Birthday Present

There was long stretch in January and February where I didn't get to see the folks in NJ. Illness and busy schedules got in the way and as a result I just received my birthday check a couple of weeks ago.

Now birthdays are not a big financial deal in the Hart family so I was trying to figure out what to get with my $50 check. Videogames cost $50 but I don't currently have a computer or game console capable of playing modern games. Books? If I'm in bed and the kids aren't crying or screaming, I should be sleeping.

And $50 isn't enough money to get a gun, even an old WWII gun made in the Soviet Union by the tens of millions. Or so I thought...



Allow me to introduce the Mosin-Nagant M44. According to my research, based solely on watching "Enemy at the Gates," this gun or its longer variant, the M91/30, were given to every other soldier in Stalin's army. (The other guy just ran along unarmed.) The point is that they made a heck of a lot of these guns so even sixty odd years after WWII there are a bunch of them floating around. How many? So many that you can buy one for $49.99.

Have I mentioned how much I love this country? For $50 I can purchase, online, a fully functional WWII battlerifle made by our one time ally of convenience turned bitter Cold War adversary turned whatever Russia is today. $50. This thing meant all the world to one or more poor Russian peasants trying to survive the Nazi onslaught and their own officers, but for me it is a fun refinishing project and a few hours at the range, all purchased with discretionary income. Here's hoping I never value it as much as that peasant did.

Grandmother's Birthday

We got to go celebrate Grandmother's (Harry and Eleanor's Great Grandmother) 85th birthday. Unfortunately Harry and Amy were unable to attend the actual party on Sunday, in part because Harry has fully embraced the concept of the Terrible Twos.



Grandmother was in good spirits but a little weak to hold a big girl like Eleanor.

The rest of the weekend was pretty successful, with the kids somehow keeping to their schedules.



In our little language development classes we are taking to help Harry express himself we have learned the various classifications of children based on their language abilities. Harry started off the class as a "First Words User" but is moving on into the "Combiner" phase. Mom got evidence of this capability when she broke out the breakfast food for the weekend. Harry knows "coffee" and he knows "cake" and he quickly realized the wonderful result of combining those two words.



Dad had to do some work from home to make sure the "Exchange" had dealt with the time change seamlessly. This took a surprisingly long time to do but Eleanor was patient.



And after all that tough work was done, Dad relaxed with Harry to watch some Toy Story. (The actual order of weekend events may be altered to aid me in making a narrative.) Harry is completely obsessed with Toy Story (except when he is completely obsessed with spices.)

Swiss K31 Refinished

I got to shoot the K31 a couple of times since Christmas. The first time was in NJ in the field out back of Uncle Bob's house. My initial impression was that it was very very loud. I've shot shotguns and .45 pistols and little .22's but this was rather different. Mach 2 or so coming out of the muzzle means the bullet makes its own little sonic boom. Pretty cool.

Anyway, on that outing I didn't hit a whole lot until I got pretty close and got over anticipating the recoil. The second outing was to the NRA indoor range in Virginia. There were a bunch of Blackwater guys there with their Evil Black Rifles so it was amusing to pull out the K31. I did a bit better, though I was shooting "off hand" - standing without support. I'd post the targets but since they were human silhouettes it might look a little creepy. Next time I will shoot at concentric circles.

In between outings I refinished the wood on the rifle. When we were out in the miserable January weather, I noted that the K31 just sucked up the rain. There was no finish to speak of on most of the stock. A little Easy Off oven cleaner took off what remained and then some stain and a little polyurethane finished it off.



This photo shows the anchor points for the sling, though I do not yet have a sling... or a bayonet. I may have to rectify that before too much longer. Also evident is the fact that I couldn't really get the stock looking like new. Oh well, this way it looks nice and old.



I didn't do anything with the metal and you can see here how nice the finish is. The sight is adjustable for long distance shooting. The units for those numbers is yards. 1500 yards is just shy of a mile, for reference.



And here is a loaded magazine. The ammo is very pretty. It's nickel jacketed, that's why the bullet is silver, and sealed to the case with a bead of beeswax. Leave it to the Swiss to make bullets complicated.

Old .22 Rifle - Before, During, and After

This is a follow up post about Great Grandfather's old (naturally) .22 rifle. I mentioned having finished the refinishing for this old workhorse from the farm but I never posted the pictures. That is about to be corrected.

To Recap, this is what the rifle looked like when I got it from Uncle Rich. It looked like it had served long and hard depopulating the fields of groundhogs.





Here it is in the middle of stripping and sanding the stock.



And the final product. I went with a darker stain and a nice dark bluing on the barrel. All that is left is to grind off the old chrome on the bolt and blue that up. But I am in no rush.







And how does it shoot, you might ask? Intermittently. We had a bunch of "no fires" when we took it out a couple of months ago. I was using cheap Remington ammo and it was raining so more testing is required to determine where the fault lies. I'm looking forward to it.

Creepy Crawler

OK, maybe not so much creepy as cute.



UPDATE: The green tinged lighting reminds me of The Matrix. That is a little creepy, I suppose.

Old Video

Now that Eleanor is trying her darnedest to crawl, I decided to take a trip down memory lane. We're going all the way back to 2006 with this video of Harry trying to get places before he could crawl or even tolerate being on his stomach.



Mind you, that's only his "I'm mildly annoyed" scream.

Baby Pictures

The children continue to grow and gain new abilities. Harry is really starting to talk up a storm. It took him a while to get interested in verbal communication but he's quickly catching on. Why, he's even learning his spices and practicing his Rachel Ray smile.



Eleanor is plumping up a bit. It's a nice effect I think, very appropriate in a 5 month old. She has recently discovered that her big hands let her get into Harry's toys.



More pictures here from our trip to NJ over New Year's.

New Year's in NJ