Another day in paradise

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I have no control over that. Sorry.

Gym notes 

I slept in until 7:00 AM this morning. Pure decadence.

Mrs ERJ and I went to the  gym. I performed my maintenance routine. Nothing special. I tried one set at 225 but didn't feel strong and I only did 4 reps.

While walking in, I saw that the gym was hosting a blood drive. After lifting, I popped in to donate. Unfortunately, my BPM stubbornly remained in the 104-to-102 BPM range and I was not able to donate.

Reloading notes

I have been fighting with reloading some .223 Remington. I kept blowing the decapping and expander out of the die.

I finally got it isolated to IK brass with an astoundingly aggressive crimp. I can tell by feel when I got one in the die. It is much faster to just run them and reject the ones that I can "feel" than it is to visually inspect every headstamp.

For those who do not know, ammo that is intended for military use has the primer staked in place by upsetting the brass around the rim of the primer pocket. That is so the primers do not back-out and potentially disabling the firearm.

Sometimes the necessity of warfare requires that old, less stable ammo be used. Sometimes it means the ammo is stored at less-than-ideal temperatures or shortages require that the ammo be loaded with more variable lots of powder. Or, the round can sit in the barrel which cold be 400 degrees F and the powder could ignite more quickly and generate more pressure than the system was designed for.

Another factor is that some military rifles have oversized chambers. It can be due to looser acceptance criteria for the reamers during the shortages of wartime production or it can be intentional because large chambers will accept dirtier and dented ammo. Firing ammo in an oversided chamber can cause the head to dilate as the pressures peak and the primer pocket gets larger and can fall out during cycling. Again, a loose primer can jam up the action.

Brass that is crimped is a pain to deal with when you are reloading. So is dealing with brass that was fired in oversized or fluted chambers.

Never-the-less, I am grinding my way through this lot of brass and we will overcome.

Raising pigs

I am enjoying Homesteading the Hard Way channel which is mostly about raising pigs/hogs on a small scale.

The guy isn't smooth and polished. He doesn't candy-coat anything.

A very large tonnage of pork can be raised on a relatively small footprint. Pigs can extract protein from garden waste although to raise them quickly they need high-quality feed. There are some applications where hogs are an economical substitute for a wood-chipper.

To really save money, I think you almost need to butcher them yourself. That is more doable than butchering a steer because the animal is a more manageable size and there are assorted plans for "cold rooms" to hang multiple deer.