12/23/13

Ding, digga ding ding, ding ding ding.  Ding, DIGGA ding ding, ding ding ding.  Ding, digga ding ding, ding ding ding.  Ding, DIGGA ding ding, ding ding ding.  Bah dap, bah bah, bah buh bah.  Bah, deedle da, bah doo dah…  Why am I quoting the James Bond theme, you ask?  Well, a few weeks ago, as I mentioned last week, I “loaned” my Diamondback .380 to my sister and pretty much wrote it off as a gift.  Well, yesterday at the gun show I made it official.  I texted her to say I was replacing it and asked if she wanted to consider it her Christmas present from me.  She said that was fine so I went shopping for a Kel Tec P3AT.  For some reason, perhaps picking up a Kel Tec again, I decided I'd have a look at 007’s gun instead, the Walther PPK.  Walthers are a bit on the spendy side, I found out, but the Argentinian “copy,” the Bersa Thunder, is much more affordable.  Then I found a model I didn’t know existed: the Thunder 380 CC, which is smoother and has a bobbed hammer.  I saw a few of them in the $325.00 range and then one for $315.00 caught my eye.  Of course right next to it was one with a nice case, spare magazine, speed loader, and rubber grip sleeve for fifty bucks more.  I hemmed and hawed over them for a bit and decided that since we were on the second row, I'd wait until we’d walked the whole show.  I didn’t see another I liked any better so I went back and bought the “kit” rather than the gun by itself.  I fingered I was going to buy another magazine anyway, probably $25.00 to $35.00 right there, and the rest of the stuff made the deal seem… ok, I'm just dumb.  That’s why I paid the extra fiddy.  Anyhoo, the point is, now I've got a gun similar to what Mr. Bond, James Bond carries… sort of thing.  That was the reason for the theme song.  So… yeah.  I also bought a pair of recoil-reducing butt pads for the two Kushnapup Saigas and two more of those bitchin’ slings I had found for the Tavor… for them.  Ok, I don’t remember if I mentioned a problem with the SKS in the Bullpup stock so if I did… well, suck it, I'm telling it again.  I was having a problem with the trigger not resetting properly and failing to release the hammer when the trigger was pulled.  After experimenting with it, I noticed that it only fucked up when the transfer bar was bolted down tight.  If it were left slack, so as to cock at an odd angle, it seemed to function.  I knew though that if left loose it would just fall out eventually and I didn’t want that.  I thought that if I could find a Norinco SKS trigger group which still had the Chinese hammer, trigger, and sear, parts I have replaced in my trigger group, I'd see if it would work.  I asked around at the gun show about SKS trigger groups.  One guy laughed and said, “Good luck!  Those are getting really expensive… if you can find one.”  I fingered I was fucked but kept going.  Eventually I saw one in a display case and asked about it.  “That’s for a Chinese milled receiver Norinco,” he said.  “That’s what I've got!” I said.  “How much?”  He made a face like, “You ain’t gonna like this!” and said, “Eighty bucks.”  I had my credit card out in a flash because I was expecting more along the lines of $200.00 from what the other guy had said.  Unfortunately he didn’t take plastic.  I bummed a hunski from Larry and bought the thing.  It was still sticky with Cosmoline so I finger it is new old stock from some warehouse somewhere.  At the house after the show, I installed the NOS trigger group in the SKS and reassembled it.  I couldn’t really “torture test” it because I don’t like cycling the action of a weapon when mom is home… and I really need to slam the action open and closed to see if it is going to work.  I checked my 922r worksheet and found that the trigger, fore end, and butt stock of the Bullpup kit, along with the gas piston and operating rod I'd already installed in the gun, should get me under the “no more than ten foreign parts” mandate even if I use the bone-stock Norinco trigger group.  I'm still going to take a saw to the trigger in the trigger group so that no one can say that there is still a foreign trigger on the gun.  I'm also thinking of swapping the US made hammer, and softer main spring, that I have just as a “belt and suspenders” sort of thing.  Back at the gun show, the only other thing I bought was another Tavor and a Steyer AUG… no, I'm just kidding.  I did not buy another superfluous, and very expensive, rifle… yet.  I'll probably wind up with an AUG one of these days because they are really cool and it “matches” the Kushnapups… kind of like the Tavor “matches” the SKS in its Bullpup stock… sort of thing.  No, the only other thing I bought was a holster for the Bersa… henceforth to be called Bertha.  As for Saturday, John was sick so we didn’t go to the shop.  I went and filled the diesel jug so we could have heat and bought some bolts for the exhaust manifold flanges on Lil' Wiggly.  When I found out John wasn’t coming, I took a piece of muffler pipe to Steve-John and had him flare the two ends as flanges.  I went back to the shop to work on making the flanges fit but decided against using the chop saw and/or welder while standing in the middle of the lake in the machine shop bay.  I cleaned up and went home instead.  So, that’s what I did over the weekend.