Author Archives: TMM

1944 Lee Enfield, with the Bayonet of course, we need that for Jay.

Here’s another one of the family, a 1918 Enfield.

Here is a panoramic from Boomershoot 0.90.  It’s on the far right of the shot.  I must say, I love it out here.

If you’re from the area, that’s the Clearwater valley and towards the right of the picture is looking WSW towards Lewiston/Clarkston.

Jennifer asks:

But whether I’ve met you or not, I want to know your story.  The vast majority of my readers are firearms enthusiasts of some stripe.  How did that happen?  How did you become gunnies?

I think the most wonderful thing about being me is I don’t really remember a time in my life I wasn’t around firearms.  I don’t even remember the first time I went shooting.  I was 3 1/2 and my dad sat me on his leg and guided me through the whole process.  I squeezed the trigger and grinned from ear to ear.  I got my first .22 when I was in second grade for my birthday.  I spent hours at the range with my dad with him teaching me to shoot.  Pushing my capabilities and comfort.  If it looked easy he quickly remedied that.

In about 5th or 6th grade I started shooting pistol.  He started me off with a 22 and by the age of 14 I was regularly shooting a 1911 and driving tacks.  My dad shot competition pistol while at MIT, I still have the pistol he used to compete.  It is one of my favorites and one that provides the most piercing memories.  I had a habit of pushing with my thumb on the grip.  His solution to the problem was the same his coach used, thumbtack placed pin up taped in place.  I only screwed up once and I forever remembered and never made that mistake again.  Even now when I pull my 1911 my thumbs are well clear and are NOT going to push on the weapon.

All this time growing up I absolutely loved shooting.  Between that and flying those are the two stand out memories I have of spending time with my dad.  Even now shooting for me becomes very Zen like and I often hear my dads voice.  After a shot it’s his voice I hear telling me what I did wrong, if it’s a good shot I hear him telling me to call it.

Growing up my household was very libertarian in philosophy and politics.  I remember coming home on the day Waco burned.  I remember seeing the anger and aggravation on my dads face and in his voice.  At the time I was so young I didn’t understand what was going on.  As I got older that would change.  It changed most dramatically one day while sitting with him after an excursion to the range.

I don’t remember how or why the conversation took this turn, but my dad began to tell a story.  A story about a young boy who at the time was the same age I was.  Hearing something in the woods grabbed his rifle and his dog figuring it was a deer.  His father and a family friend proceeded to follow out the door behind him with their rifles as well.  The boy and his dog proceeded through the woods in the direction of the noise.  Then it happened, a burst was fired at which point the dog dropped dead.  In front of the boy was three men, heavily armed.  The boy, having seen them kill his dog returns fire and tries to retreat to safety.  They shoot the boy in the back while he is retreating.

I then ask my dad who the armed men were and why they were there.  The response was memorable to me, “They were there as representatives of the government.”  My dad then proceeded to tell me about the rest of the incident, including Vicki Weaver, and how Lon Horiuchi got away with murder.

I couldn’t help but place my self in Sammy’s shoes at that point.  He was my age and I began to wonder why I was any different or what prevented that from happening to me.  I have no doubt that the reason my dad told me that story was because he was looking at the incident from Randy Weaver’s position.  What would he do if they had shot me in the back and killed my mother?  I do know my dad had stated that Horiuchi was lucky my mother and I were around.  If it wasn’t for us my dad would have had nothing to prevent him from going on the hunt.  Some would say “yeah sure”.  If you knew my father, that wasn’t a joke and any thing he said was anything but an idle statement.  If he said it, he was damn serious. 

From that point on I was a very big gun rights advocate.  I did numerous projects through school, many my instructors disliked, on the falsehoods of gun control and the dangers of government. 

Eventually as I went through college and began to finish up I started moving back towards the gun community.  During school I had neither time nor money to play.  In 2008 I attended Boomershoot and led to me creating this blog.  I had other sites but hadn’t really started the blog.  I figured it would be a good on the side hobby and a way to relieve stress when necessary.  The blog just turned 3 and has resulted in some interesting communications.    I also found it a great way to pursue writing on freedom and liberty, not just gun rights.

I have grown more recently as now where I work, I’m like Joe, many have heard of me and know me as the “Guns and Explosives guy” before they’ve even met me.  People who a friends of friends are coming to me with questions.  Which is awesome, and very neat.

So there’s the story of why I’m a gunny.  There’s a lot of heart in why I’m here.  The happiest memories I have from my dad usually involve a firearm.  For me nothing is more peaceful that settling in behind the last gift I got from my father and reaching out and touching something.  I can’t help but remember that great man and all that he taught me.

H/T Sebastian.

Got tied up at work and some other training.  Enjoy this random picture of things going boom with heavy objects being lobbed into the air.

I think that established the BC of a snow flake.  Details and video of this experiment can be seen here.

While at the Boomershoot site one of the visitors asked Joe what voltage the transmission lines are over head.  He guessed around 50 or 100kV then noticed I was there and said well there’s the person to ask.  I have the disclaimer and will adhere to it.  All I will say is I know a lot about embedded systems, power systems, protective relays, and communication systems involving power and industrial controls.

I had looked at the lines before but never bothered to really figure it out.  I took a look at it and let my instincts take over.  My estimate was around 230kV but I would count the insulators at home and come up with the actual number.

So from the photo you can see there’s 20 insulator discs.  Three discs are approximately 35kV.

Crunching the numbers comes out to be 233.3kV.  230kV is a standard transmission voltage so the approximation is reasonable since it’s not sitting in between two standard voltages and isn’t way off in the weeds either.

On my way home after dinner with Joe yesterday I decided to swing by “The Man Shack” and see what they were up to.  Ended up finally leaving at 0330 this morning.  Seriously the sun coming back up was the clue time had elapsed.

While there we ended up playing around with my camera.  While most of the images are nothing special, there are two which stand out.  The second was inspired by the success of the first.

The lights above are reflections caused by the UV filter I hadn’t taken off.  The second picture ended up being prefect given the luck of a plane taking off as the picture was being taken.  I thought the exposure had been plenty long, but after inspecting it  I should have let it expose about another 15-20 seconds. 

So yesterday after I got my truck unstuck I climbed up to the top of the 700 yard berm and did a 360 degree panoramic of the Boomershoot site.  ICE was a little bit misbehaved in that for some reason it thought the images I supplied were beyond 360 degrees so is placed images where they didn’t belong.  I finally worked around it by doing the panoramic in 3 sections.  One section it called 270 degrees but it was more like 120.

The end result though is very neat.  The thumbnail below is only a section of the entire image.

So my schedule for yesterday did a big fat change Friday night.  Instead of the Palouse car show we decided to help Joe with a private Boomershoot party.  We drove the truck for simplicity sake and got out there a little bit late.  Late enough that everyone was at the Taj by the time we got there.

As I arrived I saw a set of tracks running through the field next to the berm down at 380.  Figured ok passage should be good.  I eventually get in a ways and see a small mud hole that doesn’t look too bad.  This thing was deep enough and wet enough it could have been used as a runaway truck ramp because that’s exactly how it behaved.  I hit it at about 20 to 25 and immediately stated slowing down I got to just the other side but the rear end was mired in.  I Tried backing up cutting to one side to try and get another run, big freaking mistake.  My front end sunk in absolutely no time flat.  When I got out this is what it looked like.

The weight of the diesel block is what did me in cause notice how the front wheels sunk.

We tried to pull it out initially by Joe doing a snatch with his Escape.  It didn’t work, I then tried to use the come along and with his rig as the anchor with the truck trying to pull out.  The Escape just started sliding towards the truck. 

We then proceeded to just move the bare minimum gear up there and were going to get the truck out after the party.  After the depressing failure of the fireball we went and grabbed the Cat.  Hooked it up to the back and pulled her right out.

The ruts tell the story of how bad it really was.

I have now joined the limited group of Boomershoot staff that goes out there so often that they have finally gotten stuck.

When I stopped to chat with some friends from work last night I was reminded of one very important thing.  No matter what, it could always be worse.  How much worse you ask?

That is a Steiger Quadtrac 4WD tractor that sunk in the Palouse mud out here near Pullman.  How sunk you ask?  Well normally they look like the following and they have been known to pull stuck dozers out of the mud.