Yep. Went to the gun show today. First of all I have no idea of what was going on, but I have never seen a crowd at the Tampa gun show like this one. Maybe it was this large due to the fact that there hasn't been a show since November? Maybe its due to uncertainty over the economy? Maybe a lot of folks just want to shoot? Who knows, they could be concerned about the election. All I know is that they must have had at least 20,000 people there in the 5 hours I was shopping. Something to chew on I guess. In the mean time, one of the things I went looking for was a reloading press. No such luck. Some supplies, but no reloaders. The wife picked up a few things (new concealment purse), we got a lot fo ammo from Georgia ammo, and oh yea, I managed to pick up this little diddy: One caveat, this is a used rifle, but other than that speck of rust you see in the second pic, this sucker was basically a closet queen. Its not like its gonna be hard to clean this beauty up. For the price they wanted and the fact that its a colt, I couldnt pass it up.
I was dismayed to see a new AR in the sports shop I visited today. Of course I sold mine in 1994 when the NJ ban went into effect. Then they loosened the restrictions a few years later, and I found I could have kept her . I paid $560 for my AR in 1986-ish. The new one I saw today was going for a bit over $1000.
I'm really torn on what to buy. I want some kind of assault rifle. It seems everyone around here has an AR. I want something different but EBs Socom II is a little expensive. I'm intrigued by the Finnish (Valmet) and Serbian (Zastava) upgraded versions of the AK firing 5.56. Wonder if you can get any of them over here?
If you have the means, I highly suggest picking up a M-14 clone. Not only is it chambered in a real killing caliber (it's a fucking .308 and that'll wreck anybody's day if they find themselves on the end of it), but it has class oozing off of it just in a stock set up and it can be loaded out with everything under the sun just like the Evil Black Rifles can. as soon as my dealer's distributer has them back in stock, I'm picking up a match grade M-14.
Yeah, that's what the M1A SOCOM II I was talking about is. I plan on getting one eventually, but at the moment I don't have the funds...
I paid $999.00 for my "pre-ban" (not exactly--it doesn't have a bayonet lug ) 20" AR in 1997. I was going through some old papers the other day and found the receipt for it. Four years earlier, I paid less than half that for the carbine. Still the best deal I've ever gotten on a gun (including the Mosin-Nagant that was given to me by a coworker).
As I recall, my Colt AR-15 was my 19th birthday present to myself and I paid about $550 for it. That was 1988 and California had a pretty strict AWB just a couple of years later. I always kind of regretted not spending the approx. $600 to get a companion CAR-15 carbine (much like the beauty that frontline just got) for my rifle... ...but I fixed that little oversight last month.
Damn, nearly 2 1/2 hours later of cleaning and Im finally done. All I can say is thank God for modern solvents. I used the Break Free Foaming bore cleaner. Its says on the bottle that the foam may turn a shade of blue as it dissolves the copper. Well it didnt turn a shade of blue. It turned in to a blue very similar to the color surrounding this post. I had to use a pair of channel locks to move the damned hard guard retention ring enough to get the hand guards off. I never had that much of a problem in the past. Yeah I scratched up a bit of the finish doing so, but man you gotta see the crud I got out of there. I got a lot of the rust scrubbed off but not all of it. I'm going to have to get some finer brushes. I also broke the rods on the cleaning kit. But I switched to one of those string bore cleaners and volia. I think Im gonna run out and get an OTIS kit tomorrow. Oh and carbon build up..ugh. The jack ass who owned it prior to me must have never cleaned it. But such is life. It's as clean as a whistle now. The bolt moves a lot more freely, the foward assist is no longer sticky and the charging handle glides. I've got a buddy with a shop that has both us an industrial parts washer and an ultrasonic cleaner. I think I'll be stopping by there. In the mean time I put some Birchwood and Casey Rust inhibitor on and also some Break Free. That should keep it nice and protected and arrest any further rust development until I figure out what Im going to do next. Its not a rust bucket, but Id like to get rid of all what remains. In the mean time Im gonna try to get some rack time and head out to the range tomorrow. I dont think Im going to be able to properly zero it, but I'll probably just plink Sunday. But the cool thing is that there are plenty of holidays for me to get accessories. Next on my list is a press and dies. The cost of ammo has gotten outrageous.
Non-chlorinated brake cleaner and synthetic 5w-30 work for me just fine. You can't go wrong with reloading, though. I spend more time on my knees at the range than Tex... wait wrong forum.
Go to the Bushmaster site. They have the handguard removal tool. You'll actually wonder what the hell you ever did without it.
In 1992, I bought a 20" AR-15 with a DPMS upper and Colt lower with a fully legal, registered, civilian transferable drop-in auto sear and three position selector switch for $2,500. I sold it in 2002 for $25,000. I needed the cash to make a down payment on the house. I wish I'd kept the rifle.
Damn, sorry to hear about that Elwood. Bear, thanks for the idea. But I now have a Queen of Misery Mark 1, Mod 1 tool. Ever since I got the crud out of it last night its been at least manageable by two folks. Well I took it and the kids and wife to the range with our rifles. My son, Chuluthu Jr, is either impressing the hell out of me or scaring me. The kid can operate his 'cricket' .22LR so smoothly. At 50 meters he was doing pretty good for someone with little training. Im gonna start working on his sight picture. He's got the breathing down pat. In my world, all was not well. I have 3 failures to eject. I believe its due to the reloads from Georgia Arms. I started to inspect the base of the rounds and found several that were lacking. Once I started to exclude suspect rounds I had no feed problems. But Im still gonna keep my eye on the extractor. Next up, my groups sucked ass at 50 meters. Today was just to get a feel for the rifle. I dunno if it was me or if it was the fact that I was shooting 55gr .223 through a 1:7 barrel. I'm more willing to bet it was me since up to 100m the 55 gr shouldn't be wobbling all over the place. So I got a bench rest today and will try it out with the rest in the next few weeks. I did get a general zero in place and man I forgot how much I have to elevate the front sight post and how far to the right I had to move my rear peep sight. Oh and todays product plug...Break Free Powder Blast. Holy shit! That stuff if fantastic. It's like having my very own drum of solvent in a high pressure sprayer. Made my clean up go a hell of a lot faster. I enthusiastically recommend this product.
55 grain bullet out of a 1:7 barrel shouldn't be a problem at all. The bullet shouldn't be wobbling at all. When I first got my AR, I was getting shit groups too...but once I got used to the sights, the groups started getting smaller.
Couldnt tell ya. I was thinking of that too. So I got a spare out (one of the 5 that magically didnt get turned in to the supply room when I got out) but I never loaded it. Yeah I know. Stupid me.
A small bullet through a tight barrel shouldn't cause wobbling. If anything, it will cause over-gyration. At worst, the nose of a 55 grain bullet might be still pointing up while it's on it's downward arc. Larger bullets out of lower spiral per-inch barrels is what usually wobbles.
Just curious - what did you give for the rifle Frontline? I might have missed that part, but I don't think you said.
