Gun-a-Day 47: The MLR-1722 is Finally Ready for its Close-Up

The world looked extra crisp and bright with my amber Wiley X eye protection on. These Anzi’s are old but barely used. Usually, I just grab a cheap pair of hardware store safety glasses from the truck dashboard, and these stay in the gun cabinet, but they were handy, and I was not going to risk another cartridge-failure flash in the eyes again.

Of course, it will come as no surprise to anyone that, true to the way normal life works most of the time, there were no blow-back issues of any kind today. In fact, there were no mis-feeds, jams, stove-pipes or chambering glitches of any kind today?

Coincidence? Surely not. Who knew?

I just found my new lucky charm!

That’d be helpful, maybe, if I actually believed in that kinda stuff.

🙂

Anyway, time was at a premium this morning, so I decided to limit the session to 25 shots. I also decided to stick with the 6-inch round Shoot-n-C as target and used only the center-dot targeting image on the reflex sight.

If I measured, the math might show that the shots are all within the dimensions of the 9-ring, and 21 or 22 of the hits are in 9s or better. With the non-magnifying sight.

Yes, this little Browning-branded, loss-leader, battery-powered, reflex optic is kinda like Sunset Boulevard‘s Norma Desmond. If it could talk, it might say today (finally!) in a melodramatic impression of Gloria Swanson’s voice: “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.“

Close-up is right. This is a group to be proud of. More importantly, it’s a group to be productive with. This is varmint-management accuracy here. The width of this group is comparable to a squirrel’s torso hunkered down on a tree trunk, so while I want to avoid any premature announcements of “Mission Accomplished,” I am definitely ready to say that this rifle and sight set-up is real-varmint ready.

As a matter of fact, there was a stray dog roaming the edge of the property while I was finishing up. If I’d known for sure that it didn’t belong to someone, there would have been a field test event right then and there. I’ll keep a close lookout. We’ve got coyote problem, and we’ve got a more serious, near-feral dog issue in our neck of the woods, and they are welcome on my land only if they’re ready to stop by long enough to be put down for a permanent stay.

Yes, the 25-round plan was the way to go today. If it turns out that this gun and these cartridges and the sighting system is repeatedly and dependably reliable after all, I may want to conserve as much of this ammo as possible.

Played out right, the 9000+ rounds I have left could potentially be a rest-of-my-lifetime supply.

As far as I know, it already is … Thank You, Lord, for my life this day, and, as Randy Stonehill sings, I “… celebrate this heartbeat / ’cause it just might be my last / every day is a gift from the Lord above / and they all go by so fast …” This one has almost slipped away already, so I’m extra grateful that I got to spend part of it out in the sun and the breeze and the pines and the empty cartridge cases.

Pretty much perfect.

Shot o’the Day is this pic of the MLR-1722’s breech from the magazine attachment opening. Good grief! it’s almost completely fouled, gunked and sludged with accrued smoke stain, gunpowder grit, cleaning solution residue and other unidentifiable ingredients comprising this sludgy mess.

Once again I’m a bit confused. There were no feed malfunctions today, and this pampered little rifle has never been anywhere close to being this dirty. Go figure, huh? I’m taking that under advisement and making a mental note.

Well, it won’t stay sloppy for long. I’ll give it a nice makeover session this week and put it back in its cozy cabinet for a while.

All better. Sleep tight. Good work. I’ll call for you again sometime soon, little buddy.

Gun-a-Day 40: The Fearsome Glock’L’Max is Spotted in Broad Daylight

I guess 40 consecutive days of shooting is some kind of milestone, and I feel very blessed to have gotten this far into this project. Here’s to the hope for at least 325 more days’ worth. Dei gratia & Dei volente

My goal today was to test the laser in the light of day (albeit in a mostly shady spot), and the mission produced good intel. The first magazine was emptied with laser targeting, but when I reloaded I couldn’t relocate the red beam and spent the last 15 rounds with regular sighting. This loss of signal could be (probably is?) a function of old batteries about to go out after an impressively long tour of duty, or the sun could have just been too bright for my eyes (not as good as they used to be) to distinguish the red dot and black target field from the red light … or both.

Either way, the record now includes another 25×25 and “7’s or Better” session, and I got to try out a new set-up with the camera. I like the proximity very much, but the target hits are mostly too hard to see in the shade from the morning light. The new particle board target back worked well enough that I’ll use it every day until there’s not enough left to hold the paper.

I’m glad the time lapse caught some of the flying debris. Those cedar trunks are getting chewed up pretty heavily, but they are doing good work with no pass-throughs.

Shot o’the Day is of the gear I use to make time lapse videos with my iPhone 4.

First and foremost: the app is iTimeLapse, and if I can make it work with only user-image issues and edit-errors left over after just a couple of tries, then it can be used to good effect by almost anyone.

Also important is The Glif. My web-biz partner came across this at kickstarter.com while it was still in design/development/pre-production, and we got our orders in “on the ground floor.” We both like the simplicity and versatility, and I’ve used it like crazy with the tripod screw mount.

Lately, my stand-of-choice is this mini UltraPod rig that I got from an Eddie Bauer outlet store years ago. The position-control is very, very adaptable, and the lock-down is solid. It balances well and supports/distributes weight well.

The top section of this slide-on iPhone cover by Great Shield allows me to use the Glif and helps me pretend that I’m “protecting” my little “golden Apple-item” from possible debris and fragment damage– at least over most of the phone’s surface. The lower section doesn’t quite fit the Glif, and I don’t want to stress/stretch that little gadget out of shape.

All told, this set up costs about $35 today (that’s less than I spent), and it’s about as crucial to the Gun-a-Day blog as the guns and ammo themselves.

Gun-a-Day 39: Beware the One-Eyed Glock’L’Max!

Before buying my Glock 9mm, I decided that it needed to be equipped with a guide-rod-installed LaserMax sighting system in order to be complete.

Today’s shooting session was fresh proof of the wisdom of that decision (hey, my good choices come few and far between, so I have to celebrate the lonely little fellas on those rare occasions when they happen).

The LaserMax homepage recommends annual battery replacements, but I have to admit that I haven’t changed the batteries since the day I put it in– that’s at least eight years, and I think it’s more like 10+ (I’ll have to dig out the receipts and double-check the dates). Pretty impressive lithium-life.

Today’s shots o’the day are seen in the time-lapse. That’s a big, ragged hole next to center-red, and that’s where the bullets went when I open-eyes-fired with the laser on the bullseye. No squinting, no long-arming, no rigid positioning– just a sideways stance and a firm hold and an effort to squeeze and not jerk the trigger.

There were no Brown Bear jams or misfeeds, and I think the four or five shots farthest from center were all due to user-aim issues. I noticed that I was pulling a bit on a few …

Just when I thought maybe my tests were becoming redundant and the the Glock was about ready to be rotated out for practice time with another gunI get this result and see that the pistol and the laser work, and they work well when I give them half a chance. There’s more to do and more to learn here, for sure.

It’s obvious that I’m going to have to get a real and reliable target support system in place. There’s been way too much jumping around in the past few days while I’ve been scrounging to scrap together backing boards.

The angle is not great on this video, so the full-screen view really helps.

With shots like these today, I am very interested to see if I can do better tomorrow … and to see how well the laser does in daylight down my shade-covered firing lane.

I’d love to find out that I can improve to the point of consistently hitting inside the 8-rings at 20+ feet away in a one-handed, right-shoulder-forward stance.

Gun-a-Day 38: “Taking Lapse” with My Glock 19C

A bit of box tape, an empty dishwashing detergent box, and a Birchwood Casey target were mounted on a yard sign holder (yes, that one) today, and 25 more Brown Bear bullets went downrange. Once again, the wood chips were flying.

The time-lapse images seem to show a 25 out of 25 result, but my after-session count suggests that one shot had to be using the same hole as a previous slug if, in fact, I got them all in the black. I don’t think I missed the target altogether with any of them, so that deduction makes the most sense, I guess.

I’m still finding it a bit funny that the sideways, one-handed position is giving me more overall accuracy than my two-handed stance, but I’m not complaining!

I had one ejection-catch on the 8th round of the first magazine (tried to edit out some of the delay in the time-lapse, but the gap is still obvious).

The purpose for these multi-mag target sessions is affirmed almost every day, because I keep noticing that there is a loss of focus in the middle of the pack. That’s not okay with me!

Shot 25 took quite a while because I had to find the dropped, unspent cartridge from the re-rack earlier. When it finally went, the target jumped like … uh … like it had been shot.

That last bullet hit the yard sale sign inside the box and mangled it up quite seriously. Mounting the box on the wire stand didn’t provide the stability I want and need, but the results were interesting. That wire is nothing but conceptual, abstract sculpture now, and the hit on it is the official “shot o’the day.”

Watching some shows and movies this weekend, I noticed a “hold-high-and-point-down” position for weapons held by police and soldier characters. Is this a muzzle-rise-control method that I haven’t known about (or is it a continuity problem common in procedural-fiction where dynamic image is more important than technical accuracy)?

I’m going to try a bit of that tomorrow to see if I re-acquire the target more quickly.