Month: January 2022

January 26, 2022 – Eating Crab

January 26, 2022 /

Most Americans have been to Red Lobster, Joe’s Crab Shack or some of these other chains. Based on what region of the country you live in, crab mean different things to different people. Blue, King, or Dungeness crab, I have had them all. And personally, I thing the Dungeness is the best of them all. Sure, it is a lot less work to breakdown king crab but to me the meat is bland (and not worth the effort). It is another reason that you typically eat it with butter because it needs more flavor.

Quality food is best handled with simple treatment. I love Indian food and heavy spices. In that case, I think the recipes are showcasing the spices more so than the ingredients. Even in the case of crab cakes, I tend to make them when the meat starts to get a little fishy. A few nights ago, I made Fettuccini Alfredo and just sprinkled the crab on top. Even then, I think the parmesan overpowered the crab and to do it again, I would probably use olive oil and Italian seasoning with the crab.

I want to focus on the crab today, so I am not going to talk about how to make alfredo or boil pasta. But suffice to say, it is really easy.

I start with the legs. Break them off from the carcass and split the shell. If you are careful, you can get whole segments out as you work down the leg. I use a specialized shell cracker, but I have also used a nut cracker and also pliers to do this job.

Once the legs are done, turn to the body of the crab. This is called lump meat and it is not nearly as sweet as the legs. If you have a lot of them to shell, then you might want to separate for different uses. But essentially, you break the body apart and pick out all of the meat. Avoid the mustardy looking stuff called ‘crab butter’ it is edible, but not tasty. I try to rinse all of that off before I start shelling.

My wife snuck one crab while I wasn’t looking so one crab yielded about 1 cup of meat. If you think about it, this took one day and $54 in rental and license fees to yield 1 cup of crab meat. You bet it deserves special treatment for all of that effort.

I will take one detour before I finish today. I heard probably the best discussions on food and culture over the weekend. It was an interview with Wade Truong of Elevated Wild on the Orvis Hunting and Shooting Podcast. One of the sentient questions I took away was ‘How can we possibly value food when we can have anything we want, whenever we want show up in our doorstep in a bag?’.

I don’t think every meal has to be an affair, I think that there is a place to just getting it done (see yesterday for more of my thoughts on that). However I think that there are too many people that have no connection to hunting/gathering/growing food whatsoever. There are certain emotions that are related to killing something. It is a combination of sadness, disgust, reverence, gratefulness and jubilation at the same time. That is a connection with our humanity.

End Your Programming Routine: I had a good run with this trip to the coast last weekend, I will be moving on tomorrow. Clearly, it was a good experience since I wrote so much about it over the last three days. The two points I was trying to get across today were 1) treat quality ingredients simply and 2) look for ways to reconnect to humanity. If you cant (or wont) hunt or fish at least cook. Treat ingredients with the respect that they deserve.

January 25, 2022 – I’m a Gulper, Not a Sipper

January 25, 2022 /

It’s probably a bad habit, but when I drink out of an aluminum can, it tends to be with a meal or out of a sense of thirst. I am not a same can all day person, I want to get it done and move on.

Over the course of the last ten years or so, wine has started coming in a can. While my wife and I were visiting the coast over the weekend, we picked up a couple of cans of wine along with some snacks to enjoy the day.

I did some quick calculations. A bottle of wine is 750 ml or roughly 24 ounces. That means that one can equals about half a bottle. So, at $8 a can I suspect that cost is about par with a bottle. The truth is, I don’t really know who made the wine in the picture, however most of the cans I see are labelled Underwood or 14 Hands which would be on the mass market (cheaper) end of the wine industry. I am pretty sure that it cost more per bottle when all the variables are compared apples to apples.

There is no doubt that this is a convenient format. The can is more compact, it is light and looks a lot better than drinking out of the bottle (meaning, a glass is not required). Aluminum blocks the light, so there would be no photo degradation like glass and chills quickly. However, there are some drawbacks, especially if you are a gulper.

What I learned from reading ‘Cork Dork’ a couple of years ago is that with sommelier training, the glass is important. I won’t rehash the book but how the residual liquid slides down the glass is an indication of the wine’s composition. And of course, the glass is designed to trap the nose and the aroma as you drink. Red wine glasses are bigger to expose more surface area to oxygen and provide more aroma, which is at least half of taste.

It was very difficult to drink directly out of a can and get the same experience. Add to that my propensity to take a slug rather than a proper sip and it was half gone in no time before I realized that I was doing it.

The wine itself was OK. In my opinion it was clean but unremarkable. That tends to be a characteristic of industrial wines. They tend to be more homogenous vintage over vintage due to blending and post fermentation alterations. So, here is the verdict.

End Your Programming Routine: I like the format, but I would still bring glasses if possible significantly reducing the convenience. I would also recommend red over white as they are not intended to stay as cold to drink. Maybe a Yeti or equivalent can coozi would be appropriate to drink directly out of a can so as not to feel the rush of beating the can warming up. I am not turned off enough to not try it again but I think that this is a situational use container.

January 24, 2022 – Don’t Be Crabby, It’s a Beautiful Day

January 24, 2022 /

I have said before, my favorite kind of fishing is the one that I am doing. My boys were headed out to a campout and we had a free day. My wife wanted to go to the coast and do some crabbing.

There are some people in my family that are pretty ‘coasty’ (including my wife). Both my grandfather and uncle had houses at the beach and looked for any excuse to go, including I remember checking the mail. Me on the other hand, I want a compelling reason but crabbing seems like a good one.

People not familiar with the pacific northwest coastline may be jealous that in less than an hour we can see the ocean. Don’t get me wrong, it can be beautiful. I think where most of the disconnect between perception and reality with me is that it is a hard formula to figure out whether it is going to be nice or miserable at the coast.

One thing I know, if it is hot here where I live, it is often can be cloudy or even rainy at the coast. In the summer time, even when it is sunny the wind blows pretty stiffly to the point that it is 70 degrees and cold (or sand in your face) because of wind chill. I think many of the best days are in the off season. That happened to be Saturday.

The conventional wisdom is that crabbing is best done in months that don’t contain an ‘R’. That means May, June, July and August are out. It is not that you cannot crab, it is more that it is molting season and the meat doesn’t fit the shell and tends to be soft rather than firm.

There is also a best time of day to do it. The best time is slack tide or the time in between incoming and outgoing tide. The incoming tide pushes crabs closer to the shore and the outgoing pulls them out. I will also say, the tides can also move your gear around as well. One time, my family lost all of their pots to a strong tide and could never find them again.

The technique is pretty simple. You attach some bait to the ring, throw the ring in the water and wait. After 15-30 minutes, pull up the ring keeping tension on the rope so the crabs don’t slip out as you are pulling them up. Once the ring is on the dock, you have to check for sex and size. Males, wider than 5 3/4″ are keepers. Crabs should be kept alive until boiled. They should be immediately cooled and cleaned and they should also be kept as close to freezing as possible until eaten. And, they should be eaten within a couple of days if not frozen.

We dilly-dallied our way to the place that we were going to crab. Consequently, we got there at 2pm and they closed the dock at 3pm. It was such a nice day that we did it anyway and we got two keepers in our 45mins of fishing. I would say that this is not always the case. I have been on days where all day yielded two crabs. So, we got lucky but that is fishing.

One last thing about inexperienced crabbing. Sea lions have figured out that the crab traps contain food. They will tear your traps apart and eat your bait and crabs. Traditionally, bait is the remains of filleted rock-fish. Some people use chicken and claim that has less problems. I have even heard of people using road kill as bait as well. But, what I am trying to say is that if you see sea lions, crabbing can be pretty poor. Fortunately, we didn’t have that problem.

End Your Programming Routine: Oregon requires a separate shellfish license to crab. It is good for the calendar year and with that we can also harvest clams as well. This is also something that I have never tried. I see more trips to the beach this year to harvest the bounty of what we have available.

January 21, 2022 – A Brave New World, Analysis

January 21, 2022 /

I eluded to this but I almost gave up on this book. It really wasn’t until chapter 17 that things started to make any sense. That was page 184 out of 220.  The interesting thing to this book was that Huxley wrote a forward to the 1946 edition of the book.  He unlike Orwell lived to see his work actually have some longevity and gain traction in the world.

I found it interesting that Huxley’s greatest regret was that he was unable to anticipate the coming of nuclear energy in 1932.  Therefore, his science fiction was ‘dated’.  For the twenty-first century reader, I think it is pretty forgivable considering all of the other technological changes we have seen since 1946. To his credit, he also admitted that if he were to redo it, he would have rewritten a lot of it (without getting to in depth to precisely what he would change).

From Huxley’s own words, this was intended to imagine a society five hundred years in the future.  Also, by observation the trend toward comfort over freedom was beginning.  I am not totally sure of his influences but I do think it was a stroke of genius to imagine totalitarianism as a gentle blanket, a much more likely scenario than the failures of the iron curtain or China.  Only North Korea seems to embrace the iron fist type totalitarian regime and even then I think it only kind of works because of it’s small size and population.

As I said at the beginning, the influences to the book were  supposed to be 1) the industrial revolution, figure headed by Henry Ford 2) Jazz and 3) Frued.  I could certainly see many references to Ford.  In fact, there is a quote late in the book ‘…Industrial civilization is only possible when there is no self denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.’  Everyone has a job and a place.  People need to keep consuming so that everyone keeps working.  Everyone needs to keep working so that they don’t have idle time.

Jazz is a curious one, maybe it was situational like the instrument named the sexophone (sounds like saxophone, it was never defined). There were many places where lyrics came from the characters mouths in song or rhythm.  I am far enough removed from Jazz that those lyrics may have been adaptations of popular songs, not quite sure.  Certainly music was part of the conditioning in civilization.  Like all entertainment, if it can be subverted to push a useful message, there is no doubt that can be leveraged for propaganda.

That leads us to Freud.  I think that you will all remember my analysis to Freud and 1984.  To me, that was clear and and easier link to make.  In this case, I have a harder time making the outright connection.   I think you could easily overlay Id, Ego and Super Ego to characters events and circumstances.  But I didn’t get the sense that the story was laid out to prove the theory.  Rather, it seems like Huxley was aware of the theory and said “that makes sense, that is how humans behave” and then wrote the story.  I think those looking to make Brave New World justify Freud would have an easier time than saying Freud’s influence drove the text.

Knowing the Orwell was a student of Huxley makes a lot of sense.  It does seem fairly  evident that Brave New World was highly influential in 1984.  I am sure that they shared some fairly poignant discussion and had similar thoughts.  In some ways I am glad I didn’t know that they had a connection before I read and analyzed 1984.  It was easier for me to be objective and follow my instincts. 

I think there are aspects of both that could be combined together.  For instance, I don’t know about ‘hatching’ civilization but I do think the kinder, gentler totalitarianism is the more likely play than Big Brother.  Society seemed more realistic in 1984 as well as the propaganda techniques but conditioning and chemical control also seems possible.  

I learned something during this process.  I don’t do well analyzing something until I have seen the whole picture, that is read the whole book.  I was struggling to even identify the concepts until I was done and then they seemed so clear and words began to flow.  I even cut out things that were more minor because I had so much to say about what I considered major concepts. 

End Your Programming Routine: If it wasn’t for chapters 16-18 being so outstanding, this book would have been a hard no from me.  If you are choosing between 1984 and Brave New World, I recommend 1984 any day and every day.  Not only does it seem more plausible, the storyline is generally more interesting.  Brave New World takes too many unnecessary detours for character development that simply don’t matter and don’t impact the story.  That being said, this is a good companion to 1984 and I would read them in that order.  As always, additional knowledge and perspective are helpful when preparing for the quiet revolution.  

January 20, 2022 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

January 20, 2022 /

Can I be honest? I suppose that I am as much of a voyeur, or lurker or however you want to describe it as I am a doer. I have talked about my disdain of social media and my real lack of participation at most of any level. I don’t care to interact and I suppose that I don’t understand the ‘rules of participation’ because I don’t.

Where is the going? I am a sucker for looking at people’s pictures of their survival backpack contents or reloading bench setup. Some years ago, I liked to periodically check-out https://www.edcforums.com/ to see what people carried with them everyday. It was as much evaluating what I did but also some people really go artistic with these things.

Somewhere along the line, I started noticing not just people’s gear but people also did stuff. I guess that is what occasionally draws me in. I probably could find as much inspiration in Pinterest, Instagram or other platforms as a lot of the forums seem pretty dead now. I am not specifically looking for inspiration, I just like the more deterministic view that forums have and I open what interests me rather than scrolling through a bunch of things that I don’t care about.

That is what leads to today’s post. Because right now, what is on the bench is not really Tacticool related. I am rebuilding a chainsaw. I use my bench for reloading, gun cleaning, Christmas wrapping, antenna building, record player rebuilding and many other things.

I actually built the bench to do fly tying and ironically, I have never done that. Fly tying is something that I have had an interest since I was a child. I actually took a community college class when I was in high school. It is also something that I haven’t done since I was in college. I still have an interest in doing it, I should probably put that on my goals for this year.

My bench was my first real woodworking project. It’s not completely fine woodworking because I used some fasteners to attach the drawer unit. However I took raw, rough cut lumber and built the bench about seven years ago. The drawer that you see is constructed of plywood that was a drawer that I built as a router table in the late 1990s. I saved the drawer but I sold the router and burned the bench because I didn’t want to move it from South Carolina.

End Your Programming Routine: The bench is a very important part of my tools. It is a space to work and I don’t have to be fussy about spills, scrapes and dents. It is probably redundant to say that people need a space to work. It needs to be comfortable height and clean. Normally, I would have done this work in the shop, but this way I don’t have to wait for it to heat up.

January 19, 2022 – Time to Start Gardening?

January 19, 2022 /

It absolutely is time to start planning. If you know your last average frost date, then that is your target day to aim for getting plants in the ground. Aside from that, this is pruning time. Grape vines, fruit trees, rose bushes need to be started before the budding begins.

If you don’t know your last frost date, start here. Once you know that date, you can plan germination dates for seed starts by back calculating when you want to get plants in the ground. Don’t be a robot, watch the weather around that date so that you don’t put plants in the ground only to freeze.

If you remember last year, I needed to build new beds. That is still the case for me and I am running out of time to get that started. Another reason to start planning now is that this is the downtime. Once the grass starts growing, then you’ve got mowing and weeding to add to the list of yardwork (if you do that kind of thing). That means your free time is significantly reduced.

Recently, I bought some LED grow bulbs. The main reason was that I raided that fixture for light bulbs throughout the summer and fall and now I needed new bulbs anyway. However, I do want to try and grow some greens hydroponically this year so I thought that this upgrade was worth the extra money (to try). They are not cheap, so at $20 per bulb, that is the three times what a T8 daylight bulb costs. I will report on the how they did later in the spring.

It is a good time to make sure tools are in order. Do that oil change on the lawnmower, sharpen blades, replace broken tools before the rush happens. Bare root trees are best planted in the winter. Even if you do not want to work outside this time of year, having a plan to execute when the weather gets nicer is very helpful.

Speaking of seasonality, in this era of shortages, it would be best to get the items like seeds, hose mending, irrigation and other supplies while they are available. I have a feeling that once they are gone, they are gone for the season. That is quite normal actually, I can tell, there have been a number of times that I was looking to mend a hose in August only to find that everything has been sold out.

End Your Programming Routine: In our house, we keep talking about the shortage of everything and the adulteration of the food supply with increased industrialization and additives. We keep saying that this is the year that we will do more, more gardening, maybe some chickens as well. I can’t say 100% for sure that we are going to turn the corner this year, but we will miss the boat on this years harvest if we don’t start soon.

January 18, 2022 – Movie Day

January 18, 2022 /

I had a good weekend. This was the first time I had Martin Luther King Jr day off since 1997. The weather was OK so consequently, I got some pruning and yard work done. I also got some work in the shop done, this was one of the projects I worked on.

About a week ago, I talked about my son’s bicycle problems. I communicated with the factory, and they weren’t going to touch this problem with a five foot pole (as I suspected). So, I went ahead and bypassed the factory switch. Here’s how it was done.

End Your Programming Routine: The repair took a little over an hour, the video slowed me down quite a bit. Then I have spent another hour editing this to get it where it is, so this is it for today. Keep looking for ways to reject the status quo in your life. Fix that battery.

January 17, 2022 – Science on Monday

January 17, 2022 /

Today is Martin Luther King Jr day and technically, I have the day off. This is the first time I have had this as a holiday since I was in college. Nevertheless, the show must go on at AltF4.co.

We have had some cold weather recently. Not cold like upper mid-west, but colder than normal weather as in significantly below freezing at night. I have a refrigerator in the (detached) garage that barely hangs on through the cold of winter and the heat of summer. I will use it as long as it continues to run. This was the first time I have ever seen canned drinks freeze and distort the can.

So, what actually happens? Eventually the outside temperature gets colder than the inside temperature of the refrigerator (and freezer). The unit has no capacity to warm itself and therefore the entire becomes the temperature as ambient. So, expect your refrigerator to freeze and your freezer to thaw.

Now, most compounds when frozen actually shrink in volume. Not water which is 99% of what is in this can. That is the miracle of life. Without the fact that water actually expands when frozen allow life to exist on the planet. It is how the Arctic and Antarctic have ice over the ocean but liquid beneath.

Carbonation is the act of dissolving carbon dioxide into a liquid. Dissolved doesn’t mean that it disappears, it is dispersed throughout the solution. The freezing point of water is significantly higher than carbon dioxide and freezing turns the individual atoms into a crystal structure. What happened here is that the water formed ice and the majority of the carbon dioxide left the liquid and blew out the can.

Impressively, the can didn’t burst, but it expanded everywhere it was possible. When the ice melted, the volume contracted again and the can folded inward. There were some other cans of Sunkist in the refrigerator that showed no signs of damage at all. What happened there?

Something you may know is that antifreeze is significantly comprised of ethylene or propylene glycol. Well, chemically those are alcohols. Sugar is also classified as an alcohol. It is also why they say animals are attracted to antifreeze because it is sweet. This is my theory anyway, there is enough sugar in the Sunkist that prevented it from freezing.

There were some ‘Mexican’ Coca-Cola’s in the freezer that completely iced up and spilled over. The bottle didn’t break, that I can see. The weak point seems to be the bottlecap. I suspect that as the bottle iced up, it put enough pressure on the cap to create a gap and release unfrozen liquid and the carbon dioxide.

Why did the Cokes freeze but the Sunkist not? Good question, Is it because one uses corn syrup and one uses sugar? I think likely. I suspect that on a weight by weight volume, significantly more corn syrup is used in place of sugar. Lastly, there were two bottles of prepared margarita drink. Those appeared to not freeze either.

End Your Programming Routine: I opened the water and it was flat. That means that the waters are done, the cokes were done and I have a mess to clean in the refrigerator. Fortunately, it was only a few things and not stocked full. Although it is possible that if the refrigerator was full, this may not have happened because of having enough thermal mass to keep the internal temperature from getting so cold. My advice is to watch the weather and take appropriate actions to protect items from seasonal damage. I don’t know if I will have do anything different but it is a data point to watch in the future.

January 14, 2022 – Brave New World, Chapters 13 – 18

January 14, 2022 /

Things change rapidly in the later part of the book.  Finally, we get into what is going on and more importantly the why of it.  

A lot happens in the latter part of the book.  John interacts with society, Bernard rises and falls as a celebrity, and of course, the finale.  I am not going to spoil what happens and how for you.  But, this is definitely where all the action is particularly chapters 16 and 17.

Science and Art vs Society  – To me this is the central theme of the book.  From a philosophical point of view, there can only be truth when there is also untruth and there can only be beauty when there is also not.  Science and art lead to truth and beauty which often times can be in contrast to happiness.  And when there is unhappiness, there is instability in society. 

The poignant conversation with Mustapha Mond reveals science has ceased advancing in AF632.  Without truth, there is also no beauty.  I used to believe the phrase that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’.  And I am not saying that I have completely thrown that belief out however, I do think that the antithesis that there are standards that are universally recognized.   Those standards can change but only if truth changes.

Back when I was in high school, we had a days long debate with our Latin Teacher who was also trained in philosophy about this subject.  His stance was that there was an absolute definition of beauty.  That flew in the face of us young, doe eyed high schoolers.  I think it was us revolting to the idea that we all saw ourselves as “mommy and daddies’ little gems”.  The truth of it was that we had not seen enough of the world to understand that the full picture had not been revealed.  In that Latin class, most were successful in life but in the larger graduating class some became drug addicts and criminals, some died in car crashes and some got ‘knocked up’ shortly after leaving high school; hardly a beautiful ending.

In the eye of the beholder is a filter that we use to justify our choices and it is perfectly fine.  But, it doesn’t mean that it fits the definition of beauty.  I don’t know if this is true but Mustapha cited that only 1/9 can be Alpha.  The other 8/9 are not.  That is the science (or statistical analysis, a form of science) or truth.  When we are in the lower eight, we don’t want to believe it and that makes us unhappy.

Age and solidarity draw toward religion – The wildcard in the trinity above is religion.  Civilization in AF632 has edited out god, therefore it is handled in a separate conversation between John and Mustapha.  I suppose you could say that religion influences truth and beauty but it could have it’s on effect on happiness as well.

The claim is that as we age and get closer to death, we are looking for answers to the unknown in life.  In Brave New World no one ages, death has been normalized throughout all life and no one is solitary.  I suppose that is one technique to prevent looking for God in the first place. 

But I think in a larger sense, religion has a more powerful role than either truth or beauty.  It can cause us to do things and live life in contrast to societal norms or dare I say even laws.  For instance, despite religion being illegal in China there are still churches.  Religion has always survived persecution or even on the fringes of permission.  Clearly, a powerful motivator and society disrupter.

Nobility and Heroism = Political inefficiency – This is a minor point but a quote that I thought was interesting.  What it is saying is that when the population holds some individuals (or fictional characters) to a different level, then the current propaganda has failed.  I think that this is one to watch out for in the future actually.  

We see this all the time in the villainization of individuals in media circles.  It could be Trump or AOC and to a lessor extent Antonio Brown or John Gruden. One side pushing an agenda to discredit the other side.  The part that has yet to be perfected is when this doesn’t happen at all it means total control has been assumed.  The other thing to watch out for here is don’t get trapped on one side.

Humanity is the right to be Unhappy – Here is the punchline to what Huxley was delivering.  Again, this is the result of concept one today.  I think that it is interesting that even in the 1930s, Huxley recognized the trend to give up freedom for the sake of comfort.  

I will use a completely unrelated example to illustrate this.  Many companies are pushing this acronym SaaS.  That stands for Software as a Service.  The premise is that you sign up for a reoccurring payment to retain access to the service.  You don’t pay it every month (or period), you are charged automatically.  I have always bristled at this in that as it puts it on auto-pilot.   It stops becoming a subscription and become an everbearing revenue stream for the companies providing the service. No wonder it is popular.  The prevailing attitude of most people is that it is better to give up control than to have to deal with it.

What we lose here is the analysis of whether we want the service or not.  Is the payment market appropriate? Are we using the service enough to justify the cost? Do we even know that we are paying for the service?  We are abdicating choice for comfort in this case.  

My wrap-up next week will conclude this review.  I will do some comparisons with teacher and student to 1984.  I think Huxley provided some pretty strong conclusions late in the book.  The thing that I really appreciated with this section was the reminder that I don’t have to agree with what is happening in the world, the fact that it is happening and I know about it there is still hope that we have not been completely brainwashed or sanitized.

End Your Programming Routine:  Freedom requires maturity.  Maturity contains the ability to accept that there is truth that contrasts what we want in life or that we may not fit into every definition of beauty.  We do not have maturity if we put convenience over freedom in the long run.  The ability to make the decision in the first place is freedom. Without a continued questioning of whether we made the right decision or the results still fit is truth.   

January 13, 2022 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

January 13, 2022 /

The other day, I was in a local store and I saw more ammunition on the shelves than I have seen in almost two years. I won’t say that the problem is over by any means but it got me curious about some other locations and specifically components.

Last night, I had the occasion to go to the larger nearby city for some specific lightbulbs I couldn’t buy locally. I thought that I would stop in to Sportsman’s Warehouse to see if that matched my local experience. Again, they had some ammunition, pretty much what they have had recently 9mm, 40 S&W, 7.62×51, 6.5 Creedmoor and 12 gauge goose and duck loads. I did see a few boxes of 38 special, 22WMR, 44 special, 223 and 5.56 and that was new.

This post isn’t another inventory report on who has what, where. As I said in the first paragraph, I was looking for components not just ammunition. And the good news it seems like you can buy bulk (handgun) bullets but still not powder and primers. I have talked about my position before but I thought that I would hone in on my specific situation to give perspective.

Reloading became popular in the 1960’s. It was a way to get much better performance or specific results out of a firearm. So for instance, if you buy 45 Colt factory ammunition, it is loaded for maximum pressures not to exceed what could still be fired in an Colt 1873 Army revolver. The new Ruger Blackhawk can handle pressures up to the SAAMI limit (not the 45 Colt limit) which is three times that amount specified for the cartridge. Hence, you get the +P designation that you will see on a box of ammunition.

Still using that example, the 1873 originally used softer lead bullets. There is a phenomenon causes lead to foul the barrel if travelling too fast. This is why using a copper jacketed bullet is preferable if loading to higher pressures. Since the 45 Colt uses the same bullet diameter as the 454 Casull and the 460 Smith and Wesson there are a lot of selections of construction and weight to choose from (if you reload).

If you already own a 45 Colt, then you might already know all of this including loads safe to shoot in an 1873 are marked ‘Cowboy’ meaning lower velocity and soft lead bullets. Specifically, there is a specification for the pressure and construction that will prevent you from harming yourself if you are shooting something 150 years old. Confused yet?

I reload because I enjoy it. I also reload from the preparedness aspect. This time, I was unprepared in a way. From the last ammo shortage (2012-2016) I learned that primers were unavailable for years, I got those. Bullets are now somewhat available (and I have some). Powder is still scarce. So while I have a little, I don’t really have enough to load the primers I have.

The idea with reloading is that you find the right powder, primer, bullet combination that makes your firearm perform at its best. Where I am in the journey is that I have loaded some but haven’t done a whole lot of testing. Therefore, I held off on really having the stuff on hand to weather an ammunition shortage like I had planned. Now that we are here, I don’t have the options or the knowledge that I would like.

I suppose the industrious ones bought whatever they could find. I have seen a lot of trade requests for powder and primers happening over the year. In fact, a number of my bottles I haven’t yet opened because I just don’t do that much rifle shooting and I have been waiting to build up enough brass to run a batch for testing purposes. The powder on the left were what I wanted to try first.

End Your Programming Routine: So, that is my interest in components. Before all of this hit, I was building a starting point inventory and didn’t quite get there. Now all of that has been on hold for several years with no end in sight. Just because one powder can work in two cartridges doesn’t mean that it is optimal either. The only way to get there with the knowledge is to do it. With that, I hope it clears up soon.