Friends,
It's an amazing time in life where I have the esteemed privilege of moving my blog to my own domain name. I hope that both of you, my faithful readers, will join my celebration and come to the new website. In the spirit of hope and change, we will have a bit-warming party at the new place. So, come one, come both, to evylrobot.com. Many thanks,
Evyl Robot Michael
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Judgement Part-III
I'm sure that both of you remember when I was talking about my shotgun, or the other time that I was talking about my shotgun. Well, after waiting more than two months, I have received a magazine extension, and canceled an order for two others. I will never give my business to Impact Guns again. My order from Morning Bite initially got shipped to the wrong address, but the communication was great, the owner took the time to explain the situation to me, and resolved it to my satisfaction. If I were into fishing, I would give a lot more of my business to them. We tried the mag extension on Jen's 20-gauge, but it didn't like it. It kept trying to double-feed shells from the mag, which caused it to repeatedly and completely jam the action. It only takes a couple of minutes to clear, but that's a couple of minutes in which YOU COULD DIE in the wrong situation. It works like a charm on my gun. I went ahead and put the magazine spring and retainer from my 12 in Jenni's 20, so that increased her capacity from four to five, and the gun actually cycles the mag better now than it did in its stock form. Score! So, we each got an upgrade out of the deal. I've been wanting to take some final pics of the gun, but I just don't feel like it right now. Maybe tomorrow I'll take some pics of my personal go-to guns on the back porch right before sunset. This would exclude my beloved .44 Magnum, of course - since it is only a pleasure shooter and target gun. But, I think I could take a really nice picture of my 586's, Star-15, and my Ranger. There's something to think about in my dreams... *yawn* ...I guess I'm still fighting that whole time change B. S.
Monday, March 9, 2009
EBR Dissipation Range Report
Success!
Here's the rifle with my ladybug helper:
Here's the setting for the test:
And, here's the proof in the pudding:
Please pardon my goofy grin. I'm not sure what's up with that. Here's the close up of the target in question:
That's at 100-yards, prone. Given a little more time with the gun, and some high-quality ammunition, I'm confident that I can tighten up that group quite a bit. I really see no reason that this should be any less than a sub-minute rifle. It looks like she's pulling slightly to the right, but it got to the point that I didn't want to mess with the sight adjustment any more for the weekend. The gun shoots like a dream, and I should have done this modification a long time ago.
Yesterday, I mounted a single rail on the bottom of the handguard. I'm going to have to get some better handguards to get where I am trying to go with this thing. I still don't think I want to do a quad rail, as I like the low size and weight of the plastic. At any rate, I'm having fun, and that's really the point of the thing. I wish the antis could figure that one out...
Here's the rifle with my ladybug helper:
Here's the setting for the test:
And, here's the proof in the pudding:
Please pardon my goofy grin. I'm not sure what's up with that. Here's the close up of the target in question:
That's at 100-yards, prone. Given a little more time with the gun, and some high-quality ammunition, I'm confident that I can tighten up that group quite a bit. I really see no reason that this should be any less than a sub-minute rifle. It looks like she's pulling slightly to the right, but it got to the point that I didn't want to mess with the sight adjustment any more for the weekend. The gun shoots like a dream, and I should have done this modification a long time ago.
Yesterday, I mounted a single rail on the bottom of the handguard. I'm going to have to get some better handguards to get where I am trying to go with this thing. I still don't think I want to do a quad rail, as I like the low size and weight of the plastic. At any rate, I'm having fun, and that's really the point of the thing. I wish the antis could figure that one out...
Friday, March 6, 2009
EBR Dissipation
Since the wife got her EBR, I will be doing some customization to the old Doublestar - to really transform it into my own gun. There have been several modifications that I've wanted to do to this, but since we were sharing an EBR, I didn't want to personalize it too much and ostracize my dear wife. The first step has been to extend the sight radius to rifle-length like the Bushmaster Dissipator. This particular mod just seems like a no-brainer to me. You get the sight radius of the rifle, but retain the handiness of the carbine. That's a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned.
I found a low-profile gas block on ebay for cheap. It came in via USPS on Wednesday. The price was right, as the machining wasn't terribly tight on the thing, and there were some holes that I had to clean up/redrill prior to installation. I don't regret buying the thing, as it was about half the price of a higher-quality block, and it ultimately mounted to the gun as if it was made for this specific gun. If I do another such conversion, I will probably go for a better gas block, but I don't see how this one could possibly hurt at this point. I'm not completely convinced that I want to go with fancy, expensive handguards, so I got a cheap set of full-length, plastic handguards at the local military surplus, and on Wednesday evening went to town tearing down the upper so I could rebuild it to my own specifications.
The stock sight block got remounted closer to the muzzle, after replacement with the low profile block. I plugged the chamber with my pinky and blew down the muzzle to make certain that I had aligned the gas holes between the barrel and the block. No problem there! Once all was said and done, I went to install the full-length handguards, and that's when I made the discovery that there are different handguard caps. I haven't handled a whole lot of these things, so I hadn't noticed, and nobody told me that there are differences. The cap that came on my carbine is the standard carbine, round cap. The handguards that I bought fit the old-style, triangular cap. My impatience told me to modify parts to fit together, but my better sense told me to shop for the proper-fitting parts. Yesterday, I made a couple of phone calls and ran to the military surplus store again only to discover that nobody in town has either a set of round-cap handguards or a triangular handguard cap that they can sell me.
Last night, I revisited the 'modify' option. I spent a couple hours with a hand-rasp, filing away plastic until the handguards would fit into the round cap. (Talk about pounding a triangular peg into a round hole!) Ultimately, the rifle came out looking very nice. It now wears the full-length handguards, and has the rifle-length sight radius on the carbine upper. This extended the sight radius by about 33% - which should vastly improve my long-range accuracy as long as the ammo can keep up with the machine and me. I was so tired last night that I didn't feel like taking any pictures, but they will be forthcoming. Maybe I can have a little EBR photo session this evening or tomorrow morning.
I'm enough of a traditionalist that I don't want to mount a bunch of excess crap all over my rifle like a lot of folks do. My rifle doesn't need a light, and a laser, and a holographic sight, and a scope, and a radar, and an anemometer, and a vertical fore-grip, and ammo storage, and battery storage, etc., etc., etc... Heck! My weapon of choice is a 12-gauge pump action, with a well-tuned, double-action revolver scoring a very close second. It's no small wonder that I even wanted an AR in the first place. Honestly, if it were not for the threat of a new AWB, I probably would have never bought one at all. But, I digress - I follow the KISS philosophy with my rifle. I don't think I want the bulk, pokey corners, and heft of a quad rail, but I would like a single rail on the bottom side of the handguard where I can easily mount a sling swivel and possibly a bipod in multiple locations. I would like to get a quick-disconnect scope that I can use as an alternative to the iron sights from time to time. Prior to that, I would like to get some nicer irons. The sights on the gun do the job, but they could be a whole lot better.
The gun is really sharp looking, even if I say so myself. Stay tuned for pics and a range report! I hope both of you enjoy them!
I found a low-profile gas block on ebay for cheap. It came in via USPS on Wednesday. The price was right, as the machining wasn't terribly tight on the thing, and there were some holes that I had to clean up/redrill prior to installation. I don't regret buying the thing, as it was about half the price of a higher-quality block, and it ultimately mounted to the gun as if it was made for this specific gun. If I do another such conversion, I will probably go for a better gas block, but I don't see how this one could possibly hurt at this point. I'm not completely convinced that I want to go with fancy, expensive handguards, so I got a cheap set of full-length, plastic handguards at the local military surplus, and on Wednesday evening went to town tearing down the upper so I could rebuild it to my own specifications.
The stock sight block got remounted closer to the muzzle, after replacement with the low profile block. I plugged the chamber with my pinky and blew down the muzzle to make certain that I had aligned the gas holes between the barrel and the block. No problem there! Once all was said and done, I went to install the full-length handguards, and that's when I made the discovery that there are different handguard caps. I haven't handled a whole lot of these things, so I hadn't noticed, and nobody told me that there are differences. The cap that came on my carbine is the standard carbine, round cap. The handguards that I bought fit the old-style, triangular cap. My impatience told me to modify parts to fit together, but my better sense told me to shop for the proper-fitting parts. Yesterday, I made a couple of phone calls and ran to the military surplus store again only to discover that nobody in town has either a set of round-cap handguards or a triangular handguard cap that they can sell me.
Last night, I revisited the 'modify' option. I spent a couple hours with a hand-rasp, filing away plastic until the handguards would fit into the round cap. (Talk about pounding a triangular peg into a round hole!) Ultimately, the rifle came out looking very nice. It now wears the full-length handguards, and has the rifle-length sight radius on the carbine upper. This extended the sight radius by about 33% - which should vastly improve my long-range accuracy as long as the ammo can keep up with the machine and me. I was so tired last night that I didn't feel like taking any pictures, but they will be forthcoming. Maybe I can have a little EBR photo session this evening or tomorrow morning.
I'm enough of a traditionalist that I don't want to mount a bunch of excess crap all over my rifle like a lot of folks do. My rifle doesn't need a light, and a laser, and a holographic sight, and a scope, and a radar, and an anemometer, and a vertical fore-grip, and ammo storage, and battery storage, etc., etc., etc... Heck! My weapon of choice is a 12-gauge pump action, with a well-tuned, double-action revolver scoring a very close second. It's no small wonder that I even wanted an AR in the first place. Honestly, if it were not for the threat of a new AWB, I probably would have never bought one at all. But, I digress - I follow the KISS philosophy with my rifle. I don't think I want the bulk, pokey corners, and heft of a quad rail, but I would like a single rail on the bottom side of the handguard where I can easily mount a sling swivel and possibly a bipod in multiple locations. I would like to get a quick-disconnect scope that I can use as an alternative to the iron sights from time to time. Prior to that, I would like to get some nicer irons. The sights on the gun do the job, but they could be a whole lot better.
The gun is really sharp looking, even if I say so myself. Stay tuned for pics and a range report! I hope both of you enjoy them!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Stock Market Bargains.
A couple days ago, the stock market closed under 7,000. So, Jen and I bought it. Yup - we know a bargain when we see it. We had been scrimping and saving, and we were able to pony up the $7,000.00 that the entire stock market was worth. Once we finally come out of this pesky recession, we'll be super, uber rich! I'm gonna have me sooooooooo many fur coats it isn't even funny! I'm going to be hosting the greatest party in history! You are all invited, too! *singing to a tune* Rich rich rich rich riiiiich riiiiiich!
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