Friday, December 09, 2011

Overheard in the Office:

Me: (Idly flipping through the Big Book Of Bullets) "Huh. '.10 Eichelberger Long Rifle'..."

RX: "What?"

Me: "You take store-bought .22LR, pull the bullets, dump the powder..."

RX: "But it's a rimfire! How do you get the priming compound...?"

Me: "...run the primed cases through a series of sizing dies..."

RX: "Yikes!"

Me: "...and then you seat your..."

RX: "Matchstick."

Me: "...7.5gr .103" spitzer bullet over not quite two grains of AA9, and launch that sucker at over 2100 feet-per-second."

RX: "Yes, but what would you do with it?"

Me: "I bet it would $&#@ up a mouse."

RX: "Yes, but so would a darning needle attached to a length of dowel rod, and it would be a lot more sporting to hunt them that way. I believe fat Hermann was the last hunstman in Europe to take a mouse with the traditional darning needle attached to a length of dowel rod. It just seems like something he'd do."

39 comments:

  1. I have a perverse fascination with those sub .17 caliber cartridges. There was one out there that amounted to a necked down 25acp with either a .10 or .15 bullet, can't recall which. I think that would be all kinds of fun in a Contender. :)

    Chris

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  2. Here it is: http://www.saubier.com/smallcaliber/extreme.html

    Chris

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  3. When Fat Hermann came to Hungary to Hunt, he used a Drilling. At least, that's what's in the Picture we got from my Great-Uncle, who was his Guide. Then the $$%^&$%&^&&^^& Bastard stole my Dad's Hunting Dog!

    I believe you were thinking of Magda Goebbel teaching the girls the Darning Needle Hunting technique.

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  4. "What's it for?"
    "To Sell!"

    I still shoot 22 shorts in my basement, and I often wish for a little 22 short autoloader to do so with. A small caliber rifle would be the nuts for that.

    Of course you'd have to score with an electron microscope.

    I used to own a very ornate schuetzen rifle that shot a 4mm lead ball using only a #11 percussion cap. It was a hoot to shoot, almost noiseless, and had the most lovely engraving on the receiver- which was meaningless, since the barrel was mostly just a crowbar with a teeny single barrel sort of pistol merged into the muzzle.

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  5. i have such a man crush on the .14 calibers. one day i'll spend way too much money to shoot pigeons.

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  6. When it comes to 'mouse hunting', I once shot a mouse in an abandoned farm house with a S&W Md. 29 loaded with full charge .44 Magnums.

    Most of him disappeared down the hole in the floor I made with the blast, but I think that qualifies me as one of the few who have truly used a .44 Mag to kill everything from "...mice to monsters..."

    All The Best,
    Frank W. James

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  7. Mr. James:

    Hey, you're supposed to eat what you kill!

    That .44 probably RUINED the roasts from that mouse.

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  8. What the *%&)% do you guys put in your morning coffee? And can I have some?

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  9. "I bet it would $&#@ up a mouse."

    Heheheheheh!

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  10. I killed a mouse in Reno.
    Just to watch it die.

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  11. Envisions Tam and Roberta chasing that damned rat around his theme park in Florida with a needle/dowel rod spear...

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  12. Being of a certain age, I immediately got the fat Herman reference. In fact, an image of said person flashed before me.

    Then I wondered what would the google say?

    It turns out the phrase "fat Herman" does not mean what I thought it meant. And I'll have that mental image for awhile.

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  13. We use Crash the cat for all our mousing needs. Unlike .10 Eichelberger, he also warms my lap.

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  14. Best weapon for mouse or stobor
    3mm CorreiaTech Combat Wombat

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  15. You have to google "Fat Hermann".

    The balance of his family lives in the US. One of his nephews is one of my suppliers.

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  16. "You have to google "Fat Hermann"."

    The results of that were unexpected.

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  17. "The results of that were unexpected."

    Only if you google "herman" instead of "hermann"

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  18. Remington 550 will shoot .22 Short in semi-auto mode. I can't remember the last time I actually saw .22 Short ammo for sale, other than mail order.

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  19. One of the early 80s Gun Digest annuals had a humorous article on a ".14 Fudman Fleet" (sp?), being a .460 Weatherby necked down to .14. It was all in jest, but a well-written jest at that.

    Micro-wildcats are always an interesting discussion. Thanks for that one. If there can be a .17 Mk2, there might certainly be someday a .14 or even .10...just for the fun of it.

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  20. Og,
    Regarding .22 shorts...
    I believe Midway has a conversion kit that allows you to shoot shorts out of a Ruger 10-22. It's just a bolt assembly and a magazine. Swapping out the parts should take all of a minute or two and you can switch back to the standard .22lr parts just as quickly.


    BGM

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  21. ...and then I think that we should be careful about discussing funky new cartridges - no matter how apparently useless - on the internet, for surely Ron Cohen will announce a 220 in rainbow colors, or perhaps a 250 with three pastel frames, or better yet a 290 with threaded barrel & scope mount, for same 'new' cartridge next week.

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  22. "We use Crash the cat for all our mousing needs. Unlike .10 Eichelberger, he also warms my lap."
    Borepatch, the .10 will too, if'n you shoot it enough.

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  23. I'm trying to imagine the gun drill for a 16" .10 Eichelberger barrel... or the cleaning rod.
    PhilaBOR

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  24. The original Remington speedmasters were available in 22 short, when you can find one. I buy 22 shorts at walmart all day and all night. (they're incorrectly marked as CB caps; they dimensionally match shorts)

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  25. Umm, J.D.?

    What exactly is a "3mm CorreiaTech Combat Wombat"?
    And are there any pictures to be found anywhere?

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  26. "I still shoot 22 shorts in my basement, and I often wish for a little 22 short autoloader to do so with."

    S&W did make a 22 short version of the Model 41. I can't find one on GunBroker right now, and I don't recall what they go for these days....

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  27. Back in the 1920's, Springfield Armory got 6,000 f.p.s. out of a 30-06 necked down to handle a phonograph needle. I guess Col. Whelen had time on his hands.

    I just sent some FN 5.7 cases necked to .17 caliber up to Mack Qwinne at MGImilitary in Maine.

    With a.301 rim/head diameter, you could stuff an awful lot of those little babies in a fairly compact magazine. Straight blowback with a 2 pound bolt and 3,350 fps with a 25 grain pill in an 18 inch barrel. I'm almost afraid to see what the evil genius will come up with.

    Sizing primed rimfire rounds must be interesting, in a Chinese curse sort of way. I'll bet there are lots of suprises.

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  28. Whatever's going on here is to over the top for me...we use sticky trap's for mice around here and .22LR or .410 for tree rat's...

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  29. OK, I got lost ... are we or aren't we talking about Hermann Goering, of suicide with a zipper in Nuremberg fame?

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  30. Grayson - I'm not aware of any images of the Combat Wombat, since it exists AFAIK only in the mind and writing of Larry Correia. Here's a description of it's use:

    EXTERIOR SHOT – THE PLAYGROUND. Nazi dinosaurs are all trying to do that Heil salute, but it is difficult with their stubby little arms. Tom Stranger falls out of the sky and lands, crouched, in the middle of the Nazi dinosaurs. They turn to look at him, surprised. Tom Stranger reaches both hands into his suit coat and comes out with a CCW (CorreiaTech Combat Wombat) pistol in each hand. A Tyrannosaurs with a little Hitler mustache roars, but then Hitlersaurus Rex explodes into a shower of blood and meat chunks as a 3mm hypervelocity round strikes it at over 50,000 feet per second.

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  31. Forsooth, I actually said "Fat Hermann Goering;" I figured he started small and worked his way up to hunting boar with a lance. (Insanely arrogant, even though he did succeed.)

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  32. Oh, to clean your .103 ELR you use your vacuum cleaner to suck air down the barrel and you suck a string down, then tie a small patch in a knot. Perhaps tie a knot in the string.

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  33. Anonymous @1:42, that person violated the Goatse Law. It really is an actual Federal law.

    We are forbidden from posting blind links, without fair warning, to images which will gross us out, which we did not need to see, and which we might not ever be able to scrub from our visual cortices.

    You can look it up.

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  34. I wish I still had my copy of "Cartridges of the World." That Kolibri round was right itsy-bitsy. I suspect my fingers might be too big to manipulate and shoot that sort of thing.

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  35. JD, as most people (of my age and erudition) know, the Combat Wombat was an off-road motorcycle, imported into this country by the Pacific Basin Trading Company (AKA PABATCO) during the sixties.

    They also sold a just-plain Wombat, and a Super Wombat. I believe the bikes were manufactured by Hodaka. I might be mistaken on that last statement.

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  36. Justthisguy - I knew about Super Rats but not Hodaka CW. Apparently there is a hip-hop group from Oz that call themselves Combat Wombat. Looks like there are international copyright issues to be worked out by Hodaka, CorreiaTech and da rappers.

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  37. Justthisguy:
    that would be the early 70's for the Hodaka Wombat variations. The 100B+ and Super Rats were 100cc, The Wombats were 125cc. The Combat Wombat MX was rated at 23hp, IIRC, and was hard on the tranny, since it was about 3x hp of the original design Hodaka. Neat little bikes.

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  38. Joe Del Mar had a nice clean Kolibri in his Dec. 3 sale.

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