19Aug06

Enlightened comments from a eminent and well-known gunsmith:

"I agree! The vast majority after-market add-ons, particularly expended/enlarged controls, have no serious, or even legitimate, purpose. But, some do. For example, you and I both strongly recommend the installation of Mack Gwi nn 's D-Ring on all serious AR-15s, the precipitous removal of magazin e safeties from all serious pistols, and replacing underpowered recoil spring s on many autoloading pistols, particularly 1911s.

Other observations:

The ubiquitous 870. We see more broken ones in our shop than any other shotgun. Weak points are the ejector, wood forend, and magazine follower.

Old-style, wooden forends typically crack down the center, and the halves f all off. We routinely replace broken, wooden forends with plastic ones, which are far superior. When the ejector breaks, it is a major job to replace, as it is riveted onto the receiver. In addition, the old-style magazine follower needs to be replaced with the new one, as the old one will predictably hang up on the joint between the end of the magazine tube and the beginning of the magazine-tube extension. In fact, magazine-tube extensions are a perpetual

problem. I don't recommend any of them.

Remington's ever-popular M700 bolt gun. We see many of these too! The extractor is weak and breaks often. The first thing nearly all military/po lice snipers do to the 700 is replace the factory extractor with one from Sako o r Harris. Like the 870, the 700 was never designed for military purposes. It is a strictly a sporting arm, and always will be. The classic, Mauser action is found on all military, bolt guns. That is my preference. When you need a serious, bolt gun, have your gunsmith set you up with a Mauser or 1903 Springfield.

The point is that we gunsmiths have a knowledge and experiential base far i n excess of that of most armorers. I concede that many in my guild cater to the kiddy/competitive market, but I don't. I, and many others, confine our

practices strictly to serious guns for professional gunmen, who, like you, carry guns for serious purposes as a regular practice. Our guns work! =9D

Comment: Armorers and gunsmiths both play legitimate roles. Many times, th e two functions are combined into the same person. At the end of the discussion, serious guns need to be eminently suitable to a particular job and work dependably. On a daily basis, lives are depending on them! Non-serious g uns are of no interest, at least to me.

/John

19Aug06=20

This afternoon, in rural OH, I shot a groundhog at sixty meters with Cor-Bo n 223 DPX (53gr), out of my EOTech-equipped RA/XCR. The bullet went through and through, but the exit wound (after five inches of penetration) was spacious, and a large wad of entrails trailed out from it when we found the animal. He was DRT, dropping in place after being hit. After exit, the bullet continued downrange and kicked up a wad of dust behind the animal. However, I definitely heard the "thwock" of the initial impact.

Of course, my XCR is set up as a people gun, not a varmint gun, but I had the opportunity to take this hog out, and I wanted to see how DPX performed on living tissue. It did just fine! My riflesmith, Colby Adler, saw to it that the combination of the EOTech and the XCR were dead nuts at forty meters, w hich is MPBR (Maximum Point-Blank Range). It sure was!

/John