Footnote J

Here is a good write up of the Mark III provided by Wikipedia, for general interest

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruger_mark_III

Ruger Mark III .22 pistol

My friend and I finished up our day of indoor shooting by shooting his Ruger Mark III, a totally beautiful gun and, like all of his weapons, impeccably clean and flawless.  He has a laser sight mounted on his and boy was that fun.  After being shaken up by the 9mm, it was fun to shoot a gun that had a lot of mass and felt utterly recoilless.  I couldn't get the red dot to stay on the bullseye at 50-yards, but I could get it to oscillate around in the target like an electron bouncing around, and that bullet went where the dot was when you pulled the trigger!  We were actually able to shoot some pretty good groups, and it made me anxious to get my .22 semi-automatic out and shoot it.  After this session, we swept up the brass and called it a day.  What a good time I had, right up until lunch was over and I was hit by body aches and chills and a good head cold, right out of the blue.  I spent the next 24 hours in bed, but God must love shooters, because all this misery was put off until after we had left the range!

Footnote I

General interest link for history of the development of this fine pistol and a technical description:

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sig_P228#variants

Sig Special 9 mm Pistol

My little wintertime trip north continued with a bit of indoor range firing of my friend's Sig Sauer Special 9mm semi-automatic.  We are in a period of time where there is a confluence of problems for pistol shooters. Some anti-gun legislators have been emboldened lately and frankly there has been a fear of renewed gun-control measures ever since the current president took office, accompanied by record gun and ammunition sales ever since 2008. Now in his second term and never to face voters again, he is bolder and giving the force of the bully pulpit to the anti-gun elements in congress. The news media, of course, are carrying water for all of them. So you can't hardly find a 9mm semi-automatic; they are immediately snapped up.  There is a fear that ammunition will be taxed or imprinted, causing it to become unavailable. In addition the federal government has apparently placed a billion dollar order on 9mm parabellum and other size bullets and I have been told that the manufacturers must give 75% of their output to this order.  All these things together and you cannot find a box of 9mm ammunition on the shelves anywhere. But I did.  And I have a lot more in my gun safe at home, so we shot some of it.
I will say first that Remington 9mm bullets are LOUD!  The others at the indoor range thought so as well.  We played around, making sure we could each hit the target at 25-yards before cranking it down to the 50-yd mark, right in front of the deflector.  I have thin wrists and that gun felt like it wanted to leap right out of my hands!  It was so much fun!  We were able to hit the target.  This gun has a long trigger pull. You have to take up a whole bunch and then get into your zen squeeze.  When it goes off, it wants to drive your styrofoam ear plugs right into your brain, and a fireball covers up the line of sight for an instant. 
I think that I am going to have to do some wrist-roller exercises; winding up a free weight on a thin rope, or something like that to strengthen up some when I get back up north for the summer and get my 9 mm out of the safe.  What a good time, though, and what a nice gun.

Footnote H

Here is a good link to the parameters and description of the Ruger Model 10 semi-automatic rifle, just for general interest:
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruger_10/22

Ruger Model 10 .22 Cal Rifle

After shooting skeet for the first time and having quite a good time of it, the fun was not yet over. We proceeded to the indoor range and checked in to test fire some of my friend's armament, since I had arrived by airplane and didn't have any of my own.  We shot a beautifully kept, like-new Ruger auto-loader which he had felt was shooting a bit left.  After a couple of groups each, he took a punch and ball peen hammer and tapped the sight over a bit.  We saw some improvement, shot a couple more groups and tapped it over some more.  We were using a rest, but not a sandbag and we either had a padded barstool or a folding chair to sit on. The chair was a bit too low and the barstool a bit high, so when we got to the point of it shooting a group at the midline of the target, we felt the job was done for the day.  He has a nice new sight put on which is really quite more useful in daylight.  There are three dots to line up, two on the rear sight on either side of the notch, and one on the tip of the barrel.  I would love to spend a session with this gun outdoors with a sandbag and see just how accurate we could make it shoot.  Maybe in the summer.

Footnote G

Footnote G    Here is a link to a pretty extensive review of the Browning Citori Special, which was a very fun gun to shoot.  I think that I could improve my trap score by using this one instead of the field gun, Remington 870 that I currently am using.  On the other hand, it would be daunting to shoot these pairs with a pump action!  I know shooters do it, but it seems like it would be a tough proposition

www.typicalshooter.com/review-browning-citori-xs-special-over-and-under-shotgun/

Browning Citori Special 12-ga shotgun

Life is good!  32-degrees with light snow flurries in Wisconsin in early March and the guys at the gun club are shooting shotguns!  Didn't try and bring a shotgun on the airplane, so am at the mercy of those who are willing to share.  Fortunately, to teach, as well.  My friend took it easy on me with the true pairs, and gave me a good introductory lesson on where to hold and let me shoot this nice over and under.  It was a real treat and I didn't do half badly for the very first round.  Even surprised myself and my mentors by smoking the last 2, which are tough, intuitive shots.  It was a great time with a great, in my humble, novice-like opinion, gun.

Footnote F

Footnote F       Remington 870 break down and reassembly for cleaning.

www.learnaboutguns.com/2008/05/07/how-to-disassemble-clean-and-reassemble-a-remington-870/

After each use, I routinely squirt some Rem-oil into the barrel and run a few rags through it in the direction of the action, to clean out powder residue and such.  I follow that with a swap and some Rem-oil on it.  Then I sort of squirt some into the action and work it a couple times, wiping it out. Then a little "zot" into the trigger area to keep moisture out.  Then I wipe down the metal and case it.

But there has to be an occasional breakdown and cleaning of the internal parts or residues and crud will find a way to build up, gather moisture, and start pitting stuff.  This is a good little article on breaking it down to lubricate and clean the hidden, internal parts once in a while.  What a great thing, the internet, to be able to download such stuff at a moment's notice, even with regards to older, rarer guns.

Footnote E

Footnote E

This links to a periodical issue which has quite a nice article about the Diana 60.  The bonus is a very comprehensive little treatise on pellet shape, design, and speed with regards to accuracy.  Very enlightening, and applicable to air guns in general.

www.airgunshop.co.za/Newsletter001.pdf

The writer talks about pellet speed, which I have mentioned before.  Pellet shape, at increasing speeds, makes a difference too.  It would be great fun to take a week and shoot pellets of different shapes through the Diana 60 and do a little accuracy study.  That is the kind of shooting I love to do; get right down to the idiosyncracies of a particular quality gun and see how it can be tweaked to shoot the best it possibly can.  All the more reason to get this gun back on the firing line. 

Footnote D

Footnote D     Diana Model 60 download

This particular download was an absolute find!  It is a 22-page manual on the complete dissassembly and reassembly of the Diana Model 60 rifle!  I printed the entire thing so as not to lose it, but this is the link:

www.mediafire.com/?onpy98l6i6zylp1

I can get this gun repaired with new piston seals and indeed a new mainspring for under two hundred dollars, but the prospect of being able to disassemble it and make the repair myself is exhilarating!  It is what loving guns is all about!  I need to carefully read this manual and decide as to whether I dare get into this project or whether it might be over my head.  At any rate, what a great find on the internet because, if it is for real, I know someone with a little more skill and equipment than myself to get advice, and perhaps even some help, from.  The problem is that I am in Florida for the winter, studying trap-shooting and this person is in Wisconsin studying ice and snow-drifts.  I am going to order the seals.

Footnote C

Footnote C  link:

www.pyramidair.com/blog/2008/03/10-meter-rifles-part-4-used-10-meter.html

B.B.Pelletier is the pretty much beloved guru of air rifles and pistols.  I am fortunate, with this classic old gun, to have the internet where I can access the kind of information that B.B. archives.  I can hardly wait to clean up and rehabilitate some of my other older airguns because I know B.B. will have posted valuable information to help me.  What a great resource. 

Many of the posts and comments that I read refer to the fact that the Diana factory burned to the ground in 1977, as well as to the fact that highly engineered airguns of the quality of the old German classics, with the fine machining to such close tolerances, cannot anymore be duplicated without great expense.  That is why I really need to address this rifle and put it back into commission.

Footnote B

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Model_870

It is good to have as much information about a particular model of gun as possible because the time always comes when you want to tinker.  In the case of this gun, I have tinkered only with different chokes.  I am not yet a proficient enough trap shooter and need to firm up those skills at least to the level that differences in the gun outweigh differences in my form.  That is going to take some doing, but I have started along this arduous road.  One has to remember, in the end, that this is a field gun, which my new-found friends at the trap range in Florida are always reminding me.  I know they are encouraging me to get a side-by-side or an over and under trap gun but I am a shabby chic.  I am fascinated by some of the older and classic inventions of shooting.  But we will see, because I have friends who will let me try out some of their instruments of clay pigeon annhiliation and I may get hooked.

In the meantime, this is a fairly good compendium of the salient points in the development of this shotgun and I sure love mine.

Footnote A

www.pyramidair.com/blog/2008/04/shimming-diana-breech-seal.html

I am footnoting a link here to the blog of the famed B.B.Pelletier who in this instance had a guest writer for the purpose of discussing shimming out the breech seal of the Diana Model 60, in order to increase modest pellet velocity.  The salient point, of course, that will occur to everyone, is that this applies to other airguns as well. 

The article speaks for itself and is obviously the chronicling of a very capable machinist, which I am not, but I know someone who is and that is all that matters.

The only caveat I would add is that more velocity is not necessarily better; there is a limit to which increasing the speed of the pellet leaving the barrel improves accuracy.  This limit is, of course, the speed of sound, about 1100 feet per second.  When a projectile crosses, or even gets close to this barrier, turbulence starts to play a big part in its path and the shooter hears a loud crack or snap as well.  Up to this point, more speed means a flatter parabola in the trajectory of the pellet and less time for intervening disturbances to affect accuracy.  Now we have arrived at what makes airgun shooting fun and interesting and for that matter, all types of shooting. 

Anyhow, the Diana 60 apparently is a little on the low end for muzzle velocity and these experimenters are always trying to tune things closer to the sound barrier and crank things up a bit.  Wonderful fun.  When I get mine repaired and on the firing line again, it has a pretty fat, new breech seal in it and I am thinking that will do things well.  My problem is, on the other hand, the piston seals, plural because this is a recoilless rifle. 

Diana Mod. 60 .177 cal Rifle

Diana Model 60  .177 calibre rifle

This is an extremely beautiful gun I was handed down from dad.  I pulled it out of the gun safe and brought it to FL to shoot toy soldiers, pencils, and golf balls (turned out golf balls are not a good idea)with a friend in his linnae and to generally re-familiarize myself with.  Unfortunately it has to be, like my other problems, considered "down" because of little or no power. 

The breech seal was quite worn and I was able to purchase a couple from Umarex, USA for only a dollar.  This did not do the trick and that leaves me with the probability that the piston seals are shot.  A little blogging and I learned that they dry-rot, and this gun has been in the safe a long, long time.  So I am in the process of obtaining the seals and enough information to determine whether or not I can handle the repair, or whether I had better have a facility do it.

The exploded diagram.  The model 65 and 66 had locking levers to maintain positive locking of the break-barrel.  The 60 does not. 

Hammerli Mod D .177 calibre pistol

Hammerli Mod D  .177 Calibre Pistol

Handed down from dad.
This is a lovely CO2 powered pistol, in it's own form-fitting box along with cutouts for a box of gas cartridges, a cleaning brush, and tin of pellets.  I have not fired it for years and took it out of the gun safe to bring it to Florida for the winter. Naturally, when I inserted a CO2 cartridge, nothing happened.  The mechanism inside did not load any gas behind the piston. 

This diagram was downloaded from Pilk 10-P website with the following instructions:
     Sights--clockwise - right        clockwise - down     2 clicks per scoring ring at 10m

     Trigger weight--Turn screw A 176-1 anticlockwise to increase. Should the trigger fail to engage while pistol is being cocked, turn A 176-1 anticlockwise.

     Trigger slack--Loosen lock nut A 177-2 to adjust.  Turn A 177 clockwise to shorten, anticlockwise to lengthen.

Needless to say, this was another target for my entry-level gunsmithing.  I took it apart to the extent that I could, cleaned, and oiled everything.  Then I adjusted the trigger to be a little lighter on the pull, and put it back together.  Voila!  It began cycling.  Friend Don was down to visit in FL and we put in another cannister of CO2 and had a blast popping Coke cans in the back yard.  The pistol is quite accurate out to 25 or 30 feet.