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McSpredder

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Everything posted by McSpredder

  1. If it works in Switzerland, maybe it is not such a bad idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Switzerland People who have a good knowledge of their own country, combined with marksmanship skills, can inflict a lot of damage on a trained and disciplined professional army. That was demonstrated during the War of American Independence and in the Boer Wars, and by the French and Belgian resistance fighters in WW2. Cut out some of the boot-polishing and square-bashing, offer young folk the chance to practice flying drones in battle, and more of them might be want to join up.
  2. Guns for Sale (Private Sales) has recently listed an AYA No3 magnum (3" chambers, 29" barrels) and an AYA Super Solway (3" chambers, 32" barrels). Probably weigh somewhere around 7-1/2 lb. Either of those might suit, if they are still available. Non-ejectors, therefore not handy for a "flush" competition.
  3. Maybe somebody nicked her Land Rover. Programme wouldn't be the same without it. We have only been in the county a few years, and many of the locations have us guessing, but the scenes in Hexham market place were really nice. Hope they will make another series.
  4. Do any of your pals have Excel installed? Excel will usually be able to open an ODS file, but will give a warning about risks associated with macros. If you wrote the spreadsheet yourself, and have not incorporated any macros, it may be quite safe.
  5. What would be the result of doing nothing about the Houthi? Presumably more ships would take the long route around the Cape. Countries bordering the Red Sea and Suez Canal would have fewer opportunities to disrupt international trade. Does that mean that imports from Asia would cost more, allowing UK manufacturers to be competitive? Or would we end up in an even worse mess? A cheap shell can sink a expensive boat, but what is to be done about drone attacks? We cannot carry on using a £2M missile to shoot down each £2k drone, whether it is in the Middle East, or Ukraine, or anywhere else. There must be a better way.
  6. Fully agree. That is exactly what happens with the mig-welding forum. I send £10 every so often, and reckon it is excellent value for money (whch reminds me that it must be 2 or 3 years since my last contribution, so time give them some more). https://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/
  7. Just as a matter of interest, how does a one-eyed driver judge distances?
  8. PW members may be able to recommend a good gunsmith if you say whereabouts the gun is located. A clearer photo (particularly around the crossed pikes) might allow somebody to check the re-proof date, and help to confirm the stated history of the gun. If there are visible marks showing that the barrels were originally chambered for 65mm (2-1/2”) cartridges, you can reasonably assume that re-proofing was done solely because the chambers were lengthened. If there are no old 65mm proof marks, the barrels may have always had 70mm chambers, in which case there must have been some other reason why a re-proof was needed. Edit: I quoted London Best because I totally agree about consulting a good gunsmith, and was not tyrying to teach him anything. The other remarks were for the OP.
  9. Ah, the Monkey Loader. I had some doubts more than 60 years ago, when I first saw an advertisement in a Youngs of Misterton catalogue dating from the 1930s. Gent dressed like Mr Toad, dangling a sawn-off shotgun (well, maybe a Churchill 25”) with muzzles not far off the ground. I could never quite make up my mind whether that nose-in-the-air stance meant he was looking for the pheasants, or sneering at the peasants. I understood how this device might avoid Sagging Pockets, but was always intrigued to know it provided Freedom from Irritation. As for safety, are caps any less likely to be struck by accident when cartridges are held in a tube rather than in a pocket?
  10. For a newcomer who has not yet developed any particular habits, is there any reason why it wouldn’t be equally easy to shoot off either shoulder? I would find it almost impossible, but that is after nearly 70 years shooting from the same shoulder. Most left-handers seem able to cope easily with a RH top lever. Is it just a matter of finding a gun with a stock of the appropriate cast? Lots of people can shoot well without any cast. Are there other known snags for a person wishing to shoot off the 'wrong' shoulder?
  11. Ultra-rapid acceleration in heavyweight vehicles sounds like a recipe for frequent tyre replacement and increased road repairs costs. In other words, more fun for the EV drivers and higher taxation for the rest of the population. Does ownership of an EV help to save the planet?
  12. I suspect he might have some experience of maintaining crawler tractors or tracked excavators. Turning the track pins on those seems to work pretty OK, and they stand up to quite harsh treatment.
  13. Almost thirty years ago somebody told me: "Nuclear fusion is the energy source of the future, and always will be". What is it predicted to cost? When Calder Hall opened we were told that electricity would soon be too cheap to meter, but I still get bills every month. Is there an estimated date when fusion power stations might be up and running, and coupled to the grid? Might the inhabitants of East Anglia still be muttering "Norfolk in use" in a hundred years time?
  14. How dare say 12gauge82 suggest such a thing? It amounts to impugning the integrity of the English judicial system. Orf with his head. Or at least have him thrown into jail. One of Lord Denning's successors as Master of the Rolls, Lord Bingham, described him as "the best known and best loved judge in our history", and if a senior judge says that, can it possibly be incorrect?
  15. Gilbert & Sullivan ("Iolanthe"), 1882 "The Law is the true embodiment Of everything that's excellent. It has no kind of fault or flaw....." Lord Denning (senior member of the judiciary), 1988 "It is better that some innocent men remain in jail than that the integrity of the English judicial system be impugned". Gilbert & Sullivan words were intended as humour, while Lord Denning was deadly serious. Maybe nothing much has changed.
  16. McSpredder

    MEMORIES

    With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipt maiden And many a lightfood lad. By brooks too broad for leaping The lightfoot boys are laid; The rose-lipt girls are sleeping In fields where roses fade. (A E Housman)
  17. Might the two shots have been an almost instant bang-bang? I have seen that happen when an ordinary single-trigger O/U was being held rather loosely in the hands (not against the shoulder). The gun moved back under recoil from the first barrel (so that the shooter effectively released the trigger) and then moved forward again to make contact with the trigger finger and discharge the other barrel. In that instance the gun was being held in front of the man’s chest, pointing skywards, so there was no danger to anybody, but it gave him a bit of a shock. Why was he doing that? He just wanted to fire a shot into the air and scare some birds, something he had done dozens of times with his old double-trigger gun.
  18. If holding the muzzles in boiling water doesn't cause enough expansion, you might try the chip pan (cooking oil boils at around 300oC). Certainly a lot safer than an oxy-acetylene flame (3150oC).
  19. Thank goodness there is at least one person left alive who made his own catapult rather than buying one from a shop. I always took a cut-throat razor to school in the early 1960s, because it was an essential item in the dissection kit for anybody studying A-level biology. Perhaps no more lethal than the sheath knives carried by all those scouts and guides.
  20. Back in 2016, Cameron wanted the international community to provide more support for education of Syria’s children, encouraging them to stay in that region rather than flocking to Europe. "A generation of refugees left out of school means a generation of young adults not only unable to get work but also more vulnerable to extremism and radicalisation,” Cameron warns. Unless the international community does more to help the countries on the border of Syria, he warns, hundreds of thousands of Syrians will continue to “fear they have no alternative but to put their lives in the hands of evil people-smugglers and risk the prospect of freezing to death in the Balkans or drowning in the waters of the Aegean in search of a future." I am not a great fan of his, but I do think he was correct on that point.
  21. No, no, that is an anachronism - something that you might have used long ago, but can now only read about in history books.
  22. You could be overcharged if the the system got wet. Maybe it was the wrong sort of rain. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67361998
  23. I was told, quite a long time ago, that a windscreen can usually be repaired if the damaged area is no larger than a one pound coin. Can anybody say whether that is still a reasinable guide?
  24. Are they seeking a total ban on imports of meat and other animal products? Or is it considered OK to import a carcase if people want to eat it, but not if they want to look at it?
  25. Shotgun prices from the same 1958 catalogue. That year I paid a retired headkeeper £4 for a Harrington & Richardson S/B .410 (big step up from my BSA Cadet).
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