Marlin Carbine II

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Commander Zero

Right after I acquired the Marlin 45 Camp Carbine last week I put in an order with Midway. I ordered three extra 21# recoil springs and four stock buffers. It occurred to me today, as I was opening the package, that it seems I have already made up my mind about keeping this gun since ordering this many extras, and the expense involved, would suggest that ‘flipping it’ was never really part of the plan. So be it.

I’ll strip out the existing recoil spring and buffer, both of unknown age and condition, and replace them with the new. They may be just fine, but I don’t know that. They could have ten rounds in their history or they could have ten thousand. I just don’t know. So….replacements it is.

I also picked up a pic rail for it. Impulse purchase. But I bet a little red dot pistol sight like a Holosun of some flavor would be really handy on this thing.

One thing I hate about logistics is having to carry around spare parts for the life of my ownership of a gun. For example, I have a large .50 cal. ammo can with “P35” written on it in big letters. In it are spare parts, exploded diagrams, spare magazines, extra grips, extra holsters, etc, etc. And I have to keep that around for as long as I own that gun. (Yeah, technically I dont have to do anything…but if I’m holding onto a gun for the long-term it gets a support package like that.)

The Marlin was discontinued in 1999 and it’s propensity for eating stocks is a very well known issue. The treatment (because it isnt a fix) is to replace the buffer once in a while. Numbers I see call for replacing the buffer around 5,000 rounds. I don’t think I’veguns shot 5,000 rounds of .45 ACP over my life. If that replacement schedule is to be believed, I’ve got enough buffers to last for 20,000 rounds and I’d surprised if I ever fire enough ammo through it to even make it to the first buffer swap.

But…maybe someday something will come across my path that I really want and the Marlin may come as trade goods. Or maybe I’ll keep it for the rest of my life. In either case, having the spares just makes the gun that much more attractive.

For those that have a Marlin carbine and haven’t laid in extras….I sourced mine from Midway and they were manufactured by Power Custom:

Not this weekend

Posted on February 10, 2026 by Commander Zero

Wound up not getting up to the Beta Site Sunday either. Stepped out my door, all ready to go, and…flat tire. And since I wasnt going anywhere without a spare, I had to dismount the dead tire, put on the spare, and then take the offending tire off to repair.

Well, turns out it was a fatal flat and the tire could not be repaired…had to be replaced. And a buncha money later we were back to where we started.

But, Im slightly superstitious and chalked this up to the universe trying to tell me “Not this weekend, kiddo”.

And, of course, Sunday dumped 4-6″ of snow up there, so next trip, in two weeks, will involve the chained up side-by-side. We’ll see how that goes.

The locals

Posted on February 7, 2026 by Commander Zero

The game cameras I put in are doing their job. THis guy decided to visit the Beta Site around eight this morning:

This is the second visitor that the game camera has caught. First one was a squirrel yesterday. Im not posting that, ’cause its pretty boring. This guy, though…a surprise. The area is also home to some rather larger denizens as well:

If they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone. But if they wanna challenge me in a game of Food Chain Promotion/Demotion…..well…may the best mammal win.

And being a mildly intelligent animal, I know when to take risks and when not to. Today was a day not to. Tried to head up to the Beta Site but the snowmelt in the shaded draws had turned some twisty turns of road in to sheet ice. How bad? When I came to a stop I started sliding down hill…backwards. Fate smiled and I didnt go off the side of the road but I was in a not-great situation. Pulled a shovel from the back of the truck and spent an hour dumping dirt and gravel all along the road….not to get me to where I was going, but to allow me to leave in one piece. Managed to pull it off and headed straight to the tire store for a set of chains. Will also update the gear in the back to include a spud bar for breaking ice and least one bag of sand and salt.

So, todays trip up there was a bust. But I fully intend to be there tomorrow if the weather holds up.

Marlin Carbine

Posted on February 5, 2026 by Commander Zero

A lot of people would say the Scout rifle concept, today, is pretty useless. And that even when Copper dreamed it up it was of extraordinary limited utility. Perhaps, but I’ll go you one better. Theres another gun out there:

It’s too light for big game
Too heavy for varmints
Ammo too expensive to plink
Capacity too little for ‘serious work’

Behold, the gun no one needed but, once discontinued, everyone wanted:

Yup..its a Marlin Camp Carbine in .45 ACP. IYKYK. Right now, several of you are getting ready to tell me about the self-destructing buffers that led to stocks cracking like river ice in the spring. Way ahead of you guys. I also ordered a couple extra 21# recoil springs and several extra poly buffers.

I was minding my own business and stopped in at the gun shop on my lunch hour. This thing caught my eye because, for reasons no one seems to be able to articulate, people hold onto these things with both hands and they seldom seem to turn up on the used market. In fact, I just looked on Gunbroker and found 21 Marlin Camp Carbines and all are 9mm.

I purchased this one and it jammed when I tried to feed a round of FMJ ball into the chamber. No biggie, I know exactly what the story is. Previous owner must have disassembled it and failed to reassemble it properly. Its a ‘known bug’ that you can reassemble this thing in such a manner that the feed ramp is in the wrong position. So, I disassembled, consulted YouTube, reassembled, and things worked fine.

Im not a huge .45 ACP fan. I prefer a higher capacity magazine and I’ll take 17 rounds in a gun that fits my hand just fine versus half that many in a 1911. And while there are double stack mags out there for .45 ACP, most of them result in pistol grip sizes that are rather unwieldy for me. I will say, though, that the S&W M&P .45 do an excellent job of keeping the grip size small while accommodating a double-stack mag.

I own a lot of guns but I have exactly one .45 AARP pistol….a Springfield 1911 I bought many, many years ago. I seldom carry it because anything worth shooting is worth shooting more than once, and a 17-rd 9mm makes me feel safer than a 7-shot 1911. However, it’s a fun gun at the range and sometimes I carry it in the woods. So I figured as long as I’m going to have a 1911 laying around I may as well have a matching carbine. So…I picked up this particular one.

Now, I should mention, I have a Ruger LC Carbine in .45 ACP and it’s not a great gun. It recoils heavily, is ergonomically awkward, and just looks stupid. It’s only claim to fame is the use of double-stack Glock .45 magazines, and the threaded barrel.

The Marlin, on the other hand, has a little bit of class, style, warmth, and charm. It’s a nice little throwback to the 1990’s. It’s a gun that doesn’t really, to me, seems to have a defined role in…anything. But somehow it has a charm to it that just makes it desirable. And we Americans have always enjoyed having a rifle/carbine combo that shared ammo. Having it share magazines as well just sweetens the deal.

Anyway, I picked this up today. Not sure if I’ll keep it in the long-term or not, but it’ll be fun to take to the range and shoot…especially beside the Ruger LC carbine. And, technically, Ruger could reintroduce these since they own Marlin. However, Ruger would be cannibalizing the sales of it’s own carbines, so its pretty solid that this will not happen.

Personal Safety Day 2026

Posted on February 5, 2026 by Commander Zero

holidayAs I mentioned last year, in addition to Paratus I have created a second holiday for myself – Personal Safety Day (aka “Threatmas”).

Personal Safety Day is my holiday where the day is dedicated to inspecting, maintaining, and updating everything that pertains to my safety and security. These are things that include but are not limited to – checking smoke detector batteries, weapon lights, flashlights, spare tires, door locks, security cameras, house guns, EDC items, the Bag O’ Tricks ™, and the like.

This year, Threatmas includes the factoring in of the Beta Site. I’ll be setting up my list of things to sock away up there on my next trip. At the moment, the Beta Site is just a chunk of wooded dirt, but until I get four walls, a roof, and a flush toilet up there I can still drop a Monovault full of Just In Case up there.

Personal Safety Day is no substitute for regular inspections/maintenance of that which keeps you safe and secure. PSD is, instead, the day dedicated to making sure it gets done. During the year, youre supposed to be doing these things and you blow it off with “When I have the time…”, or “This weekend, for sure…”, or some other excuse…….well, PSD is that day where you have no excuses because PSD is specifically time set aside for those exact things. You said youo’d do it when you had time? Well, PSD is that day where you have the time.

I find having a checklist is imperative for maximizing the results of PSD. You’ve set aside a day for checking out your systems, make the most of it and make a checklist. You’ve got 364 days to add to and modify that list….take advantage of that. And don’t forget, money is one of your most important pieces of safety equipment….count the gold, silver, cash, and other tangibles. Know what you have, exactly, so that you know where you stand when something bad happens.

Now, with that said, it’s back to crossing things off my list…………..

CostCo Lithium Batts *

Posted on February 4, 2026 by Commander Zero

Was up at CostCo picking up some more lithium AA-batts at lunch. The price tag for the batteries had the dreaded asterisk (“*”) after it’s price. What does that mean, you ask?

SO, what this means, is that once the supply of Energizer lithium AA-batts at this CostCo is gone…theyre probably gone for a while. So if youre local, and you want lithium AA-batts (which you should use in all yhour critical devices), you need to hustle thee down to CostCo and snag the last few 18-packs that are there.

The root of money

Posted on February 2, 2026 by Commander Zero

Today is the birthday of the author of the classic “Atlas Shrugged” – Ayn Rand. (Not her real name, btw.)

She’s one of those figures that has no middle ground. Either you like her or you loathe her. I’m more of the former than the latter. “Atlas Shrugged” changed a lot of the way I think about things…especially money. “Francisco’s Money Speech” is one of my favorite passages in the book. It is shortened but well played in this clip:

This abbreviated version of the speech plays nicely but doesn’t deliver the full ideas. That can be found here.

Especially apropos of late:

“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, ‘Account overdrawn.’

Wanting to make sure I was reading things the way she intended, I also read almost everything else she’d ever written..The Virtue of Selfishness, Anthem, We The Living, etc, etc. I even read her collected letters. (But I never could make it through The Fountainhead.) Fallible human? Absolutely. But even people with personal failings can still come up with interesting ideas and philosophies.

Anyway, I read “Atlas Shrugged” about thirty years ago and I still revisit it from time to time. I may not necessarily agree with all of it, but I agree with far more of it than I disagree with. And, no doubt, it has colored much of my attitudes on money, relationships, liberty, and government….for better or worse.

Its odd, but when I think about it, I’d say the two most influential books in my life have been “Atlas Shrugged” and “Starship Troopers”. There’s a pair to draw to, huh?

“Whats up, birches!?!?!”

Posted on February 1, 2026 by Commander Zero

Thats pretty much what I said when I visited the Beta Site today…the first time I’ve been up there since it changed hands. Specifically, into my hands. I could not help myself but to say “See that tree over there? Mine. That one? Mine. That rock? Mine.” I also scolded a bird for trespassing. I have a bit of a territorial streak in me.

I wanted to head up there for more than just childish selfish reasons…I wanted to see what the roads were like, and more importantly, to see how much humanity was up there. This is an are that is well past ten miles from electricity. The number of year-round residents isn’t going to be huge…though they are there. My concern was my two closest neighbors on the two properties that were kittycorner from me. Neither property showed signs of their roads being used. At least, not terribly recently.

Of course, the road to my property (and , wow, it takes some getting used to saying ‘my property’) was equally unused. The only prints remaining in the snow were from the local wildlife and the cattle that roam the area.

A few trees had decided theyd give their lives to block the road into the Beta Site and they will get removed in the spring when the snow melts. In the meantime, they do yeoman service deterring any trespassers.

And once you get to the top of the hill, you can see down into the proposed building area.

The remaining snow was very patchy in the timber and there were plenty of places in the pines where the ground was nothing but beds of pine needles on dirt. Sat there for a while and listened to the blissful silence of…nothing. No cars, no trains, no people, nothin’…just the way I like it. It was probably about 50 degrees and sunny at that point so it was pretty dang nice to be out there. A light pullover and ballcap were plenty.

One of the reasons I wanted to get up there was because I wanted to see where along the route would be the optimal place to unload the side-by-side and continue the journey. Later this month I’ll be picking up a trailer to haul the side-by-side out there. I need to find a spot along the route where I can safely and securely park the trailer and my truck while continuing on the side-by-side. The road to the Beta Site is an easy enough, though bumpy and twisty, ride in the non-snowy season. However, once the snow sets in theres some parts that are definitely sphincter-clenchingly treacherous. Certainly, throwing some chains on the tires of my small truck wold go a long way but there will come a point where the snow or other conditions call for something a bit more dedicated to crappy terrain. So..side-by-side.

There were portions of the property that were knee deep in snow and portions that were completely bare. I definitely should have brought along my snowshoes, as well as some gaiters and yaktrax.

And, one other reason for the trip – remote game cameras. I received a couple remote game cameras for Christmas and deiced to try setting one up to keep an eye on things. I don’t necessarily expect to see much in the way of trespassers at the moment, but I would like to get the familiarity with the system and process so that when summer gets here I can set up a network of cameras at the most likely access points.

So…long day. My plan is to pick up the trailer in three weeks and haul the side-by-side out there and get some miles and experience on it. I will also be dragging up a loaded Monovault with some essentials so that theres at least some resources up there in case I do actually have to hide out up there before I get the place built up.

But, I gotta say, it was a very novel feeling to know that everything I looked at belonged to me (for as long as I pay the $50 annual property taxes, anyway.)

Oh, and the road that you see in the pictures above? It’s steep. One of the other things I wanted to do while I was up there was make sure the realtor had removed their signs. They had not. But, as it turns out, those For Sale signs are made out of a corrugated plastic that was perfect for sitting my butt on and roaring downhill at breakneck speed before tumbling out into the snow. That was fun.

Spot

Posted on January 28, 2026 by Commander Zero

Many posts back, I mentioned that I usually only buy pm’s (precious metals) when I can get them at discount…usually at spot. So, here’s the interesting thing…I swing by my local PM guy the other day and silver is $107/oz. I ask him what he’s selling it at, in terms of premiums. Well, he’s selling silver, at that time, for $100/oz.

Waitasec…spot is $107 and youre selling it for $100? How…how do you do that?

Turns out the answer is…economics. My guy doesn’t want to get caught holding a bunch of metals in a market that is, to say the least, a bit volatile. He sells it to his wholesalers almost as soon as he gets it. Well, his wholesalers are buying it at $17 under spot. So his $107 ounce of sliver gets him…$90. So, he can either sell the silver for $90 an ounce to the wholesaler or he can sell it to someone like me who walks through the door for $100. Of course, he isn’t buying it at spot…he has to buy it below what his wholesalers will pay him. So he’s paying, for example, $18 under. Or, put another way, he can either sell his $82 ounce of silver for $83 to the wholesaler, or $100 to me. Well, would’n you sell it to the buyer who is paying more? So, he is selling silver at below spot and still making money.

In a perverse way, its kind of a good time to buy silver if you focus just on the ability to buy at or below spot.

He doesn’t think the run up in silver is done yet. Doesn’t matter to me , though… one of my goals at the moment is to start replenishing my silver hoard that I liquidated to finance the Beta Site.

FAKking around II

Posted on January 27, 2026 by Commander Zero

M. just swung by my desk. Took two stitches to close up his wrist. He thanked me for the help and said he’d be more careful in the future.

I was going to say ‘Thats my mitzvah for the day’, but, technically, a mitzvah is done out of religious obligation. Since Im not religious, I can’t really have any religious obligation. But, I have my own moral compass and it says “Help that nice old man who is bleeding profusely”. So…good deed for the day. Chalk one up in my karma counter.

I think the total cost to me was something like $1.00 for the supplies and about five minutes of my time. Neither one is a high enough cost for me to withhold helping a coworker. Or even a stranger. (Under current circumstances.)