember my manual exactly… but the 45-70 is typically loaded mild for antiques, medium for lever guns of modern manufacture, and hot foe tanks like the Ruget No.1.

    A shithouse 405 gr. Round nose should be on your project load developMINT… and the big Postells might be worth a try. You ever do paper patched boolits? I’d love to try them but I’d need the proper mold and a responsible adult to wrap the damned things… 😞

  6. BC, your last meme sums up the Army in a nice little package! It couldn’t have been better said. The policies and procedures and doctrine works somewhat on Conus bases, so so much afield and definitely not in combat. Bosnia was my cherry popped and we didn’t follow any sort of training, and orders once we went out the gate. Intelligence? Sucked platypus dicks and was meaningless once among the Serbians and Croats and the hardcore Czechs and muslim mercenaries. If we followed what we were ordered to do we where deader then mule shit, so we took on the Marine mantra, Improvise, Adapt and Overcome, then adapt again…

  7. For clarity, anything manufactured before Jan 1, 1899 is an antique and not a “firearm” under fed law. Full stop. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. It can be shipped directly to one’s home, just as God intended. I’ve bought several that way, and they can be found on Gunbroker under the “antique” section & see if FFL is required or not. Got a 7×57 1895 Mauser before Christmas direct from a dealer with just my DL, matter of fact. If the gun is not set to use cartridges, think cap & ball or other muzzleloaders, then they are also considered antique mechanisms & are no-FFL-required even if made this morning. The guy who runs survivalblog runs an online gun store of all pre-1899 or black powder repros, everything is no-FFL-required, though overpriced IMO.

  8. I used to have a Ruger #3 in .45-70 that pushed… pushed my shoulder blades together.

    Hell-on-wheels hunting deer in cedar swamps, shot a doe through a 4″ aspen tree once.

    Moving to “civilization” I traded for a .45 caliber the local Carabinieri wouldn’t freak out over because I owned no suitable handguns for “civilization” living.

    1. This is a fun hobby and I’ve done plenty myself. It’s also very, very basic stuff. Basically a much-needed deep clean, some basic woodwork, and some metal refinishing or painting.
      In my opinion-and I may well be wrong-it’s a labor of love versus a money-making endeavor.

  10. About 30 years ago, I was visiting my sister and brother-in-law at the ranch they lived on. My BiL had recently purchased a Marlin 45-70 which I hadn’t tried out yet (we always tried each other’s new purchases) and asked him about it. He went and brought it out and we stepped out his back door to give it a try. As he handed it to me, he had a sly grin on his face that should sent up a red alert. I took aim at a dead tree branch and squeezed the trigger. My shoulder still hurts! He had loaded it up with some hot handloads that he was afraid to try himself. I think I got him back, but I don’t remember. Maybe I need to get him back again. I have tried it since with “reasonable” hand loads, as well as his replica Sharps made by some outfit in Wyoming.

    Get some Trail Boss (if you can find it) and some cast pills and you can develop a pleasant shooting load.

  11. I picked up my first 45-70 quite some time ago. Marlin 1895 CS with a 24 (26?) inch barrel and 8 round magazine. Was used to fairly stout recoil from goose and duck hunting, so the standard loads were doable. The longer than usual barrel adds significantly to the velocity.
    Was playing around with the standard 405 gr loads and switched to a Buffalo Bore 405, practicing for a bear hunt. I weigh 205 and took the shot kneeling. A moment later I was lying on my back, looking up at a friend of mine who was laughing hysterically. He’s 6’8” or so and runs around 300+. He tried it. Knocked him back 3 steps… “Nice toy. You play with it”.
    Gave a couple of boxes of the Buffalo Bore to this Algonquin we used to hunt with up in Canada. He loved them for moose hunting. Shot one while resting his rifle on the side of his truck bed. Thought it sounded funny – realized he’d shot through the other side of the truck and still dropped the moose.

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