Scorpio64

Salt water tanks are great, but require a lot of attention to detail. It's not just feed and forget. It's imperative that you don't overpopulate or they will die in their own filth. I was only able to get five fish at a time into a 20 gallon tank and have it be stable. You are creating an ecosystem, once you have a good balance, LEAVE IT ALONE! A properly set up tank will practically run it's self. I had clown fish, anemone, box fish, some kind of algae eater, a long bill, and various butterfly fish. You need to be aware of compatibility and that some fish are better if you have just one and others are better off when there are two or more. The aquarium where I got my stuff went out of business long ago, but man, the woman there was super knowledgeable. The only place I know of is in Ocean Twp. Tropaquarium I think. Have not been there in decades.

My wife loves Playa Bowl.

That's exactly what I did with my SPR. Bought a threaded match barrel with an 11 deg target crown and put a .25" proud thread protector on it to keep the crown from getting buggered up . I don't rapid fire and I don't shoot at night so flash hider nor brake were necessary.

So, I guess a 3D printed house in Florida is out then.

I was thinking that too but don't know enough about 3d media to have commented on it. Although the shotgun dummies look more like a novelty, I bet they'd work okay, but the 9mm look like they'd leave shavings in the action that could cause problems if the gun weren't cleaned after.

3D printed dummy rounds are an unknown quantity. They will probably work as good as anything, but Snap Caps have been around for ages.

Bullets made for reloading are made from the same lead and copper as factory ammo bullets.

YT has been pretty good about not taking down CPAC speaker videos. Except for Bob Unanue's. They are gone baby, gone. Only one was found on YT, not posted by a mainstream source but an unknown who sped up the recording 25% to fool YT's automated censoring software, the same software they use to detect copyright infringement based on audio. If you pull up the video, and slow it down by 25%, it plays back normally.

You are trying to pin the shortage down to one single entity, and it simply can't be done. Yes, there are a lot of people and companies exploiting the situation, but none are completely responsible as individual factors. The sum total of all the factors combined, add up to more than the individual factors. For instance, a single factor on it's own is X. If you combine four factors, it injects a multiplier into the equation that creates a greater sum total causing exponential increases in price.

Honestly, I don't think shipping delays are a major factor. Delays are mostly by days, not weeks or months. Amazon orders are showing up on time or delayed by a day or two. The delays are real, and a factor, but on their own not a major one. Just another straw breaking the camel's back.

Is this the way you understand how primer makers have always operated, or just during this crunch? Primers have never been a surplus item, the retail market for reloading components dates back 150 years. With few exceptions, the primer makers are all ammo mfgs too. CCI, Federal, Rem, Win, Fiocchi, so yes, they are going to channel primers to their own ammo plants to run the loading machines 24/7, decreasing the primer supply. Why sell primers at 3 cents a pop when you can sell ammo at 3x the normal prices. Big profits generate big dividends. btw, the primer/ammo shortage exists only in the USA. My friends in PR, Aus, Germany are having no trouble finding ammo or reloading components. The prices overseas have gone up, but not even close to the extent we are experiencing in the good old US of A. As far as I know, there is nothing to stop foreign manufacturers from filling in the gap. Is some left controlled bureaucracy preventing foreign suppliers from upping their imports? If so, that would be an artificial manipulation of the market. By it's self it would not drive up prices, but it certainly contributes to the pressure. The supply chain was definitely a factor. Especially when you consider that a substantial portion of the precursor chemicals used in powder and primer come from China. We may never know all the details, but there is no doubt that there are forces pushing and pulling the ammo/primer market. It's a situation where chaotic events are being exploited, some are a natural predictable consequence, while other events have been artificially generated and it has created this feedback loop that just feeds on it's self.

The shortage is the result of a "perfect storm". There are many channels in play here, and they are not necessarily cooperating or colluding, but they are working off of predictable human behavior. They have several past incidents to work off, to predict how people will react. The top tier ammo makers are squeezing the smaller ammo manufacturers and the end users too. They are not going to pass up an opportunity to kill competition, that's the way it works in making hamburgers or ammo. They are also looking to recover from the "Trump slump". Back in 13/14 the bottom feeders watched ammoseek and stood in line at Wally World to scoop up all the ammo they could get, just to flip it on gun bro. This could have EASILY been controlled if retailers set limits, but they didn't, so you have to acknowledge that they were complicit in the behavior of the bottom feeders. This time around, they have uped their game, using bots and clever software, they have refined their tactics to where they can scoop up inventory as soon as it hits the retailer's website. This in turn created hoarders, people who were like fuck it, I'm gonna buy it all when the price is good, or they have more money than common sense and pay whatever ridiculous price is demanded I doubt anyone who learned their lessons after Newtown, then Vegas is hurting for ammo. But I believe they are still buying, maybe not as much, but they still buy because they are feeling panicked. Shortages happen for various reasons. Gas prices spiked when the Texas and Louisiana refineries got hit by hurricanes.That kind of shortage naturally drives up prices. But the ammo shortage we have now is a combination of natural and artificial that work as a feedback loop. The commodity manufacturers (ie the primer makers) are absolutely manipulating manufacturing to their benefit, but the price spikes are not entirely their fault.

Thief: " I'm very sorry" Yeah, sorry he got caught!

Didn't see this until just now. What I meant is that any firearm that requires anything other than manual cycling will be on the chopping block. That is their ultimate goal. As it stands now, the classification is focused on F/A with auto sear, but the leftards are looking to expand (move the goal post, again) the definition of assault weapon. As we all know, a true assault weapon is select fire, but that has not stopped the left from going forward with their doublespeak campaign where they lump semi-auto in with full auto. If tens of millions of uneducated Americans believe that a semi-auto rifle is an assault weapon, then the left will face less resistance when they use the ATF to broaden the official definition. It is all about perception. For instance, in Florida there is a demoncrat state rep that wants to reclassify grandpa's old 30-06 scoped hunting rifle as a sniper weapon. Banning hunting rifles is a no-go, but get it in peoples heads that it's a "sniper weapon", then a ban becomes easier to pass.

Tex laid it out pretty well. The bottom line is steel case ammo decreases the duty cycle of the firearm, and increases the general maintenance cycle. Whether you use brass or steel, you are going to have to replace things like the barrel and bolt parts. With brass, you can confidently go 20k rounds or more. With steel case the duty cycle could be well under 2k rounds before things start to break down. Due to increased blow-back and steel case coatings like lacquer, there will be more carbon and funk buildup in the chamber. If that is not cleaned out regularly, it invites stuck cases and broken extractors. Now, if you ask any AK owner about steel, they will say there is absolutely nothing wrong with it and it's superior to brass. And you know what, they'd be right. The AK platform was specifically designed to work with cheap steel case ammo. The platform has a looser chamber and certain parts like the extractor are made of harder metals meant to handle steel. The AR platform was designed for brass. There are literally tens of thousands of post and scholarly write-ups on the topic. Lastly, I will say this. Brass = America, steel = communists. I'd rather give my money to Federal Cartridge or Hornady than China or Russia. You may as well be handing them money to build warships or reeducation centers.

Don't quote me on this, but I think Jerry cans are already compliant because of the spring loaded spout. The main issue with most gas cans, according to the tree huggers, is that many people leave the spout cap off and vapor escapes. The little yellow vent caps always break off too. The whole idea with the new style spouts is that they self close and even have a vapor return tube. In a perfect world, those spouts would not be a terrible idea, but they suck monkey dick. They never work and are nearly impossible to operate without spilling gasoline, which defeats the purpose entirely. Those dumb ass spouts have spilled more gas than the old style ones ever did. Brilliant! I bought a can two years ago that the spout actually worked well, but squirrels ruined it. Those lil bastards love chomping up gas caps on mowers and cans.

That's like $100 worth of cable right there. This is a fantastic transfer switch and a stupid good price. Anyone with a genset should think about adding this to their house. It would be foolish to not jump on this offer, Reliance is the gold standard. No more 3-way splitters or extension cords running throughout the house, no looking for extension cords, no inleting the furnace, no electrocuting linemen. Just plug it in and enjoy life while everyone else is in the dark or getting rained on.

Tractor Supply 30 gallons, hand crank. It's a bit pricey at $500.00, but it's all that and a bag of chips. Holds enough fuel to keep a genny going for 7 to 14 days depending on how big the genny is and how many hours you run it. https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/gas-go-30-gallon-steel-ul-listed-caddy?cm_vc=-10005

Peel, that you know how to do that, much less what it means. Sexy. I'm sorry to say there is no good 5 gallon can solution since the leftards when all hippie on gasoline cans. We run into the glug glug problem all the time filling mowers. What we did was drilled air holes in the handles so air can get into the can as the liquid sucks the air out creating a vacuum. Old fashioned cans used to have holes in them, there was usually a little yellow cap over a nipple somewhere at the top of the can, but they did away with those when the new and improved nozzles came along. If we are in a hurry, we take the nozzle off and use a funnel. Diesel has a higher viscosity than gasoline, so it's going to decant slower. If you have diesel/heating oil already, look into diesel generators. You don't have to get a giant one, but they are super expensive. you won't have to worry about keeping fresh gasoline and you will already have a diesel reserve. Lastly, if you are going the transfer pump rout, why not get a 55gallon drum and put it on wheels.

That is a really neat method, I'll have to try it when I start reloading for my bolt action. Is there a way to translate that method to a semi auto action? The video above it about die size was pretty interesting too.

I really need to stop watching youtube vids on reloading. It's getting expensive. So now that I know there's a doohickey for measuring ogive length, I have to have one. And a small base die, because not reloading for 5.56. I dunno if my 223 Wylde chamber will like 223 sized brass. I dunno why but the guy on the video sez I need to do that, even though external case dimensions are the same for 223/556.

There are rifling marks on them, but it is strange that none are mushroomed.

Yup. 16 nailed it. Besides OAL, I still have a bit of figuring to do in things like bullet set back, free bore and jump. I want to make a reliable accurate round, not just an accurate load. I may end up ditching the 77gr, which to be honest, I only got because they were available and had a smoking BC. I should stick with what I know works well, 75gr OTM based on the PPU cartridge.

Corrections... Match King, so not a hunting round and the BC is .420

May not have been the best way to approach hand loading, but I shopped for bullets purely on the BC spec, always looking for the highest BC for weight. I'm not a hunter so terminal was not part of the equation, but the BC on those Sierra 77gr TMK (which I think is a hunting round) is pretty good It's .403 G1 If I recall correctly.