A tale of two guns, the fire, Duane, and more…

As mentioned on the blog yesterday, we canceled today’s company ride.

We had another huge wildfire yesterday (it made the national news), and this one resulted in the Boss being booted from his own home. Yep, Steve and Maureen were of two of thousands of people evacuated when the fire reached right down to their property line. Steve posted a photo on Facebook very early yesterday morning, and the flames were literally headed right for his home…

We seem to go through these firestorms every year here in the Golden State, but usually they occur in the summer. The news media is reporting that this one was apparently caused by three transients living in the boonies who started a fire to stay warm. I suppose there is good news: No one died in this fire. And Steve was able to get back in his house last night.

We did have to cancel our company ride, though. It would have taken us right through the fire, and Glendora Ridge Road, Highway 39, and other parts of our planned route were closed. Steve wouldn’t have been able to go because the issues around his home, and it just didn’t seem like a good idea. Don’t despair, though…we’ll reschedule another ride in the near future. And I actually got out for a bit today on my motorcycle, but more on that later.

Next topic, if I can change gears for a second…the tale of two guns. Every once in a while I post a firearms related story on the blog…nobody’s complained yet, and when I talk to our readers, it seems more then a few of you share this interest with me. The focus in this blog entry is on two old assault rifles…not the black plastic M-16s and other Rambo stuff that’s in the news all the time…but two really old rifles, with designs reaching back a century or more. I spent a couple of very enjoyable days on the range playing with these….

The one on the top is a Mosin Nagant 91/30, which is a Russian rifle originally designed in 1891 and then modified in 1930. These old Mosin Nagant rifles were Russia’s primary infantry weapon in World War II, and you can get them for well under $200 at a lot of sporting goods stores.

Make no mistake…the Mosin Nagants are in rough shape, they’ve been gunked up something terrible with cosmoline for decades, and they’re crudely built. But, folks are buying them (I see them at the range fairly regularly now). I had to find out for myself what all the excitement was about, so I bought one labeled as “excellent” (which was still pretty rough). A lot of folks are buying these things because you can also buy cheap surplus ammo, but that’s not for me. I ordered the brass, the reloading dies, the bullets, and I rolled my own. Folks, that old Russian rifle is about as crude as it gets in the gun business, but boy oh boy, can she shoot! To my great surprise, it’s very accurate.

The other rifle in the photo above is an Argentine 1909 Mauser. Here’s another photo of it…

The Mauser uses a cartridge (7.65 x 53 Argentine Mauser) that is just about impossible to find today, so for that one I bought the tools that let me make cartridges from 30 06 brass. That was actually a lot of fun. You run the 30 06 case into a special die that reforms it into the 7.65 Argentine cartridge, you trim the newly-formed case to the correct length, and then you reload the new case using the right dies for that cartridge. The photo below sort of shows the forming steps and the finished ammo…that’s a 30 06 round on top and two of my newly-minted 7.65 Argentine rounds on the bottom…

I was surprised at how well it all turned out, and I was really pleased with how well that old Mauser shot. Even though I’ve had the Mauser for years, this week was the first time I had ever fired it. It shoots 1-inch groups, but with the rear sight at the lowest setting it was still shooting a foot too high. After researching this issue on the Internet, I found out that’s what those old German engineers intended. It’s zeroed for 300 yards at the lowest setting! The theory is that you aim at the center of your target for any distance up to 300 yards and you’ll hit it (as long as your target is about the size of an enemy soldier).

Looking at those two rifles, the Mauser has vastly finer machining, fit, and finish, and the Germans really got carried away serializing things. Even the cleaning rod has a serial number!

That got me to thinking about the Mosin Nagant and how rough it was compared to the Mauser. To cut to the chase…it’s torn apart in my garage right now and I’m refinishing it. I’ll post a photo when I’m done. I just like things to look nice, I guess. Even with its crude build quality, though, that old Russian rifle shot just as well as the Mauser.

Okay, I know, California Scooter is a motorcycle company and this is a motorcycle blog…so back to the main attraction.

Like I mentioned above, I was disappointed that we couldn’t do the company ride today. I love these events, and I enormously enjoy the riding and the camaraderie. It’s great…just ask anyone who’s ridden with us. I was especially looking forward to meeting Duane, who recently bought a beautiful custom P-51. I hadn’t met Duane even though I had photographed his bike in an earlier blog, and TK told me that Duane was really looking forward to riding with us. It turns out that Duane is practically a neighbor, too…he’s just a few towns over.

But, we had to cancel the ride today. What to do?

To make a long story short, I shot an email over to Duane around 10:00 this morning, and by noon the two of us took a putt up to the top of Mt. Baldy for a couple of burgers. We had a great ride and I caught a couple of what I think are great photos of my new buddy Duane on his beautiful two-tone P-51. I like them so much I’m including them here in all their 900-pixel wide glory…