hobbies

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I have been coming back around to shooting again. Spent some time the other day with a plain jane Marlin 60 .22 banging away at about 25 yards. I think a set of military aperture sights like these are needed for windage and my blurry damned eyes.


I loaded 50 rounds of a very mild 45 Colt load with a 250g RNL and some PB. Pietta 1858 replica with a 5 shot Howell conversion cylinder. Mild, accurate as hell at 25 yards. With cap & ball & FFFg too. But with that you have to grease the cylinder face and on a hot day it's messy as hell, so I call it the 'butter pistol' . I couldn't imagine Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain running around Little Round Top with buttery spooge up to his elbows :)

Also loaded some 158g hard cast SWC .357 loads for my Coonan. Trying to crack the 1400 fps barrier with them.

We are getting whacked right now with that big storm. Short of an invasion I think the guns will have to stay inside today.

After that maybe I'll have time for the commemorative spoons.......
 

Rick Hunter

Celestial
Might be easier to say what hobbies I don't have, although some of them I only return to on occasion. My main ones are shooting/reloading, hunting, and fixing cars and machinery. Other hobbies that I don't do all the time include fishing, golf, gardening, and collecting antiques, especially glass telegraph and telephone insulators.
 

Rick Hunter

Celestial
Try a Williams FP-GR or similar receiver sight on your Marlin. Most of my rifles use them. Took some practice with my Lyman 66 equipped Henry .22 yesterday and those squirrels better start writing their wills!
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I had been feeling gun chatty but didn't want to hijack other threads.

We have a .22 'woods walk' in the spring and fall at a club not far from here. My buddy and I have hopes that it'll be on this fall which means practicing up. Paper target @ 25 yards for 50 points then a course with stations of different sized gongs and spinners for the other 50 points, plus a crack at bonus points. One includes a gong made from an old fire extinguisher that's got to be 70 yards away. You can shoot iron sights or scope, long gun or handgun. They take us out in groups of 5 and each group has a range safety officer.

My go to for that has been my Ruger Mk.II with the 5.5" bull barrel. I've won it a few times. Also shot it with my Colt 1911 .22 - the new Umarex not one of the old Ace kits. Gotta use the web belt and old '44 Boyt for that. I happen to like the 1911 quite a bit. Also shot it with a S&W 317 3". That was a challenge.

The Marlin 60 is as exciting as a hammer to me but I think I'll give it a go this year if I can. I'll look into those sights you mentioned. Mine went all blurry on me.
 

Rick Hunter

Celestial
I think I have a Williams WGRS-54 peep sight that clamps on the dovetail mount in my little gun junkyard. Let me look and see.
 

SOUL-DRIFTER

Life Long Researcher
My hobby has been treasure hunting with one of my many metal detectors.
But...it has been 16 years since I seriously spent time with it.
Buying and selling has become my new addiction.
Recently bought several musical brass instruments. Cats now refuse to enter the room I keep them in...hmmm.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
My hobby has been treasure hunting with one of my many metal detectors.
But...it has been 16 years since I seriously spent time with it.
Buying and selling has become my new addiction.
Recently bought several musical brass instruments. Cats now refuse to enter the room I keep them in...hmmm.

A guy I know has done that for years, hangs around grave yards. I thought that was a bit weird until he explained that it's the visitors that drop stuff. He's picked up a number of cool coins, a badge, etc. Amazing the stuff laying there just out of sight
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Paranormal forum and I'm going on about cars.So I posted a bunch of old car pics - which I don't need much prompting to do. I bought that thing to have something to work on directly, not just to look at. Some people have extensive collections but that usually means they just sit inside 99% of the time. To me that's a form of automotive taxidermy. Machines were made to be used.

A friend has original survivor cars and here's a little taste of what you get with those:

His 1963 Ford Galaxie Fastback has a fancy for 1963 TWO speed windshield wiper. A HIGH and a LOW. He had never, ever, not even once tried it in the HIGH position until 2020. Imagine that. 1963 to 2020 and one day he just reached down and turned the knob an extra click. It worked ! Wow !

..... and wouldn't turn off again. Switch contacts were green with decades of nobody using them. He literally almost had a heart attack and absolutely lost sleep over it. After some fiddling it went back and he'll never touch it again. Besides, that car hasn't seen rain since Nixon was President so why that mattered in the first place is a stretch ....

In comparison I just gutted the interior, a couple of times. I bought the car pretty much as you see it but it had been neglected for many years, plus a lot of stuff came in boxes. It had factory air conditioning but that had turned into a disease filled mouse house so I removed all of it stem to stern. I rebuilt/replaced all the vacuum motors that hide under the dash, fixed all the gauges, rebuilt the climate control rollers, replaced electric window motors and regulators, fixed the damned stereo and put the dash and console fully back together. I rebuilt the entire front suspension, brakes, power steering, replaced the starter and alternator, rebuilt the carb and tuned, tuned, tuned the living snot out of it.

People don't want these cars anymore. As investments your $$ can do better elsewhere. They watch TV and want restomods that look old but drive and handle like modern vehicles. This thing is like a B-17. All cables and hydraulics, levers and linkages. If something is happening it's because you're physically making it happen. No electronics other than the old, cool and especially gigantic stereo. This car is as close as it gets to a restomod with an original. It keeps up with traffic easily, is extremely maneuverable, and you can romp on it to your heart's content with no bogs, hesitations, burps. It'll light those rear tires right up and leave nice positraction candy canes all day, but I've done that like, twice. Don't want to have to replace the clutch.

It's a very early production L-46. Well appointed back when. The original owner or someone shortly thereafter blew the engine and trans out of it and it got replaced with a factory short block and a slightly older Muncie M21. Car was built Oct 12 1968, CE or Counter Exchange motor built Oct 14 1968. It retained all the specs that makes it the 350 hp/350 cu in. It has a fresh rebuild, albeit 30 years old. .030 over, factory camel hump heads. Aftermarket carb and intake. Extremely high compression. Can't tell exactly but each cylinder tests @ 215psi consistently. It’s tight. Doesn’t burn oil at all. Could care less about #s matching but I am happy it's a very early, correct 350 and not somebody's Mom's station wagon engine.

OK, so ten thousand words later I'm still droning on. Point is I just like working on it, learning about the tech that makes it go. It isn't super fast and when you look at it it needs a new interior and the paint really is about a B- when you get close. I treat it sometimes like I found it smoking in a hole at Roswell. The mechanicals are sorted out, it's totally turn key - assuming you know how to start a carbureted car and drive a four speed. It gets a lot of attention, too much in fact. One day a guy with a dreamy look on his face - and I've encountered a few - will make an offer I won't refuse then out she goes. Only got room for one, maybe a Mopar next time.
 
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spacecase0

earth human
my hobbies are sewing, machining, electronics, physics, exploring shamanism, gardening, woodworking, off grid living, and some other things I likely forgot.
I use to play with cars for fun, but they are to pricey for me now, so mostly I am focusing on creating things of all sorts lately.
collecting most things is just pointless given where I am in life.
the only things I collect lately is the means of production of things.
I really want to build an automated loom ...
no where to put it though, guess I have to focus at building more out buildings first.

back to the car topic,
I have a mazda RX3 that needs an engine and transmission...
I like that car, but unlikely to ever be able to afford a proper engine for it.
have been thinking about putting a predator engine in it, I have an extra 13HP one.
and an electric motor as well so I can get up the hills...
likely a crazy idea, but I think it would work if done correctly.

edit:
I forgot ham radio as a hobby,
also wine making, other chemistry, and other such things
 
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nivek

As Above So Below
I've been watching and reading about electric car designs and engineering off and on for a few years now, here's a short clip and link showing the latest...These cars are quickly becoming better and better in their reliability and performance...

...

Car design is about to change forever. This video encapsulates how

Electric vehicles are incredible. Beyond eliminating fossil fuels, they are whisper quiet, accelerate faster than gasoline cars, and according to a new Consumer Reports study, operate with less expensive maintenance over time. But one of the biggest benefits of EVs that they are revolutionizing the way cars are built.

How? As this new video from Israeli startup Ree demonstrates, the EV of tomorrow is basically just a giant skateboard. With tiny motors placed inside the wheels, the car can assume any form imaginable; any sort of seating or storage arrangement can be built right on top of this flat base.


 

AD1184

Celestial
...one of the biggest benefits of EVs [is] that they are revolutionizing the way cars are built.

How? As this new video from Israeli startup Ree demonstrates, the EV of tomorrow is basically just a giant skateboard. With tiny motors placed inside the wheels, the car can assume any form imaginable; any sort of seating or storage arrangement can be built right on top of this flat base.



This company has rediscovered body-on-frame vehicle construction, which used to be how all passenger vehicles were made before the advent of unibody construction, where the car's body and chassis were joined into a single structure. The first unibody cars were made in the 1920s, with the practice becoming de rigueur in car construction by the 1960s.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Not about cars really although hard to tell. Screwing around with paints and finishes.
Found a nice acrylic lacquer Krylon 1613 Semi flat black spray paint 12oz
Supposed to stick to vinyl quite well. I used it on potmetal.

I have also been looking for something to fix chipped fake chrome and found Hobby Lobby sells all sorts of cool metallic leafing products. This thing is cool and cheap Silver DecoColor Premium Leafing Pen | Hobby Lobby | 1079847

I bought a junk plate off ebay to try this on. Had to scrape off bees nest and mud. Cleaned, scraped, sprayed with Krylon. I waited a few minutes for the paint to flash and took it right off the chrome with zero pressure. It doesn't stick. Tried to repair the broken chunk with JB Weld. Hard to shape and I ran out of it, but it did the job. That weird chrome paint is the closest match I've seen and only set me back $3 with a coupon.

I just put my old rat eaten rubber boot in it and will hang it on the wall as an objet 'art. Had to practice before I touched the original. It actually looks much better live, the picture really doesn't flatter it.

upload_2020-10-15_9-50-2.pngupload_2020-10-15_9-50-14.png
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Anybody here know how to to weld? Specifically anyone use one of those 125 volt entry level flux core stick welders, like from Harbor Freight? They run about a hundred bucks.

Don't really know what I want to do. Not create objects of art, more practical. Exhaust systems, maybe a railing, make a shop press from an ATV lift.

I've googled plenty. Ask a question like that on a car forum and before long you've installed your own personal atomic pile to power your welder so you can commission a new battleship in the back yard .....

Pretty sure the answer is an entry level 250/125v MIG with a wire feed, maybe a Hobart. Buy cheap buy twice. But those small machines are quite capable and I am wondering. Just don't know and figured I'd ask.
 

The shadow

The shadow knows!
My hobby is model ships. My boys love helping me.
Here is my latest model. The minicraft 1/350 Titanic. My boys helped build her.
I added the rigging and wires.
FB_IMG_1603295751933.jpg
 

August

Metanoia
I bonded with my boys so much thanks to that Titanic model. The model provided many happy hours in the most dark time for my family.

Yes that's a great thing being able to share that experience together , its something they will remember for a long time to come. From the darkness comes light from a ship that sadly was lost so long ago.
 
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