Posted on 09/23/2009 6:19:16 AM PDT by HairOfTheDog
Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!
At the far left, the Crimson Trace laser grips are 1.51 inches thick, the factory grips are 1.36", and the aluminum ones on the gun are 1.30". The slightly-thinner grips improved on the already nice factory ones, but I notice more material trimmed away at the bottom rear of the grip, compared to the other two. Even though I have large hands, I think this makes for an even more comfortable grip for me.
Never satisfied, I've ordered some Hogue custom grips in G10 composite. They are even thinner, but have a vey aggressive checkering pattern, from what I've read. That will be no problem for me, since I expect to use the P229 mostly as a high-end plinker. If I have any problems with the .40S&W conversion (if it ever gets here), I have the other grips to fall back on.
And the CT laser grips will probably never be used again. I found out that CT just came out with another model, all hard plastic, that is not only thinner than the rubber ones, but activates with a center switch, like the grips on the Kimber do. IOW, everything that disappointed me in the present laser grips were already fixed by another version. The story of my life.
But I'm not soured on Crimson Trace by any means. I've come to the conclusion that my old(ish) eyeballs need a bit of help, and me a bit more confidence, so my serious "carry weapons" will have CT grips on them. The Kimber already has, and I just ordered a set for the itty bitty Beretta. Costs as much as I paid for the gun itself, but this is serious business, even if .22lr doesn't sound like a serious caliber. Again, this will be a hard plastic grip with center activation, so I expect no problems like I've had with the rubberized ones.
I remember my buddy, the NRA instructor, saying that when you get serious about carrying, you go through a lot of $100+ holsters until you find the one that works best for you.
Well, at least I've saved money on ammo, so I can practice, practice, practice.
Evening - those new Sig CNC grips do look sharp - makes a fine weapon even better.
The American Rifleman arrived today, “Top-of-the-line AR magazines” should be an interesting read. Your comments would be appreciated. The other lead story is the new Savage 110 BA .338 Lapua Magnum.
And it will soon be LOST.
I have a set of the aluminum grips for a 1911A1......they are anodized and seem to not hold up to well to abuse and use of EDC with a CHL/CCW permit.........let me know how yours stand up over time. They LOOK good , I just wasn’t pleased with their durability per se such as the Hogue rubber grips on my 226 and 220’s............ What is the rear sight on your SIG there ? MMC ?
"John Locke" ~lies~ in the shadow of the statue.
Think about it...
Aw, ain’t that cute?
Are you guys OK, there in the Capitol City? I heard from my nephew on FB, and he and his wife are OK, and David called tonight, so he’s OK.
Just saw that. One of my favorites. *snif*
I soooo need to get DVD copies of “Kiss me Kate” and “Show Boat” and “Anchor’s Aweigh” one of these days.
We didn’t recognize the name, but bio information sure brought back some memories, thanks for the ping. OB & LSA
Oooh. Can I have one too? :-)
Very nice.
Hubbit and I have reached a deal on really neat piece of property. Our 'bit of the Shire' including rolling hills above, and the river Withywindle below...
Wide view (North is screen-left)
Close up:
It's 19 acres total, kindof an "L" shaped property including about a third of a mile along the creek. The neighboring properties to the north and east are timber areas full of trails and logging roads to ride... And previous owners have made and tended paths and trails long the creek and in the woods, with bridges over the little streams that flow down into the creek. In the fall, there is a salmon run on the creek. It's a little like owning our own private park.
We have loan prequalification and a great loan officer pulling for us, the inspection is tomorrow on the house. The house is a bit dated, and we'll need to do some work to freshen it up... new paint and carpet, but we just couldn't be more proud and excited about this great find.
Ok then........looks great !
I will ask as to overall length when stock is folded if ya have time !
I have a Bug Out Bag with an M1A cased in the safe near it so I can grab those two bags an be out the door in less than 60 seconds. That rig looks like it would fit INSIDE my BoB......I like it !
I'm so thrilled for y'all. From the pictures, the place looks beautiful. The house can always get fixed up later, but the land is the land, and y'all got a nice bit of it!
Well, we can gather for The Hobbit release, if it’s a summer release... maybe when the DVD comes out...
Or maybe even sooner, just for fun :~)
Paint Moot?
Well, that might be a bit much to ask of friends I’ve been neglecting here... :~)
But maybe the ones who are close by will come and help paint!
How are you doing with your packing?
I need newspaper for dishes and other breakables...haven’t figured out where to finagle some yet. Most everything else I’m not currently using is packed, but not yet in the trailer.
I have next Monday and the following Friday off. Hopefully it’s enough, with the weekends thrown in. Brother seems convinced that we can do most if not all of it Monday, provided he does much of the organizing and loading of the furniture. ;-) Hopefully by then I’ll just have the bed, the good desk, miscellaneous bookshelves and the dresser. Not much else.
It’s all made tricky by the fact that he really only gets Sundays and Mondays off, I probably won’t get the key until Monday, and this month ends on a Sunday. Can I lobby for a leap year?
Meanwhile, I have a sister out there somewhere who may or may not be arriving at some point. We don’t know exactly where she is or where or when she’s likely to show up and have no contact information for along the way.
‘Cause I needed more drama this week.
Oh, and the trash people won’t let me pay ‘em without permission from my new landperson, who hasn’t yet returned this afternoon’s call, which probably just means she’s busy, but I’m antsy about it. I’m not going to feel like this is real until I’m really there, I’m afraid.
I sold the little oven today. *snif* End of an era.
I wouldn’t get antsy about the garbage...
That is solvable when you get there :~)
I just remembered my farrier is coming at noon on monday... will be a couple hours there in the middle of the day when I’ll have to be holding horses. But if we can do a trip early, you can be packing the trailer, and the truck, while I’m doing that. Will work out good for me on the loading huh :~)
Ah! You’re moving too? I guess I missed that. Got a good new place?
I’m more worried about the not calling back than the garbage, ‘cause my mind keeps thinking somehow I’ll be found out as resident of a scummy trailer and this whole move will be called off and I’ll be stuck here. Irrational, I know.
But the garbage pickup account dealie is also the one last thing I don’t have set up—power’s set, cable’s set, mail is set to forward...all that. I don’t like holes in my completion. ;-)
I have an appointment first thing in the morning on Monday, so I figure we could do a load right after that, maybe nine or nine-thirty or so? And then we (brother and sister and whoever else I can recruit) can load while the farrier’s here. Sounds good. If I can get all the boxes in there over the weekend, that first load can be all the boxes, and then furniture later.
I don’t think the loading will be too bad, unless I’ve obtained a washer and dryer by then. But driving and parking the trailer seems like the harder part. :-\
I’ll drive the trailer ;~)
I’ll bring the blue pickup over on Sat morning... you can load it too, before we hook it up.... easier that way.
It really does look nice. I can’t stop exploring those pictures, looking at all the nooks and crannies. I can’t wait to see it in person.
Have you looked at the Bing, you really can zoom around and look close... you can see the beaver dams, there’s two big ones... the one on the little creek that flows into the main creek is quite a dam.
And you can see some of the little bridges he’s made down there.
Yeah! Perfect for me, really. So much so that it seems too good to be true and I’m waiting for reality to come crashing down. ;-) It’s a rental, but just the right rental: cute little house with a big back fenced yard for Cisco, nice neighbors, out away from town, and *right* on the bike trail. As in I walk out the front door and there it is, just a few feet across the road. So I can ride to work in nice weather, and ride for fun, or walk/run Cisco whenever I want.
I’m supposed to be out of this place by the end of the month, which is approaching with alarming speed.
I already signed a rental agreement, but I’m still worried somehow something will go wrong before I’m actually *in*.
We’ll have to figure out the best route, too. The shortest way from this direction is twisty, and on some pretty narrow roads—OK in the car, but probably not fun with a trailer. Maybe we can look at Google Maps over the weekend or something.
I don’t mind twisty ways as long as the horses aren’t in the trailer. We can go that way. :~)
It measures 28 1/2 inches folded. Some makers of cop gear make "low profile" cases for 29-inch SBRs. I'm looking into something like that myself.
Shweeet. Nothing will go wrong. Sounds most excellent.
Ummm.....I don’t see any pictures.
I’m sure it’s nice,though.
It's the wide view of the property, runs all the way down to the creek, and then a third of a mile further up stream...
And this is more of a zoom-in on the buildings and the upper pasture:
Kewl!! Lots of green stuff!!
So you say there’s a lot of painting to be done? Is it another “undo the 70’s decorating” thing? :)
Hope there isn’t any wallpaper to strip. *shudder*
Not as bad as the 70s.... It’s in 1984.
There is wallpaper in the kitchen that I had to promise my friend Kay I’d remove.... but I don’t know if we’ll do that first, or later... It’s actually not as bad in person as it was in the photo she saw.
We’ll be back there today for the inspection, I plan on taking a LOT of photos, for planning purposes. :~)
Congrats to you and Ecurbh, looks like the place you were describing way back when. We got the red x the first time but the second set, whoa, that is nice, really nice. Again, Kudos, OB & LSA
Could you ask some of the folks you work with to save their newspapers for you for the next week or so?
I hate to say this... but newspapers are .50 cents. $2 on Sundays, with all the ad paper and stuffing you could want. :~)
Osage - thank you :~) We just got back from the inspection, and we’re a little overwhelmed with information and tired. I think it’s OK if we want it to be... nothing major, we’ll see when we get his final report, in print, tomorrow.
Yeah, I’m figuring on just buying a stack of newspapers. Cheaper than bubble wrap. Still requires finagling, though. I have to stop at a *store*.
Sister apparently has arrived in Washington, so there’s that.
What should I make her do first? Hm. Floors? Takin’ out the trash?
Just sayin' ;~)
So where is sister then? Still enroute? Where’s she going first and when?
I know, I know. ;-) I’m putting off dishes until last, but I guess I have no excuses when the time comes.
She’s arrived at brother’s. There was talk of me picking her up tonight, but she didn’t seem all that thrilled about the idea of getting right back into a car again and I decided I didn’t want to drive to *town* in the dark on a Friday night. So I’ll go get her sometime tomorrow. I have folks coming throughout the day to look at various for-sale stuff, though, so I dunno when I’ll make it up there.
Send her out to buy newspapers. ;o)
Ha! There you go.
Evening All, well - the lawn didn’t stay snow-free all that long did it? We finally started seeing some snow-free patches thursday. :-)
G’nad;300winmag - as long as there isn’t all that many Sig 522s on the shelves, you may as well check out the new pictures, Sig 522 SWAT, got the rails on already. Don’t know the price.
I doubt if I'll get another Sig 522, since I already started customizing my new one. Tonight's Saturday Night Gun Pron is about my first impressions.
My object was to come up with a retro look, and make it appear as close to a Sig 552 as possible. I already had the genuine front and rear sights, bayonet lug, and repro flash hider ready to go. Installation was simple, and here it is, along with a thicker butt pad, with "my leetle friend" for comparison.
I had forgotten how much black was in EBRs.
With stocks folded, the Sig is even more compact, due to the shorter action needed with a 5.56mm cartridge. And yes, this still being Michigan, I had to have a pistol permit, even though it's always a rifle in the other 49 states. I think I need the pistol permit on me whenever I fold the stock. It's some sort of mysterious transformation that we mortals can't comprehend.
My final step for now was to mount my Leupold .22 "tacticool" scope. However, I didn't notice that the H&K-type drum sight was too tall for normal scopes, and most Sig 552s never used scopes, despite having a rail. Here it is with the scope placed on the rail just to show how high that rear sight is.
Fortunately, it seems like I have a supply of folding backup sights around, so I found a GG&G rear sight after just a couple of minutes of looking. Goodbye semi-faithful repro, hello great shooter (I hope).
You can notice (it's hard not to) the case in "Sig blue", loudly proclaiming to the world your good taste, and slightly battered credit card. I also determined that the stock, even extended, was waaaaay too short for me, so I put on the extended butt pad. Right after I took the picture, I moved the scope all the way forward on the rail, because the eye relief is so long (a trait of quality scopes) that it still needed to be further from my eye. Now everything is cool, and I'm ready to check its dietary preferences for .22s.
Overall, the quality is quite good, even though the construction methods don't match the "real life" Sig. The .22 has an extruded aluminum upper, rather than the stamped steel upper of the Sig 556. The lower receiver is glass-filled plastic, rather than a machined aluminum forging. The barrel is full-diameter solid steel throughout, rather than the "cheater" barrels on the Colt and GSG. The blowback mechanism is robust, except for the two tiny horseshoe clips that have to be handled with great care lest they be launched into space. That could have used some better design, or perhaps there's an aftermarket fix for it already.
The gas block is the same as the real one, except for a few modified machining steps. The gas tube and regulator are not kosher, being black plastic, rather than hard-chromed steel. The tube only goes about halfway back to the receiver, and has a closed end, so maybe I can use it to store something. It's just vinyl and pops in with a little tab to hold it.
I have some doubts about the handguard. Compared to the FAB ones I had originally on my Sig, these are pretty flimsy, and I was afraid I would break them putting them back on. Also, they have lots of distracting holes where pieces of rails can be mounted. Finally, the real 552 handguards had three large rectangular openings at the front on each side, rather than a lot of slots the whole length of the top and bottom. I'm looking into genuine or repro 552 handguards. I also think the stock would look more correct with that little bar in the open area removed. I don't think the "grownup" Sigs ever had that.
It looks like I'll be researching more details in the various online Sig hangouts.
Later today, a "Sunday Supplement" covering some smaller items that occurred this week.
Morning Winmag - very well done indeed. Sure didn’t recall you getting one. These Tacti-cool .22s seem to be made by just about everyone these days. Surprised the Length of Pull is that short?1? Yet to see one in flesh in these parts. Seen the Ruger, S&W, the GSG. Haven’t decided yet if or which.
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