Pellet heads!! What's up today?

Have a Very Happy Birthday Harman Lover 007 !

 

X3

 

X4 !!

 

X5!

 

To all that have served, thank you!

 

Me,slow.
X6 OM!

 

X7

And X2 on imacman's Happy Veteran's Day!!

 

Happy happy Harman lover 007...

 

Weather has been wet....Yesterday was blustery and rainy...
Still in the shoulder season here....Shuffling between the little stove (Prodigy 2) and the Big guy (Advantage 2T) Either not quite warm enough or OMG shut the fire off...

The little stove is quite a long ways from the family room....and at times it is just not quite enough by itself to keep things comfy .....The big stove is too much unless the temp outside is in the low 40's F
Also varies depending on wind, dry air with clear skies.....Wet cloudy with the place socked in tight in the soup...

But I did a slight adjustment on the Big guy to allow a really small fire and keep it going.....
the number 1 setting is 7 seconds between auger feeding ...2 seconds auger on time...
Number 2 is 6 seconds burn.....3 is 5 seconds 4 is 4 seconds 5 is too fast.....

I tweaked the feed on time just a touch....2.5 seconds auger on....Added about 5 volts to the draft fan to speed it up a bit....

Helped a lot.......I had not fooled with the settings since the initial runs on the new controller..
The new control was set to do exactly what Whitfield had spec'd out on the stove....

Also since we are now running all the shells through Munchy the size of the pieces are more uniform and there are nearly zero fines.. (Small granules or smaller)

The resultant materials gives less fly ash too....

Not a perfect world....But heats well....

 

Decent day today (Weather wise anyway)
We ran Munchy and crushed 3-1/2 barrels of shells.....Normally we get 10 barrels of shells from a full dumpster....But every so often we get a tad more....The recent runs saw a little extra ...Hence the extra half barrel.
As we fill the barrels with shells from the plant the round shape of the 1/2 shells takes up more space than after they are crushed.....
So a barrel full of half shells will be a little less after going through Munchy..
3 barrels of shells plus the extra that we got filled up 3 barrels to the brim....Stove ready.

Actually we got a tad more...So we will stick a plastic tote in the corner by the stove and fill it up for a backup on a cold night that we don't want to go down and drag a couple buckets upstairs....

Happy time with the stoves full and five 5 gallon buckets full upstairs and all 4 stove ready barrels in the basement full too....Life is good...

 

It's been pretty warm, haven't burned any pellets yet. I've just been letting the propane furnace do its thing. It's been running a few times in the morning and at night.

Looks like a weather shift is coming, should be cold enough to roast a few bags.

 

After a long sojourn finally got the new 50" Monitor back up on the rack this morning..

Son in law was over and we took a few moments and tossed that bad boy up on the rack....
All ready to go....I want to change the power feed to plug the the monitor in direct to the power and not have to boot it up each time I fire up the computer....

The old garage sale special has been my "Saviorbacon" for nearly a month now..
The new screen is an LG 50UQ7570 .....

Nothing fancy but just a good HD LED.....
I added a few $$$$ to the warranty exchange and got this much better unit....

The unit on the wall rack is the new unit....Old one is lit and very fuzzy screen....Unit in the chair is my garage sale special....

 

What ya reloading there?

 

That setup has been used for Myriad of cartridges over the years.
Pat and I shot IPSC for years (45 ACP) and I messed around with several 9mm cartridges (9x19....9x21...9x21.5...9x25) I have loaded 40 S&W....357 Sig
We did Cowboy action and loaded 44 special with that game...

The one press on the side closest to the RH side of the piccy is set up currently for 502 Thunder Sabre..
A cartridge and carbine I set up to run on the AR platform (Short 50 cal)
The press closest to the camera is currently set up for 357 sig.....(My Glock )
I had a 12 gauge MEC press on the rear station area.....Sold it after we stopped doing Cowboy action
The far LH side had at one time a Dillon 650 that I had all the tooling for about all the popular pistol/revolver rounds.

When we had the shop I did some commercial reloading for the local gamers that did not do their own.

I kept the two presses on the mount as they can do anything I might want....I have all the tooling....So for the past few years....It holds down the carpet....

If you are doing competition ....you must have one of two things...A press...or real deep pockets..

Between practice and match days each month we would go through 1000 rounds or more each...

A lot of handle pulling.....

 

Or both a press and plenty o' greenbacks a lead mine also can be handy as well.

 

When we were into the sports...we could cut our ammo costs by over half..
All the needed components were easy to get....Primers, powder and bullets.
We always pick up our brass..."Tag'em and bage'm"
Many times after a match we would go back through the stages and clean up all the stuff left behind by others.....

Now the supplies are tough to get....With all the politics and scare tactics ...people are hoarding everything...
Like toilet paper back when the Rona came to town.

Some folks that were not even using the stuff were hoarding it and then trying to scalp it for many X its value....

My oldest grand son is shooting trap on a high school league....He joined the gun club and really likes the sport.....
I offered to get another MEC 9000 press so he can learn how to do the reloads...
He can use reloads for practice sessions...But all contestants must use the same ammo on competition day.....(Keeps everyone honest and on equal footing as far as ammo goes)

When we shot IPSC we used our own ammo.....On local match day whatever you had was good....On scored matches you had to submit 3 random rounds picked by the match director and or his staff...They marked them and if anyone contested your score or ammo they would Chronograph the loads to be sure you were honest...

The high school shoots use all factory loads as the School does not want any risk of "Kids" loading up stuff that is not safe.....This makes sense....His school has 0...ZERO injuries in many years of participation in the sport.....Compared to Foot ball and other sports .....The shooting team is proud of their record..
Not that many schools offer this sport....
He goes to a more rural high school....They also have FFA and do animal stuff and learn to run farm machinery too.....
I am pleased that he is involved in this stuff......A well rounded education....

 

Modern shells in a Damascus steel barrel can be problematic as well, me thinks.

 

VERY MUCH SO
They come apart...