Cartridge Collecting

Cartridge Collecting

I did not know that I was a Cartridge Box Collector. But in looking at this I think that I am.

It all started the first time I went Pistol Shooting with my Dad. I was in my 20s and just bought my first pistol. I was talking to my dad about it and he said I should get my Pistol out and go shoot with you. I had no idea that my Dad owned a pistol. He went and dug out a Smith and Wesson Model 28 in 357 Magnum and a few boxes of shells from the 60s. We went shooting and I saved the old boxes after.

Over the years I have accumulated a bunch of old boxes that were given to me, usually when someone was cleaning out their garage or I was helping clean up after a relative passed.

I guess I am a bit of a romantic and when I would see the old boxes I would set them aside. I eventually ended up with a box of them. The box grew to a larger Rubbermaid container and today I decided to pull them out. I did not realize how many I really had.

I really like to old boxes and get a kick out of them every time I see them. Anyway  I thought I would share them here.

Cap & Ball Pistol

The importance of Choosing the Right Wife

Several years ago I was given a black powder cap and ball pistol. It had been fired and put away without cleaning. All of the components were frozen solid and the owner was going to throw it away so he gave it to me. I spent a few evenings disassembling it cleaning and repairing it. Fortunately it was a Stainless Model so most parts were salvageable.  When I was done I put it in the safe. 

I decided that I would take it out and shoot it. I took it down the the range and blasted away. It was a lot of fun but boy did it get dirty! I decided that I would take it apart and clean it in my ultrasonic cleaner. 

I did the frame first but did not take any pictures. Then I put all the remaining pieces into a beaker and ran them through a cycle. I cleaned the parts in a mixture of Dawn Detergent and a small amount of Vinegar.  

Here you can see the parts going into the cleaner.

It did not take long for the solution to turn black and start to smell of sulfur (Left Side). 

After I finished cleaning I decided that I would put the parts in the oven on warm to dry them so that the steel parts would not rust. 

After the oven they got a light coating of oil where necessary and back into the safe. 

Why is this post titled the "Importance of choosing the right wife". Well I did all this cleaning in our kitchen counter and baked the parts in our oven. My wife does not even bat an eye when I have an ultrasonic cleaner cleaning stinky gun parts or brass on the kitchen counter. Nor does she think twice when she opens the oven door and finds gun parts. She just tells me that we are going out for dinner tonight with a smile.

 I am a lucky man!

Removing Suckers

Sucker Removal

One of the tasks for this time of the year is to remove what we call "suckers" they are shoots that sprout from the vines in areas that we don't want them.  We want the vine to focus all of its energy on the fruit producing shoots. So any extra shoots need to be removed. 

Here is a picture of a sucker that needs to be removed. If left unattended this shoot would grow to several feet long and would pull nutrients away from the main fruit producing shoots. 

Here is a before and after of the same vine. 

Before

 After

Sometimes they get rather large, here is one that got missed last year and has already produced several shoots. This has to be removed as well. 

Before

 After

It is a really simple task, but quite labor intensive. Each vine needs to be attended to. 

Range Upgrade

New Steel Targets

The Family and I enjoy shooting steel and have some steel silhouette targets that I made. They are knock down targets that go flying when you hit them. They are a lot of fun but I don't really like the kids to have to go down range to reset them. The kids are pretty good about gun safety but they are kids and get excited. So I decided to get some steel hanging targets that the kids could shoot without having to reset. 

I decided to do a little shopping on e bay and ended up finding these. They are 3/8 inch AR500 Steel Targets. I am not familiar with AR500 but from what I have been reading they are a hardened steel. That means that I can shoot them with stuff bigger than 22 Rimfire. So this is going to benefit me as well. 

I decided that I would mount them to a piece of galvanized angle iron that I had laying around in the shop. The angle iron will be screwed to my target stand at the range. 

The targets will be hung with short lengths of chain to allow them to swing when hit. Hopefully deflecting the bullet down and away from the shooter. 

 To mount the chain to the angle I used short bolts. This way I can unscrew the chain easily at the range if I need to replace a chain or want to switch out the targets.  

Here they are installed at the range with a row of my homemade knock down targets below. I will probably paint them black after a little while. But I had white paint laying around so I used it to keep the targets from rusting. 

I put a few shots into them after this picture was taken and I think that I may replace 2 of the 4" targets with 6". My pistol skills are better suited for the 6" targets than the 4". 

Weed Control

Vineyard Weed Control

I use several methods of weed control. In the row I mow or disk to remove the weeds. But in the berm (the space between the vines) it is a little more difficult. In this area I spray. I have a sprayer that atomizes the weed killer and applies a very small amount. I prefer to use as little chemicals as possible. In a perfect world I would use a mechanized method to remove the weeds but I have not found one that works reliably for us.

The sprayer is made to work on many tractors so a lot of the bracketry is modular. This is a very nice feature except for the fact that one of the brackets sticks up and if I am not careful it will hit the young shoots and break them off. No shoots = no grapes, so I like to avoid that.

You can see the bracket in this picture circled in red.

I decided that it was time to address this issue. First I drilled a hole so that I could put a bolt through the unit to hold it in place. Then I cut off the part that was extending up. 

Then I fabricated a little fender to push the vines up and out of the way should I hit some. 

 Welded it in place.

 Ground down the welds to make it smooth, added a coat of paint. 

 Here is the final product, It wont win and beauty contests but I think that it should work much better.