DPMS Oracle: The red line is between 19.5gr and 20.0gr of H-4895

The Oracle coughed up a hairball at 19.5 grains of H-4895, Rem 71/2 primer 55gr soft-point, 2.25" COAL, no crimp. Forearm was supported with an open palm and trigger arm and wrist were perpendicular to the barrel and as "loose" as practical.

Three-of-five were misfeeds. The weird thing is I think I experienced three separate failure modes.

One was failure-to-feed from the magazine to the chamber with the round wedged diagonally in the receiver.

One left no indent on the primer so I speculate that the trigger did not engage the hammer.

The third was failure to strip the cartridge from the magazine.

I am comfortable saying that if you want to confirm that your "home brew" AR is as "gassed" as a DPMS Oracle then it needs to feed-and-fire five-of-five rounds as above except that they are loaded with 20gr of H-4895.

For a frame of reference, a typical powder load for this powder and a 55gr cup-and-core bullet might vary between 24.5gr-and-26.0gr.

A productive day

I cut scrubby trees that were just outside the pasture fence. I toppled the trees over into the pasture. The largest ones were about 5" in diameter.

Then I trimmed the poles and tossed the branches back out of the pasture. I dragged the poles over to the garden and left them.

Back to the reloading bench
I am still trying to find the point where my friend's AR coughs up a hairball. If you recall I had a steel, aftermarket magazine in my friend's rifle and it solidly puked at 20grains of H-4895.

I recognized that my data was compromised so I needed to replicate it with the factory supplied magazine.

I was sure it was 20.0 grains or more so I loaded up five each of 21.5gr, 21.0gr, 20.5gr and 20.0gr. The only failure was that the bolt did not lock when the magazine was empty.

Case prep
I stumbled across a thread on the internet

"Then I want to speed up the trimming of 223. I saw this Lee trimmer that goes in a die body and uses my drill. I have an RCBS power trimmer but this looks even faster."

Well, you know I had to check that out. I find that trimming brass is the most tedious part of reloading.

The trimmer loads in a press.

This is a detail of the cutter/deburring head. It can be powered by a drill motor. Available HERE

I am not sure how the system handles the chips that are generated. Maybe the smart money would be to get a cheap press and mount it horizontally and leave the drill motor running continuously.

You gotta love this guy. It looks like he repurposed one of his wife's slippers to be a chute from his prog reloader to his bin of finished goods.

I am envious of this guy's setup. His tool datums off the shoulders of the formed case which is how the rifle sees it. His case trimming operation starts at 3:26. I think the speed would be pretty easy to mimic with these Lee tools even if they datum off the base of the cartridge. Maybe when I get a few dollars ahead...

A trip to the gym
Mrs ERJ dragged me to the gym.

I am decrepit. I could only do 1/3 the number of push-up I was able to do two years ago. Don't ask about running.

I will be a sore puppy tomorrow and Friday.

Gender fluid naming conventions

97% of Transgender parents name their children "Otto".

The other 3% are named "Manuel".

Aging feminist discovers secret to tiny waist

I recently went to an event where I reconnected with many of my cousins.

Mrs ERJ was not able to attend and avidly asked for details of how they are all doing.

I mentioned the wife of one of my cousins. We had not seen this cousin or his wife for ten years. At that time she was notoriously "big-boned."

I was able to share that my cousin's wife's waist was now incredibly small.

Mrs ERJ was amazed. She asked if it was due to diet or a rigorous exercise program.

"Nope." I replied. "It was probably because she wasn't wearing a brassiere."

Mrs ERJ gave me a quizzical look.

Defending myself I asked, "The waist is the region between the top of her panties and her bust, right?"

Mrs ERJ nodded in agreement.

Then I said, "Vertical distance, not diameter."

My kind of dancing

Beautiful to listen to. Beautiful to watch. A nice way to start the work week.

I would be one of the fifty guys watching.

Dog-whistle Racism

(University of California, Berkeley) law professor and author of the 2014 book Dog Whistle Politics Ian Haney-López ... argues that such rhetoric pushes middle-class white Americans to vote against their economic self-interest in order to punish "undeserving minorities" who, they believe, are receiving too much public assistance at their expense. According to López, conservative middle-class whites, convinced by powerful economic interests that minorities are the enemy, supported politicians who promised to curb illegal immigration and crack down on crime but inadvertently also voted for policies that favor the extremely rich, such as slashing taxes for top income brackets, giving corporations more regulatory control over industry and financial markets, union busting, cutting pensions for future public employees, reducing funding for public schools, and retrenching the social welfare state. He argues that these same voters cannot link rising inequality which has impacted their lives to the policy agendas they support.    -Wikipedia

Got that? We would all be rich if we looked the other way on illegal immigration, crime, higher taxes, more regulation, everybody paid union dues, we paid more for public schools, we allowed all public employees to have 1950s style defined benefit pensions and if we all got behind the social welfare state.

Occasional-Cortex used this term, "dog-whistle racism" in an interview. The beauty of the phrase is that it IS a political dog-whistle. It if fraught with meaning for those who support Occasional-Cortex and blows right by normal people.

Fourteen cows 1.0: Prelude

 And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river. And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well favoured kine and fatfleshed; and they fed in a meadow. And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill favoured and leanfleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river. And the ill favoured and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven well favoured and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke.  Genesis Chapter 41

The bulletin boards and forums were on fire with rumors of Ebola having made land-fall in the continental US.

The original posts cited videos that had been quickly yanked off the internet. A typical video was of a middle school basketball game where one of the players  suddenly collapsed and started vomiting bloody fluid.

The CDC felt compelled to issue a statement that the seasonal flu sometimes exhibited those symptoms and to not panic. The CDC claimed to have everything under control.

Rick Salazar had plenty of time to track the progress of the phantom epidemic. He worked the gig economy and was currently in a lull. Also, the middle of January was a slow time on the farm. On nice days he might cut a little bit of firewood but other than that all he did was walk the dogs.

What was distressing to him was that the videos seemed to all originate in San Diego, California and St. Paul, Minnesota. If the CDC’s story was true then the videos should be originating in a semi-random fashion that was roughly proportional to population density.

It only took a few minutes of internet research to learn that San Diego and St. Paul were epicenters for refugees from Uganda and its neighboring countries. IF Ebola was going to show up in the US then it was more likely to show up in those two cities than just about anywhere else.

Rick logged off his computer and took a stroll around the property. He did not like what he saw.

There was nothing wrong with the forty acres. It was fifteen miles from “the city” of 200,000 and roughly five miles from two cities of five thousand each. Nope, the problem was not the property. It was the house and its proximity to the roads.

The house was a scant 150 feet from the road and another road pretty much “T”ed into the front yard. The house was indefensible.

Then Rick rode his mountain bike around the two square miles that contained his forty acres. After that he rode a couple of miles up the road that “T”ed into the road he lived on.

What he saw was that the landscape undulated and there was a high point about every quarter mile. He also saw the reason why the road department decided to end the one road at the T. The two square miles were bisected the long way by extensive muck bottomed marshes. Rick had heard one neighbor say that some of those muck deposits went down thirty feet. Not a desirable roadbed by any stretch of the imagination.

The only conceivable defense against the Golden Horde involved posting sentries on the road at the hill tops and to have a means of communication. That was going to take some thinking.

Rick also counted mailboxes. The pieces he rode varied between thirty mail boxes per mile down to two mailboxes per mile. Figuring three people per house he passed 360 people and he did not see a single soul who was not in a motorized vehicle.

Getting back to his study he did a quick study of passive, infrared sensors. He ordered twenty of them from an online vendor. Even if this plague were just a hoax he would have a lot of fun playing with them. Who knows, maybe it would help him get his next gig.

After placing the order Rick started organizing his junk. He had once been an avid prepper but his interests had changed.

Hand tools went into one outbuilding. “Chemicals”, motor oil and such went into another. Motors, pumps and the like were moved into the yard where it would be convenient to cover them with a tarp. Building supplies and fencing were assembled into piles.

Rick was totally whipped when Kate came home from her volunteer work.

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