Duracoat!

Since some of my more recent projects have come to a close I found something new to occupy my time. I have a QFI LA .380 that I received from my grandfather. It was a cheaper quality firearm yet it has never malfunctioned on me. I figured that I could make it a little more ascetically pleasing if I was going to keep it.

The finish on it reminds me of a 1990 Saturn that the clear coat wore off of. The plain cheap grips on it also do not accent this horrible finish as well. So I asked myself how to make this look better?

DURACOAT!

I watched a few videos and read a few reviews on the Duracoat product. Everyone had nothing but grand things to say about it. So why not give it a shot? The Lauer Weaponry website made things very easy for me to order the color I wanted (Colt Gray) along with all the other necessary tools and products I would need to complete the job.

The entire process is actually quite easy. First off you need to strip down all the items you plan on painting down to the bare minimum. Once that is achieved you have to prep the surfaces of the items. Some cleaner / de-greaser (provided in the kit) and a 3M Scotch Bright pad is all you need for that. Soak down the parts with the cleaner and buff them with the scotch bright pad. Afterwards wipe them off with a clean dry towel. Next its time to mix the paint. Duracoat requires you to add a hardener to the paint. The ratio is 12 parts paint to 1 part hardener. After the paint and hardener have been mixed you can add them to your air brush (also provided in kit). Now its time to paint away! After you have applied a few coats leave the items to dry. It states that it will take 24 hours for the paint to cure and harden before you can re-assemble your firearm. I myself am going to give it an extra day to be on the safe side. Either way it was a pretty smooth process and the final product came out looking awesome!

The only other thing that I may do once I put this back together is look for a nice Hogue grip for it to top it off. Well that does it for now. Time to put this sucker back together. More updates and projects to come soon! 

Mauser Refurb

A few months ago my grandfather gave me an old Mauser action 8mm rifle. He had gotten it fairly cheap many years back. I don't have any way of determining the origin of it since most of the markings are worn away completely. It appears that it was converted to a sporting rifle at one point. It had a lot of wear. Most of the bluing was worn off of the receiver, and the stock was rough and most of the finish was worn away. Unfortunately I was so excited to get to work on the rifle that I failed to take pictures with my good camera and only have a few off of my phone that I took.

This is the stock after a few good wipe downs with mineral spirits. The mineral spirits took off the remainder of the finish and also lifted the old oil out of the wood as well.

After a long sanding process I decided that I wanted to do a traditional oil hardened finish on the stock. So I picked up some Linspeed.

After several coats utilizing the Linspeed "dual application" process you can see for yourself that the results are pretty impressive.

I had some time between coats of oil so I took the liberty to re-blue the receiver. For it being such an old rifle I was able to blend the bluing so you couldn't even tell that it was redone.



After all was said and done I think that the rifle came out looking pretty good. My grandfather actually tried taking it back after he saw how nice it came out.

More updates on the way!

Shotgun Hull Base Wad

So recently I have noticed that on several of the forums I have been going on there has been a lot of talk about "what type of shotgun hulls should I use when reloading". What are the pros/ cons between using one brand over the other? You could go on for days about the minor differences about them but in my opinion it all comes down to the bottom base wad of the hull. I normally reload 2 3/4 #8 or 7 1/2 "target loads" at first I used to use Federal Top Gun hulls since I found them the easiest to reload on my machine. Other hulls would get stuck on some parts of the loader or the crimp wouldn't hold over time. I was sold on the idea that Federal hulls were "the bees knees". Then one day somebody had read my post on here about my current shotgun reloads with the Top Gun hulls and mentioned that they have a paper/ fiber base wad. If the base wad has ever been exposed to water/moisture then it will break down and could cause barrel obstructions, or even just normal breakdown of the wad itself over the course of time. I did not know that about the hulls I was using. So I took the liberty of cracking open a few more common hulls so you can see the difference in quality of the hull that you could possibly use for reloading. 

These are the base wads of 4 different hulls that have been fired, reloaded, and fired again. The first one on the left is a Federal Champion Paper hull. It has a fiber base wad that only after 2 firings has started to break down quite a bit. There are noticeable separation cracks throughout the wad. The second from the left is a Federal Top Gun hull also with a paper/ fiber base wad. It seemed to hold up a little bit better than the Champion but there are still noticeable signs of the wad breaking down. The third hull is a Winchester Super Target. It has a separate base wad insert. It shows very little to no wear in it. The white plastic insert is hardly even discolored from the powder. The only problem that I have with reloading this hull is not the base wad, its the quality of the rest of the hull. The plastic is very thin and soft. They tend to mushroom out at the top when you crimp them. I have also had trouble with the final crimp holding after a long period of time. Ill pick up a box that I had loaded a few months back and have shot rolling out of the corners. Finally all the way on the right is a Remington Gun Club. These have been my hull of choice to reload lately. The overall structure of the hull is great. Very rigid durable walls. Its hard to tell they are even reloads most of the time. They hold their shape very well, and the base wad is all once solid piece of the hull. It's not fiber/paper nor is it a plastic insert. its just one solid molded hull base wad and all. After I had reloaded the Gun Clubs several times I cut one down and the inside of it still looks as if it were brand new out of the bag. I hope that this helped out those that were un-aware much like I was. More updates and projects to come!

The Winchester

Over the weekend it was abnormally warm in Chicago. So a friend of mine suggested that we make the best use of the weather and go to the range. We ended up going to the Winchester Gun Club in Franksville, WI. We had a blast to say the least. Its a shotgun only club. We dabbled in some skeet, trap, 5 stand, and sporting clays. After spending the day there we were looking at the memberships on the way out, and realized that if we would have just become members at the beginning of the day they would have pretty much paid for themselves already. The gentleman overheard the comment and cut us a deal. He took all the money that we would have saved on our rounds and applied it to the cost of the membership. Twelve dollars and 5 minutes later we were the two newest members of the Winchester Gun Club! Now I have plenty of hulls to reload in the near future.

Also under the press now is a new .45ACP load. I changed over from the 185gr. HP to a 200 gr. alloy SWC. still using the AA#5 powder at about 6.8.gr I'll have to go to the range this weekend and see how they perform. Thats about it for now until I receive some parts to finish the Marlin project. Next on the list is going to be some 9mm wad cutters and possibly refurbishing an old duty revolver for a friend of mine. 

Updates and new projects!

Okay so it has been a while since I posted last, but can you blame me. Who wants to sit inside during the summer when you can be out enjoying the weather. Now that the temperature in Chicago has dropped down its a little less inviting to stay outside as much. So its time to jump back into the swing of things. Recently I acquired an 8mm Mauser sporting rifle that was beat to piss. The stock was in terrible shape, most of the bluing was worn away, and the interior of the barrel was caked with oxidation. Unfortunately I was so excited to start working on it that I completely forgot to take pictures of it beforehand. Ill do an update once the stock is finished hardening with "after" pictures though. The end product is very  nice.

Moving on to a little bit of a shop update. I have moved onto casting and sizing my own bullets now! My grandpa supplied me with one of his extra sizers and I have been going to town with it. My first batch of bullets that I created are .45ACP 200gr Semi-Wadcutter. I currently have some brass in the tumbler getting cleaned up. Once that is finished I'll have to reset my Blue Press and play around with a few different loads I have been looking at.

After I'm done with the .45ACP I think I'm going to move onto loading up some 9mm. I'm starting to run a little low and now that I can cast it will be even more affordable to shoot.

Time to get down to business. My newest project that I have taken on is a very special one. Recently I  have decided to focus a bit more on Gunsmith work and restoration. A friend of mine came to me with her late brothers Marlin mod.336a 30-30. When she dropped it off I immediately noticed that it had been sitting around for quite a while. There was no oil to be found anywhere on the rifle. There was also a decent amount of rust starting to form on all components of the rifle. last but not least the action was stuck open. It took quite a bit of force to get it closed, and when it did I could tell that something had malfunctioned.

Turned out that end of the carrier rocker had snapped off. Fortunately enough it is not expensive, but it is also not as available as an entire carrier assembly. Regardless I ordered one up and I should expect to see it in the next few weeks. In the mean time while I wait for the part to arrive I decided to start working on all the rust and oxidation on the rest of the rifle. With a little bit of patience, Hoppe's no. 9, and some 0000 steel wool I got to work. I was worried that I would have to re-blue a few areas once I knocked off the rust, but to my surprise the bluing was hardly affected at all. 

*Before* Notice all the surface rust on the lower part of the receiver body. Also the bolt had lots of marring.

*Before* The lever was coated in surface rust inside and out. the trigger assembly was almost as bad.

*After* The Hoppe's no. 9 solvent really breaks down the rust. The 0000 steel wool does an excellent job of taking away the imperfections but does not affect the bluing in any way

The bolt had many marred spots on it. I used some Blue Magic metal polish and an old cotton rag to buff the metal at first. After I gave it a good once over I used a two stage 6" buffing wheel to give it a near mirror finish on it.

Not much to do now except wait for the carrier rocker to come in and put it all back together.

Glow Sights

So last time I went to the range I noticed that unless in a well lit room the sights on my 9mm Taurus were just not cutting it anymore. The white rear sight was a dingy grey and could hardly see any color on the front as well. After searching around the internet I came to a conclusion that the cheapest way would be to just re-paint them rather than replace them with another set.

Then I thought to myself if I'm going to paint them I may as well try to find some lume paint but that was fairly expensive and hard to find. So I went to the local arts and crafts store in the area and picked up some regular glow in the dark craft paint.

After a few coats I left it under a regular desk lamp for a minute or so and then killed all the lights in the room. It was actually glowing fairly decent for not being exposed to any UV light. Now, time to get to the range and test it out ! I may bring a UV light to give it a quick boost if the glow starts to fade.

.45 ACP 185gr. HP

So I realized two things the other day. First I totally forgot that I started this reloading blog, and second I noticed that I have been neglecting this beautiful piece of machinery next to me also known as the Dillon RL550B. So what better to do then put the shot shell production on hold and get back on the Dillon.

 The fist question to ask myself is what should I reload? So I rummaged through the bottom of my bench to figure out what cases are all ready to go. Apparently last time I came back from the range I didn't put ANY of my empty cases in my tumbler. But the good thing was that all my .45ACP brass was cleaned from the time before and ready to get put under the press.



Equipment being used:


- Dillon RL550b
- Winchester .45ACP brass
- CCI large pistol primers
- AA #5 powder
- Hornady 185gr. Jacketed HP




Now that I have all of my brass sorted out its time to decide how much punch I want behind the 185gr. HP. Consulting the always reputable Lyman Reloading Handbook I see that suggested starting grains was 7.4 (9.2 being the max) . Since all I do is target shoot at shorter ranges in the area I figured that I would not need much more than that to get the job done. So I bumped it up a bit and went to 7.8gr. No point in throwing away extra powder. I loaded around 150 rounds for now. I'll have to hit the range before my trip to Austin in two weeks.