Thursday, April 21, 2011

I work harder for other people than I do for myself.

It's true. Left to my own devices I'm comically lazy. Can't get a damned thing done. Put me with somebody else, and I always end up tired. And dehydrated. And a bit sunburned.

Hey! My first sunburn of the year! It must be spring at last.

My neighbor J has been screwing around with fencing for his extended yard for over a year. It's gone through a few different permutations, none of which ever came near completion. But recently he scored a whole bunch of used chain link fencing and posts, and it built a fire under him. So today, since nothing was happening on the geiger counter or hole-digging fronts, I went over and helped him set fence posts in concrete.

Lots of fence posts. That's all I have to say about that.

And then...depression set in. When I got my .44, the only ammo M could find was a box of Blazer. I don't know if you're familiar with it - I wasn't - but it's got aluminum cases and says right on the box that you shouldn't reload it. To make sure you don't, it's Berdan primed. I went through most of the box and the pistol gobbled them up fine - no problems at all. Then three weeks ago my neighbor picked me up a box of ammo that, judging from the price, was machined out of pure platinum. And the pistol stopped being reliable in double action. Three out of five rounds, it just dimpled the primers. Single action, it worked fine. That wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but I refused to panic. I knew I was going to reload for the pistol, so let's see how the reloads behave.

Well, yesterday my .44 dies finally arrived in the mail. So today I worked up all my brass, loaded a round, fired it just because that was the first shootable round I'd reloaded in several years, then loaded five more and stepped outside.

Click.

Clickclickclickclickclick

Shite. Zero for five, double action. Single action, they all went bang just fine. I've got problems.

(And yes, before somebody suggests it, I do know how to seat a primer. But thanks for asking.)

On the good side, this is the first time in my life I've had a reloading shack where I could test-fire ammo without even stepping outside. (yes I DID open the window first.)

2 comments:

Matt said...

Sounds like you are not getting enough hammer-whack in DA. Could be a new spring set is needed, or the hammer is dragging during DA and hitting the primer to soft. Look for drag marks on the hammer sides? I think Blazer ammo has somewhat softer primers.

Anonymous said...

It's a Taurus? Lifetime warranty on the pistol regardless of number of previous owners.
All else fails, send it to them.
http://www.taurususa.com/repair-policy.cfm

You can get springs for it from Wolff:

http://www.gunsprings.com/index.cfm?page=items&cID=3&mID=65
Dunno if your model is in there though.

I had a Ruger do that same thing though. It was second hand and all gummed up internally. A spritz with brake clean and a bit o lube was the remedy.

Buck.