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The lovely Mrs ERJ and I were listening to some music from 1970.
My beautiful wife suggested this piece
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Good stuff.
And isn't it odd that quoting historical documents that were key to the formation of our nation are now likely to get one added to a terrorist watch-list?
Worrisome.
Potatoes are in the ground.
90 feet of Kennebec. 45 feet of Red Pontiac. 135 feet of potatoes pulled from storage that had not sprouted very much and were sound. Varieties not known but some were probably Russet Burbank.
I was aiming for 200 feet of row and ended up with 270, which is half as much as last year. They are in a very good spot and if I do my part with fertilizer, weed control, Colorado Potato Beetle control and irrigation when needed, they should do well.
AND....the tulips are blooming.
Liberty apple trees are in full bloom. 187 Growing Degree Days base-50. By comparison, 2023 was 149, 2022 was 118, 2021 was 205 and 2020 was 72 GDDb50 on this date.
PLA resin is one of the industry work-horses and is not the most expensive resin.
Amira's challenge was outside of Samson's expertise. His specialty was LONG distance, precision shooting, not bar-room brawl distance shooting. He needed to consult with some experts. He wasn't going to deliver something that didn't address the issues Amira had pointed out.
The next morning Samson walked to the eastern edge of the Cumberland Plateau and found a position on the cusp of the Tennessee River Valley where he could visually see the eastern suburbs of Chatt. He was a quarter mile east of the official boundary of Copperhead Cove.
He moved around a bit until he had three bars of signal on his cellphone and then started typing...
Launch App: Rypt_Cord Server
A spinning clock icon appeared on the display of his phone. Then...
....Encryption achieved.....
Login:Not_Marinept25MOA
PW:*********
Ring:SemperfiAtl
Subgroup:PrcnShttrs
Samson tapped on the icon for "Start new Thread" and then tapped out
Subject: Advice needed re weapons for indig personnel
Background: Twenty small-stature to very-small-stature potential combatants need weapons with following characteristics
Need recommendations.
Over.
Trip1805 wrote: Hello NotMarine
Have you considered M1 Carbine. Designed to replace M1911 .45 ACP handgun for use by cooks, truckdrivers and REMFs.
Sounds exactly like what you are looking for.
Over.
NotMarine wrote: Cost and availability?
Over
Trip1805 wrote: $1500 for used, not matching serial numbers. $2000 for new with +6 month waiting list.
Over
Not_Marine wrote: That is not going to work for me. I need 20 copies in less than a month.
Over
WndwLiqr wrote: Have you considered .22LR semi-auto like 10/22? Can be had for $400.
Over
Not_Marine wrote: Great weapon. Not sure it can punch through chest or beer-gut, hit spine and disrupt CSN. Also, twenty copies at $400 way above budget. Can you suggest something between M1 Carbine and 10/22?
Over
Time passed and much internal discussion within thread. The various plusses and minuses of several semi-auto platforms were discussed. Then...
DieTrd wrote: How about Pistol Cartridge Carbine? 9mm PCC approximately 3X .22LR mass and performance. Simple blow-back. Price about $400 per copy for cheapest option.
Over
Not_Marine wrote: Price still too high.
Looked at M1 Carbine. Magazines are junk. Need robust magazines.
Over
Even more time passed
Md_scntst wrote: If I remember correctly, you have access to 3D printing. Many designs for PCC available on the graynet. Some use Glock magazines. PM me for details.
Over
Please advise regarding projected cost.
Over
Looking at a bulk buy for CHMSL barrels, roughly a C-note per copy.
Over
PM sent.
Over
End Session:
The prototype showed up in six days and was tinker-toyed from many AR parts because they are abundant and ergonomically excellent. For example, the fire-control groups were scrounged from the builder's parts drawer. Triggers are one of the items most frequently upgraded from "stock" ARs and "stock" was plenty good-enough for Amira's specification. Ditto for the buffer-spring that powered the bolt which the builder had fabricated from laminated steel, similar to the core of a low-voltage transformer.
Samson was delighted with the additional AR parts. He saw them as inventory-on-the-hoof. They were fair-game to cannibalize should the high-end weapons need those parts.
The 6" 9mm Luger barrel was pressed into a 16-1/2" long tube to make it legally a long-arm. The receiver was 3-D printed and it even had a serial number on it (CCArms, LGB-A001) to make it legal. The mag-well accepted Glock magazines and the forearm had a dovetail for a light and posts for a sling. The sights were on the barrel-tube, a tall ghost-ring rear and a simple, hooded post in the front.
Samson took the weapon out for first firing and he encountered some short-stroking. He determined that the bolt had some burs on it that were scraping the molded-in metal guides that trapped the bolt. He stoned the bolt to slightly chamfer the rough edges and reran the test with only two failures of the bolt to travel far enough back to pick up a new round.
Samson reread the notes the builder sent with the "build" and learned that there were spacers in the buffer-tube to increase the preload on the spring. He started playing around by removing spacers and deliberately "limp-wristing" the wimpy, generic, white-box 9mm ammo in an attempt to make it not-cycle. He stopped removing spacers when it ran ten-in-a-row even in limp-wrist mode.
Once he was happy with how the rifle was tuned in, he filed the front sight to raise the point of aim to a 75 meter zero and then invited Amira, Sarah and Sig to shoot it.
Bracing the weapon against a tree trunk, simulating shooting from a doorway, Amira was able to keep ten shots at fifty meters in a group no larger than a softball.
Sig suggested that the front post should be thicker for better low-light visibility. He also suggested that wooden butt-stocks could be fabricated in Copperhead Cove to reduce cost at a penalty in weight.
"How soon can we have all 20?" Amira asked.
Samson frowned. "There are always bugs that don't show up until the lead units get enough exposure to several different shooters and different types of ammo. I want to make five and get them out to shooters of different heights and get some rounds through them."
"After we bubble-up and solve the issues on those, I want to make another batch of five" Samson replied. He had anticipated the question. "Point being, if we have the parts in-hand, they are much easier to modify as loose-parts. If I build them into working rifles then we risk damaging the receivers if we have to do a full disassembly. The receiver is just plastic, after all."
"I want one of the first ones" Amira said.
"If it is alright with Sarah and Sig, you can have the one you are holding" Samson said.
That brought a BIG smile to Amira's face.
"The next question is, where are we going to get $2000 for the parts and another $1000 for ammo, extra magazines and other odds-and-ends?" Samson asked.
---Note to my readers---
Thank-you for all of your comments on the previous Cumberland Saga post!
This is a work of fiction and undoubtedly many of my more sophisticated readers are already thinking..."but it doesn't work that way...". My challenge as a writer is to produce vaguely technical sounding text that seems plausible and paints pictures in the reader's heads while not strangling the story with excessive detail.
I will be disappointed if some commenters don't take me to task, though.
9mm seemed like the only choice. It is the cheapest centerfire ammo and really does replicate .22LR ballistics with three times the mass out of a 6" barrel. Longer barrels only gain about 100fps compared to a 6" barrel according to Ballistics By The Inch.
Ballistics: 2" high at 50 meters with a 75 meter zero and 3" below the line-of-sight at 100 meters. With a muzzle velocity of 1100fps, velocities of 1020fps at 50 meters and 960fps at 100 meters. Getting plunked in the noggin or heart/lungs by 124 grains at 960fps will quickly end the party for you, even if the bullet is going too slowly to expand.
The final nail in the coffin of 9mm vs .22LR is that most centerfire arms are less likely to be damaged by dry-firing than most rimfire arms. When ammo is dear and noise is to be avoided, dry-firing is your friend. It makes flinches disappear.
To the Marines out there: Samson was not a Marine but is allowed to be on the ring by virtue of being able to shoot as well as a Marine.
---End notes---
One of the recent sub-themes in the Cumberland Saga is the use of "shingling" or overlapping time-horizons to create resilience.
Amira observed something like "There will always be another crisis coming along. It is just a matter of time."
The idea comes from the strategy of having a "ladder" of Certificates of Deposit of varying maturities to supply a steady flow of income. If the income is not needed, then they can be reinvested like a link in a caterpillar track.
The people in Copperhead Cove expanded their short maturity food crops and applied fertilizer to maximize yields. They also invested in cows which have a much longer time-horizon than annual crops. A cow can live five-to-fifteen years depending on care and upon the owner's willingness to tolerate lower milk production in later years.
The small-fruiting bushes are even longer-horizon than the cows. They will start fruiting in their second year in the ground and some of them will spread on their own. A thirty-year life span in a home garden is not unreasonable. Small fruits are also very resilient with respect to the weather. Given a little bit of snow-cover, most of them can sustain -30F.
 |
| Reportedly a 700 year-old Sweet Chestnut tree |
The chestnut orchard is the investment with the longest time-horizon and it occupies the least desirable land. They might start producing nuts in four or five years (if fertilized and weeds are controlled). Some will die of blight but others will have resistance. On a favorable site, a single chestnut tree can live and produce human-quality food for hundreds of years. Nut pines, Black Walnut trees, oak with sweet acorns, persimmon, olives and pear trees can last just as long. Apples are a 30-to-50 year enterprise. Most stone-fruits are 5-to-20 year enterprises.
The rabbits are already hitting the apple root-stock I planted. I am surprised that they are eating the MM-106 but left the G.214 alone. That might change.
I tooled up with a length of pipe, a stack of copy paper, glue stick and "white glue" to make temporary shelter for the vulnerable root-stock. Putting a fence around the enterprise is on my list of things-to-do. I got my cycle time down to around 15 seconds per copy by the time I was done. I could probably squeeze another five seconds out if I had to make another thousand.
I purchased some steel T posts at a salvage yard. They were charging $3 each which was not a great price but it was a fair price. I only had $60 cash in my wallet so I bought 20.
Ichthys
 |
| Approximately 1/6th scale |
The church that I attend has a food pantry that supplies supplemental food to people who ran out of pay-check before they ran out of food.
The distribution point is WAY back in the extreme opposite corner of the parking lot from the entry way and it is masked by other buildings.
I committed to making a stencil to be used on the pavement to indicate the directions to the distribution point.
The Ichthys symbol seemed appropriate. My current plan is to make the "fish" thirty-six inches long from nose-to-end-of-tail with the lines 1-1/4" wide and painted with white pavement marking paint. The fish will be supplemented with an arrow indicating actual direction the vehicle should travel.
The Ichthys symbol not only represents a fish (food) but was an early symbol for Christ and evangelization (John 21:11). The 153 fish may have represented the entire, known world since it was believed at the time that there were only 153 species of fish in the world.
Samson and Heddy almost missed the drive into Copperhead Cove. It looked different with the dead brush stacked up around it, almost hiding its existence.
Putting the pickup into reverse, Samson backed the truck and trailer 25 feet and then swung into the drive. It never paid to lock-up the brakes when pulling a trailer. Samson’s truck had been built in 2017 and had most of the bells-and-whistles (no turbo, though) but Samson still drove as if he didn’t have technology for a safety-net.
Pulling into the drive, Samson saw Lliam urgently flagging them down. He clearly did not want them to continue up the drive.
Shutting down the rig, the two adults got out of the truck to see what was going down.
“Mom just had her new cows delivered” Lliam told them. “She is walking them up the drive and they are as skittish as all get-out.”
Heddy gave it some consideration. “How long you think it is gonna take?”
“Hard to tell” Lliam said with a sigh of resignation. “None of them is halter-broke so Mom brought along Bossie who IS halter-broke. She is leading Bossie and the three new cows are following Bossie and Blain is up ahead and shaking a bucket with a little bit of corn in it.”
“You could always walk up the foot-path” Lliam offered.
Samson’s vision of a triumphant return died with a whimper. The gifts and gee-gaws in the trailer would just have to wait.
The new cows didn’t settle down until sunset. They had never been outside before. In their feeble minds, it was as if they had teleported to an alien universe filled with weird noises and smells and food.
Sarah had staked out four picket lines with Bossie’s in the middle. Bossie was the rock, the anchor. Bossie was the key to making it all work.
Heddy got Agnes, their two-year-old, settled into Roger and Alice’s house. It was the house Heddy had grown up in. Alice fussed like an old hen as she pulled linens out of wooden chests and dusted and made beds and filled vases and… Samson twiddled his thumbs. Just like the military; hurry up and wait.
Samson accepted Roger’s invitation to the nightly “planning meeting” that took place on Sig’s patio.
Samson was a firm believer in the axiom that one should gather intelligence before taking action, so he was content to watch the interplay between Sig and Amira.
He remembered Sig from previous visits to Copperhead Cove. In fact, one of the hurdles to proposing to Heddy was to pass inspection from both Heddy’s father (Roger) and by Sig.
Samson was properly nervous, a fact which spoke well of him in Sig’s mind as did the fact that Samson was not intimidated by complicated familial relationships or idiosyncratic religious practices.
Samson came from western Virginia. He played ball with kids whose parents handled snakes, drank muddy river water or walked across burning coals (which Samson had seen with his very own eyes). Summer tent revivals where people stayed awake for days were a yearly feature. Catholic Mass sung in Latin still happened. Yeah, Copperhead Cove just barely made the needle twitch into the "Quaint" region of the dial although he was not fond of outdoor toilets.
It was an article of faith among the matrons of Copperhead Cove that the young women who left CC repelled men who were not Godly. God cast a veil over them and their beauty was apparent only to those men who had been called to enter through the narrow gate.
The fact that Heddy brought him home for “inspection” meant that her hand was his to lose.
He did not fail. When he was unsure of the relationship, he defaulted to addressing the speaker as Aunt or Uncle until he was told “Just call me Sarah” or the equivalent.
Samson recognized “Amira” as a traditional, Muslim name, something he had picked up during his deployments. He could hardly wait to hear THAT story.
Amira, who he had never met or even heard of, was asking Sig where she could plant some chestnut trees.
“I think they should be at the edge of the new pasture where it is just starting to get too steep for pasture” Amira proposed.
Sig rolled his eyes. Samson could tell that Sig found Amira to be vexing. Never the less, Sig had enough respect for her to give her a full hearing.
“I don’t know why you insist on planting nut trees” Sig grumbled. “It will be twenty years before they produce a single nut. Besides, we are leaving lots of MATURE nut trees in the pastures.”
“It might be true that it takes twenty years for walnut trees to start bearing, but these are chestnut trees. They can have nuts in five years if they are cared for” Amira replied.
“And you and everybody else will be gone in five years” Sig shot back. “So what is the point?”
“I hesitate to bring this up” Amira countered “because I know how everybody reacts when they hear “Well, we did it this way in California” or “We never did that in New York City”, but when my mother and I moved in with my aunt back in Bosnia, the chestnuts that grew up in the hills are what fed us through the winter.”
“Some of the chestnut trees in those old orchards were over two-hundred years old.”
“Sarah told me that there is a crisis every ten years: 1987, 2000, 2009 and now. And they keep getting worse” Amira continued.
“So what is the downside? If this is another false-alarm, there will be a ten-year-old chestnut orchard churning out thousands of pounds of nuts the next time there is a crisis. The worst that can happen is that you will fatten the hogs on them.”
“We don’t have the manpower to plant them” Sig said, his objections weakening.
“I didn’t ask for help. I asked you where I could plant them. Walter said he would help” Amira pressed. "It is something he can do, planting seed nuts."
“How far apart do they have to be planted and how many seed nuts do you have” Sig wanted to know.
“My plan is to plant them in a grid with seven paces between each tree in both directions and then thin them out based on nut quality so they are roughly fifteen paces apart” Amira said. “ and I have three-hundred seed nuts.”
“Center your planting down-slope from your house and plant in both directions. You can use the sixty feet closest to the tree-line for your trees” Sig said.
And that was the end of THAT discussion.
It was a demonstration in relentless, but respectful, grinding down of objection-after-objection. Relentless.
Sig looked over at Samson and said “Welcome.”
Samson nodded in acknowledgement of the greeting.
“I had been communicating with Gregor. He told me that you need upgrades in your weapons. I brought some gifts that I want to give you.”
Everybody’s ears perked up at the word “gifts”.
“I brought 4 AR and ample magazines and ammunition” Samson said.
Then, looking over at Sig “And I brought you a bolt action rifle that uses the same ammunition as the AR rifles.”
Samson had indelible memories of Sig’s reaction to the AR platform. “Too many tiny springs and itty-bitty parts. Thin, wire springs rust and break. I prefer Mausers.”
To Samson’s amazement, Sig shook his head in the negative. “I am a shotgun man. Give the bolt action rifle to Blain. He has nothing.”
Samson would learn later that Sig’s eyesight was failing. That, and the fact that Sig could run his shotgun without thinking and didn’t want the complication of another firearm to confuse things.
Amira piped up without being asked “What did you bring for the women?”
“Oh, Heddy brought all kinds of clothing” Samson misunderstanding her question.
“No. What kinds of weapons did you bring for the women?” Amira asked.
Samson shrugged. He hadn’t given it any thought. “I didn’t bring them anything. They can use what the men don’t need any more after they trade-up to the AR rifles.”
“That’s not good enough” Amira said, catching Samson off-guard.
“What do you mean?” Samson asked.
“Cast-offs don’t meet the requirements” Amira said.
Samson’s eyebrows furrowed in consternation. “Don’t meet the requirements?” He was uncertain. He had never heard of “...the requirements”. “What are the requirements?” he asked.
“Every woman in Copperhead Cove needs to have her own, personal weapon” Amira started out, ticking off the requirements on her fingers.
“For the record, every girl who has seen her eleventh birthday is a woman.”
“The weapon must be accurate enough so that she can shoot the man raping her mother from a distance of fifty paces.”
“It must have enough firepower so that it can stop the rapist’s two wing-men when they attack her from that same distance.”
“It must have low recoil. Not all eleven-year-old girls can take a lot of recoil.”
“Ammunition must be cheap so that we can practice” Amira concluded.
Samson pondered the VERY specific nature of the requirements. He had been in the sandbox. He could easily imagine why Amira saw a need for that kind of weapon. If not her...then somebody very close to her had needed that weapon.
Samson did not argue about the impossibility of finding such a weapon, much less finding fifteen or twenty of them. All he did was respond “I will work on it.”
