Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Impending Cranberry Sauce...


...I'm thinking the baked cranberry sauce with bourbon like I saw on Iron Chef America. If I drink the bourbon, I won't care how the cranberry sauce comes out. That was, BTW, one of the lessons in my brief stint in cooking school...if you open the wine first, the whole prep process goes a lot smoother!

Anyway, spent all yesterday evening in a training class for video blogging...yes, I abandoned the audio podcast as a clearly intermediate stage between writing and video...seemed more of a pain in the butt than it was worth. My plan now is to have the video component to the blog up and running by SHOT, which should be no problemo. Probably the first video test run will be on my newest piece, the S&W 329PD ultralite .44 Magnum I had overhauled by Jim Stroh over at Alpha Precision...got a note that it will be winging its way back to me this week! I had Jim do one of his superb action jobs on the gun and replace the Hi-Viz fiber optic front sight with a gold bead (because, Little Grasshopper, even durable plastic like fiber optic tubes will BREAK if you smack it against something! I have learned this from experience, and therefore tend to relegate fiber optic fronts to competition guns, as opposed to a dangerous game back-up guns!).

At 26 ounces unloaded, this little monster has a fearsome reputation...I swear, I have seen more of these "For Sale - Less Than 50 Rounds Fired!" 329PDs at gunstores around the country than you can imagine — there are two in the cases of my local gunstore right now, and one looks like it has maybe 49 rounds less than 50!

I've shot 329s with heavy bullet hunting loads, and while it's not exactly what you might want to give to your Significant Other as the ideal purse pistol, you're not going to die from the recoil, either. So my first video will center on that gun and the whole concept of recoil...I want to shoot the 329 alonside my plain vanilla Dirty Harry M29 6-inch .44 Magnum, my "packin' gun" Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 Magnum "Thumper," which has had the barrel shortened and been fitted with a lightweight aluminum frame, and the Ruger Alaskan snubbie in .454 Casull.

I wish I had my latest concept gun, the 2 1/2-inch stainless steel .44 Magnum fitted with a titanium cylinder by Randy Lee at Apex Tactical, ready for the test, but I haven't even sent the thing off yet. This is for two basic reasons — concept guns cost a HEAP 'O' MONEY, and Randy is, like, backlogged until Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's kids grow up and start robbing liquor stores. Even his website is missing in action. [NOTE to Patrick Sweeney...this is why you haven't received the cast-off .41 Magnum parts! They're still cast on. What do you guys see in that worthless caliber, anyway? Don't you know that only girly-men use any revolver caliber that measures out less than .44?]

I'm looking forward to adding video to the blog! Maybe I can do cooking segments, too!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Michael: With all due respect to Sweeney, I thought I got first dibs on the .41 Mag parts.

As for my affection for this caliber it stems from the simple fact that I'm very politically incorrect and I shoot living things with handguns and I've noticed THE .41 WORKS!!!! (Don't fix something if it ain't broke school of thought.)

All The Best,
Frank W. James

Anonymous said...

Guess I am a girlie-man, cause I love the .41. But I love the .44 too. Heck, if it goes bang I love it.