Mosin upgrades

Due to my poor performance on the Mosin Nagant, instead of working on holding it more steady, my breathing, or my trigger work I decided to 'improve' it. You won't really be able to tell the difference from the outside, but inside stuff is changed.

First thing I did was polish all mating surfaces in the trigger group. There were huge (small) gouges (scratches) that made it feel rough, or so I was told. Went to 1500 grit sandpaper in the end.
The inside of trigger:

The sear, where it catches the cocking knob:

The sear, where it rubs on the inside of the trigger:

The cocking knob, where its held by the sear:


I also added some shims to where the trigger spring/sear attaches to the receiver. This reduces the trigger pull, but can be dangerous if you do it too much. I did not do it too much. I did not test the trigger before the mods, but post polishing, the trigger pull was about 5lbs (which is a bit low for a stock mosin, maybe I accidentally bent the trigger spring while polishing?). After shimming the trigger spring, it went down to 3.9 lbs. I tested the trigger pull in a (mostly) inaccurate way. I used a gallon milk jug and added or removed water until the trigger just barely tripped when I used a rope to hold up the jug using the trigger. I measured the number of cups of water in the jug and converted that into a weight.

Second, I hoped to make the barrel more consistent. I cut some (three) squares from a coke can to put under the front of the receiver (where its screwed in). This raises the receiver and barrel a bit from the stock. (the Finns used brass) Then I sanded the stock where ever the barrel was touching, so that it was free floating. I had heard on the internets that the mosin barrel is a bit thin, and warps with the increase in temperature, so free floating completely is not a good idea. I put some cereal box cardboard under the barrel at the front of the stock. This puts pressure on a known location of the barrel, often people use cork, and its called "corking". So, the barrel was free floated from the chamber to the front of the stock. Then, the handguard was putting pressure on the barrel (the top of it), so I added some cardboard shims to the bottom of the handguard so that the barrel was floating within the handguard/stock except the front of the stock where I wanted the pressure to be.

I also did some cosmetic work on the sling. I also had some problems with my original idea to hold the sling. The "button" (which wasn't really a button but sort of worked like one) slipped out once while I was out in the woods, and I had to eat a pb&j so I could use the ziplock part as a piece of strong rope. Anyway, I made some "dog collars" to hold the sling on, using some old boot leather and an old coat hanger (with some dental floss as thread).
As you can tell the one on the left was made second. They fit perfectly.

St. Patrick's Day 2010

I started my morning with green eggs and ham (and cheese and toast in sandwich form)...
(add blue food coloring to yellow eggs for green...) (similar for beer!)

Lunch was ramen noodles with green food coloring, which got some attention at work.

Dinner was brats and green beer.

I went over to visit some friends that I haven't hung out with in a while. They had brewed some green beer which was interesting to taste. I have been debating making a small (gallon?) amount of wine in a fairly ghetto manner (but sterile and clean!)

I tried the starcraft II beta, it doesn't seem like too much changed... I guess thats a good thing though. I got owned.

Bowling scores and interesting water

We went bowling on Sunday, two games. The second game was a bit rushed. Since I forgot my awesome scores over the winter break, I am recording these here.

First game - 141.
Second Game - 122.

We went to this greek place on Sat and some of us got waters.

It was interesting, when you stuck the straw in the water, it turned blue.

Sweetwater Creek State Park

Sara and I went to a painting class at Sweetwater Creek State Park. It was a very well run park, they have a neat little visitor center. I want to go back and check out all of the trails when it gets a bit warmer.

A small bit of cash and the park provided paint, paper, and scenery. We went to an old civil war era cotton/textile mill. The mill was burned during the war and never rebuilt. They moved the workers to the north and would not allow them to return until after the war. There was nothing to return to, so it might have been for the best. There was a protective fence, but we got to go inside to paint. In the 1970's, some good ol boys would go down there and get drunk and shoot at a wall. None of the bullet damage to the brick was from the civil war.

I made a pencil drawing of this arch that had wood supporting it (which I later found that the wood was only there so that it would not collapse, it was open in civil war times). The water that ran the mill came through the hole in the wall from the arch. Its "backwards" in the sense that I am used to drawing boxes from the outside (perspective is wrong). Although, it would be right if the tree was on the outside, and we pretended that I was sitting outside of the ruins and looking into a mirror.


In the painting, the perspective is correct. Without the black lines, the painting would suck. I should have used darker shades to delimit the objects instead of black, but I suck at mixing paint.

I took some pictures of the scenery, it was a pretty neat place to visit.

And a picture of the ruins, from the outside. The wooden arch is on the left.

We had lunch at the end of a trail, overlooking the "falls" (rapids).
The rest of the day was also awesome, we went to the melting pot for dinner. We were so stuffed that we prompted fell asleep when we got home.

Hiking (and pretending to hunt)

I did a bit of outdoors stuff during the end of Feb.

I went to the Allatoona Lake WMA (attempting to hunt squirrel). I did not find any squirrels, but did see some cool herons, falcons, and bats. Nice scenery though. Some of the roads were closed, and it was very hard to figure out where I could go.
(camera phone = suck)



I went to visit some friends with my parents and their dogs, we took them out into the woods. One of the dogs found a deer antler which it promptly started gnawing on. I again pretended to hunt squirrels, but only saw a deer.

The week after that (squirrel season was a closing, and I am a procrastinator), I went to Charlie Elliot WMA looking for some squirrel. It was interesting to figure out how all of that works. Turns out, check in is only for deer time. I was fairly confused as to where I could go, but I eventually figured it out. I messed around in the woods again and ran into some deer. I just sort of went out, so it was good practice for going out into the woods off trail and being able to find your way home. The pictures are from a dove field after I exited the wooded area.



So, the moral is:
If you hunt for deer, you will have squirrels as loud as elephants taunting you.
If you hunt for squirrels, you will see many deer.

I think I want to go hiking on WMA's when its not the hunting seasons and practice not getting lost. Seems like it could be fun to explore some woods without being on a trail.

New plants

So I haven't posted any pictures of the plants. Its sort of hit and miss, I don't know where to put the light.

Mid Feb, when they were just sprouting...






And March 1st.

Rainy day thinking

Don't spend a rainy day thinking (and learning on wikipedia) about computability, incompleteness, recursion, infinities, towers of meta-circular interpreters, and etc.
(don't fear, I didn't spend much more than an hour)

More posts will follow, I have pictures and stories to tell about the last 2-3 weeks. The upcoming weeks should be mostly fun too.

Stay dry.