Posted on 09/23/2009 6:19:16 AM PDT by HairOfTheDog
Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!
Lol .... Sad we see common calibers, albeit tried and true disappear from the shelves and levitate towards a round that is a,proven performer as well but mainly a LEO / FLEA caliber is available. 357sig is and has been my carry for last 8-10 years. Carried a 1911A1 prior to that albeit my old sheriffs department reserve gig forced me to a SIG 220 in 45 as a duty weapon. sheriff hated 1911A1’s for some silly reason. He was an idiot and my love of 45 conflicted thus a P-220 was compromise.
After retirements rom military, joined another sheriffs reserve unit and 1911A1 was approved for carry thus I was a happy camper. Then witnessed a DPS shooting with their P-220’s on a camero windshield. 230gr HS x 4 rounds broke said glass yet never penetrated. Was involved with shooting thru car door once and same 230gr HS didn’t punch thru said car door. Granted pistol ain’t for killin a car yet stopping a felon in said car was desired.
AS1and AS2 glass properties construction of car doors knowledge in hand Texas DPS did extensive studies for defeating at least one layer of that glass and the car door to make hits on soft squeezy felons vitals inside.
The 357Sig was / is the solution until a rifle or shotgun could be obtained.
Every store I have visited in past few months of this ammo drought has had 357sig ammo. Bought cases for past few months each payday.
Will never run out, still able to shoot 3 gun and IDPA matches, saving brass, casting and reloading for paper punching games. Easy days thanks to a caliber few seem to use.
Shoot with two other deputies that carry 9x23 1911A1’s due easy reloading of that caliber. Their reload rounds are plus pee velocities that match or exceed the 357sig in some cases and punch vehicles just fine as well when forced to do such. factory 9x23 is rare per my experience , have never seen such in a gunslingers shelf for sale. But it to is out there I am told.
Always thought a Para Ord P-14 or STI in 9x23 would be perfection personified as a CHL rig. HiCap primary and 1 spare mag would be around 40 rounds plus or minus on person, easy to carry and and and and .....:o)
Good read on your range day. Love the bull on first round fired. I have done such and stopped and replaced the target. Wallpaper my office with such cold shots ....:o).
Yeah it’s a small office ...LOL ,
Stay safe !
I have ,,,,very nice. Sad we can’t buy such tools anymore unless ya find one already in private hands. That would make a great lap gun in the recliner for home invasion insurance....:o)
Hope yer well my friend. Stay Safe !
That would make a good recliner gun. I wonder if they make a remote control that will attach to your picatinny rail?
Just aim it at the wife or kid and tell her to turn the channel ....:o)
;-) lol
Want to be able to shoot both GI 5.56 and civvie .223;
What would you suggest for an upper?
I prefer, but am not stuck on, the M16A2 appearance.
Based on what I’ve heard I prefer the gas-tube over the gas-piston.
Based on your description, you want a quality upper marked "5.56mm", since the civilian ".223" does not have to meet the higher standards of "5.56" in terms of barrel life, strength, etc.
While the lower carries the serial number, the upper is the key element as far as overall performance goes. Go with quality manufacturers, even for "just the upper". There are too many "Grade B" forgings around that need a lot of later handwork to get them into a respectable, in-spec shape. The better manufacturers machine their own, or their QC goes through more steps to make sure even the "trivial" specs are right on.
I don't know if you're looking for a "beater" (always good to have one of those, especially for learning AR15 gunsmithing on), or a "forever" rifle. In any case, get as heavy a barrel as you can handle, especially underneath the handguards, where GI standards, and weight savings, tend to thin out the barrel before it gets "fat" again. DO NOT buy a fluted barrel, because only the extra-premium ones will have a second heat-treating after fluting. The manufacturing world is only now starting to realize that machining itself can add potential stressed in unexpected places that come back and bite you thousands of hours, or rounds, later.
Consider a monolithic upper, with the forward rail section machined from the same piece of aluminum as the "real" part of the upper. Stay away from free-float tubular handguards. The one I got proved to be the biggest ass-pain of any AR15 work I ever did. The final results are great, but only after a lot of grief, and a good chunk of change for a carbon-fiber tubular handguard. No matter what you have, things start to get hot after the first few hundred rounds. Anything touching the barrel will get hot, including the gas block/gas piston, gas tube, rear handguard ring, and even the part of the upper that the barrel screws into.
A bit of trivia, but in a special test on a suspect lot of ammo, the Army discovered that the stainless steel gas tube melts into red-glowing linguine after about 950 rounds of really sustained full-auto torture firing far beyond anybody's specs. However, once the weapon was cool enough to touch, the gas tube was replaced, and it still passed the "serviceable for combat" standards. Just don't do it to your own weapon, ask a friend to borrow his. :)
A rule of thumb is to be prepared to spend $1K or a bit more for that quality upper. I'm already seeing guys coming back to the MSR store offering to sell back their $700 generics, only to be told that they can get $600 for the entire weapon. As the store owner tells them, "first, you didn't buy this from me, because I've never sold this brand. Second, an unfired weapon is still a used weapon once you go out the door with it, so $600 is the best you can expect". If I was shopping for an upper today in 5.56mm, I'd consider this heavy barrel, mil-spec upper from a company like Daniel Defense.
Slap on sights, and I'd consider it "ready to rock", although I'd tweak it a bit with a better flash hider than the GI type. Certain premium brands can both cut down muzzle rise, and dampen muzzle flash at night to just a faint puff of gas that's just about impossible to see beyond a few feet away. I'd also add insulated rail covers, and more rails, where needed. Anything metallic can get warm after 30 rounds of "quick" fire, and heat shields will stop shielding when saturated. The really good thing about my carbon fiber handguard was the composite started to get warm where it touched the aluminum rear cap, but stayed cool about an inch forward of that.
Here's the writeup at Daniel Defense upper.
There's a lot of detail on this one item, along with a good discussion of the mil-spec features you want on your upper, in general. Both Midway and Brownells have "build your own AR-15 configurators" that let you browse through their wares and give you a bill of materials. Just take basic "lower" choices, and concentrate on how your upper should look.
Thanks!
The Daniel Defense link didn’t work for me. I’ll mess with it a bit as well as look around for some of the other things you mentioned.
Doesn't work for me either, I must have broken something. What it really is supposed to be is a link to Midway's page for that 16" upper. There's a lot of ways to search for it. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Check your FReepmail :)
Let me start with an item rarely seen in normal times, much less in this era. Up until last week, Uncle Joe was the world's authority, and he guaranteed that nobody needed more than a double-barrel shotgun, fired from the upstairs balcony (for those who have balconies and upstairs) to scare off any bad guy. Or a pump shotgun, which might not even need ammo, since the sound of the pump handle being worked also carried his personal guarantee to scare off the bad guy.
So, taking the best of both his worlds, I bought the Kel-Tec KSG:
It's a pump shotgun with two magazines holding six 3" shotshells each, selectable by a lever in the loading port. I can't really tell if the "business end" would be sufficiently threatening to deter the average bad guy.
I felt my left hand would be too close to the muzzle to use those factory sling loops right next to the muzzle, so I added a Magpul angle grip/hand stop and a QD sling swivel on the bottom rail, and a Magpul quick/change single/double point sling, rather than the simple nylon strap provided. The BUIS are there simply to be prepared for the rare situation where I might have to fire it like a rifle.
And behind the pistol grip is a typical 2-3/4 inch shotshell, and a now-rare Mexican half-size shell. With vey limited testing, it is possible the little guy might work, allowing for about 24 rounds in the tubes. I know it is far above state and federal magazine capacities for hunting.
All-in-all, an effective conversation-starter, and (I hope) effective confrontation-limiter.
Based on my own lyin' eyes, I'm beginning to believe there really is some evidence of holding back product in the firearms industry. Not just guns, but even the nickel-dime accessories. I didn't see MTM ammo boxes fly out of the store as fast as AR15s, but they've been impossible to find for months. Now, BLAM! they're in the store by the pallet, including new models I never save before. I went crazy and bought a bunch of the new ones, simply because I have more ammo that should be stored in moisture-resistant, stackable boxes.
Same thing for holsters, with my MSR store getting in several hundred from three manufacturers in one week. Coincidence?
Getting to know the owner is paying dividends. His store, which is heavily armed, armored, and monitored, is also the vault for much of his personal collection, too. He's been showing me some of the goodies that appear as special deals for attendees of the SHOT show, and are never seen again as commercial products. He's started to bring out stuff I never saw except in advertising, and one item I wished I had never seen.
This is the Australian L2(???) which may or may not have been a candidate to replace the Vietnam-era M16 with something cheaper, and a source of pride for Oz.
This stock photo does not do justice to how cheap and ugly it appears in real life. I didn't even want to hold it, because I was so offended by it, it was like trying to hold a turd by the clean end.
Looking at the picture, I believe the design is based on the plain-but-efficient Armalite AR18, but was severely worked over with an ugly stick. Then it was given to some high school kids as a makeup project to make it look even uglier and cheaper. They probably saved themselves from flunking with this project.
The Australian company probably realized their own hope of survival was to sell this on the American commercial market (as Steyr did with their GB pistol), and, during the Reagan golden years, it was imported by a California company in just enough numbers for the store owner to score one for himself. In reality, it is probably as dependable and serviceable as the AR18. In my own opinion, after shooting and maintaining lots of military weapons, some of which where downright fugly, this would destroy my morale, no matter how sterling is was on the battlefield. I'd consider airdropping this rifle on the enemy as a war crime, much less giving it to someone's own troops.
Australia stumbled along with the M16, Enfield, and AUG. All were/are expensive, a genuine POS as far as the Enfield went, and pricey when the AUG is fully tricked-out like ozzies tend to do. They were all vast improvements over this justifiably forgotten weapon. :)
Oooo. I’ve been eyeballing the KSG for a while. I;m glad to see it’s real not vaporware.
Have you shot it yet?
Morning gents, nope they aren’t vaporware but apparently the LGS that had one figured they were made out of unobtainium. It was a bout double SMRP. I did fondle it a bit as did others, first one we had seen. It isn’t ‘a sweet handling bird gun, like a Superposed or Sterlingworth’ but it seems to be able to do what it is supposed to do, make folks take heed. I’d like to shoot one, just because..
Well done Winmag, hope for range report, if your range allows its use; not many do, hope yours does.
Great report as usual..... Beware too much wear and tear aka force on that lower plastic rail ....
Might be worth using an end mill and removing the plastic rail and replace / reinforce with a aluminum one.... I have Surefire M900 I want to put on mine when one shows up at local shop for sale..... May need to leave accessories off shy of a X400 surefire and leave it alone.
Ya may consider using that sling as a single point transition style rig versus nuts to butt attachment points. Just a thought.....
Stay safe !
I read the article. I would use the word, "break", rather than "rupture" in the title. Second, the user never stated, but I inferred, he was using that vertical grip to handle a large part of some rather nasty recoil. I have no idea on how hard he torqued down his attaching bolts, or if he had them butted up against the forward cross rail, to most efficiently transfer recoils forces from the weapon to the accessory. I do this religiously for everything on rails, including sights and scope. Finally, I don't know if he was checking for "slop" or movement during the first few rounds fired with any new gun.
I have the Magpul AFG2 angled foregrip on the pump handle first and foremost as a hand stop. Second, it provides me multiple ways to grasp the forend due to my carpal tunnel. I have a few tacticool shotguns, all with plastic rails, and do NOT have vertical grips on any of them to use as a mechanical advantage in operating the handle, or handling a big part of the recoil.
Based on the very little said in the article, I suspect the shooter was making a couple of careless moves that bit him around shot 10. I will be doubly-careful when trying mine out, however, since I suspect this was a cascading series of user errors.
Oh, I paid regular MSRP for mine (still unchanged from long ago), and the sling is a Magpul MSR2, which lets me unclamp the front of the sling, and clamp it to a D-ring near the rear, for single-point use.
Thanks for the heads-up, I will double-check everything before I shoot, and while shooting. My suspicion was it was the old rock-and-slide that done in the plastic.
I read a review that said a good idea is to attach a metal spacer rail to the plastic one before putting on the foregrip.
This one is truly a gift from the gods. It's a working weapon with about 1000-2000 rounds through it, and some custom mods that indicate it wasn't a cop gun. The Hogue extra-chunky rubber grips are rather beat up, and will be replace by the current slimline factory plastic grips. There's lots of holster wear on it, but it doesn't show as much on stainless. It also weighs 10 ounces more than my P220 Elite, which has the latest of bells and whistles on it. Of course, the SiG "short trigger" and SRT trigger kit weren't even gleams in designers eyes yet, but the frame is basically unchanged from 12 years ago, so those parts are on order, and will teach this old dog some new tricks.
The one thing I was most grateful for was the nice job of breaking the handgun in for me. At perhaps 2000 rounds, it's at the stage I'd say was "experienced". While the stainless steel bearing surfaces are polished together, a little bit of Nanolube made the gun feel like its internal workings were somehow made of melted butter. This is the way I always like to see a working handgun, which is why I called it "a gift from the gods". New grips, new trigger parts, and it's ready to rock on as an experienced adult weapon.
One interesting thing about it is that the owner must not have been impressed by the newfangled Glock front rails, probably because so many holster weren't on the shelf for them yet. He had most of the rail milled away so things worked better in the holster.
I learned enough from my father to recognize this as a serviceable bit of machine work, but lacked the finishing touch of skating off another half-thousandth with an ultra-sharp mill, and a slow, steady feed.
Still, when you know exactly what you want, and you find it in a rare variation, it doesn't get much better. And I already have enough magazines, bought during the "great dream time" when I'd buy stuff I wanted, but not really needed, when it came on sale. :)
Ah win-mag, you did it again. Nice score. Seems the previous owner had the right idea, get that rail off of there, spoils the look a classic handgun. You shootin’ ‘frangible’, FMJ or lead in that one?
Wasn’t that rail non-standard, you needed an adaptor to get the shure-fire lights etc to work? All in all, it’s one I’d like to shoot some day, just never had the opportunity.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.