Make a note:

Sometimes, after 2 glasses of wine, it's important to spend 5 minutes dancing in the kitchen with your wife.

Don't ever let the moment pass, gentlemen. That particular moment will never be here again.

Reach out and grab it.

Pub Glasses

Apparently you can buy cool-ass, heavy duty pub glasses for 59 cents each at goodwill.

I'm digging it.

Half-a-mind

For 2k, I have Half-a-mind to just buy a transmission from J.C. Whitney or Jegs or Auto-Zone for about $1500 bucks. Install that bad boy myself, and save $500. The only problem with that is that I have no idea how to swap a transmission. So the Half-a-mind plan may come out the half-assed plan...

Hazard of buying used

Apparently my truck's Transmission has proverbially crapped the bed. Mechanic says best case, $2k to fix.

Just damn!

Nebo Redline

My gentle readers may remember my buying a Nebo Flashlight about 2 years ago. It was bright, and I liked it's lighting output. I carried it regularly at work for about 4 months, until I finally got issued a streamlight.

This is a follow-up. The Nebo is a piece of garbage. Especially for the 50ish dollar price tag. The light still works, but it is bulky in the pocket. It uses 3 AAA batteries in a circular battery configuration. You could almost get a single C-cell battery in the same diameter. Not great for a light with a pocket clip.

Also, the output switch (10%, 50%, 100%, strobe, and s.o.s.) adds lots of bulk. Also, I have grown accustomed to the "multiple press" system streamlight uses. It's not better or worse, per-se, but I like it better.

The worst thing about this light, though is its shitty tail-cap. It is overly large. And the rubber covering the activation switch is chintzy, and rips. And when you try to fix it, it rips more. And eventually, the magnet breaks, making it un-fucking-useable.

To hell with Nebo. I have used this light a grand total of maybe 6 months over the last two years, and it just doesn't meet expectations. Save 10 more bucks and buy a streamlight.

Leather tooling

So one aspect of leatherwork that I have had no exposure to is tooling, or carving. Sure, I have used some basic stamps, but just for some basic border work.  Today, I tried my hand at some true tooling. These are some very basic floral patterns, basically what everyone starts with. The bottom piece got too busy, I think. I like the way the top one turned out.

I'm digging the tooling. I have a basic stamp set, of like 6 stamps. I think I'm going to keep playing with it. Maybe one day I can do one of those really cool oak-leaf belt-and-holster sets.

Belted

Neighbor Mike asked me the other day to make him a belt.

I like a lot about this belt, but I wish it was lighter. I need to get a medium brown dye. I think the tooling turned out great. And the belt loop has a pocket for a guitar pick built in. Mike is a mandolin player, and is always looking for a pick, so I figured I would make it easy for him to find one. He has a buckle he wants to use, so all that is left is attaching it.

Revolvers vs. Autos

A couple posts back, I opined that I was not backwards enough in this day and age to still distrust Autos. The Other Ryan, in comments stated that if anything, he believed that Autos were more reliable than revolvers. He stated that taking a quality revolver off the shelf and having it go heads-up against a modern service pistol, such as a Glock or M&P, and he would bet that in shooting a wheelbarrow of ammo through each would result in reliability issues with the revolver before the auto. He defined reliability issues as the gun failing to function at a 95% level. In other words, the first gun to fail to work 95 shots out of 100 would lose the competition.

Thing is, I tend to agree with him. Given THOSE conditions. I still trust a revolver more. Here's why.

I've shot a lot. I shot guns all the time growing up. I grew up in the 80's and 90's, the son of a cop in a rural town. Know what we shot? Revolvers. Smith & Wessons.

I grew up and went into law enforcement, and continued shooting. Only now, my shooting mostly focuses around my service weapon. Know what it is? An Auto. A Glock, to be exact.

Now I know that competitive shooters, and serious gun writers, and hell likely some hobbiests shoot more than me. But I know I shoot a hell of a lot more than the average cop, and a good bit more than the average gunnie. Until I moved to the Big City in May, and lost easy access to shooting land, I shot several boxes each month. Easily over 1000 rounds each year. Sadly, since moving, I haven't shot nearly as much. Maybe 500 rounds all told, with less than 300 of that being handgun shooting. (I went to a carbine course, and shot a few hundred rounds of .223.)

I say all that to say this: I have never had a revolver fail on me. I have once SEEN a revolver get decommissioned due to faulty powder in the ammo. The bullet got stuck in the bore. But if the next round had been fired, it would have shot. It would have also likely caused a catastrophic failure in the gun, too. Revolvers can also have their timing go to crap, or have parts of their lockwork fail, causing the gun to fail. At that point, the revolver is nothing more than a paperweight.

Now, I've also shot a lot of autos. Have I had them fail on me? YES. Was it a less than 5% failure rate? Yes. Was it because of the gun itself? Sometimes. Sometimes it didn't want to feed the particular ammo I had. Sometimes I was limp-wristing. Sometimes, when I was simulating firing from the hip on close targets, I had the gun in too tight to my body, and the slide hit my belly, causing it to not fully cycle. All of the failures I have experienced I have been able to clear with a tap, a rack, and a trigger pull.

But they still failed.

I have never had a revolver fail. And over the course of my life I have probably shot a revolver twice as much a an auto.

So, is Ryan correct in his opinion? Given the 95% function rate, I believe he may be. As I said, I have had probably a few dozen failures with an auto, but I would bet that they still functioned at over 95%. Given Ryan's guidelines, I have never had a gun become "unreliable".

Thing is, when a revolver fails, and it is an actual failure of the weapon, not bad ammo, you will likely need tools, if not a gunsmith to get it working again.

With an auto, when you have a failure, you can often fix it quickly, right there, just by going through a failure drill.

So in my completely biased opinion, a revolver will work 100% of the time, until it doesn't, at which point it will likely be useless in the field. An auto will work better than 95% of the time, and a failure you will likely be able to fix right there, on the spot.

So by the standard of 100% reliability, I feel like the revolver will get the nod, every time.

Think of this: lots of people have done a 2000 round torture test of semi-auto handguns, and the results can be illuminating. I feel as if a 2000 round test of a Ruger GP100 would be pretty boring. I bet that if ammo reliability was not a concern, it would reliably shoot every single round, first to last.

So that's my thoughts on that. And that's why I like revolvers.

Gun Porn for Old NFO

A set of Herrett's Shooting Ace grips on my 36. I wasn't planning on posting pics till I had tried them for a week or so, but NFO is laid up reading blogs while recovering from surgery.

Also, I plan on doing a post this weekend (an idea that comes from a comment left by The Other Ryan in my last post) about my feelings concerning semi-autos vs. revolvers, and concepts of use, which I hope you will enjoy, to NFO.

Get better, man.

36

Well, I have pretty much given up on carrying my Kahr CW9. Don't get me wrong, there are no problems with that gun. It's a great gun. It's just not the gun that I am most comfortable carrying, anymore.

I tend to favor revolvers over autos. Now, I like autos, and carry one on duty. I'm not backwards enough to still distrust autos in this day-and-age. There are literally hundreds of dead-nuts reliable autos out there that I would be comfortable trusting my life with, if I got enough trigger time behind them.

But I LIKE revolvers. Yeah, I admit a bias that doesn't have any basis in actual application. I just like revolvers more than semi-autos. Revolvers have soul.

But with a carry gun, I am always trying to strike a balance. I want a gun that is easy to conceal, comfortable on the belt, but that is as close in size to a fighting pistol as I can get, while maintaining small enough dimensions to carry OWB, and still easily conceal it with a shirt.

For the last year or so, that gun has been a Kahr CW9. If checked all the boxes for me.

But since getting the Model 36, it has taken over as my daily carry piece. With the 3 inch, heavy barrel, and the Pachmayr grips, this little j-frame handles like a fighting revolver.

But it still carries like a j-frame. I have carries it off-duty every day for a week. I know I need to carry it more to truly get a feel for how it is going to work out long-term, but I can conceal it under a polo-shirt, and I can carry it all day without it rubbing wrong or getting heavy and uncomfortable.

I feel like this is a perfect carry solution for me.