Brrr!

I know it aint much compared to you MidWesterners and EastCoasters, but 26-degrees at 6AM and a layer of frost on the pasture is a reminder that it’s nearly the Winter Solstice next Wednesday the 21st – when I take the garbage cans up to the road. Days will start getting longer if not warmer.
And since I quit Twitter and went to Gab, things are interesting.

Adios 501’s, No Mas Levis

Ten+ years back I quit wearing button-fly 501’s that I grew-up with because every time I worked outside or in the garage they raised an unpleasant stink on my legs that was not just me.
My wife noticed it too, and it didn’t wash-out, so I suspected the classic late 90’s brand-strategy of off-shore cost-cutting by Levi’s with cheap Chinese or Pakistani or…something fabric.
Also the Levis HQ in SF is notoriously busy with social-engineering causes and climate hooey, and some former friends who worked there were the worst sort of Virtue-Signalers you could possibly imagine. Pure elitist BayAryans.
Now there is another reason to quit the old haberdasher, as noted by Calvin at Voices Inside My Head, a silly self-aggrandizing posture of the Loud Levis Pharisees: Levi’s: No Firearms in Our Stores. Thanks.
So for years I wore cargo-khakis instead, until getting up into Flyover Country where Wranglers are prevalent. Also Wranglers come in only a few varieties and fabrics instead of a dizzying array of Urban stylings: Slim, Regular, Full – and a couple different colors. It’s so much easier to grab a pair.

Small Parts Deconstruction

The International Harvester came with a variety of bits and pieces as befits anything and everything that spent any time in an arsenal whatsoever. In the mix are parts from Springfield Armory (SA), Harrington & Richardson (HRA), and Winchester (WRA). The 4-mik600k serial number places it in the latter part off the first serial-number block that was assigned, maybe somewhere in 1955 – I think if you add-up production numbers, but don’t trust my math.
UPDATE: According to the OldGuns.Net calculator, “The year of manufacture for serial number 46579XX is 1953.”
It’s a fun gun to field-strip, and beyond. The legs of the receiver are thoroughly IHC stamped (International Harvester Corp.), with some interesting pencil marks. 44 over 4-61 – probably arsenal re-build markings. Additionally the stock has been glass-bedded – a long time ago using early materials, so for replacement/competition purposes I might as well go National Match, since this would fall into that designated shooting-class now (match-rifle).
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The barrel is of the well known and high-quality Line Machine (LMR) company dating from July 1953.
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The Springfield Armory op-rod mics an excellent .526, plus there’s the trigger-housing and hammer, with a late IHC “U” marked safety.
UPDATE: “U” for United Auto, used by late SA and early IHC rifles.
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HRA = bolt and gas-plug.
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WRA was the donor of a lovely trigger-guard.
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The peep-sight was drilled and tapped for a Marbles or Western type sight disc. And it’s not perfectly centered. It’s also much finer than even a National Match hood, and frankly too-fine for my eyes as sighting through it exhibits for me the “spider-web effect.” That’s OK, I have another rear aperture that has been un-f*cked.
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Not sure what the stampings on the windage and elevation knobs amount to: BME and WCE…but are late-period items and not IHC.
UPDATE: Thanks to Calvin we now know that, “BME = Bruce Machine & Engineering and WCE = Wico Electric. USGI contractors.”
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Also not sure what the “11” is on the bullet-guide thing is.
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The Emu – at least I think that’s what it is.

A(nother) case for EDC-everywhere. This sum’bitch came quietly wandering up the drive after I had rolled-up the garbage cans to their pick-up location. I turned around and flat stopped in my tracks.
big-bird peckerhead
He (?) was in no hurry, despite the neighbor’s dogs (a white-wolf type and a German Shepard) across the fence barking like crazy.
I thought the dogs were just noisy because they wanted pets from me, but nooo.
He was about as tall as me, and with a similar size shoe-print, and that scared me. His slow and deliberate gait indicated s(he) wasn’t afraid of nobody. Somebody’s escaped pet I suppose, but I hesitate to call an Emu a “pet” because they are just nasty big and ornery birds.
The dogs were barking like crazy and he didn’t care, I picked-up a stick laying on the ground and raised up my arms over my head and repeated, “Keep moving!” And he slowly walked down the road away towards another house.
I didn’t check to see if (s)he had a collar.

Dadffodils

Unseen, lying beneath the surface on either side of the steps cut into the embankment, are some two-dozen bulbs waiting to be triggered by the change in season. I’m glad I did it yesterday when it was a bit warm still, because today is just cold and gloomy. All that elbow-twisting in the dirt with the circular bulb-planter device left me with a tweak in the neck-shoulder. Meh. Ibuprofen.
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And for your pleasure:

Just Chillin’

The Global Machinery of Climate-Change blew over and laid-down a blanket of “Sierra Cement” (aka = snow) over the Thanksgiving holiday, and now we folk on the down-slope get to enjoy our traditional-seasonal Frostie, as the chilled-air from the mountains rolls down and fridgidizes the ambient surroundings: woke up at 31-degrees and it didn’t crack 62-degrees outside today. More time for indoor sport I guess as long as it doesn’t involve too much house-cleaning. Thanks Algore, see you on the iceberg!