Archive for January 6th, 2023

The Whipped Cream Difficulties Home for Unloved Firearms. (Random gun crankery)

Friday, January 6th, 2023

I like guns that have a story. Even if I don’t always know what that story is.

There are people who throw conniption fits when they see a vintage military gun that someone has modified. For me, it depends on two things:

  • How good the modifications are. There’s a reason people refer to “Bubba gunsmithing”.
  • The relative rarity of the gun. Someone who hacks on a vintage M1917 Enfield these days is doing something stupid and appalling. Someone who modified one of those guns back in the day when you could pull them out of barrels at the Army Surplus store and they were cheap enough to use as tomato stakes…that’s a different story.

I’ve written before about my fondness for esoteric small bore cartridges, like the .22 Jet and the .224 Harvey Kay-Chuk. This isn’t just limited to handguns, but extends to rifles as well. Indeed, I’ve been kind of looking for a good .22 Hornet. (CZ made nice ones for a while, but they seem hard to find now. The ideal would be a heavy-barrelled pre-64 Model 70, but those are not cheap.) I also wouldn’t mind finding a nice .22 Magnum rifle, to go with my two .22 Magnum revolvers, but those are more common and fairly easy to find.

Mike the Musicologist and I were out a few months ago and visited Provident Arms in Spicewood. This was on the used rack and, while it isn’t in .22 Hornet, it was nicely priced ($400 plus tax, out the door). I heard it softly calling my name, and well…it followed me home. In addition to the nice price, it opens up several new rabbit holes for me. And it feels like this gun does have a story, though I don’t know what that story is.

This is a custom gun. The base is a M1903A3 receiver. Some of the markings are obscured by the scope mount, but as best as I can figure out from what I can read, and this serial number table, it was made by Remington in 1942.

(This one says September 1943.) I’m pretty sure this is safe to shoot as it falls outside of the low serial number range, but I would welcome hearing from any 1903A3 experts out there. If you know anything about 1903A3 rifles, you know more than I do, and are thus an expert.

The scope is a Bushnell 3-14. It seems like a pretty good scope, though I won’t know for sure until I shoot the rifle. We’ll talk about that later. Assuming it holds zero and isn’t otherwise broken, I could probably take it off and get back at least $100 of the purchase price. But that would leave me with a gun with no sights, so why would I want to do that?

The other thing is, someone rechambered this in .220 Swift. No, really.

.220 Swift is one of those super-odd cartridges. Factory ammunition is “available”: Remington makes one loading, Federal makes one loading, and Winchester makes one. Good luck finding those in stock anywhere, though. Most folks seem to handload for .220 Swift.

And there are good reasons for that. You can really push .220 Swift, if you want. It uses a .224 diameter bullet, same as the .221 Fireball, .223/5.56, .22 Hornet, 5.7×28, and some other cartridges. I’ve seen claims that it is the fastest commercially produced rifle cartridge, and, based on skimming reloading data, that seems accurate. With lightweight bullets (35 grains or so) you can get over 4,000 feet per second out of the .220 Swift. That’s…astonishing. At that velocity, from what I’ve seen claimed, you can sight in 1.5″ high at 100 yards, and (depending on the the load) hold dead-on target out to 300 yards without the bullet being more than 1.5″ above or below your aim point. This would be a really great cartridge for varmint hunting.

But it is also a very controversial one. The sources I’ve read say that the factory ammo makers originally loaded it at the 4,000 fps level, but shooters found that it tore the crap out of barrels quickly, like within 500 rounds. The factories backed off their loads some in an attempt to improve barrel life. It’s also worth keeping in mind that the .220 Swift was introduced in 1935 (Winchester chambered it in the Model 54 at first, and then in the Model 70 when that was introduced the next year.) Since 1935, our knowledge of metallurgy and barrel-making has advanced considerably, and apparently newer barrels don’t get shot out as fast. Especially if you don’t feed them a high-volume of maximum loads in a short time: the consensus seems to be one or two shots on a varmint, then letting the gun cool down before taking more shots, is the way to go.

The other issue seems to be people trying to make .220 Swift do things it wasn’t designed to do, like take larger game. There was a guy in the 1940s who claimed it was the best cartridge he’d found for “feral burros”, while other people used it for deer, elk, and even tiger. On the other hand, if you’ve read Ruark’s Horn of the Hunter (and if you have, first drink’s on me next time we meet) the rifle he attempted to use to take a hyena (and threw away in disgust) was allegedly a .220 Swift. This may have been a bullet construction issue: fast moving hollow points would blow up on impact, while other bullet types (such as monolithic copper) give better penetration to vital areas.

Personally, I’d stick to game not much bigger than coyotes (Call me, Martha).

Of course, I’d welcome hearing from any .220 Swift experts out there. If you know anything about .220 Swift, you know more than I do, and are thus an expert.

I haven’t had a chance to shoot this yet. The temperatures are mild enough that I can finally go rifle shooting, but I need to find an outdoor range with open lanes. If I go to an indoor range, that makes it much harder to chronograph loads, and I do want to do some chrono work: not just with this gun, but with the Scout and the XP-100. And it seems like whenever I go indoor, there’s always someone there who has brought their .22 Eargesplitten Loudenboomer or something that produces an equal amount of concussion.

Mike the Musicologist, RoadRich, and I went shooting last Sunday at Lone Star. But the only range they had open without more of a wait than we wanted was the .22 rimfire range. That was fine, we brought .22s with us, but it did mean that I didn’t have a chance to check any of my other guns.

I actually do have ammo for this gun, oddly enough. I ordered some of the Remington load from Midway. Mike and I went down to Cabela’s the day after I bought the rifle: while they had no factory .220 Swift ammo, they did have two boxes of Hornady unfired .220 Swift cases, and RCBS loading dies for .220 Swift. Someone in my extended circle reloads, and did a batch of .220 Swift for me using those dies and cases. (As I recall, I bought 55 grain Hornady bullets for those loads.) I’ve also managed to accumulate some factory loaded ammo from various places (gun shows, gun shops, etc.).

This might turn into a fun project. It’s already been an interesting diversion.

And I’m still looking for a .22 Hornet. And a .22 Jet: I’m thinking a Jet might be my target of opportunity at the Symposium in June.

(This article from Outdoor Life was a useful source of background in writing this blog entry.)

Posted in Books, Guns, Ruark | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: January 6, 2023.

Friday, January 6th, 2023

Kenneth Rowe, also known as Lt. No Kum-Sok of the North Korean Air Force.

This is an interesting historical footnote (recommended for use in schools) that I was previously unaware of.

Lt. Kum-Sok was born in what was then “the northern part of the Japanese-occupied Korean Peninsula”. He became a navel cadet, transferred to the North Korean Air Force, and learned to fly MIGs.

He got his wings at 19.

…

Mr. Rowe had become a member of North Korea’s Communist Party and “played the Communist zealot,” as he put it, while serving in the Korean War. But he had been influenced by his anti-Communist father and his mother’s Roman Catholic upbringing to yearn for life in a democracy. He had been thinking of a way to get to America since Korea was divided after World War II and the Soviet-backed Kim Il-sung imposed Communist rule over what became North Korea.

On the morning of September 21, 1953, while flying in a patrol of 16 planes, he broke off from the formation and flew across the DMZ to Kimpo AFB in South Korea.

Luck was with him. The American air defense radar just north of Kimpo had been shut down for routine maintenance, and neither American planes aloft nor antiaircraft crews had spotted him.
During the late stages of the Korean War, the Air Force had dropped leaflets over North Korea offering a $100,000 reward to the first North Korean pilot to defect with a MIG. Mr. Rowe maintained that he knew nothing of that reward and said he had simply wanted to live a free life. But he accepted it.

This was the first intact MIG that the United States was able to analyze. (At least, according to the NYT: Wikipedia claims that Franciszek Jarecki, a Polish pilot, defected in one on March 5, 1953.)

Seeking to determine the MIG’s strengths and weaknesses in anticipation of future conflicts with the Soviet Union and its allies, the Air Force dispatched some of its most accomplished test pilots — including Maj. Chuck Yeager, who had gained fame in 1947 as the first flier to break the sound barrier — to put the MIG-15 through strenuous maneuvers. Their verdict: The F-86 was the superior warplane.

Again per Wikipedia (quoting Yeager’s autobiography), “the MiG-15 had dangerous handling faults…during a visit to the USSR, Soviet pilots were incredulous he had dived in it, this supposedly being very hazardous.”

He came to the United States in May 1954 and was something of a celebrity. He was introduced to Vice President Richard M. Nixon, was interviewed by Dave Garroway on NBC’s “Today” program and appeared on broadcasts for the Voice of America. He received an engineering degree from the University of Delaware, became an American citizen in 1962 and worked as an engineer for major defense and aerospace companies. He was later a professor of engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach.

He was 90 when he passed.

And his plane?

Seven decades later, that plane still exists, and resides at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force near Dayton, Ohio.
Its red star repainted, it is on display alongside an American F-86 Sabre jet, a remembrance of the dogfights of the Korean War in the swath of sky known as MIG Alley.

Posted in History, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed