Sunday, June 17, 2012

Pull The Pin!

...Pull the pin, that is, to load it.

I rode my motorscooter to the range yesterday, my longest trip so far this year (I'll get back to that) and a fun one, given the sweeping curves along Kessler Boulevard. I did not so much enjoy the gusting breezes at the open field of the WXLW transmitter site,* but that's how it rolls.

"Pictures or it didn't happen," you say?Okay.

Besides the usual reasons (loud noise, small holes in distant pieces of paper and big fun), I wanted to check out a recent acquisition, an H&R model 623 "pull-pin" .22 revolver. It was inexpensive and simple; I didn't expect much. Anyway, chrome-plated like that, it was cute and collectible.Surprise! It shoots a treat! The sights are set up "cowboy," with point of aim just atop the skinny front blade rather than covered by it, but as soon as I had figured that out, the little plinker was turning out nice, tight groups.

Considering it's not unusually heavy, felt recoil is 'stonishing low, lower than the 6"-barrelled High Standard Sentinel I'd also brought. The "pull-pin" system is less frustrating than you'd think; pull the pin and the cylinder drops right out, then the pin is used to operate a conventional ejector star; loading is easy and you push the cylinder back in place and run the pin home. Or return to the frame empty and use a little loading notch on the right side, if you're the fretful sort or range rules require; either way, you do have to mind muzzle direction and finger proximity throughout the process. Fast? Not especially, though the guy with a Nagant revolver will envy you. --Which reminds me, DA trigger pull on the H&R 623 is like butter, smooth and easy. (I didn't try it in SA; that's just not how I use revolvers).

A great deal of fun and an excellent value. If you encounter an H&R pull-pin revolver for sale (they made several models, built the things for decades) and you were wanting a nice plinker, give it a look.


On scootering: the intersection of Kesseler Blvd. and Georgetown St. is accident-prone; I arranged to arrive the on red and went through with other traffic. But the worst I have seen and one reason I've not been riding to and from work other than low-thryroid-induced fatigue is the degree of damfoolishness I have observed this year. Evenings on my way home, some yahoo along College keeps popping out of a stopsigned cross street in the 4000s and making a sweeping 90 through traffic (two lanes coming from his left, one from the right) to slam-bang into a parking space. It's a festival of brakelights and singing tires and he'll survive unhurt just as long as everyone else has their wits about them -- but I have no interest in taking a small motorscooter though there. I figure I'll wait 'til he's made his appointment with Fate. Alas, he is only the worst of a lousy crop. It's offputting. Still, I hope to start riding to work more -- scooter, bicycle, whatever. Need to take a different route.
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*A classic old-school building, now with a lot of open space around the teeny-weeny modern 5 kW transmitters; in its day, it housed a gigantic RCA transmitter, a nice workshop and kitchenette -- plus a miniscule apartment, just in case a transmitter operating engineer got snowed in out there in the sticks! Nowadays, you could just stroll over to the stripmall next door for lunch, or hike a little farther on city-plowed streets to a motel. The site is on the linked map, just a bit west of the intersection.

9 comments:

Stranger said...

Your experience with H&R's is much the same as mine. My first real six shooter, at age 11, was an H&R my Dad traded ration points for. The SA trigger was just above the hair trigger level.

If the rat I was aiming for stopped, his tail was mine, fleas and all. And I could still make money shooting running rats for the bounty.

I certainly miss the H&R's, Owl's Heads,and other mid priced revolvers of the era. But don't ask about the cheap ones!

Stranger

John said...

I have a 923 - nickle plated 9-shot version with 6" barrel.

Fun to shoot, relatively accurate.

John said...

Correction: Nickel plated.

Hand-eye-keyboard coordination must be off this morning.

The Jack said...

Yeah I was on that 56-Kessler route a bunch of times on Friday.

In between the people that will drift out of their lane and into yours and will be shocked like a largemouth bass when you honk, the intersection darters, and those that figure they can slow down right after a blind curve...

it makes for an interesting drive.

For me the fun intersection is Kessler and Kessler, odds are good someone'll be broke down or smashed up there.

Roberta X said...

Ah, yes, the intersection of Kessler, Kessler, Cooper and 56th, or How To Make A Simple Cross Intersection Tricky.

Out-of-towners: Kessler makes a hard left. Or a hard right if you're headed the other way. Why? why? Shaddup, you, or the city planners will hit us again.

Anonymous said...

When you first posted about that I sort of thought it might be a longer-barreled model of the weapon Verna (Marcia Gay Harden) pointed at Tom (Gabriel Byrne) in "Miller's Crossing".

Wrong. Turns out it was a Colt Pocket Positive. (scroll all the way down)

Hard to make it out in the frame, in my defense.

Mike James

Robert Fowler said...

I had the 9 shot version with the 6 inch bbl. I bought it new for 98.95 in 1978. That along with a new break top 38 4" H&R that was around 150. I wish I still had them both.

Crucis said...

My dad had one just like that in the 9-rd version, pull pin and all. The trigger pull was in the double digits. With dad, that didn't matter. He was a part time blacksmith and I saw him carry 40lb ingots suspended from a single finger.

kishnevi said...

that fate tempting driver must be from Florida. Going by what I see on a daily basis, we must lead the nation in the number of idiot drivers.