Messages

10/22 ?. Mine ?. I have no idea what your talking about !.

Cheers Paul, he was in great condition.  

Rifle is my Carl Gustaf's 2000. Topped with a Leupold 3 to 12 x 42 VXII ( I think ), with a Sonic 35 sound moderator, Load was 48g H380 behind that 85g Sierra Varminter.

Maybe not every ones ideal varmint rifle or caliber, but it does the job

I would have expected more physical damage than I saw.

Yesterday evening was nice, so thought Id maybe try my luck for another Fox.

It  was  pretty windy so decided to give the 6.5 X 55 an airing, as the 85g  .264 Sierra Varminter's would hopefully work in my favor, as opposed to  the 50g & 52g bullets out of my .222 or .22-250.

Or in other words they may compensate a little for my lousy & futile attempt at doping any cross wind.

Well after Dr4Body's epic Canadian Wolf adventure, I'm not even gonna attempt to make a story out of this !.

Suffice it to say, I spent 2 hours sitting in the bottom of a ditch till it was almost too dark to shoot, when Mr Fox appeared 50yds to my left. I gave him a squeak,  he stopped to look & paid the price. I paced the shot out at only 57yds.

So thats 3 this year so far.

That's probably what they used, though I have heard of tuning guru's that could listen to the "hiss" of each carb with a stethoscope, & adjusted them till they all sounded the same. Must have been like tuning a piano by ear.

I borrowed a Weber Carb Syncrometer, which you pushed into the air trumpet of each carb, & attempted to set the airflow through each one till they were all the same.

But it was a real pain to keep swapping it between the 4 carbs. Would have been nice to have 4 of them, one for each carb !.

Imagine balancing all those carbs with probably nothing more than a Stethoscope !.

I owned a 1969 Lotus Elan + 2 SE, many moons ago, that had a pair of two barrel Weber DCOE 40's, & they were bad enough to set up.

Left hand drive !.  Good grief , you'll be wanting to swap out that lovely V12 for lumpy old V8 next !.




Is that better ?.

[Jaguar XJ13]

This car, is, in my humble, personal & honest opinion, among the most beautiful car's I have ever seen.

Its the only one ever built by Jaguar, though there are some replicas built now.

Here's some history.

Jaguar XJ13

The  Jaguar XJ13 was a prototype racing car developed by Jaguar to challenge  at Le Mans in the mid-1960s. It never raced, and only one was ever  produced.
Jaguar had considered the manufacture of a V12 engine as  far back as 1955, initially for racing purposes, and then developing a  road going version, unlike the XK which was designed as a production  engine and later pressed into service for racing. The engine design was  essentially two XK 6-cylinder engines on a common crankshaft with an  aluminium cylinder block, although there were differences in the inlet  porting, valve angles and combustion chamber shape. The first engine ran  in July of 1964.
The idea of a mid-engine prototype was first  mooted in 1960, but it was not until 1965 that construction began, with  the first car running by March 1966. The aluminium body was designed by  Malcolm Sayer, the aerodynamicist responsible for the Jaguar C-Type, D-Type, E-Type and XJ-S, who used his Bristol Aeroplane Company background to build it using techniques borrowed from the aircraft industry.
The  Jaguar XJ13 had mid-engine format with the 5.0 liter V12 engine mounted  behind the driver, used as a stressed chassis member together with the  five-speed manual ZF Trans-axle driving the rear wheels.
The front  suspension wishbones were similar to that of the E-Type, however where  the E-Type used longitudinal torsion bars, the Jaguar XJ13 had more  conventional coil spring/damper units. At the rear there again remained  similarities with the E-Type - the use of driveshafts as upper  transverse links - however the rest was quite different, with two long  radius arms per side angling back from the central body tub together  with lower links.
The development of the Jaguar XJ13, although  treated seriously by the designers, was never a priority for company  management (despite assistant MD Lofty England's Le Mans success in the  1950s), and became less so following the 1966 merger with BMC. By that  time Ford had developed the 7.0 liter GT40,  and so the Jaguar XJ13 was considered obsolete by the time the  prototype was complete. The prototype was tested at MIRA and at  Silverstone, which confirmed that it would have required considerable  development to make it competitive. The prototype was put into storage  and no further examples were made.

If I thought for 5 mins that my knives were good enough to make a living out of Rick, I may just take you up on that !.

Thanks gents !.

Yours will be on its way in a day or so Rick, & yours is still a couple of weeks in the making gitano.

Well I finally finished j0e_bl0ggs Muntie knife.

Steel is type 0-2, & hilt is Buffalo horn & Moose bone.

Heat treat & final polish is by j0e_bl0ggs, with a coat or two of Renaissance wax.

Sheath could be loosely described as "serviceable". ( I dont do leather ).

Here's my favorite knife.

Made it myself about 25 or 26 years ago, out of a meat cleaver, & it took some grinding !.

I loosely copied the shape from a Frosts knife that I liked.

The scales are Laburnum, from a tree my Dad cut down in our garden. I treated them with several coats of Teak oil, letting it soak in between coats, & they have not been touched since.
These days I would do a better job of matching the scales up for sure. Though at the end of the day its a working knife, & wasn't meant to look pretty.  

Ive no idea what Stainless steel its made from, but it holds a good edge & is not too hard to sharpen.

The sheath was also made by yours truly, & again is pretty inelegant, but has lasted well.

Just spotted a deliberate mistake in one of my previous posts, my first center fire BOLT action rifle was a PH 1200C Superclip.

My first center fire rifle was a Springfield M1A.

Best rifle I ever owned.

No, the PH M85 Sniper weapon was certainly available on the civilian market, if you could afford one.

It lost out against the AI L96 A1 in British army trials, & so they adopted the AI.

Not sure though if the M85 only became available to civilians for this reason. Maybe PH were hoping to cut their losses by offering it to the great unwashed masses.

Ive never had the Scout & the M85 side by side to compare them, but I think they probably use the same magazine system.  

Perhaps low sales of the M85 prompted them to use the actions and mag system for the Scout ?.

Couldn't agree more, I find I dont use or need a knife over 4" these days, & if I need to chop something, I use an axe !.

Ive seen several Deer Gralloched with a piece of flint before now, when no one had a knife. Though I suspect several of us had knives, we just didn't  want to be the one to get our hands dirty !.

My brother in law, whose a retired Scottish Gamekeeper, has lost more knives than you can shake a stick at, & last year when I was up Scotland, his last remaining knife & his current Gralloching knife, was a Harley Davidson folder as in the attached pic.

Needless to say, I gave him my spare knife, the one I always take with me to replace the one I know hes lost !.

I remember them well, & occasionally we get one through the shop.

My first center fire rifle was a Parker Hale 1200C Superclip in .308.

Rumor had it that PH used Spanish military Mauser actions, which I'm pretty sure my 1200 had, because it had the cut out in the left side of the action for loading with a stripper clip.

I'm pretty certain they were aimed at cashing in on the concept of Colonel Cooper's Scout rifle, not just produced solely as a short handy rifle.

I dont recall seeing them when they were new, with a long Weaver base for a forward mounted Scout scope though.