If The Poppies Are Out...

...The wind must be blowing, and if the wind is blowing, the buffalo gnats aren't biting! So, Thursday night pistol league moved outside tonight at Carmi so we could shoot steel.

We were rusty, but Susan broke 5 seconds on the six plate runs we were doing tonight, and we stopped at the DQ on the way home to celebrate.

Dowsing: Either You Have It, Or You Don't

I found out about fifty years ago that I could dowse for water and sewer lines, and my dad could do it, too.  He worked for the municipal water system, and all of the water and sewer department trucks had dowsing rods for locating buried utilities. The first time I tried it was at McMillan Park in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. They were getting ready to stake down some equipment before Old Threshers, and they needed the location of a water main before putting anything into the ground. I was amazed then, and I still am every time I see it work.  In this brief video you will see the rods cross on a burial from 1850.

Let's Drop A Rotten Cherry Tree

I was asked to drop this cherry tree for a couple reasons. The top was crooked and wide-spreading in two different directions, so the weight was hard to figure. It also had a large dead branch about 8 feet up, and the crew figured it might be rotten. I tapped the trunk with a hatchet, and you could tell that it was indeed punky, but the question remained; how rotten was it? The open face cut revealed the insides, and we were OK. The center 1/3 of the tree was punk, but we had 6 to 7 inches on both sides that were solid wood, so completing the drop would be safe. I wasn't sure about the balance on  the tree, so I put a wedge in the back cut for insurance. It tipped on its own when I cut it loose. Note the branch that broke loose out of the top, and how it spears the ground.

Ruger's Auction To Benefit Honored American Veterans Afield

Ruger's offering for HAVA this week is a .41 Magnum Blackhawk that was built 40 years ago. If you are an old fan of Shooting Times, you know that Skeeter Skelton was greatly enamored with this caliber in the Blackhawk. It is still in Ruger's catalog, so it is still popular, even if you don't hear much about it on the blogs and in the magazines. This fine pistol will sell mid-day, April 29, 2015, so Click Over, read all about it, and place that winning bid. 100% of the proceeds of this auction will go to benefit Honored American Veterans Afield.

$755

Tuesday Turbo Boost

All The Live-Long Day

Back To The Old Grind!

Not My Victrola; Let's Visit The Red Hot Mama!

Here's How To Pull A Tick Quickly And Easily

We have tried many different methods for pulling ticks, and the little Tick Twister works best for us. We are beset by Lonestar ticks this year, and the sooner you pull them, the better. Those little critters make you itch much worse than the dog ticks and deer ticks do.

Weekend Steam: A Move Up From Triple Expansion

May 1 will be here in just a few more days, and that is the centennial of the Lusitania leaving New York on her final voyage. The great ship was torpedoed on May 7, and 1198 passengers and crew perished. Click Here to visit a site with some very good old photos of this historic ship. These are from a private collection, and are not public domain.

The Lusitania was revolutionary by virtue of its turbine engines. They were by no means perfected, and the ship had troubles with them, but she could run at 25 knots with the new-fangled non-reciprocating steam engines.

Images of Lusitania via Google Search.

Great War Anniversaries

The war really got in its groove in 1915, becoming a never-ending nightmare that sent us down a century of war, and it is still not over. Today, April 24 marks the centennial of the beginning of the Armenian massacre. Pick your number, but the dead easily numbered more than a million Christians murdered by Turkish Muslims. This atrocity is where we got the word, Genocide. April 25 is ANZAC Day, the centennial of the attempt by the Allies to reach Russia via the Dardanelles. The Turks were on the high ground, and the disastrous result is the stuff of legends. There is a wealth of information about both of these nightmares on the internet, and after looking at them for several evenings, I am going to link this one from the History Channel, and this one from World Net Daily. You will find more than you can stand to read if you do a few searches.

The final ANZAC  survivor of the Gallipoli campaign passed away in 2002.