Bonus!!

Took Noah to the range this evening and we burned through a few hundred rounds of ammo in the .22LR and .17M2 rifles. We had a bunch of fun even though we sweated our patooties off. The funny thing is that when I got around to cleaning the Remington M597 tonight, an "extra" part fell out of the trigger assembly when I removed it from the receiver. It looks like a little metal spacer but I couldn't find anywhere inside that it might have come from. Funny thing is that we've shot this rifle bunches of times before and never ended up with extra parts. Even funnier is that I didn't even take the trigger group apart. Here's a pic of the part:




Will have to contact Remington and get their take on what this might be and if its appearance might be troublesome. Given my recent luck with guns, I'm beginning to think I should take up a different hobby. :-(

What to do?

The weekend is upon us and I need to plan some extracurricular activities. :-)Movies are always an option, with the following high on the list:






Still need to do some work on the Magnumlite .17M2 rifle, so a trip to the range may also be in order. Window shopping ('cause I'm broke!!) at the game or gun store is usually good for a pick-me-up, too. I'm on the fence about a couple of games - to buy or not to buy, that is the question. Battlefield: Bad Company and Metal Gear Solid 4 have piqued my interest, but not enough to run right out and buy them. Maybe I'll just hold out for Mercenaries 2: World in Flames next month. I've got several other games that I need to finish anyway.

Thanks to my wife for getting the MP3 player installed and working on the blog. If you don't like what's playing at the moment - too bad...

Vacation is finally over!!

Well, all I can say is, "It's good to be home." Vacations are more stressful than relaxing for me. Not sure why, but that seems to be the way it always turns out.

We managed to do some fun stuff like spending the day at the indoor water park (no sunburn - YIPPEE!!!) and wearing ourselves to the bone at Kings Island. More leisurely activities included several visits to the Cheesecake Factory and a stroll through the Newport Aquarium. Now, on to more important matters...

I managed to hit the range shortly before vacation and try out some different ammo in the Magnumlite .17M2 rifle. Ran some CCI, Hornady, and Eley rounds down the bore with the following results: all three brands showed case head bulging just like the Remington ammo; there were no case head ruptures from any of the three; and, functioning was 100% with CCI and Hornady, and 96% (2 failures to eject out of 50 rounds) for the Eley. The Eley was much stinkier and dirtier than the other brands, which is odd considering the Brits usually take great care in their ammo manufacturing, especially with a "target" driven brand like Eley. Here are a few pics of some of the spent casings:






So, at this point, it looks as if the gun may need to go back to Magnum Research to correct a timing problem or some other issue such as bolt mass or recoil or hammer spring tension. Needless to say, I'm a bit disappointed in the performance of this gun considering it is essentially a custom "production" conversion built on the ultra-reliable Ruger 10/22 action. Oh well, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Surprise!!

Pretty decent day at work. Reported end of fiscal year results to corporate and we max'ed out all of our safety and environmental goals. It was a tough year and things were touch-and-go at times, but it feels good to do what lots of people thought couldn't be done in a plant like ours. Next year will be very difficult, but we're just enjoying the moment for right now.

Came home to find out that Shari had picked up Guitar Hero: Aerosmith on the PS3 for us. Seems like a lot of fun, but I didn't get much of a chance to really play it. I didn't really know the Aerosmith songs in the first level, but this was offset by the fact that you get to play as an opening band for the first several songs, ripping through classics like "Dream Police" (Cheap Trick), "I Hate Myself for Loving You" (Joan Jett & the Blackhearts), and "All Day and All of the Night" (The Kinks).

The graphics render amazingly likenesses of the band. I can't wait to get to some of the tracks further into the game like "Cat Scratch Fever" (Ted Nugent) and the Aerosmith tracks I know - "Sweet Emotion", "Dream On", "Train Kept A Rollin", "Walk This Way", etc.

Gonna be a busy weekend - July 4th, range time with the new .17M2 ammo, prepping for vacation next week...

Not much happening...

The usual - work, yelling at the kids, etc. Got a couple of replies on the .17M2 ammo problem. Remington says ship all of it back for a full refund (which is not what I asked for, but a nice gesture on their part). I plan to ship back one box for them to check out and see if it is safe or not. If they test it and deem it "unsafe", I'll ship it all back. I got it at a killer deal ($3.49/box), so I would like to keep it if at all possible.

Magnum Research said to shoot some different ammo (which arrived via BBT today) through the gun. I now have CCI, Eley and Hornady to run through it and see how they function. Since Eley manufactures the .17M2 ammo for Remington, I'm not holding my breath that it will work well. Lots of folks have had good luck with CCI; mixed reviews on the Hornady round. The latter two are significantly more pricey (about double) than the Eley/Remington stuff. Hopefully, the Fourth of July weekend will present an opportunity to hit the range and try them out.

Been thinking about culling a few more guns from the safe. Something new and different is always catching my eye and the routine is "sell one, buy one". We'll see how that shakes out. This is the gun that makes me drool uncontrollably - the Springfield Armory SOCOM II in urban camo.