Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Your .38

Milady and I were watching Pawn Stars the other night and a customer comes in and asks Rick to look at a handgun.  It's a Whitney Navy revolver, a .36 caliber, but the customer insists that it's a .38.

I mention that it's probably a .36, that all .38s are actually .36 caliber, The bore diameter is .357 of an inch.

Milady turns to me "My .38 is actually a .36?"

"Yep". I replied.

"How about my .32?" she continues.

"Sorry," says I.  "It's a .31. It shoots a .313 bullet."

"Okay", she's getting exasperated.  "How about your .44?"

"Wrong again", says I.  "It's actually smaller than .43."

"Well, okay" says she.  "How about my .45s?"

"Bingo," I tell her. "Those are actually .45 caliber."

"You're messing with my pea-brain".  She drains her wine glass and stands up.  "I'm going to bed."

I sat for a while, savoring my bourbon, contemplating the fact that what we call our firearms is seldom accurate.

6 comments:

Tewshooz said...

I read this to my DH this morning. He agreed and then tried to go even further.....I stopped him at that point. My brains are scrambled already with all this stuff. Just give me the bullet that fits my gun...

Old NFO said...

LOL, good thing you didn't get into the .303, 30.06, .30 cal, .308 wars... :-)

6ShotsOr5? said...

Yep, the .30 cals get weird. My 7.62 x 39 is a .312, but my .7.62 x 51 is a .308...

Gaffer said...

I call mine "Gertrude"

Anonymous said...

I was all set to remark about how men and womyns mismeasure other things.......
Steve

Rivrdog said...

Six-or-Five, it's more complex than that: there are TWO cartridges called "7.62x39". The hulls are identical, but in the former " Comm-Bloc", and out of any cartridge factories set up by them comes 7.62x39 with .311 bullets, whereas everything WE set up produces 7.62x39 with .308 bullets. The guns with the .311 barrels will not shoot .308 ammo accurately, it has insufficient rifling engagement. The US guns (mostly the Ruger Mini-30) with .308 barrels have too tight a bore to shoot .311 ammo accurately. The difference between bore and bullet must be less than .001 to have any chance at accuracy.

I had a Mini-30, and my best metal-rested bench efforts at 100 yards gave 6-10" groups using commbloc ammo, but improved to 3-5" with US ammo. The Mini30 was a maintenance nightmare anyway, being a 7/10 scale M14 Garand action, it was just too fiddly, so I sold it. I have an SKS to spray and pray 7.62x39 with now...commie gun and commie ammo, it's average 5" benchrest groups make it an okay militia-duty gun.