DrBob

I have an SMLE , a 1916 BSA manufacture, bored out to .410. As Enfield Spares notes, it never fed cartridges properly, certainly not now the magazine has been welded, and is a single shot. it shoots surprisingly well, great fun on the clays, but, as cylinder bore, strictly short range. It means I can own a piece of history which is still functional. i acquired a 1907 pattern bayonet, and have to say that fitting it to the weapon is disturbing; the whole assembly is perfectly balanced and swings very easily, not the heavy and unwieldy mass you would expect. To imagine a young lad, shivering in the trenches, waiting for the whistle to 'go over the top', a bayoneted rifle in his hands, is a salutary thought........

Might be worth checking these people out https://www.vintagecashcow.co.uk/items-we-buy/medals-and-militaria/princess-mary-tins

A useful little trick if dentures rub; identify the sore spot and pick up a little flour on a cocktail stick or similar. Place a little flour on the spot, and immediately seat the denture. Remove it and there'll be a little white mark where the sore spot is; this can be adjusted with a small file, Dremel or similar. As ever; beware ulcers in the floor of mouth and especially on the side of the tongue, particularly in those who like a drink and a fag. These need assessing quickly, ideally by a dentist. Any ulcer that lasts more than six weeks needs checking out.

I think from his body language, speech pattern and directness, there's an element of autism here. It would fit with his impulsiveness. Not justifying, just observing. I feel for his parents, decent people by all accounts.

Great fun. Powerful, accurate and endlessly customisable.

Might be a simple scam. Check with the Police before giving out any details.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2018/they-shall-not-grow-old quite stunning

I made a superb pick-up from an old walking pole and magnets from https://www.first4magnets.com/ who were superb. Fascinating site, some good Boy's Toys.......

Sharp end of a cleg

A horsefly, Tabanus, yesterday......

Saw a quote in a local shop ” cats leave paw-prints on your heart”

Hi Sportsbob, Wisemans were in the old Birmingham gun quarter, I’m pretty sure it was in Price St; close to Wilde. This would be in the late seventies. I used to buy all my reloading stuff from them. Wilde is still there , Colin Wilde died in 2016, Steve Horton at the helm of Hortons, the area has shrunk dramatically, I haven’t checked out Wiseman’s yet, but will make it a Spring project to drop by.

Hi Teamtractor, what’s Wiseman’s like? i used to go to the shop in Price St, Birmingham, and it was an absolute treasure trove; a proper old gunsmiths. is it still?

Shane wrote Fairytale (with Jem Finer) apparently after a bet with Elvis Costello, who reckoned they couldn’t write a Christmas hit without compromising their reputation. Have to say a song about alcoholism and lost dreams ain’t your normal Christmas fayre, but it’s more relevant to a lot of people than, say, White Christmas.

80 was a lovely powder, back in the Seventies. It was a bulk powder compared with the Olin ball powder used by Winchester and designed for use in the AA compression-formed cases. The main issue was that Winchester ,and similar low-bulk powders,could be double loaded quite easily, with catastrophic results. No 80 was so bulky that the wad would protrude from the case if double charged and would be immediately obvious. This engendered a certain safety margin when reloading. It was also very tolerant of cartridge case variations, I never had any signs of excess pressure over several thousand handloads, compared with factory loads where I have occasionally encountered sticking cases, blown primers, distorted wad columns, etc. it just became too much effort and expense. Now I’m older, I buy cartridges by the thousand. Back in the Seventies, few people ever did that; very often folks would shoot clays with good old Grand Prix, no 6, or Eley Trapshooting, varnished paper case and the same loading as described above. People would buy two or three boxes, often from local shops. Interestingly, I started at the Belfry Hotel, which had a little Skeet set-up, this would be early to mid Seventies. All gone now, the hotel is the PGA HQ.

This poem, written a hundred years ago, still has the power to chill. Imagine the soldier, scared, exhausted, finding himself in the gloom with the animated corpse of his dead enemy. The last paragraph is spine chilling. Food for thought as another Remembrance passes into history. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47395/strange-meeting

With older guns, the snap of the tumbler ( hammer) could cause the delicate springs to fracture if not cushioned by a primer strike, in other words dry firing could cause harm. Not really an issue with modern guns, except, perhaps, with hammer guns, where the firing pin housing can be damaged by repeated dry firing.. I personally feel that it is always a mistake to load a cartridge into a gun and pull the trigger, except when actually shooting. Snap caps are usually pretty obviously different from live cartridges, but you are still loading something into the chambers of a functional shotgun and pulling the trigger. I wouldn't.

We are all sentient beings. Life is hard, endless pressures and admitting it is seen as a weakness, a sign of failure, especially for blokes. My guess is that you are down at the moment, ground down by the pressures of work, society, children, debts etc, and you see your wife as a stable bastion, a beacon of decency in a corrupt and amoral world. For her to show up with a bunch of silly women friends and make a direct statement of her intent to shock, has added to the mix and overloaded your coping ability. A bit of dope is not the issue. You've both changed, probably tended to become isolated from each other, and bad thoughts quickly grow. Take her out, to somewhere special, and tell her how you feel. Tell her you're frightened, that you need her and want her. My guess is that she'll dismiss her friends as a bit of a laugh. She's a Mum, remember. She's never had time to just let her hair down, to escape the school run, homework, washing etc, and just wanted to be silly for a night. Her kids will always come first. Last summer was warm. This one's rainy. Next year might be brilliant. Don't walk away. Many wise words on this thread.

photobucket now useless. Will try the other method......

Amanita phalloides, the Death Cap, is unbelievably toxicand closely resembles edible species. One trick to remember, look at the gills, A.phalloides has white gills. Edible species are chocolate,or pink.

She was a big girl! Quite late in the season, so well fed on a glut of craneflies, and probably laden with eggs. They really don't nip unless held in the hand, they're quite sweet natured. There are a few British spiders which can bite, a couple can be potentially harmful, but you really have to try to get bitten. (Unless you read the Daily Mail, or- the mark of the terminally senile- the Express, in which case they'll get you in your bed.)

That is a Garden Spider, Aranaeus diadematus. They tend to appear now, throughout the Autumn, building a beautiful Orb web in hedgerows and around buildings. Very tame, easily handled, they can nip but are pretty well harmless. A. quadratus is a closely related species which can reach a good size. Eat a massive number of insects, they are a major predator of craneflies, daddy longlegs. Not to be confused with the False Widows, the "Daily Mail Spider", which lives in a messy tangle web and can deliver a mildly venomous bite. Here's a female A. quadratus exploring my finger. Note her fangs are folded, she didn't bite. Which was nice......

Tip, Those who have problems with dental local anaesthetics....... The commonest reason for failure of LA is simple; the target nerve supply is not affected by the drug. Typically, the target area is the large nerve supplying the lower jaw, it's surprisingly difficult to hit with total accuracy, and easy to deposit the drug within the surrounding tissue. Secondly, there may be secondary innervation, another nerve supply to the area. Let the dentist think you know more than you do. It makes us nervous! In the lower jaw- Ask for a "supplemental Long Buccal Nerve block and a lingual infiltration" In the upper jaw, ask for "an Articaine infiltration, mesially and distally". Lingual ( pronounced ling-wal) means on the inside, mesial ( meez-ee-ul) means in front, and distal means to the back. Articaine is a particularly powerful anaesthetic. Secondly, tell the dentist that you don't mind swapping with the next patient and sitting downstairs for a while. If he/she asks how you know the jargon, just say your brother, sister, wife is a dentist!