35TH HIGH SCHOOL CLASS REUNION!

On Saturday October 11th, many of us met at the
beautiful home of Deb and Tom Watkins in Chowchilla for a great class reunion - one of the best I think. I don't know how many people showed up, but we had a good time. We also were treated to a "Car Show" with Tom's elegant vintage sedans. Unfortunately I neglected to shoot pictures of them.

New Ruger Target Rifle - Come Home to Papa!

These little guys are just ONE INCH in diameter, and I was 15o away.

t
This BIGGER target is 4 inches in diameter, but i Don't care - I'm only interested in the 1/2 inch circle in the center.

The SILHOUETTE target to the right is no big deal if you look at the chest/torso - but LOOK AGAIN at the FACE - pretty good shooting with a 357 magnum pistol. Kinda like Mel Gibson did in Lethal weapon. Distance 50 feet.

For Father's Day, I got the rifle I've wanted for about a year. It is a Ruger M77, Mark II, Target Grey "Target" model in .223 Remington caliber. The stock is made of several layers of wood laminated to each other and then milled down. It has a special 26 inch "bull" (heavy) barrel and a two stage target trigger that only takes 3 pounds of pull to release. These two features are designed to maximize accuracy. As the targets below will show, this is a very accurate rifle at both 150 and 300 feet. Most bullets feel within the inner 1 inch circle, and SOME bullets went into the exact same hole as the other bullets so that it looked like just ONE bullet had been fired. Next time I go out to shoot, I'll move the target out to 300 feet and make sure that the scope is set correctly for that distance. It's a great gun, and I don't even mind that it is about 4 feet long and weighs about 11 pounds. Heavy guns are easier to hold on target. I can hardly wait to get out to the range again! The bullets below fell mostly within the inner circle, which is only 1 inch in diameter.

RUGER 10/22 PROJECT AND PVC RIFLE REST

When I was building this nifty PVC rifle rest for my 10/22, one thing led to another once again. I decided to "float" the barrel using the factory barrel and old black walnut stock. This made the rifle much more accurate. I checked into the options to make it even more accurate, and found out a "Bull Barrel" and a trigger job would be the most cost-effective. This barrel is about twice the diameter of the stock one, at 0.920". Well, those were done, and I had to "float" the barrel once more for the new, much larger bull barrel. Now it is shooting as straight as I can expect. I can shoot a dozen bullets and only leave 8 or 9 holes since some of them go into the same hole. When that was done, the last thing to do was to refinish the walnut stock. I experimented with my usual Minwax oil finish in a natural tint first. I didn't like this, so I applied Minwax paste wax finish, which didn't flatter the open grain. I stripped this off, and settled for good old Polyurethane finish in a semi-gloss. It's done - FOR NOW anyway. At least it's as done as any project can be.

DONAHUE FAMILY CREST

OLD PIX OF ATHENA

MISC PROJECTS 2008

2008 WOODWORKING PROJECTS

OUR BACKYARD AS OF MAY 2008

NOTE THE REDWOOD GARDEN PLANTERS


NOTE THE CITRUS TREES IN THE WINE BARREL HALVES


NOTE THE OTHER FRUIT TREES IN OUR RAISED AREA NEAR THE HOT TUB......