Tag Archives: gear

Stock options

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Well, other than deadly pathogens floating in the air, it was pretty nice the other day so why not take a trip to the range? Gun du jour? The PTR-91 GI model. Merciful Crom, it is a thunderous hammer of righteousness. There is no two ways about it – it’s heavy. But it shoots everything I feed it, and I was able to ring the 100-yd 8″ gong with pretty good regularity. The .308 AR-10 is probably a better choice in every regard (weight, ergonomics, availability, etc.) but dang if that heavy hunk of sheet metal doesn’t inspire confidence.

Realistically though…a little .223 carbine is hard to beat. And speaking of .223 carbine….

Cue the music………

Ta-da! Yes, it is the repro of the classic Ruger GB folding stock…made famous by a crack commando unit that was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. The folks who make this stock called me the other day to tell me it was on the way. Being a fabulously nosey person I asked what the backstory was. As it turned out, the company (Samson) had a pre-existing relationship with Ruger, making parts for them or somesuch. One of the Samson employees kept hassling Ruger to bring back the folding stock for the Mini-14. Ruger kept blowing the guy off, telling him that no one was interested, the Mini was a dated design that wasn’t really selling very well anyway, etc, etc. Finally, to shut the guy up, Ruger gave them the moulds and told them to go make it. Samson put out a pre-order and the response was far greater than what Ruger had imagined it would be. So…with Rugers blessing (and, it was hinted, some licensing fees) Samson picked up the torch and is now making the original Ruger folder stock. But, enough history…let’s drop it on a Mini-14 and get on the jazz.

No lie, I giggled like an idiot after this stock was on. Started whistling the A-Team theme and didn’t stop the whole time I wrote this post.

I’ll be the first to say it, when push comes to shoot, I’d rather have a little AR carbine than the Mini-14. The AR is more accurate, better ergonomics, better sights, better triggers, more modular, cheaper mags, etc, etc. But, there is just something about the Mini-14 that says ‘truck gun’ without going too Burt Gummer. This thing will most likely become a range toy or safe queen. Although…it might become a ‘truck gun’ for under the seat with a half dozen magazines. Telll you what though…I can’t wait to take this to the range and see the looks from people who either a) never knew Mini-14’s had stocks like this or b) people who haven’t seen one in thirty years.

And if you think that’s cute, wait’ll you see the itty-bitty baby PDW I’m putting together later this week.

Article – The man who refused to freeze to death

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I know that even in the supposedly warm climes like Afghanistan the temperatures can drop to killer levels of cold. Now, imagine how cold it can get in places that are actually traditionally considered to be cold places. Then add in some wet clothes. And you have a recipe for disaster. Unless you’re this guy:

Heimaey is the largest of the Westman Islands, an archipelago south of Iceland mostly inhabited by puffins. On Stórhöfði peninsula, at the southernmost point of Heimaey is an outcrop that juts into the Atlantic Ocean. The local weather station here claims to be one of the windiest places in Europe.

It was here, in the early hours of March 12 1984, that 23-year-old Guðlaugur Friðþórsson stumbled towards salvation. His bare feet were bleeding from deep cuts caused by the volcanic rock hidden beneath the snow, his clothes soaked in seawater and frozen to his body. He should have already died several times over, but something deep inside Friðþórsson propelled him forwards.

An interesting article that explores the mechanics of freezing to death and, interestingly, the mechanics of not freezing to death. I did find this part very illuminating:

“When you come out of the water you get evaporative cooling,” says Tipton. “This is a really potent way of losing heat from the body.” Ordinarily you would want to strip off and put dry clothing on, but in the absence of that, climbing into a large plastic bag will reduce evaporative cooling and convective cooling.

“If you get someone wet at 4C and they have got a litre of water in their clothing; if all of that water evaporates they are going to have a fall in body temperature of 10C,” says Tipton. “If you put them through the same scenario and then put them in a plastic bag they can use their body to heat up that water. It is contained in the bag so it cannot evaporate away. Those people lost half a degree, so they were 20 times better off.”

Seems like everyone in hunting camp carries those deck-of-card-sized thin mylar ‘space blankets’. Turns out, according to this article, that you might be better served with a big ol’ contractor-grade garbage bag. Personally, I rather like these. But what I’m a bigger fan of is a gigantic conflagration that lights up the countryside like some sort of flaming hellscape. Problem is, of course, that if you wait until you’re freezing to death to build a fire you’re going to freeze to death because your manual dexterity and clear-headedness went out the window a few seconds after you fell through the ice. That’s where things like these come in handy. In practice, I go way overboard on flammables when it comes to packing stuff for wandering through hills….flares, fuel cubes, lifeboat matches, waxed dryer lint, and, if I have room for it, a tiny fuel bottle of kerosene. Except for the small fuel bottle, everything fits in an M4 pouch which means there’s no reason to leave it behind anytime you step off the pavement. Whatever you wind up packing, make your choices with an eye towards having hands that are so frozen you can barely manipulate your fingers… big, clumsy, fumbling movements will be the order of the day when need a fire now..plan accordingly.

But, back to the article at hand, freezing to death (or hypothermia, if you want to get technical, I suppose) apparently doesn’t have to be your fate if you can keep a clear head, a little extra poundage around the abdomen, and make good decisions. Of course, dressing for the occasion also comes in handy…wool, synthetics, etc.

And don’t let the calendar fool you….lotsa people die of hypothermia in August. All it takes is a fast summer thunderstorm, a steady blowing wind, and maybe some cool temps at a high altitude and you are in big trouble.

Lithium AA batts at CostCo

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If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that my experience, and the experience of pretty much everyone else reading, has been that at some point your Duracell batteries are going to crap the bed and ruin your device. To prevent this sort of thing, I’ve instituted a pattern of checking the batteries in all my devices on a regular basis in order to catch these things before they do irreparable damage.

An alternative to this sort of thing is to use lithium batteries. It seems that the leaking issue doesn’t occur with the lithium batts nearly as often as with the others. The problem, of course, is that lithium batts, while being awesome, are not cheap. As it turns out, Costco, which is often the source of the troublesome Duracells, is also selling bulk packed lithium AA batts.

At eighty-five cents each, that’s a rather large discount from the 4- and 8-packs that you see at the cash register of your local supermarket.

I was checking the batteries in my gear the other day and discovered that the rechargeable Eneloops that were in my ICOM R6 (highly recommended) were deader than Biden’s nomination possibilities. They apparently just self-discharged over time. Disappointing, but thats why I make sure to carry extra batteries with my gear. Since CostCo is make the lithium batts affordable, I’ll swap those into the R6 instead of the rechargeables. (And also into the spare battery carrier that I keep in my Bag O’ Tricks).

So far, I have not experienced any problems with the lithium batteries but I’m not foolish enough to just assume I never will. So…regular gear inspections will continue, even if the item in question has lithium batts in it.

Stay sharp

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One of the knives that I stockpile for Der Tag is the BK&T… it is basically a sharpened crowbar. It has the end-of-the-world durability Im after at a reasonable price. But the sheaths that come with them suck. So I usually replace them with these highly recommended SpecOps sheaths. Note that the sheath has a pocket for a sharpening stone or similar device. I was having a heck of a time finding a stone that fit that pocket correctly. Then, as I was perusing the knife section at Cabela’s, I found this:

Very much me likey. It puts a fast edge on pretty much anything, has built in angle guides, two grades of diamond plates, a leather strop, and a ceramic for fior sharpening fish hooks and serrated edges. But…while its an awesome tool, it doesn’t fit in the pouch on the sheath.

Intrigued, I looked at what other products these guys made and picked up a couple other things:

This one does fit in the sheath, so I picked up a couple of these. I also picked up a couple of their small pocket sharpeners. They have a carbide feature on them sor they are no t something you want to use every time you sharpen a particular knife, but the ceramics and diamond on it are great for keeping the knife sharp once you put the new edge on it:

Now, I do have a nice set of stones on one of those Smith-brand three-stone setups. And I use it when I need to. But it isn’t exactly portable or pack/pocket sized. These sharpeners seem to fit the bill for throwing into a small pack and keeping a knife properly sharp out in the field. And, considering some of the really awful things we are going to subject a knife to in a crisis, being able o resharpen them in the field seems a solidly prudent move.

Closeout Blackhawk pouches

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ETA: Well nuts….looks like they won’t deal with anyone without a resale certificate or FFL. My suggestion is to trot down to your local gun shop and see if, in exchange for turning them onto this deal, they’ll let you piggyback on their order.

Someone asked if I’d be doing some sorta group buy on this…nope. Too much work, not enough profit. But if you look hard enough I’m sure you can find someone to order for you.

One of my vendors is having a sale on some closeout Blackhawk gear. You know…Blackhawk…the guys that brought you such classics as the Derpa Serpa holster.

Since the pouches are non-FFL items, and on a closeout which means they probablt are happy to unload them as fast as they can, perhaps you can order without an FFL.

I ordered the M4 pouches, upright GP pouch, medical pouch, Nalgene bottle pouch, and utility pouch in…uhm…’quantity’.

SpecOps and ALICE legacy gear

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Ah, the joys of legacy gear. Back in The Day™, and by BITD I mean the mid to late ’80’s, your milsurp gear came in one color – OD – and your attachment system was ALICE. Fastex buckles, MOLLE webbing, and MultiCam were still unknown and not quite ready for prime time. As a result, some of the longer-in-the-tooth survivalists like yours truly tend to have quite a bit of legacy gear laying around.

I mention it because I was trying (and failing) to clean up the mountain of ballistic nylon that is sitting next to my desk. In it was this wonderful little pack from SpecOps. (And, yes, it’s quite overpriced on Amazon.) It’s basically a modernized version of the medium ALICE pack. The medium ALICE pack was capable of being used with or without the frame. (The large ALICE pack, on the other hand, must be used with a frame.) I picked thse packs up years ago on closeout, I believe, so I got a fairly decent deal on them. They were purchased with the notion these would be the packs to keep in the vehicle ‘just in case’.

While the ALICE packs had a lot of flaws, most notably being wildly uncomfortable, their low price and universal availability made them a good choice for tucking a pack away somewhere and not caring what happened to it. The SpecOps bag having compatability with the older ALICE frame was a nice feature for guys who have a buncha old ALICE packs and frames laying around.

As an aside, one of the things I love about the ALICE pack is its ability to be used, with the shelf attachment, to haul jerry cans and ammo crates. Do not underestimate how handy that can be. Would you rather carry 5-gallons of gas by can handle for a mile, or would you rather have it on your back leaving your hands free?

SpecOps isn’t the first outfit to modernize/upgrade the ALICE platform. The guys at Tactical Tailor had their Malice pack for quite a few years. But, ALICE gear has faded into the past and is actually getting a little harder to find as it is awash in the mountains of surplus MOLLE/PALS gear from the last twenty years of military activities.

The new MOLLE packs are, from what I am told, quite the improvement although early generations suffered from frames that tended to be a bit brittle. Being someone who loves gear, I wound up picking one up from the folks at Old Grouch Surplus a few years back. The nice thing about the MOLLE pack is it has a separate internal compartment that holds the military sleep system, which make this a good pack for throwing in the vehicle in the winter when you want to have all that I-guess-Im-gonna-be-here-a-while gear in one place.

By the by, I don’t know if SpecOps is still a going concern or what. Their various social media outlets havent been updated in years, and the selection on their website keeps dwindling. I hope they get some new blood and start putting out more products…I’ve been rather pleased with their offerings.

Anyway, I was putting those packs away and thought it was worth a post.

Monovaults…a do over

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I was puttering around in the basement moving some stuff around and one of the things stacked in the corner with the ‘this pile is for the secondary location’ is a couple of Monovaults.

I had done a lengthy post on the Monovault back in 2013 but when the website crashed I lost about a years worth of posts and that was one of them. A shame too, because it was actually a pretty informative post about what I thought was a very good product. So much so, in fact, that I’m going to go through the tremendous pain in the butt of retaking the pictures and reposting about it.

Succinctly, the Monovault is a large diameter plastic tube designed for storing (and burying) whatever items you feel need to be tucked away somewhere. The tubes have a Gamma Seal lid closure at one end, and then a ‘burial cap’ that goes over that to make retrieval easier. The tubes come in several different lengths and diameters depending on what it is that you want to tuck away.

Remember those cylindrical weapons/supply containers from WW2 that we’d see in movies? It’s pretty much a very modernized version of that.

WW2-era airborne supply drop tube. These things still turn up once in a while when someone treks out into the dense forests and swamps over in Europe.

Purpose? Nominally, they are sold as burial vaults for whatever it is that you feel needs to be buried. And, that makes sense. But I’m a bit of an outside-the-box kind of guy and while I’m sure these would work just fine for burial, to me they are more of an ideal cache container. While burying is certainly an option, the qualities that make a container suitable for burying (waterproof, airtight, durable,etc.) also make them perfect for enplacing in above-ground environments – hidden in attics, under porches, buried in brush piles, sitting in the corner of the basement, under the gravel pile on the back forty, etc.

I wound up with two versions of the Monovault which were supplied to me by the fine folks there. (We actually did a bit of trading back and forth.) Being me, I wanted the biggest one they had (the #248)  and a midling sized one – the #130.

The #130. Fits a folding 10/22, a daypack, boots, water, food, radio, flashlight, batteries, and a few other things that might make a big difference to you when you discover that your world has suddenly taken a turn for the sideways.

Gamma Seal lid and ‘burial lid’ cover. Still enough room in there to pack the essentials that would give you several orders of advantage over the rest of the herd. Pack wisely.

The #130 seems like the perfect size for the “I want to keep some essentials around in case I have to leave in a hurry”. A folding (or takedown) 10/22 will fit in there [as will the new takedown Ruger 9mm carbine] along with a frameless medium ALICE pack (or your favorite daypack), along with room for comfortable shoes, a jacket, radio, pistol, water, and a few other goodies. If you were stuck in an office building on 9/11 and had to walk your way out of Manhattan, one of these would have held pretty much just what you needed – water, shoes, radio, flashlight, weapon of choice, and that sort of thing.

The #248 is where the real action comes into play. Large enough that hauling one full of gear to a burial or cache sight might be a two-man job, it’ll hold everything you need to get your immediate life back on the rails. A full size rifle like a 20″ AR or HK .308 will fit inside with no dificulty. If you pack a smaller or broken down rifle in there, theres room for a backpack, military sleep system, freeze drieds, and a bunch of other gear. My checklist for packing for this sort of thing is ‘it’s the middle of winter, dead of night, and I’m dropped naked in the middle of nowhere. What do I need right now?’. However, if you want to have a bundle of gear dedicated to a particular purpose….exclusively gunstuff, exclusively food and water, exclusively gear, etc, these things would be good choices for that.

Big enough to handle the larger rifles. When you’re done filling this thing up, it’ll be heavy so plan accordingly.

Although I use a large Pelican case for storing my winter vehicle gear, one of these would make an excellent container for that task. Especially since you could just leave it in the bed of your truck (secured, of course) and it’d be impervious to snow and wet. Also, it’s long cylindrical nature lets it take up less room.

For storing guns I prefer the Pelican rifle cases. They’re very good at that job and, as you might expect, theyre also fairly expensive. Problem is, unless you get into the really specialty Pelican cases (which are even spendier) you can’t really stuff a goodly amount of gear in a Pelican case along with your rifle. The Monovault lets you do exactly that. In fact, if I were storing some gear hidden away at the Beta Site I’d probably tuck the guns in Pelican cases and the gear in the Monovault. (Although, if I wanted an all-in-one solution it would all, gear and rifle, go in the Monovault.)

Pricing is about comparable to what you’d pay for a Pelican case, so it’s not too outrageous. Like a Pelican case, the annoying part is paying the shipping for a large bulky item.But…when it’s 2am, the snow is coming down, and you finally bring your exhausted vehicle to a stop at your bugout location what’s it worth to know that your food, guns, radios, camp stove, and winter gear are all dry and clean tucked away under the floorboards waiting for you?

Practicing with .22 kits

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Pretty much in every piece of survivalist fiction there is always at least one big shootout scene. It can be the brave townies against the invading cannibal army, the plucky conservative group against the dastardly UN troops, etc. It makes for entertaining reading but is it likely that at some point youre going to go to war with New Bern? I doubt it. Oh, I have no doubt that during Katrina and a few other major events there might have been a few people who were forced to play Blackhawk Down as best they could (Roof Koreans!). But I believe those were the extreme outliers. Unless you’re Harry Beckwith (record holder for most amount of shots fired in defense of self), I’d bet most people never even needed a mag change.

But…we never know what the future holds, do we? So, we practice. Today is a range day to practice fast target acquisition and some shoot-n-move stuff with the HKlone. Given the always high price of ammo, it makes sense to try and save money when possible. To that end, the Germans, always looking for an excuse to engineer some new form of Teutonic brilliance, made a very nice .22 conversion kit for the G3. I bought one of these years ago and although it was rather expensive at the time (and still is), it pays for itself rather quickly.

.22 conversion kits for guns are an extremely handy thing if you’re going to take your practice seriously. They arent really about accuracy as much as they are about gun handling. Practicing bring your AR up from a low ready, getting a fast sight picture, and snapping of a shot that hits a steel plate….you can do that at $9 per mag of 30, or you can do it for $1.20 per mag of 30. I prefer the more bang-for-your-buck approach. For practicing things like shooting while moving, weak hand shooting, transitions, etc, there’s no reason the .22 conversions shouldn’t be used.

For the AR, I very much like the CMMG conversion and recommend them.Although there are plenty of .22 conversion kits for your AR out on the market the one that seems to get universal approval is the CMMG. Ciener conversions, in my experience, are…’lacking’. If it were me, I would recommend a CMMG conversion, and four mags. Why four? Start your drills with one in the gun and three in your plate carrier or GI mag pouch.

When I practice with the .22 conversions I’m usually doing stuff like:

  • Bring rifle up from low ready, get fast sight picture, fire one round at steel plate for a hit.
  • Same drill, from weak side
  • Shoot while moving..forwards, backwards, sideways, etc.
  • Shoot from non-facing positions. That is to say, shoot at target when your facing away or oblique to target.
  • And just the run-n-gun of shooting three or five rounds, run to new position, shoot another 3-5 from prone, run to new position, 3-5 from kneeling, etc, etc.

Make up your own drills. Get a #50 bag of something and drag it to safety with one hand while covering with your rifle in the other, pie some corners, do some fire/movement drills with your mates, etc, etc.

Odds are pretty good that you’ll never need to do an Australian peel or anything like that, but any drill that improves your gun handling, gun safety, and tactical options is worth doing. And with a decent .22 conversion kit you can spend a long afternoon drilling with your buddies for the cost of two bricks of .22

.22 conversion kits for pistols have been, in my experience, a bit hit-n-miss. Tactical Solutions made one for the Glock but it never seemed to be reliable enough for a day of practice at the range. If anyone can recommend a good G17 .22 kit, I’d like to hear about it.

 

Dreams and gear

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I cant recall all the details, but the dream was in some sort of new ice age scenario. Me and a group of people were trying to navigate these dark, narrow passageways under a building looking for supplies. Of course, no one had a flashlight. And then, in the dream, I remembered I had one in my pocket.

I really hate using trendy terms like ‘EDC’ but this little guy has been rolling around in my pocket for a couple years now and the more I carry it around the more I really like it. I’ve given away a handful to friends and every single one of them has commented on what a good light it is. I won’t bore you with details like lumens, weight, runtime, etc. You can look those up yourself. I’ll simply say that I have three of these sitting on the shelf as spares and there is always one in my pocket and one lanyarded to my Bag O’ Tricks…and I’m a tough customer on flashlights.

For about twenty-five bucks this thing does everything I need in a ‘non tactical’ flashlight. But its most important and most redeeming feature is that it is always there…so much a part of my everyday routing that even my subconscious knew that I’d have it with me in the dream.

I’ve mentioned these little Fenix E-series lights before, but I’ve found them to be an excellent light for toting around in a pocket every day and figured it was worth a bump.

Gear that never will self-actualize

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We’ll start with a hat tip to Tam for this link: I Am a Stryker-X Assault Backpack, and This Airport Lounge Is an Insult

Y’know, I’ve a lovely Tactical Tailor 3-Day Assault Pack that I have been slinging around almost everyday for something like 13 or 15 years. Actually, lemme blog it up…ah..3/19/2004 is when my TT bag reported for duty. So..about 14 years.

Anyway….

I have never assaulted anything (except good taste), if I did I would hope it wouldnt take three days, and if it was going to take three days I’d imagine I’d need more gear than what fits in a 3-Day Assault Pack. But the simple fact is that while I hope I never have to live the zombie-apocalypse lifestyle, gear that is designed to do so will more than adequately meet my day-to-day needs and be able to handle that sudden, unexpected hiccup in societal cohesion.

In short, if it’s good enough to climb the mountains in Afghanistan its good enough to sling over my shoulder while wandering downtown Montana.

Same for military surplus stuff. Someone spent a zillion dollars to develop product X, they built enough of them to get the per-piece price down to almost nothing, and then they tested the design to be durable enough to win a war. Why wouldn’t I take advantage of that?

Broadly speaking, there are only two drawbacks to overkill when it comes to gear: weight and price. Crap thats built to survive Ragnarok is not going to be cheap. And it ain’t gonna be light. But what it will do is give you exponentially better chances of keeping your act together when that 0.1% chance of disaster hits. Plus, that stuff literally lasts a lifetime. Buy once, cry once, and rock on.

I’ve paid some stupid money for gear in the past and….every single piece of expensive gear I paid a lot of money for is still with me today, functioning 100%, and has never let me down.

So just because you’re not planning to jump out of a helicopter and into a sangar in Sangar doesn’t mean you don’t want the high-speed,low-drag, high-price,low-discount gear. Life is short, it’s shorter with low-quality critical gear.