Personally, I stick with standard pressure loads, as the brass will last longer and there will be less wear-and-tear on the gun itself
I am sorely tempted to work up some classic black powder .45LC loads, but i hesitate to do it, because black powder is very corrosive, and the gun must be detail cleaned, stripped to the frame after every BP shooting session, I think I’m gonna get a BP long gun to scratch my black powder itch, they require less meticulous cleaning, I’m thinking a good flintlock musket would be fun, none of this newfangled matchlock or caplock stuff for me, thanks
This may show how young I am compared to the majority here, but Legos. Sets of Legos are just not made the same way now as when I was young. Back in my days you’d easily get hundreds of pieces and the design would be truly clever as to how they’d fit together to make something specific. Now-a-days you’re lucky if your new set breaks a hundred pieces and don’t worry, all the weird shapes are now made out of one big Lego piece you just stick on.
Oh and forget original designs, Lego sets are all based off whatever new big movie is being produced by Hollywood.
Actually, the ‘one big piece’ heresy is dead. There’s fewer parts now, and more custom ones, but they’re rarely that horrible ‘one big piece’ platform, excepting only a certain ‘wing’ shape I can think of that gets used to make body sides.
The new Space Police line is very nice. One of my earlier ‘adult’ sets was the original Space line, and there’s some nice callbacks.
Um, slight hijack, but cars are getting heavier and heavier. I would agree that they feel less solid than older cars, but the average redesign weighs something like 300-400 pounds more than the previous generation.
I have a 5 year old who loves Legos, and we have sets that were my husband’s originally when he was a kid, and lots of new sets also. We don’t have any that are ‘one big piece’ really, but I guess there are a bunch of special pieces for things like the animal sets (the dino ones come with movable pieces and light up eyes and stuff like that). I actually think kids do more with them now. I remember when I played with them as a kid, I just had the blocks and windows and after a while I just didn’t know what to do with them except build houses. I didn’t have a mind for putting them together, but now that I see all the things my kid can do with them it’s pretty amazing, I think some of the sets now really show off their capabilites more.
My husband likes playing with them almost as much as the kids, and when you pair them with K’nex and the motors and stuff you can get now the possibilities are enormous. I still think Legos are great because they work so well for kids that like to follow plans to build things, and also for freestyle type builders.
I really can’t think of much that I think hasn’t been improved over the years. Sometimes things like toys and clothes I guess, but I can almost always find what I want if I am willing to look around a bit.
Well I admittedly haven’t checked out any sets in recent days but that’s more because our stores barely carry Legos anymore and they’re the small sets that normally don’t have too many pieces.
The article E-Sabbath links to says that the company has gone back to using lots of pieces like The Olden Days, so if that is true, my sadness for Legos is diminished until I see actual proof.
and it is pretty cool. (although don’t buy it from that vendor - holy overpriced!)
Lots of individual pieces and he spends hours making all kinds of creatures. This seems pretty typical of what he gets now, although I agree there is a lot of cross promotion with movies and cartoons, but I grew up in the 80’s so I am used to that.
No, their primary disadvantage is that they take forever to heat up and forever to cool down. They are irreplaceable for certain applications, but not all.
You may have to do a bit of looking, but I purchased an all-metal Swingline 747 Business Stapler at Costco 6 years ago (it also came with more staples than I will use in my life). It looks new, even though it rides around in my backpack. It may outlast me. I looked online; Swingline still sells them.
I think that this is true of most of the things mentioned in this thread. There is a lot of survivor bias- everyone has been making cheap plastic stuff for a long time now, but you can still find the durable, high quality products if you care to look. In 30 years, no doubt my children will talk about their dad’s stapler or whatever I have that has lasted that long. The plastic travel stapler that was packaged with it and disintegrated in my backpack will be forgotten.
I lack the personal experience to assert that it is as easy to find the high quality durable goods today as in the past, but I suspect they are no more expensive (adjusted for inflation) than the ones still standing from 30 years ago.
I have a floor scrubber that I was my mother’s. It has to be over 40 years old, possibly over 50. I loved it for my tile floor since it could scrub the grout but it recently stopped working. I’ve been thinking of making a sculpture out of it as an homage to how some things were better made years ago. I think the brand was a Kenmore but I’d have to look at it to be sure. I don’t think they even make these things anymore, I haven’t seen any in stores, so it really can’t be replaced.
RE: “Lawyer Triggers”
I don’t believe they are a result of anything legal. They are a result of keeping costs down. The older guns were nicer, in many ways, because of the amount of hand work done by skilled workers. A really good trigger is the result of skilled labor. Modern guns can be tuned by a skilled smith to have good triggers, too. Typically, the smith basically just polishes the parts of the trigger mechanism and makes sure they fit together precisely. This polishing requires skill and knowledge and used to be done on good qulaity firearms at the factory. Cheap old-timey guns had lousy triggers because they skipped the polishing/fitting steps then and for the same reasons as now.
In most modern guns, they don’t fit parts, they just assemble them. Everything fits together well enough to function safely, but that’s about it.
Good ones are tough to find here. The most common ones (sold in Walmart, Rite Aid, etc) are made in China and they go dull astonishingly fast. Gillette still sell blades under their name that are made in Russia that are much higher quality, but aren’t nearly as easily found. One can, of course, order blades from all over the world over the internet, but I really miss the convenience of being able to buy good blades at the supermarket.
Toasters, mixers, fans, humidifiers, phones, sewing machines, heck even the microwave.
It’s not just that the materials are cheapers now, but there are tons of extras that are needless and just waiting to break down.
I don’t need a clock on my phone. My floor fan doesn’t need a remote. Why can’t I find a simple humidifier instead of one with digital displays and a ton of setting I’ll never use. I’ve got a 15 year old microwave that I’m betting will long outlast the new one that came with the house last year. I envy my mother’s 50 year old sewing machine with a metal case. Sure, it only sews straight lines, but then that’s most of what I do. I’d love to have my grandmother’s potato ricer. It had heft to it. It’s still in working order at about 80 years old, and my grandmother served potatoes all the time. All the ones I can find now are cheap cheap metal.
