Pistol shooting

The weekend before last a friend of mine organised a group of us to go pistol shooting, at a local shooting club. It was fascinating and a lot of fun!

First off we were given a safety briefing, and an explanation of sighting. Most important rule, only ever point the gun down range (towards the targets) even if you are sure it is empty!

The first session was using air pistols. The shooting range was pretty fancy, with automatic targets that you could send down a wire and call back just by pushing a button. The range was built in part for the commonwealth games a few years ago. I can't say I demonstrated much accuracy with the air pistol, but at least I put holes somewhere in the target with most shots :)

For the next session we moved to a different range, and were using .22 revolvers. We were shown how to load and unload the revolvers and then allowed to try shooting towards targets. The targets were set to 10 meters instead of the usual 20, to give us a chance of hitting them.

This was a bit different to the air pistols as the revolvers were heavier, and had a noticeable recoil when the trigger was pulled. Also, we had to wear hearing protection, and the smell of gunpowder was quite strong.

Towards the end of the session one of the instructors noticed that I was not gripping the gun quite right, which is why my aim was so bad.

The next session was using .38 revolvers. With my grip corrected, I actually did much better with these than with the previous, lighter guns. The recoil was a bit stronger again, but nothing too alarming.

Finally, we were given a chance to take turns using a gun belonging to one of the members, a glock semi-automatic pistol. The recoil from this one was much stronger than from any of the previous guns. At the end a gun club member showed us an example of shooting this with rapid-fire and the strength and skill needed to rapid fire one of these was something we were all now able to appreciate!

The final round of .38 revolver shooting was scored, and I came about middle of the pack for accuracy.

All in all it was a lot of fun. I can easily see why target shooting is a sport many people enjoy, although why anyone would want to shoot a gun at living things for fun remains a mystery to me.

Garage

Over the last couple of months I have finally had a garage installed. It is a colorbond garage, with portal structure.

To protect the brand new concrete floor, I decided to paint it with paving paint. Because the concrete was so new, the first step was to etch it, which I did with White Knight Concrete etching solution. Ironically, this turned out to be much more work than the painting!

The first step in etching concrete is to mix up the solution, then pour it on a small section of floor, using a stiff bristled broom to work the solution in. Then use a high pressure sprayer to rinse the solution off. Move to the next section of floor and repeat. One thing I did discover is that after the floor had dried, I needed to go back over it with the broom and then re-rinse with the high pressure sprayer, sweeping residue out repeatedly.

Finally, after waiting a couple of days for the concrete to dry, I painted it, using a decking mop to apply the paint. I also added non-slip pellets to the final coat.