BrianK

Okayyyy! You haven't really lived until you've heard a pack of coon cats headed in all directions and all hissing.

Just curious. Write as much or as little as you want. I tend to diahreah of the keyboard. I get to go first. When I was in the military I thought it might be worth learning to keep my body behind cover as much as possible. But frankly, other than having the thought I didn't act on it because, well, it was the military and I had the thought that signing my M-16 out of the arms room for dry firing might be frowned on. But one terrible day (civilian life) we had an ice storm during the night. It was "black ice" which is invisible and I went out to start my car, slipped and turned my right wrist into shards. I was put into an erector set of pins, screws , and rods and I got to thinking after talking to the surgeon... I was told that my wrist would never be the same, yada, yada. But then came the fighter in me. "No", said I silently, "I am going to get the full use of it back, but if I miss that goal I will never not be a rifleman and shooter. I just need to learn to shoot lefty. Heck, I'm already left eye dominant!". So while in the erector set I started to teach myself to shoot lefty. Eventually the pins, rods, and screws were removed and I was able to see what I had learned by actually shooting. Darned if I wasn't a better lefty shooter than I was as a righty. I just wasn't comfortable being a lefty shooter, meaning it didn't come naturally to me. I was so accustomed to thinking "righty". But I can do it, and with handguns the brain automatically has me using my dominant eye. I do everything I can for gear to force my right hand to use my right eye. I'm older and with age sometimes comes cataracts. At one steel challenge match my brain started to use my left eye to sight with. I was silently muttering "What the eff!?? What's going on?". So I closed my left eye to force the use of the right eye. My preference is shooting with both eyes open and trained myself to do that. Advancing forward a few months from the match. I had one cataract fixed for distance (right eye), I'd been profoundly near sighted since the 3rd grade and was now in my 70s. No need for glasses for distance anymore, and I had 20/20 vision in that one eye. I was still profoundly myopic in the left. I thought that would drive me nuts. It didn't. My brain did what it did during that steel challenge match and chose the eye with the best vision for the job. I had great close in vision, like having a built in magnifying glass, and great distance vision. I finally understood why I had been using my left eye during the match. My brain knew what "was best" and just used what was the best eye for the job during that match, the eye with the better vision. I sorta liked the new "no need for any eyeglasses at all" new me, and considered keeping my left eye myopic, but instead had the left corrected for distance for binocular vision and the ability to shoot lefty or righty without requiring a Rx lense for the left eye. Oh, the right wrist? I fired my therapist and searched for one that wasn't going to treat me like someone about to die tomorrow having the attitude, "so who needs a right wrist?". I have full use of it today. I didn't baby it, I pushed it and dictated to the wrist what it was going to do. At times, rarely, I feel tauma arthritus but it's no big deal. Mostly it's just a wrist that I use and give no thought to.

Rain yesterday, rain on and off for the next few days. Maine is a well watered land. Lotsa lakes, streams and rivers and that water comes from somewhere. Water... The other day a friend came over for lunch and asked for a glass of water. She drilled a well decades ago and hit salt water that was trapped at a minimum 10s of thousands of years ago. She's 80 miles away from the sea. She tasted our water and told us "Your water tastes good.". Yup, we hit a great aquifer with a delivery rate too high for the well driller to accurately guess at. He just wrote 15gal/minute on the final well form. If I wanted to put in a suitable pump I could supply the entire mountain. So the rain? Yes, we might not want rainy days but they resupply our aquifers so suck it up. Right now we're in our rainy season. That'll change in a month or 2. Today light clouds and sunshine, 70*F in the sun.

That's terrible! The loss of any of my dogs have always hit me harder than the loss of close humans. I have no idea why, maybe their trusting innocence? I am so sorry for your loss!

Thanks MtnMike I didn't know that.

I have a friend who wants the Little Bird. He's herently an experimenter and thinks he'll like the adjustability of the threaded baffles. Me? I have enough to do just cleaning them w/o experimenting. Which brings up something I didn't write about. I'm trying a new product in the Banish 22. Rimfire is filthy. That's just the way it is. I'm using Ceramic Shield gun lube in the can. Squirt some in the thread end, move the can around to spread it around inside, and just fire as per normal. If deposits are seen building up at the back end give it another application. Yesterday I took the muzzle end cap off to see inside and the deposits were soft and wiped off with my fingertip. Just for kcks I removed the attachment end to look inside. Nothing to be concerned about but I gave it another squirt anyway just 'cause I was there. It appears to be working. Supposedly it allows for just wiping the can clean. I would think with the threaded interior of the Little Bird the Ceramic Shield could be worth using. There's also a clear cleaning solution that gets poured in and remains inside for hours (I wish I coud remember the name. Breakthrough?). Supposedly does a great job. Dead Air told me to use 50/50 water/Simple Green. There's a Simple Green that doesn't hurt aluminum, designed for use on aircraft. My previous easy way to clean was soda blasting. But it's messy and takes time. On the positive side it gets into everything, the tightest of places and does a really good job. First round pop... I didn't notice any with the Banish 22. I'll pay more attention next time but I think I would have heard it if it was present esp' with the handguns.

Thanks. Maine in the spring... We had a snow flurry last night sometime. I took the dog out for her last of the night bladder draining @0030 and there it was mixed into the rain on the ground and vehicles. 32*F then, 34* now. Still raining, just enough to make things miserable. The next few days aren't going to be great. Cold Arctic air and humid warm air from the ulf of America are duking it out over us. Happens every year twice a year.

Did my research and the Banish 22 was the can I wanted even though I have an NFA retailer <10 miles away. The retailer would have been quicker to get a can into my hot little hands. But I want what I want and not necessarily what is on a shelf locally. I wanted great attenuation, and light weight so to me that required titanium. The Banish 22 has all of that and not that I need it, is full auto rated and will do smaller .22 centerfire rounds (.22 Hornet is specifically mentioned). SC=Silencer Central CS=customer service The process SC has in place is painless and easy and the folks there are patient and helpful. I tried to fill out the paperwork but for some reason was unsuccessful, plus I was having multiple computer issues and I was limping along waiting on a solution for my troubles to show up. But I called SC and their CS filled out the paperwork for me, me supplying answers. I already had a digital passport photo and e-prints that helped. It took time for the process and paperwork to move through SC. They check it before moving it on; makes sense. The wait for ATF approval is never fast enough and I put the can in a trust and that slowed things down a bit. But in 54 days I had it in my hands. That was much faster than every hardcopy I ever waited for; they averaged 6 months. Before putting bullets through it I wanted to open it up and check out the assembly and put Ceramic Shield in it for (hopefully) easier cleaning. Armstrong assembled it and even with 2 strap wrenches I couldn't remove the end caps. So I sent it back to SC for warranty work. 3 weeks later I had it back in my hands. I hope I got it through to SC that to ship it the end caps don't need to be so torqued down. The warranty work was 100% preventable. The can is 100% Ti. The innards were beautiful but it wasn't going to stay beautiful for long. The can is (by ruler) 1" D x 5 3/8" long and weighs 4.4ozs. If memory serves it comes in 4 colors, mine is in black. It's shipped in 2 cartons and is packed in foam. The packaging could be nuked and survive, so it'll survive the gorillas at UPS and mine did. It also comes with a red anodized disassembly/reassembly tool for the outer end cap. The end cap that has the barrel thread doesn't require a tool. The baffels have lines engraved on them to assemble them correctly; just line up the lines. The baffles can be assembled w/o lining them up so I assume it's not super critical. Some day I'll deliberately misalign them. I put some Ceramic Shield in it and moved it to allow it to run through the baffle stack. A short pause it what is suggested but I gave it overnight. Next day were the first shots. I never intend to use supersonic ammo through it so I didn't test that. I know what supersonic crack sounds like. I used various subsonic match grade rounds, and ammo with "subsonic" and "suppressor" written on the boxes. Some I've previously fired for precision and they sucked. But I was just firing for sound that day. I used my KIDD in the 16" 6# configuration and various handguns and SBRs. I wasn't surprised at the action noise of the semis, and the quiet of a Contender. It's a pretty quiet can. Next day I sighted in the KIDD. I had taken off a Nikon Prostaff scope that was adjusted for parallax at 100 yards and bought and mounted a Burris that has 50 yard parallax. One of the cans I used previously was a Dead Air Ghost. It can handle .45 ACP and .300BLK so it's bigger and heavier than needed for .22. The Ghost opened up groups on the KIDD slightly and larger groups is not why I bought a KIDD. The new Banish 22 is smaller and lighter and my hope was that it wouldn't make the groups larger. Next day I sighted it in and fired some quick groups and saw that it kept the tiny groups. But I need to shoot some serious groups before I quote figures. Ideally it will shrink groups. I have a .22 centerfire can that has that effect on some of the rifles it gets used on. So oberall I'm happy with SC and the Banish 22. It sorta bummed me out about the warranty work but I got the full tour of SC. Would I do business with them again? If my LGS has what I want I'll do business there first unless they're unacceptably high priced (they're not the low or even mid-priced outfit). But SC was a pleasant experience, and I like the Banish 22, so yes, I'd do business with them again. I like to keep padding on everything in the safe. I buy good stuff and don't want dents and dings. The can doesn't come with a sack or anything like that, and I'm not going to keep the packaging carton in the safe, it takes up too much room. So I spent time on Amazon and found a suitably sized flashlight holster that works fine. It also has an elastic "tube" on the side, maybe for a spare cell, and is stretchy enough to hold the assembly tool.

Typical Maine spring time weather. Why are the male weenie puffer forecasters on TV so surprised and feel the need to apologize? Don't like it? Get the hell out! The female forecasters have a bigger set of spheroids than the males. Our temps go up and down, it rains, it snows, then next day it can hit 60*F. Get over it. OK, off my soapbox. The ground is mostly thawed so even if we get snow I can't plow it away. Today I'll remove the plow from the truck. It might get into the low 40s today. Just right for a walk in the forest to shoot some pine (aka red) squirrels. Can't eat 'em unless you love the taste of turpentine, but the coyotes choke them down. I just need to get out and about. I'm tired of being house bound from the winter.

2" of nuisance snow last night, 30*F. It won't last through tomorrow, the sun is wayyy too high in the sky and there's too much heat in it for the snow to stick around. The snow banks are melting and the frost in the ground is out. There's no runoff where I didn't plow (The melt water is soaking in) so we'll keep our bridges this year. Don't ask me why, but I just thought of a time decades ago when we had Rottweilers. I and one of our males went for a walk down the wood road. There was at least 4' of snow on the ground so if I or the dog went off of the packed trail we were in deep doo-doo. The dog stayed behind me in the path I made with the snowshoes. We went maybe 300 yards and there was a mama Moose with a yearling yarded up where they could walk in the paths they had packed down. We watched for a time and the dog was content to just stay in place and watch. Funny how memories like that come back. Don't know why but something about this snow or day triggered it.

Last I checked 36ish degrees and rain showers. I don't need to plow rain so that's good. The last few days really ate into the snowpack and that's good too. Gradual melting doesn't take out bridges and such but a warm rain does. Everwhere we walk the dog is clear of ice and snow and the t**ds that I didn't roll up with the snow plow are showing. Makes for tricky walking to dodge the mines.

More false spring today. Temps expected to get near 70*F. It'a wayyyy too early for actual spring in Maine. It's a tease but spring is coming. Just not now. Pretty sure tomorrow we go back into the deep freeze. False spring will be over for now.

San Diego??? Covered in snow? Gotta be global warming. What else could it be? (sarcasm) Or maybe DNP is no longer in SD? My 17 year old computer pooped itself so I've been down. Our weather, typical for March has been all over the place. We've been getting nuisance snow storms, then it'll warm up and melt. Yesterday was in the low 60s, today and tomorrow much the same. Then arctic air moves in and we'll be in the deep freeze. We can get anything in March. One year we got 2 blizzards in one week with over 30" of snow each time. But right now it feels like spring. Except it's a lie. Yesterday I did consider going to the range today. But I have repairs to make. There was ice on the deck, invisible ice called "Black ice". It was rainijg but I never saw it as it was a drop every few seconds and spread wayyy out. But enough for the black ice. I slipped but caught myself on the railing but now the railing needs to be fixed. Todays a good day to do that.

It's been snowing, very lightly, for the past 2 days. Cold? Yeah that too. It's still overcast but we're having a heat wave. The last I looked it was 32*F. Soon I'll go out and clear this crud from our curtilage. The dry fluffy snow we did get was over a layer of ice and that doesn't make it easy. Wet snow would freeze onto the ice and snow gives traction. 2 more months of this and these are the worst months. We can get anything.

Wow is right! Nice fish! Yesterday we were almost into the 40s. so a heat wave for us in winter (Maine). Warmish temps for us through at least Saturday. Rain today, starting out as freezing rain since it's currently in the 20s, but Saturday is supposed to be a really nice day. If so I intend to go for a walk in the forest with my Supergrade hunting conversion rifle**. Not so much to hunt but to test it at targets of opportunity, rocks, branches, red squirrels*, whatever shows itself as a target. If it turns out to be a good day for grey squirrels I'm not opposed to bagging some. Mags are loaded and waiting. *Reds aren't generally considered edible since they taste like turpentine due to their diet. They are classed as vermin. Greys however are quite tasty. ** The rifle has been tested previously at the range, but I replaced the 2 stage 8/8 trigger with a 2 stage 16/16. Why? Because old cold fingers and the light trigger... the 8/8 is great at the range, but in the field in winter? Not so much. The 16/16, even my old cold fingers can feel the wall before the break. It should work fine but w/o testing it's just a guess.