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Sam, Welcome to another edition of Old School Guns, the podcast that tells you exactly like it is. And this is episode number 226. Number 226. And as always, if you have any questions or comments, you can email them to me at kb m a k e l.com or you can post them on the comments section of Podbean. Just straight up front, apologize for my voice a little bit. We're right in a heavy pollen thing. Plus there's some smoke from wildfires that are getting up into the area here, and so my sinuses are rebelling. They're. They're refusing to work at optimal efficiency. So you may hear me sound a little stuffed up. If that's. That's the case, I apologize for that. Straight up front, of course, I'm pleased to comment on the demise and absolute crash of one Eric Swalwell, known as sewage smell. Or sewage well, whichever. A piece. Well, he's something that would come out of the south end of a northbound dog. I mean, and you would have to scrape it off your shoe if you stepped in it. He is a piece of garbage. He is gutter swine, a rapist. He's a criminal, and he's arrogant. He is so that, you know, the reason I have such a dislike for him and always have is that, number one, his. His politics are. Who knows what he really believes, but he. He believes that his future is in being an ultra progressive. And he's arrogant. I went to college in Northern California, and, you know, the guys like that are a dime a dozen. These arrogant, entitled jerks that think they can get away with everything. And that's what sewage well was. And on top of that, sewage well is also a rapist. He's also a sexual assaulter. He's also a mortgage frauder. I mean, he's done all these things. So sewage well is a real pig, and everybody knows it. Everybody knows it. Uh, he's an absolute dirt ball, and I can't understand why he had any cachet at all. And you know that he is completely dirty because he was out of Congress, what was it, less than a week? Not only was he out of the governor's race, but he was out of Congress in less than a week because he knew they had him. They had the goods on him. And. And the worst part is the Democratic Party, this filth organization, it was, quote, an open secret that he was, you know, that he was doing things. And how much they knew, I'm sure they knew the extent of it. I mean, you know, what kind of a puke takes advantage of or attempts to take advantage of women who are 20 years younger than him, who are there, they think they're going to build a career in government. And I realize that these are probably really bubble headed libtards, but they don't deserve to be treated like that. And I don't care what the party is or what the deal is. No congressman has the right to act like that. I hope Swalwell's old lady dumps him. Although if he's got any money, she probably won't. But absolute garbage. Rapist, sexual assaulter, slept with a Chinese spy. And you know what the worst part about it is? Sewage. Well, looks like Lurch from the Addams Family. He is not a handsome guy. He could not go down to Hollywood, make money as an actor. He is a homely dude. And for him to be so arrogant as to think that, oh, this, this super hot Chinese woman is just after him because he's so cool and handsome or that all these young girl staffers must want him. I mean, how arrogant has he, does he not own a mirror, look in it and say, you know, I'm really not that handsome. Most people, you know, we all look in the mirror and we all say, hey, you know, I am who I am and hopefully there's someone in the, on the earth who, who likes us. But you know, he, he is, he's an ugly guy and he's got an ugly personality and he's a criminal and he's a rapist and he's a liar and he's not that much different than a whole lot of the other Democrats. That's the worst part. They, they all have this horrible, idiotic look to the point where they're even kind of rooting for Iran in the, the current unpleasantness. And that has backfiredness in their faces. Once the US Navy basically closed the, once they basically blockaded the Iranian ports is game over. Iran can't survive without overseas trade. And that's why they're going back to the table and that's why they're. We now control the Straits of Hormuz. And I'm telling you, I still stand by my thing. When this is all said and done, when the last hand has been played and the winners are counting their money walking away from the table, there will be an international force doing something in the Straits of Hormuz, either occupying the islands or something to keep any successor regime in Iran from, from creating any mischief. And that's just the way it's going to be. I mean, it's just the way it's going to be. Iran is finished as a. As a major international player. You know, once they don't have control of the Straits of Hormuz, they're just another oil exporter. Just another country in a godforsaken part of the world who can export oil. And if they couldn't export oil, you know, no one could even find them on a map. So. So there you go. The Straits of Hormuz will be under some international control. I don't think it'll be the UN and I don't think. And I'm sure it won't be NATO, but it'll be something. It'll be something. And speaking of NATO, NATO's finished. I mean, you, you may. Nobody's saying it. NATO's done. The United States is either going to become kind of a silent member of NATO and not do very much, or we're going to pull out and the whole thing's going to collapse, which is what actually I think needs to happen. And then we negotiate, negotiate mutual defense treaties or collective security arrangements with the countries that actually care and want to become, you know, want to become part of something. And right now that's just. That's like Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltic states, Poland, Finland, Sweden. The rest of them are a bunch of jerks. And we need to, we need to jettison Turkey. They don't like us. They don't care about us. We don't need to be in an alliance with the Turks. We just don't need it anymore. The UK and France can basically go fuck themselves. I mean, they're, they're dirtbags. They're becoming proto Islamist vassal states. And, you know, the fact that they won't, you know, we have these bases and that they won't let us use. And let me tell you how these bases work. We go there, we lease these bases, we pay the money. We, we do all the infrastructure on these bases. We basically build them large enough so that the host nation, which it's Britain, Germany or France, not really France, because we don't really have any bases with them, but some of the other ones. We build these bases so big that they can operate on them. Also. We station people there and around all these bases. There are. The local economies are hopping because you have servicemen and their families who go downtown and spend money. Let me tell you something. If you want to become rich, figure out how to open a pizza joint outside of any military base in NATO. That's any US Military base in NATO or joint base that we have with, with the host nation. If you can produce a really super good pizza, you will have people line, you will have lines to get in there and get at them every day. You know, that is the, the power of the money that we pump into these communities. When the Berlin Wall came down and we were withdrawing all of our stuff out of Germany, which we did a pretty significant drawdown local, you know, it was, it was basically, you know, kind of local areas around the bases went into many depressions because all this, all this US money that was just being pumped into their economies was, you know, kind of gone overnight. And a lot of the things that they, I can speak for Germany. A lot of the things they really liked, which were afn, the Armed Forces Network, the radio and to a lesser extent the tv, all that was gone. And they were pissed. I mean, all the good stuff that the Americans brought with us because, you know, a lot of, a lot of times people think that we just kind of tiptoed our way around there. We don't want to impact their local culture and all that. Hey, when it came to the Benjamins Greenbacks, they were more than willing to have U.S. troops there. They might complain about the traffic or this or that, but U.S. troops kept those economies just roaring outside those bases. But NATO is done. I mean, we may have some forward. I would say that we'll probably have a security arrangement on the forward edge, what is now the forward edge of NATO, you know, those countries I spoke about. And I mean, we may tell the UK to go, to go, you know, tell them they're done, we're done with them. There is no more special relationship. That's over. And I'm telling you this, the people in Argentina may get the Malvinas, the Falkland Islands back because number one, Britain can't put together the kind of naval power to go take it back like they did in the 1982. And the next thing is they can't, they can't rely, you know, with the United States. We're not going to help them. Last time we helped them with satellite intelligence and all kinds of things. We're not going to tell, we're not going to help them. We're just going to say, sorry, man, you know, your stupid little empire is, is not something we really worry about. Sorry, sorry about the phone. I managed to kill it. It's more potential spam, what can I tell you? But yeah, we don't care about their, their goofy little colonies anymore. And you know what, if we don't have NATO. Here's. Here's the deal. Greenland is now up for grabs, and we're. And we're going to grab it. We may, we may just land people on Diego Garcia and tell the British, fold up your flag, it's time for you to go. Because the British can't do anything about it. They can't do it. They're not big trading partners. They don't have any military power. They think they got some stupid special relationship which they crap all over. So forget them. You know, we may take. We may take a few of these things that, that we need and just tell them forget it. I'm sorry. You know, it's a partnership, goes both ways. If I were Denmark, I would actually be going to the United States saying, hey, why don't you. Why don't we make a deal? We make a mutual defense pact and we kind of give you Greenland and you kind of defend us. We're only going to spend 1 or 2% our GDP on. On defense. But you could be okay with that because you're going to get Greenland in exchange. If I were the Danes, I would be doing that and say, you know, we want to be the guys who you have this close, enduring relationship with. And by the way, you know, Denmark is pretty cool place. We could put a big. We could put a nice naval and air force base here and kind of seal off the Baltic Sea. And, you know, it would be a really good thing. And I think. I think if they were smart, which they're not, they would do that. But, you know, NATO, every NATO operation has been a clusterfuck. It's just starting backwards. You know, Afghanistan was a NATO operation and it was a clusterfuck. Different countries have different rules of engagements. We had to put the Germans where they wouldn't have any combat because that's not what the Germans do anymore. Since 1945, other countries, you know, yeah, we had this. That. It just. It turned into this clumsy, cumbersome joke where we wind up basically doing all the hard work and they're just kind of strapping it, hanging on. They're just strap hangers hanging on for. For nothing but, you know, just the appearance that it's some sort of big multinational operation. So you go back from that. You go back to, you know, the other Bosnia, you know, that was the same. Same freaking thing. You know, everything's NATO. We're doing the hard. The USA is doing the hard work. Everybody else kind of puts in a token presence and gives it this big international flavor. But it's Very clumsy. Doesn't get anything done. The, the NATO air operation in, well, both Kosovo and, and Bosnia, again, clumsy operations. NATO is just not a great, as a defensive alliance, I think you could make a, a good case for it, but for anything else, it's, it's terrible. And you know, just look at the, look at the, look at the island of Cyprus, which is half Greek, half Turkish. The Turks actually invaded it in 1974. We had two NATO countries almost on the brink of war because of this. I mean, it's just a mess. It has been a mess. And it was just kind of a paper tiger that was good enough to, to kind of, to keep the Soviet Union from rolling across the border and trying to take more land. It was good enough to, to, to essentially dissuade them from doing that. It deterred them. But as far as being a, a, a great alliance that, that flexes a lot of military power, it's not. And since the wall came down, all these countries have essentially just quit spending on defense except for the bare minimums. And then when Ukraine gets invaded, they clean out, they clean out all their scrap yards of all this obsolete equipment. They give it to them. And you know, the equipment that they gave the Ukrainians is, is garbage. The Leopard 1 tanks, all these things have been getting knocked out. They're gone. You know, the old armored personnel carriers that are 40 and 50 years old and all this stuff is, you know, it's like, it's like giving people World War I era equipment in the 1970s. I mean, it just didn't make any sense. So we had to, we had to change. I mean, it's, we're the only ones that have military power. That's, that's the thing. And so we, we can't afford. Well, we could afford, but we shouldn't have to afford letting all these guys off the hook so they can pay for their goofy social programs and become again, as I said, proto Islamic states. They want to do that, fine. But I feel sorry for the decent people in the uk the decent people around Europe who don't like seeing the changes that are happening. But I mean, I think it's almost gone so far. There may be no getting it back. I don't know how they're going to export people back to the Middle east and get rid of this, you know, this, these terrorist culture that has invaded Western Europe. I don't know. It's, it's certainly a disgrace. You know, when you watch, go watch the movie the Battle of Britain and if you don't feel like crying at the end knowing what it, what it is now and what it was then and what, what it's become now. Yeah, then you know, you're not paying close enough attention to it. So yeah, that's what the, that's what the state of it is. You know, when it looks at Ariel. Legal alien problem is very manageable compared to what's going on in Europe. And I think it's really going to be, I mean NATO's done and it'll be interesting to see what develops afterwards and how long it actually takes before people come to the realization that it's over. We'll see. Okay. One of the things that has been coming up, we're going to talk about gun things now, which I really like is the talking about the 38 Long Colt in the Philippine Insurrection. And I've always gotten kind of a few oblique questions over time about, you know, people don't understand they, they actually think this, that the.38 Long Colt was about like a.22 Long Rifle. It just in a handgun, it just wasn't very powerful. Just kind of a plinking load. Had no serious self defense uses. I can tell you. I just did some, I had a discussion with someone about this and I actually did some testing and here's kind of what I came to. The problem in the, you know, the Spanish American War, the lead up to it in the early 1890s, US army knew it had to modernize and US military in general, but the US army in particular, you know, the era of the Indian wars was over. The single shot breech loading trapdoor rifle, which started life as a conversion was becoming very obsolete. And you know, the US army always had to look at the possibility that hey, we might have to fight a European army, we might have to fight a modern European army and we can't do it with 40 year old technology weapons. So there was a real effort to modernize both the long arms and the sidearms and the long arms. So the long arm was essentially solved. The issue with that was basically solved by adopting a bolt action smokeless powder. 30 caliber service rifle. The 30 40, what we can now call 3040 crag, which was originally called 30 caliber. U.S. army in the Krag rifle which had the side loading thing. And you know, it looked like a pretty good deal compared to you know, the, the rifles that you know, when the testing was done, 1890, 1891 looked pretty good. Turned out it wasn't quite so as good as people thought. But that's another story the handgun was actually very innovative. The 1889 Colt Navy they called it because the Navy was the first one to adopt. It later became the Army Navy 1892. The army adopts it and they make incremental changes in 1894, 1895, 1901 and 1903. And it was a good, it was a good revolver in some ways. It was the first modern looking double action revolver. You know, you could take a Colt 18, a Colt 1901, that's, that's the one I was playing with. And you could show that to a non gun person and say, hey, here's a gun from the 1950s. And they would say, yeah, that, that looks like it. I've seen those in the movies. It looked like a conventional, you know, swing out cylinder double action revolver, but it was the first one and it was chambered for a cartridge that we would consider to be anemic today. But back then wasn't considered that bad. 38 Long Colt had served on the frontier, had served for decades, chambered in various guns mostly I think Colts like single action army in 1877 and, and such. So it wasn't, it wasn't a bad, wasn't a bad cartridge. And it was the first revolver with all that swing out. Now the problems, it had a lot of problems while it was usable and it was the first of its kind. So it was, it was groundbreaking. The problems with the, that series, the Army Navy revolvers are number one. The lockwork is kind of an updated version of the stuff they used in the 1877 Thunderer and Lightning, which was a very frail and not a very good system. It just, it comes out of time easy. It breaks comparatively easy. It's, it's a lock work that most gunsmiths won't even work on today. I actually got a story about that. But anyway, you have this, you have this kind of lock work that doesn't really work very well. You have it in a gun that the sights on them are abysmal. The groove is very shallow because it's got the sighting groove along the top of the frame like a single action army. And then it has the half moon front sight and that's very narrow. So you have this really shallow channel with a very narrow front sight. Very difficult to pick up with any speed. It just, it just doesn't happen. The other thing is when you feel it in your hand, it doesn't because it was kind of the first one. It doesn't really have the geometry of a good double action. A good double Action revolver, you know, a K frame Smith and Wesson feels so much better in the hand. And even the later Colt New Service feels much better in the hand. So you, you add all these things up. A mediocre cartridge, mediocre lock work, mediocre feel and air conditioning ergonomics and a mediocre cartridge and of course you're gonna get a mediocre product. It's, it's serviceable, but it's, it's nothing to write home about. And it was actually fine in the Spanish American War and it was, it was fine because you're, you're battling up against a European style foe and you know, you, you shoot them and they, they don't have any body armor on, they're not using, they don't have any shields, they don't have any of that. They have a uniform and they're not on drugs. So, you know, you shoot them and it's probably a more effective cartridge. When they were fighting moro warriors, some of them were drugged up, that's what the reports are, that they had taken drugs so they wouldn't feel a lot of pain. And they also had some heavy wood and rattan shields that would, you know, that.38 Long Colt couldn't puncture. And I'm not sure, and I will tell you this, the.38 special wouldn't have done any better in its, especially in its initial loadings. You know, the lead bullet.38 Special wouldn't have done any better. I think the, they went back and reissued some.45 long Colts and what kind of ammunition they were using in it. They probably were using the Schofield ammunition. So consequently, I think the stuff that was going on was that no pistol was really going to solve the problem of the combat. It was almost an asymmetrical combat. The pistol was made so that two guys armed with pistols on opposite sides would kind of fire at each other hit. And that was, it wasn't made for somebody charging with an edged weapon. And you know, a person charging out of a brush, out of a thicket or across something, you know, you don't get a whole lot of time. If they're 15, 20 yards away, you don't get a lot of time and they're on you and you may have shot them several times, but you know, the bullets haven't even had a chance to take effect. And they're getting, they may eventually die, and they probably will eventually die, but they may get in three or four hits with their edged weapon. So, you know, that's Pretty much. Pretty much. It, you know, you can't. Stopping power was not there. Killing power was probably, probably okay in the, in the final analysis, but stopping power wasn't there. And I actually did some testing. I took it and I tried to fire it as fast as I could. Double action at. And I was probably closer than I should have been. I was probably like at 7, 8 yards and I was firing at a steel target and you know, I had a hard time hitting that steel target. So I know that, you know a lot of these reports that said, yeah, I emptied my revolver and the guy kept coming and you know, somebody with a long arm had to, had to dispatch the guy. I'm not sure that they were all hit. I'm sure that there are a lot of people who said I emptied my revolver into him, but maybe they only hit him once or twice because that is a terrible double action pull in that revolver. Again, it's not only is the mechanism frail, but it's also a very heavy pull. But that's kind of how double action revolvers were used in the latter part of the 19th century. Nobody really talks about this, but it's, it's true. It was, that was meant to be the up close personal cqb. You know, somebody's on you. Accuracy doesn't matter. It's, it's not having to deal thumb cocking a single action. You can do it all with your, your trigger finger and you'll be okay. You know, you can, you can crank three rounds into the gun. Now if you're using a 44 or 45 caliber pistol, that's probably a little bit more effective. And in fact the, the charging moro with the edge weapon problem wasn't solved by issuing 45 caliber handguns. It was really solved when they issued combat shotguns. Apparently they, they issued a few in the. This is the Philippine insurrection. Now it's immediately after the Spanish American war. They issued Winchester 97 S3 or 400 of those, some double barrel shotguns, probably coach gun style, and the 1893 shotgun, which is kind of the black powder version of the 1897. So those were much better weapons to counter that kind of attack. You know, the asymmetric attack of we're not just going to stand here and shoot like duelists at 15 or 20 yards. We're going to, I'm going to charge you with my, you know, fairly primitive but very sharp and lethal sword. And you know, that's, that was a different style of attack. The.38 Long Colt would have been A poor choice for that. Any pistol is really a poor choice for it as they found out. So they issued shotguns. But I was, I was very surprised how difficult the.38 Long Cold Colt Army Navy revolver was to shoot double action and actually hit anything. Actually hit anything. Those of us who are used to. And again I go back to Smith and Wesson, but you can say Colt Python, Colt Diamondback, any, any of the later generation, even the cold police, positive cult official police, those are fine guns. And you can shoot, you know, I've seen guys who can shoot double action as well as they can shoot single action at a 25 yard target with that. So it is not the same. It should be the same. Most people assume it's the same, but it's not the same. And the early double actions and you kind of see it, you kind of see it. The, you know, go shoot a Webley double action, see where you see what happens, see how you get. It's not that good. It's a little better, but not that good. Especially the, the Mark 6 is a really good, because the grip is, is really good. You can shoot that reasonably well. But it's a heavy, very heavy trigger pull. The Mosin Nagant 1895, you shoot that, the double action pull is practically unusable except in the very close, almost contact distance that you would expect. So that's the, that's my take on the.38 long cold. Was it good? Was it bad? Was it, it was in the wrong place. It was the wrong tool in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was also a first generation, so it was, it was breaking all the ground. And lessons that were learned from it were incorporated. Cold Police positive and Colt Official police are outstanding revolvers. And they, they obviously are, you know, came out of the, the, the lessons learned from the Colt Army Navy revolvers. So there you go. The other thing to talk about is I was asked about Mexican Mauser rifles. You know, Mexico has a long history of making some pretty good quality weapons. You know, we think of them as buying rolling blocks and all these other things. But going back to, by the, you know, the early 1900s, they have manufactured really some excellent rifles, mauser pattern rifles in 7 millimeter Mauser which was what they were using. They, they had these rifles. They also bought foreign Mauser pattern rifles. But you know, Mexico has had a kind of a long arms tradition kind of linked to the Germans. I think up until just, you know, comparatively recently, within the last, I don't know, several decades, they were making G3 rifles in Mexico for the Mexican army. I don't think they were exporting them anywhere, but they were making G3 rifles. So there's this long association. Mexican Mauser rifles are, you know, they're good quality. I mean, the finish is not quite what you would expect on a German rifle, but they're not bad. I like them actually better than the Spanish Oviedo made rifles. I like them better than that, but they didn't. And they made them from the early 1900s to the, to the late 1950s. And that's probably when they started getting interested in more modern designs, culminating with the G3. And, you know, I'm sure they use other things now, but yeah, it's, it's not as backward as people would think. They had a really, a decent arms industry that's. And it was all for government work because they didn't, they didn't have anything approaching the second amendment in Mexico. So, you know, there wasn't a, there wasn't a big civilian thing. I think you could own shotguns, but that's about, that's about it. But the Mexican Mausers, I find them to be accurate, very rugged, reliable, really, really good rifles. So, yes, Mexico did and probably still does make some domestic production of foreign designs for their own military consumption. All right, let's get to my favorite part of this, which is questions and answers. And the first question is, why is.45 auto rim ammunition difficult to find? And the answer is, it's not difficult to find. It's expensive. I don't think the bigger manufacturers like Remington really make it anymore. You have to go to, you have to go to Buffalo Bore or another company I saw that had it for sale is double tap. But you're going to be paying some money. And the stuff they had was really kind of defeated defensive ammo, you know, jacketed hollow point things. If you really want to shoot it in any quantity, you're gonna have to hand load it. And the beauty is you can just hand load it with a 230 grain, you know, round nose bullet. The ones from west from Missouri Bullet Co. Work exceptionally well. But they all work, they all work really well. You could even if you want to powder coat them, but that's not necessary. But they shoot, they shoot quite well. I like auto rim. I just think it's a cool, a very cool cartridge. And it was a neat way to kind of modernize the, or at least normalize the 1917 revolvers. And you don't have to fool with the half moon clips. And now the later full moon clips, you don't have to mess with those. You can just pop cartridges in and it's a lot of fun. So the good part is I usually load, I use those same cases for the Webley. And so it's kind of nice there having some common, common components I can use. But auto rim ammunition is out there. It's still in its just as good as it always was. So yes, it is available. 38 short colt. What is it? 38 short colt was a, a cartridge that I believe they used in, in some of the early conversion revolvers. And it developed later into what we now know as 38 Long Colt. But it had a shorter case and it used a heel bullet like a.22 long rifle. It, it didn't use with outside lubrication which you know for a serious gun is really a bad idea because the lube melts in your pocket. It gets, gets nasty picks up all the lint. Whatever you're carrying it in, it's going to pick up grit and lint and everything. So inside they, they made the case longer so they could use a bullet that had inside lubrication. But 38 short colt has always been around. I was amazed that it's even still around now. And it's still around now because they had, there's still some of the revolvers for it. And it's also because it had the heel base bullet, it can fire into the conversion.36 caliber cap and ball barrels which were like 375 in diameter. And this, this will match it and go down the modern use for it. I was very, and I'm not recommending this, but I'm telling you it, it does exist. You have to, you have to kind of believe me on this. But there are people who in the revolver competition disciplines, I guess it's IPSC and, and IDPA and things, things like that. They'll take 38 short colt, use 9 millimeter loading data. And these things will give them a competitive edge in their revolvers because you, you don't have to, they're not, it's not a long case so you just pop it right out and it's faster to eject and faster to reload than would be a 38 special. So very, very interesting that there's this, this weird, this weird niche that 38 Short Colt, a cartridge from the 1860s, 1870s, 1880s has, has found in modern revolver competition. But I would never try this myself, but it is apparently out there. So that's what the 38 short Colt is it's, I think about a tenth of an inch or so shorter than a.38 long colt. So there, there you are. 30. How can I cure my. 30 Mauser accuracy problems? Okay, I hadn't thought too much about that. All I would say is it's the old tried and true answer. Slug your bore and then try to find a cast bullet that matches it. And with that you almost have to powder coat if it's on my.30 Mauser, that's the answer I found. I mean, it's not bad with 30 Mauser ammunition, but it shoots a lot better when I take a 30 caliber bullet and I powder coat it and it matches the bore a lot better. So that's the answer I found, which is a pretty good answer. Pretty good answer. So I would go with that. The next one is, do you have experience with 3030 Winchester lead bullet loads? And the answer is yes for my spouse. She has a Winchester.94 she really likes. Doesn't really care for the factory ammo, you know, the additional recoil. So I load up 150 grain lead bullets. She's not shooting at any great range, long ranges or anything like that. So it's a good load using a, you know, cast bullet loading data. And I'm actually on the hunt for some more powder now because you can't get unique anymore. For some reason, unique has become unique in the marketplace. So I'm gonna find some more there. And there's several of them out there that are, that are good. I just haven't. I had enough loaded rounds so that I didn't really need to worry about that. But yeah, I mean, that's a good economical way to, to shoot one of these really fun rifles. I mean, it really takes it down into the kind of fun you get with a, you know, pistol caliber lever action. And you know, 30, 30 brass is plentiful, which is nice, which is really nice. So, you know, it's, it's something that can be done quite efficiently. And you know, the casting is easy, the loading is, is basically easy. I do use a gas check. Don't have to, but I do. You know, I just. Primarily because I just got a big box of gas checks. So I just use them and you know, that's, that's all the, that's all it really takes. It's a, it's a good, a good cast bullet gun to be, to be blunt, very good cast bullet gun. And now I've got another, a similar question. 32 Winchester Special Bullet loads. That's a harder nut to crack. And I took the coward's way out on this.32 Winchester Special from the factory is notionally a three two one bore. I got the Lee 8 millimeter bullet mold that's in three two three. I cast those and I use those same kind of thing. Not really, you know, pushing them very hard or anything. So the other thing is my, my rifle is from the 1940s. I'm sure it has some muzzle or, you know, barrel wear. So I'm sure that it's probably a three two two bore. And I have a three two three bullet going down it and it shoots it just fine. So.32 special brass harder to find. You got to order it usually can't. You're not just going to walk into Bass Pro Shop and find it like you do. 30 30. But the other side of the coin is when you're using regular loads, you know, factory loads. For years they would say there was no difference between.32 special and 30 30. But now they're, they're coming, kind of coming around that it at closer ranges it is more powerful, maybe 10, 15% more powerful. And you know, I think it's a, I really like it. I actually like it better than 3030, but you know, that's, it's just kind of one of those quirky niche calibers. Do you know a source of four.55 Webley bullets for hand loading? I'm sure if you Google it, you can find some. There are some very, very good companies out there that are really making a nice hollow base bullet. And that's really the one I would go with. You can also get a mold. You can also get these hollow base molds. They may cost you a pretty penny. They'll be up over a C note. And even more, you can get a flat base bullet mold from X Ring Services. Guy's name is Martin Robinson. His bullets, I haven't tried them, but they apparently run about 300 grains as opposed to the 260 grains that the hollow base ones use. I would probably stick with hollow base, at least at first. And I would experiment with both and see which one gave me the best results. But, but if I had to only choose one, I'd probably choose the hollow base just because that's what it originally was. And you know, that seemed to work extremely, extremely well. Not that any Webley is going to give you the kind of accuracy that's, that's gonna win you any bullseye matches. But you know, it's, they're fun guns to shoot and really get you know, great piece of history. And they'd be very, very good if you found. And they're out there, the Colt New Service and the Smith and Wesson, you know, the early end frames that were made for the British in 455. If you have one of those guns, you will need these bullets to get it to shoot. If you just shoot a four five two bullet down it, it's probably not going to give you the kind of accuracy that the gun is capable of. So I would, I would definitely go for those. I don't know if I really want to say this, but sometimes when you get something that's a weird bullet that's cast by a commercial manufacturer, they're usually not as good as the ones you can cast yourself. I found that out with the Martini Henry. The ones I make myself and paper patch were a lot better than the grease groove bullets that I bought that were expensive that I bought. I mean it's just no comparison. So anyway, yeah, for the amount of money I paid for the grease groove bullets, I could just cast my own Lee 500 grain bullets and, and it'd be about the same. So. But the paper patch bullets really do have some good accuracy. So I would say that if you have the choice, if you can do it, cast your own. That's what I would say for a 455 six millimeter. Your opinion of the six millimeter Navy. Six millimeter Lee Navy rifle. Okay. Yeah. That was a very interesting gun. It was kind of. It wasn't really a true straight pull. It was kind of a cam locking action in 6 millimeter came out in the 1890s. They went through the Spanish American war with it. But by, basically by 1903 it was gone like the crag. It was a good, it was a good experiment. I think they had barrel burning, barrel wear issues with it. I also think that there probably was with the old cupro nickel bullets, probably a lot of fouling in the bore from the cupro nickel. Probably that was probably a big deal. If I remember, I had a guy from one of the large surplus places was actually killed when he was firing it. And I forget what was wrong. It was, I read the whole thing. There was some sort of a. They went into a big forensic thing. I can't remember if it was the ammunition or if it was the rifle, but essentially the, the action blew up in a piece, hit him in the head and killed him. So that was a, that's a really bad deal. And you know, you got to be really careful with Some of these older guns, especially the ones in very weird calibers like 6 millimeter Lee Navy, you know, just got to be careful. Okay, and here is the last question is what is your opinion of Weatherby rifles? I'm not a hunter, so to me Weatherby doesn't really make anything that appeals to me. But I always thought that Weatherby was a very cool innovator and dedicated to quality, just dedicated to quality. I know some of their, some of their later, you know, from, from about 2000 on, I think some of them were made by HOA in Japan, which, you know, it's not a bad manufacturer. Some of the early ones were made, excuse me, in Germany. I don't want to say sour and sun, but it might have been. There were some very, very high, high end Weatherby guns and they were in really useful hunting calibers. The largest, you know, kind of rifle I've ever shot out outside of military stuff was a.378 Weatherby Magnum. So it was a very cool gun. I mean it was a lot of fun. It kind of gave me a taste, which I've never, I've never gone for. But I've always wanted to have a.375 H&H Magnum or more likely a.416 Rigby. But I'm kind of at the point in life where I don't, I would never use those for their intended purposes. They're horribly expensive to shoot and once the novelty wore off, it would just be a waste of money. So I've always, I've always kind of left that alone. But the Weatherby, the.378 Weatherby was really something. And the recoil wasn't that bad. I mean, I expected to be flattened, but the recoil was not that bad. So that's it for this edition of Old School Guns, a podcast that tells you exactly like it is. And yes, if you have any questions or answers, email them to me, kb m a k e l o l.com or you can put them on the comment section of podbean. Again, I apologize for my voice and my stuffiness a little bit and hopefully that'll be that will be in Fresh Air territory by next next podcast. Anyhow, this is Old School Guns out.