Several months ago a friend of mine who has moved far away (but still remains in Texas) told me by email that he had a lot of extra reloading stuff taking up space, and he was going to load me up some practice ammo. This weekend, after I had long ago completely forgotten about it, the package arrived. Included was over 100 rounds each of .357 Magnum and .45 ACP, as well as 237 rounds of .40 S&W.

I had at one time decided that I would give the XD40 a break-in of 500 rounds before I started carrying it. Right now I"m at 200. This 237 plus the 100 rounds of Wolf I recently purchased will put me over the top. Time to buy a holster.

Time for another trip to the range.

He also sent me his .40 S&W dies, since he has now used up all his .40 material, has no .40 himself, and doesn't see any reason to keep the dies on hand. Now I just need a press.

The one down side, which turned out not to be a major problem (this time), is that our local idiot post office has a big problem differentiating my address with another address that is one word different: they apparently have difficulty distinguishing the word "valley" from "hollow." They sent this huge package of ammo to the wrong address. This happens frequently, but not usually with something quite this critical. We usually just put a note with the item (usually a bill or junk mail) that it has been sent to the wrong address and stick it back in the box. This time the other fellow drove by here and dropped it off himself. I'm just glad he wasn't nosey enough to open it.

Several months ago, while taking my CHL requalification, I ran into another Makarov user who was complaining that 1) he couldn't find any ammo for it other than very expensive stuff at local gun stores ($21.99 plus tax for 50 rounds), and 2) he was trying to sell it but "no one wanted to take the thing." If I'd had some cash I would have bought it then and there, since it was one of the Russian versions with adjustable sights. I did recommend to him to go to the gun show and look for either Wolf or Sellier & Bellot. I hope he took my advice and found himself some cheaper ammo, so he can realize what a really great gun he had. But I wish I had also remembered to refer him to this website: 9x18 Ammo. Back when I first acquired my Makarov I made a thorough Internet-based investigation on all the ammo that was available. This website is about 5 years old so some of the information on it has probably changed. I plan on going through it and updating it, and I'll post update notices here when I find them, in case anyone is interested.

I did just notice that Wolf's ammo now has a "new polymer coating." I noticed that the .40 S&W Wolf ammo that I bought at the recent gun show had a black coating of some sort on the cases. I guess it's supposed to improve feeding? I don't know. I've used Wolf in 9x18 and .45 ACP--back when they just had the "bi-metal" cases without any coating--and I've never had a single problem with any of them. For some reason I've never tried any of their 9x19 ammo. In my opinion, this is some of the best cheap practice ammo you can get.

Here is Wolf's page on their new POLYFORMANCE^TM technology.

I decided I needed to find some cool gun-related desktop wallpaper for my laptop, and I just ran across this collection of High Resolution USFA Images at United States Fire-Arms Mfg. Co. Inc. I had never heard of this company before, but they specialize in "...handcrafted, historically accurate re-creations of Old West guns and rifles..." Their wallpaper collection features lots of single-action revolvers. I chose this one...

Looks real nice at full size. This site has 22 high-resolution images. Alas, the price range of their products is way too high for me.