Reloading 9mm: Comparing two sizing dies

Posted on February 4, 2012 by George Burgyan

A long while back I was writing about how I made a shim to keep cases from hitting my sizing die.

Let me take a step back though to explain what this thing does. For this I need to go back to the gun itself. When you pull the trigger a fire a round an interesting thing happens in the chamber — the case expands. Why? Simple: brass is a very soft metal. Its job isn’t to hold in the pressure of the gun powder. It serves to purposes: hold the un-fired cartridge together and as a seal in the firing process.

The first of these is obvious to anyone that has ever picked up a round of ammunition, the second is less intuitive. While the tolerances in modern firearms are very tight, there’s some huge tolerances in ammunition. Some of the specs allow for a hundredth of an inch in either direction! Yes, I know that sounds small, but it’s actually really big in this case. Even if you could make it a perfect fit, you wouldn’t want to; the moment a piece of dirt or grit got in the chamber you wouldn’t be able to feed another round in.

The upshot is the chamber (where the cartridge sits at the breech-end of the barrel) is bigger than the case. When you pull the trigger the primer ignites the powder and that starts to push the bullet out of the case. At the same time it causes the case to expand to seal the chamber from the hot gasses that are being produced. If this didn’t happen, you would have a lot of blow-back of gasses since the burning powder would try to get around the case and back out the breech-end of the gun — into your face!

So, at the end of that process you have a case that was bigger than it started. So big in fact that it might not chamber a second time. Certainly it’ll be too big to hold another bullet. What to do: resize the case to the original size! That is precisely what this die does.

Well, what was going on is that the Redding die kept jamming things up. The case mouth would hit the die instead of going in and resizing. Perhaps it’s stacking tolerances with the press, shell plate, and die, but regardless the reason it would hang up perhaps a third of the time.

So I decided to try to get another die. I picked up a Lee since they are pretty cheap. Sometimes people seem to avoid them because they are cheap… but I’ve not had any real bad luck with them. Above the Lee die is on the left and the Redding is on the right.

What you can see when looking into the business-end of the dis is that the Lee has a slight chamfer on the edge that the Redding lacks. This is both good and bad. Good since in the 500 rounds I made today I had no hangups. Bad because it doesn’t size the case down as far. But sizing it down that far isn’t strictly needed anyway since the case head doesn’t really grow while things are being fired.

So… there you have it. A $21 solution to an irksome problem.

Building a reliable system

Posted on February 3, 2012 by George Burgyan

When I was at Insurance.com we had build a good system.

From the inside we had our moments of panic and things seemingly blowing up. But for the most part we had a major firefight on our hands once every year or two. Sure, systems failed, but for the most part no one noticed.

It is an interesting thing building a system that can sustain failures.

It is interesting for a number of reasons:

Technology – Fault tolerant
Hardware – Keeping down costs
Networking – Combination of the two
Shared resources – Things that, by themselves, are a single point of failure
Scalability – Making sure you can grow

Basically, it’s a balancing act between throwing hardware at the problem and throwing money at programming. Between the two is the networking layer — the more hardware you throw at things the more complicated the networking becomes as well.

Many times the easy things to add a bunch of front-end servers with a shared database. This is, essentially, what we did at ICOM. This has a simple problem though that we didn’t really run into with ICOM is the scaling problem — we only needed to scale so far.

The database is the single point that needs to scale — the only way to scale most databases is to get a bigger server. There also is a lot of extra hardware for the SAN that needs to be shared between at least two servers. This all gets expensive.

I’m playing around with some stuff on the side just for fun. I’ve been working in the Amazon cloud services. It’s cool to think how to make stuff work in a shared-nothing scenario using the services that comes with AWS. Amazon does it, so it’s obvious that it’s possible.

Another thing to think about is the complexity — the more complex a system is the harder it is to stabilize it. Another balancing act is knowing when and where to split systems to scale independently, and when the added complexity will detract from the reliability.

Hot tub… :-(

Posted on February 2, 2012 by George Burgyan

After we got our house here in Solon we had a few big blow-out parties where we rented a hot tub. They were fun parties.

We decided to get one ourselves.

Around 2004 or so we were planning how to get one on the concrete patio that came with the house and build a deck around it. We acquired a Sundance 8-person spa.

It was great.

For the first four or five years we were out there just about every good night.

Over time it was less and less frequent. I think in part this is because things kept breaking… The biggest culprit was the circulation pump which broke two or three times over the course of our ownership.

- = -

We went out to use the tub a few months back and noticed the water level was low.

Maybe evaporation?

We re-filled and continued on.

Then it was low again.

I doubt it was anything other than a leak.

We pulled out the trap-door in front of tub and looked at the mechanicals. No sign of water.

The next step really is to get a crane to pull the tub and fix it.

- = -

Actually, at this point the thing to do is to go out and get a Sawzall.

The cost of the repair once everything is accounted for would likely get into the thousands. It’s not worth it. And what of the next thing to fail?

From what I’ve read online the right thing to use is the aforementioned Sawzall and chop it up into smaller parts and throw it away.

<sigh/>

At least it simplifies the railing construction…

- = -

I guess I’ll get an expensive teardown out of the deal too.

CycleOps Pro 400 – One Week In

Posted on February 1, 2012 by George Burgyan

A bit more than a week ago I got my indoor cycle.

I like it.

I have to say it feels just like me regular road bike. I can cruise on it at around 130 W for around an hour or so. It feels like I’m on the road going around 16-17 mph.

The great thing is that it has a power meter. It keeps me honest. There’s an objective number that tells me how I’m doing. It’s not that “I’m working hard,” it’s precisely how hard I’m working.

It’s analogous to a hill. The hill isn’t going to get smaller because you’re tired. It keeps you honest.

So far, between me and En we’ve been on it for around 10 hours or so. Every weekday so far I’ve been on it. I just need to keep that up now!

And lemme tell ya: 450W kicks my ass something fierce.

Teardown (well, not really) – Shimano RSX Shifters

Posted on January 31, 2012 by George Burgyan

Like the title says. This is a lie for now.

Before I get there let me back up though.

I have two bicycles. The old one is a 1996 (?) Trek 1220. The new one is a 2006 Specialized Roubaix.

The Trek is an aluminum framed bike while the Specialized is Carbon.

The real reason I upgraded to the Specialized is that the shifter on the old Trek — back in 2006 — stopped working right. It was already 10 years old and I was tired of getting jarred by the stiff, unforgiving frame.

All of the components that matter are Shimano RSX — and a seven-speed rear-end. The RSX is a fairly low end group that would be the equivalent of the Tiagra groupset of the current day. All things considered it’s not surprising that they wound up non-functional over time.

The components on the Specialized are mostly 105 but it came with an Ultegra rear derailleur. Things are cool with that setup.

Fast forward to yesterday when I started talking to my coworker about trying to unload the old bike as a frame and wheels since it wasn’t working.

He thought about it a moment and started to spend my money: “Why don’t you upgrade your current bike and move the old components to your old bike and make it a mud bike?”

At this point I think I might do that.

The bottom brackets match — both standard English threaded BBs. The back-end of the Trek, surprisingly, is the correct 130mm as is the current spec. (Generally 7-speeds had 126mm rear dropout spacing)

So today I started to try to tear down the cause the whole thing: the front shifter.

I failed.

I didn’t want to beat it open and I didn’t want to break anything that I’d need to reassemble.

I got all the way to unwrapping the bar.

You don’t win all the time.

I’m going to do more research on this and keep going. Hopefully, over time at least, I’ll be able to get a set of SRAM Force components on the new bike.

View photos at SmugMug

Review: Allstate Drive-Wise – Fail

Posted on January 30, 2012 by George Burgyan

I signed up with Allstate’s Drivewise program around a month and a half ago. The incentive is that you can save up to 30% on your insurance.

They mailed out a pair of blue boxes that we are supposed to plug into each of our cars’ OBD-II ports.

The device seems to be based on the Kore telematics GE864-QUAD hardware (from the FCC ID). From looking at the box, I can see the card in question along with the strip antenna on the side and the microcontroller / OBD-II interface on another board. (I would do a teardown, but I don’t want to break the seal — Allstate would get plenty mad at me for that)

Dutifully, we plugged them in.

This is where the fail began.

The OBD-II port is the mandated port for the On-Board Diagnostics. This is the port that the mechanic plugs into to have the car’s computer tell them what’s wrong (typically a sensor is broken or reading out of range).

The port isn’t intended to have something inserted for a long time.

En’s car particularly.

The first drive caused the box to fall off.

This isn’t a problem with the port. This is a problem with the box. The device has no retention mechanism other than the friction of female receptacles for pins.

Like I was saying: this port on the car is meant for intermittent use. If you want to use it for something else it’s the responsibility of the the exception to deal with it.

We taped it up but the tape isn’t awesome at holding back gravity. But more on that later.

Now I get to the heart of my problem with the program: it’s completely simple-minded. It takes into account exactly three things to compute your discount: time of day, braking and time spent over 80 miles per hour. It then occasionally sends a packet back to the mothership over a cellular modem to report back.

I can understand time of day and speeding for the most part. (Of course if you’re out west, the limit is close to 80 anyway… but it doesn’t know where you are) But braking is programming you for the wrong behavior.

What I found myself doing to avoid triggering the device is carrying too much speed through turns. Even the way it measures acceleration is defective — it’s the car’s reported speed. (i.e. if you have low traction and need to spin up your tires to get moving it might think you went from 0-30 in a second (no, I’m not in a Formula 1 car). Ditto for braking if your car chooses to report speed like that.)

I understand what they are trying to do… but to have a report you get well after the fact that says “You broke hard a week ago” isn’t a way to build or reinforce the behavior you want — it just seems random.

Then on Friday I got this email:

Please Call Us About Your Drive WiseSM Device

This communication refers to this vehicle and this device:

2004 BMW 330CI xxxxxxxxxx

Dear George Burgyan,

We’re writing to let you know that the data coming from your Allstate Drive WiseSM telematics device suggests that the device has been removed for a lengthy period of time and then reconnected.

We’d like to ask for your assistance to help us address this situation. If your car has been in for service, please let us know by simply replying to this message, or give us a call at 877-431-7670. If we don’t hear from you, we may contact you to try to help understand the cause of the disconnection.

Please remember that your enrollment in the Allstate Drive Wise program requires that your device remain continuously installed. We do make allowances for brief removals of the device so that mechanics or emissions-control personnel can access the diagnostic port in your vehicle. Unfortunately, the amount of time your device has been removed exceeded this grace period.

Thank you for your assistance, we hope to hear from you shortly.
Allstate Drive WiseSM Customer Team

This was the last straw.

This thing is a poorly engineered turd. I’m beta testing this thing and they are giving me a lecture that I unplugged it. No, you idiot, the damn thing you gave me doesn’t stay plugged in. Not only that but the program is actively making me a less safe driver.

Epic fail.

Time; Media

Posted on January 29, 2012 by George Burgyan

Over the past week and a half I clean out the basement of a lot of my stuff. Much of it was trash — which really made me wonder why I even had it in the first place. A lot was media of some type or other.

A small bunch was cassette tapes.

I threw them away. I don’t have anything that would play them at this point (well, nothing good at least) and I have all of the contents digitally now anyway.

One that I saw was the first tape I really begged and pleaded to get. Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA.

I listened to the album while we were making the chili.

It certainly brought back a lot of memories. I get the songs a lot more now than I did when I was 12 or 13.

Even though the media that contained the seed of the memories is gone, the memories are still as fresh as ever.

I think the cleaning I’m doing of late is serving to at once let me let go of the past and remember it as well. That’s a good thing.