Some Things I Won't Do Again

If I want to shoot centerfire rifles, I have my choice of two public ranges. One is 35 miles away, one is fifty miles away. But because of the difference in roads, they are the same travel time from my home.

I went shooting yesterday, and I took these rifles, Mosin-Nagant 91/30s:



First mistake: Time of day and season. Because of the low height of the Sun in the Winter and the direction of the range, I was shooting more or less into the Sun. The glare of the Sun in the open sights of the first rifle made it almost unshootable. In order to shoot it from a rest, I had to hold one hand over the rear sight to block out the sun. Or I could stand up into the shade from the roof over the firing points. Neither led to good results.

Second mistake: Shooting two rifles with ComBloc surplus cartridges. Those rounds have primers which generate corrosive salts. To properly clean them, you have to remove the actions from the barrels and then, using a funnel with a hose (a "transmission funnel" from the auto-supply store works well), pour boiling hot water down the bore of the rifle in order to wash the salts out. Then you clean the bore and everything else carefully with the bore cleaner of your choice. (I don't use Hoppes #9, for I do not have an outdoor area to clean weapons.)

Doing that to two rifles took a lot longer than I wanted, so I'll go back to shooting only one rifle at a time.

But I did manage to break loose my wallet and splurged for a larger flashcard for my camera. The old one, which I bought when I got the camera, was a 256Mb card. The new one, which was about 40% the price of the old one, is a 2MbGb card. It will hold about 800 shots at the most detailed resolution setting for the camera. There have been times when I had to ration exposures, but not any more.

That should thrill the fur right off of my cats.