Yet Another Gun Blog
I thought everyone was installing pivot pins this way.
Often when people go to install the pivot pin, they end up launching the detent across the room and losing it. There are a variety of tools made to try and make this installation process quicker and simpler, but they are not as quick and simple as this process.
Youtuber “AR-15 Tech Tips in under 5 Minutes (Click Here)” shows how to install the pivot pin without any tools.
Give it a try next time.
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This was sent to me. Unfortunately, I don’t who to credit for the video.
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Hello all. Good news is that my employee isn't trying to work me to death anymore. Bad news is that it is because I don't have a job any more. No worries, I'll be back on my feet shortly. But this does give me some time to work on the site. The backend install was all screwed up, so I did a fresh WordPress install and restored a backup to it. Now I am messing around with a new theme. Hopefully will be able to make this site look a little nicer.
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I don’t normally share this story, as I am kinda ashamed about it. I lost a Surefire 6P flashlight in Iraq.
Well, I kinda lost three Surefire 6P flashlights in Iraq.
To the best of my fuzzy recollection, I didn’t loose any other gear in Iraq, just the three Surefires. I’ve told people 2 of these three stories, but not the third.
The Surefire 6P was an amazing flashlight back in the day. In 04-05ish, I got my first one. I think I was looking for a new flashlight and I read that the Secret Service used the 6P. It would run for an hour at a blinding 60 lumens. You could drop in a replacement bulb and get 120 lumens for about 30 minutes. Blindingly bright with a respectable run time.
One of the marines I knew really liked mine, so he decided to buy one the following weekend. We went to mainside PX and he got one. When he was driving us back, he was talking about how durable it was, and he bet it could survive being thrown from a moving car. Of course, minutes later, he turned it on, and threw it from his moving car. Pulling over, we backtracked and easily found, the still running Surefire. Barely damaged, running just fine. These lights are still amazing. I would be fine with every day carrying one today. But I’d prefer something small and lighter, with a longer run time.
Now in no particular order, lost Surefire 1.
We were issued some non-Surefire flashlights and a weaver 1″ ring to mount it to our rifle. They were good, but I decided to use my 6P instead in this weaver ring. These rings sucked. They kept coming loose many guys lost their issued lights to these rings falling off the rifles.
Another marine and myself were in the back of a highback Humvee. We were providing security from the vehicle as we drove along. Our convoy went fast down a really bad condition washboard road, and we were bounced all over the place. The other marine and myself could barely keep ourselves from being bounced out of the vehicle. Finally, when we were on smooth terrain I found that the mount had come loose, and I had lost that 6P. Quite a few of the issued lights were lost because of these mounts. Constantly re-tightening them didn’t work. They just sucked.
At one point we set up a patrol base in a sandy area. I’m not sure if it would technically be called sand dunes, but imagine something like that. We dug holes in the sand, and lived in those holes. Due to the slow ops tempo, it was a pretty nice time.
We had to leave that area in a hurry in the middle of the night. We used white lights to pack up quick. We also had to fill in those holes we were living in. I was strugging to try and pack up quickly, as I thought we had less time than we had. I stuffed all my stuff in my pack using my Surefire 6P to give me the light I needed to do the job. Once my pack was packed, I set down my 6P on top of my pack, and filled in the hole. When I returned to the pack, the light was gone.
While it is possible that someone else might have stumbled across my pack in the darkness and took the light. It is more likely that it got bumped and/or the light rolled off the pack into the sand. I crawled around a little in the dark feeling around the sand for the light, but didn’t find it.
Sometimes you have a bad day. During a patrol, I fell into a canal and got completely soaked and covered with mud. Back in the patrol base I have to strip, clean gear, clean myself, etc. When I emptied my pockets, I put my stuff on top one of the sandbag walls at our patrol base as I cleaned them.
There was a local kid that was coming by our camps and patrols. He offered to help out so we would give him some money to do simple tasks or buy and bring us snacks, etc. He built up a pretty good rapport with us.
It was now nighttime, I was nearly hypothermic from being soaking wet as it was cooling down. Someone suggested paying the kid a few bucks to clean my BDUs and some of my gear and I don’t recall if I got a say in that. Either way, I was very grateful for the help. When I stood watch that night, I borrowed another marines body armor. He had a size smaller than I was issued. I had lost enough weight in Iraq that it fit me so much better that I kept trying to get my armor switched out after that, but it never happened.
In any event, the following day when I collected my stuff off the sandbag wall, my 6P with clicky tailcap was missing. I wrote it off as lost.
Soon after, we were told by higher ups not to talk to the kid, and that he was banned from being near our encampments. He was found with a military flashlight. He claimed it wasn’t stolen, but it was decided that he couldn’t be trusted.
I never told anyone it was my flashlight. When I think about this I wonder if he stole it or found it laying around and decided to keep it instead of handing it over.
Losing all three of those 6P lights were my fault. Failing to keep better accountability of my gear, failing to dummy cord a known failure point, etc. But I think because it was my personally owned lights, I was a little more lax than with my issued gear. Still cost me the cost of a few lights.
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Alright, this isn’t a proper review, just some commentary and first impressions.
Many times I have wanted to set up a 9mm training carbine just like my main AR15. At times I have done this. More reciently, I started to like the idea of having nearly identical 5.56, .300 Blackout, and 9×19 Nato uppers. 5.56 for general use, .300 for when I feel like wasting money, and 9mm for training. I’d prefer this training gun to be reliable and dependable enough to use as a fighting rifle by itself. I could build nearly identical uppers in various calibers, but I wanted to get something factory assembled if possible. Eventually I found that Noveske offered nearly identical 9mm, 5.56, and .30 short & weak uppers. Or they claim to, they never seem to be in stock. I picked up a used 5.56 Noveske upper. I’ll talk about that some other time.
Finally, Noveske said they had the 9mm upper in stock.
I spent the money and ordered the upper. When I placed the order, Noveske said they had a two-week lead time on items in stock. At the beginning of week four, I asked them for an order status update and they told me they were shipping things in 3 weeks. I got it at the end of week four.
Annoying to wait that long, but it was worth it. Great packaging, nice fit and finish. Everything covered with Noveske logos including the thread protector.
The upper came with a Noveske marked Geissele “Super Badass Charging Handle”. Now I am behind the time and haven’t tried all these new charging handles, this one is pretty nice.
Also included is a sample of Froglube. I’ve read plenty of mixed opinions on this stuff. I’ll give it a try and will keep an open mind.
I threw the upper on a SBR lower of mine and added a SilencerCo Octane9. First range session went great, at least as far as the upper was concerned.
So far, I really like it. I’ll do a proper review later.
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I’m getting older and so are my preps. I’ve been going through my old gear and supplies and finding things rotting away, spoiling, etc.
So when I came to my 15-20 year old chemlights, I did not expect them to work, and I purchased new 8 hour duration white chemlights.
Once they came in, I tested some of my old chemlights, and it made me pretty happy to see that they still worked. I was rather worried that they would have been activated in the packages from rough handling in the past.
These old glowsticks of various ages all still worked.
The yellow colored “Brightstick” brand glowlight was the dimmest. But it came with some red cord that could be use to secure or signal with this light.
The white “Cyalume” brand light was nowhere near as bright as the old green Cyalume lights. The 12 hour duration green chemlight would light up a dark room enough that you could see what was in it, but not so with the 8 hour white light. I now know to mainly order the green lights and to use the others just for marking.
It has been over 12 hours since I activated these three lights, and they are still faintly glowing. The green is clearly the brightest.
If you have not used a chemlight/glowlight before, these are disposible single use light sources. They are a slightly flexible tube filled with non-toxic (but not good for you) chemicals. In there is a breakable vial where when you bend the light you break the vial allowing the chemicals to mix and the activating the light source. These are available in a variety of sizes and colors, including IR for marking under night vision. You will see the 6″ long green and IR light sticks commonly used for marking in the military, and all manner of these glowsticks popular at raves and places where loud music and drugs flow easily.
I am going to be buying more of the 6″ long 12 hour green glowsticks for illumination. I’ll just use these white glowsticks for temporary marking of locations at night. I feel much better knowing that they have a long shelf life and that they are durable enough not have broken when I had them in backpacks/buttpacks/car trunks, etc. At about $2 each, I wouldn’t recommend buying tons of them. I think other light sources are better value and more practical for emergency use. But these are still very handy to have.
Back in 2006, one of the radio posts I was in had no electricity, so we would use about 20 glowsticks a night to light up the entire comms room.
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I’m working on overhauling the site. Using a premade template to build it out. It is going to take me a bit to get this site where I want it, so please bear with me. Thanks,
Howard
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-Updated for clarity – also working on the site so things may look rough-
A photo of a .45 ACP AR15 has been circling the web. I first saw it on Reddit r/NFA where a poster u/miley_sinus compared it to a DOE gun. I feel that is a very bad comparison, it is close to a Colt 9mm SMG, but not like the DOE guns at all. Lacking the special front sight and handguard.
Appears to be a .45 ACP carbine with fixed field sights. Knights Armament rail and vertical forward grip, CAR stock. KAC rear sling mount. Some sort of aftermarket safety and bolt catch. A newer suppressor mount and an Eotech mounted on a gooseneck mount. An ERGO grip and KAC trigger guard.
I think the main thing I find silly is the use of the gooseneck mount when they could have just mounted the Eotech to the handguard. But, it is an Eotech, so it isn’t like they have good choice in optics to begin with.
So, a coworker texts me this same photo of the gun above talking about how much he likes that setup. To taunt him, I threw this together last night and bought it to work with me.
This is a SBR LMT lower with a Colt 9mm SMG upper. I threw on an Aimpoint CompM4 on a goodneck mount, and a VFG on an AAC rail adaptor for the CAR handguards.
Is it the same, no, but similar. Is it better? Nah, just different, but similar.
Was there a point to this. . . no. Just sharing.
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I have a Bulgarian SLR-106FR, a 5.56×45 AK rifle, that I use to keep up my familiarity and proficiency with AKs.
A while back, I decided to upgrade my AK with a Zenito railed handguard and top-cover. I purchased from IvanTheBear and after the slow international mail got it to me, I installed these rails on my rifle. Unlike AR parts, these require fitting, or in my case, lots of hammering with a rubber mallet.
The B10M lower handguard has rails on the left, right, and bottom. The B-33 cover mounts to this handguard and provides a very rigid optics mounting rail.
These products are well made, and I would recommend them to someone looking to modernize an AK. I’m taking them off mine because I simply wasn’t mounting anything to them. Most AK’s don’t have optics, so I train with this rifle with out running optics. I wasn’t running any lights or lasers so I wasn’t mounting anything to the handguard.
If I were to do it again, I would probably get the B10U or B10L where it has their BIAS modular mounting system instead of the rail system. That way I wouldn’t need to have rail covers on the rail. I’d also consider the B-22 rail to mount a mini-red dot right above the iron sights.
That said, if I had done that, I would probably be saying how I’d rather have the rails.
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Youtube channel The Armourer’s Bench put together this nice video about Savage Rifles being used in Ukraine.
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