Quarterly Update:

So I haven’t written in a while, there hasn’t been much to write about. Summer is nearly over and I have been working on the house and yard here and there. This summer has been pretty nice as far as weather is concerned. In fact if every summer could be like this then maybe I wouldn’t hate the season so much. These cool weekends have been giving me the itch to build stuff and kill things, two major urges I get in the fall. Along those lines, I have finished the 220 Swift and now I need to get out and check the system to see if everything is alright. When I was deciding to get the barrel, I worked up a custom load for it and was able to get about 0.25 inch groups at 100 yards without much effort. Presumably, since the chamber hasn’t changed at all, the load will still be safe in that barrel. Also, the load I worked up was by no means high pressure, and was several hundred feet per second slower than what that round is capable of (If I remember correctly I was pushing a 50 grain bullet at about 3500fps, or roughly 3 times the speed of sound). I have a small number of that same load worked up and I’ll use those for pressure checks. Once I have verified the load is safe in the new setup, and established smooth trigger operation and proper functioning of the gun as a whole, it’s time to load up a bunch and do some precision tuning. I plan to pillar bed the stock and it has been cleared for full barrel float. Right now I only have a crappy Simmons 3-9x40mm scope on it, since I am not made of money and can’t afford to buy what I really want. Eventually I plan to transfer my 6-24x50mm off of my 270 hunting rifle onto the swift, but before I do that I need to have my new tactical scope for my hunting rifle. I have my eye on a Millett Tactical TRS-1 4-16x50mm with illuminated mildot reticle and turret sight adjustments for windage and elevation. It has some pretty good reviews and looks pretty good for the price. Now if only I could come up with the moneys. Anyway, I hope to get a chance to start my pressure work this weekend, but who knows. Additionally, I need to get out and buy some powder for my 270. Every time I have gone to Sportsman’s, they have been sold out. Apparently they are filing for bankruptcy and want to minimize expenses while they do so. I’ll probably end up getting it somewhere else, since I want to start working up some high precision loads for my hunting rifle. I have considered adopting some techniques used by so called “benchrester’s”, including separating my brass by weight once they have met the correct external dimensions, outside neck turning my brass to eliminate defects, and working on my shooting skills. Ideally I’d like to be comfortable reaching out to 1000 yards with that rifle, whereas right now I am only reasonably confident out to about 750 right now. I have taken antelope near this range, though I do so with great caution due to the higher probability of merely wounding the animal and not being able to recover it. Not to mention the planes of Wyoming can be really bad with variable cross wind, and at that range could deflect a bullet several feet if not careful. Besides, if I feel I can comfortably reach out to 1000 yards I should have no excuses in the range of 3-500, which is where many of my deer and elk shots have been taken. I think once I get my Swift set up I’d like to get out and do some Coyote hunting. It’d give me an excuse to get a Ghillie suit and deck out my gun so I can go play sniper. I was thinking it might be fun also to build a ghillie suit for bird hunting, although for it to work properly I’d have to keep a very low profile and I’m not sure how I feel about laying prone in the snow for hours on end. Now that I am nearing the end of one gun project, I find myself looking or the next one (you know, because I have ALL of this money I just can’t seem to spend fast enough… riiiiight). I am looking at either an AR-15/AR-10 (haven’t decided yet) OR to go ahead and start working for a .50 BMG. The AR is more affordable, but they are both going to set me back a couple grand (roughly 1800 for the AR and about 2800 for the BMG). These prices are pretty much just for the base weapon, and I’ll want to make a number of additions. One other thing I have been thinking about lately is getting a class 3 license. I need to do some research on whether or not that includes silencers/suppressors, but it might be a cost effective way to go if I’m going to get into some serious weaponry. I have wanted to play around with subsonic loads for either my Swift or my SKS, and why only go half way with a subsonic round when you can add a silencer and drop below the 100 decibel mark. Unfortunately, it’s illegal to BUILD a silencer, though you can buy one if you have the proper permits and such. The problem is that they cost around $800, and frankly I don’t know that it’d be THAT cool. I should probably stop fantasizing about how to spend grundles of money that I don’t have, and probably won’t have for quite some time. Lesigh…