Three cents a round….delivered.
Thats almost enough to make me wanna pick up ten thousand.
ETA: Ah,. what the heck…I’ll always be able to make money off it.
Tag Archives: low impulse control
Still not learning
Well, nuts….another gun show where I had the best of intentions and still managed to return to the house with something that made absolutely no sense to purchase….
The fine print:
A little something from the Slick Willy legacy… a ‘restricted’ marking, denoting that this particular boomstick was only to be possessed by Only Ones. 
Someone at the Mohave Sherriff’s Office is missing a Mini-14GB.
Back in the old days of survivalism, if you wanted a .223 semi-auto rifle your choice was limited to either an AR or a Mini-14. (Yes, you could get an HK93 or an AR-180…..maybe a Valmet …or some other equally obscure gun, but broadly your choices were just between the AR and the Mini.) The Mini-14 was about as accurate as your average AK, but also about as reliable as your average AK. And it was a bit cheaper than the Colt (which was virtually the only outfit making AR’s back then).
The GB models were targeted (so to speak) at law enforcement and, amsuingly, military markets. (Yes, some tiny jerkwater nations did issue the Mini as their primary long arm.) When Bill Ruger decided to start throwing people out of the lifeboat, he yanked the GB models and the ‘high capacity’ mags from the public marketplace. Fortunately, Bill Ruger has left the biological stage of existence and the company has largely undone the damage he wrought and has come out with many awesome products since.
Anyway, the GB was not on my shopping list and I genuinely have no use for it…but it’s kind of a novelty with the police markings and the ‘Restricted’ stamps. And the price was right. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it. I suppose in for a penny, in for a pound….I may as well hunt down a GB folder to put on there and go full A-Team with it. Or I may just pick up a half dozen mags, stick it in a soft case, and use it as a tertiary level ‘just in case’ carbine to store somewhere. Or I may sell it to the first person I can make a hundred bucks off of. Who knows. But, it will definitely go out to the range for a spin.
It never stops
In, of all places, the bloody shower….
:::ring:::
:::ring:::
:::ring:::
::rii…”What!?”
“Want a Rugger 556?”
“How much?”
“[price]”
“Dammit.”
I had about fifteen minutes before I had to be somewhere but that was enough time to go to the bank, grab cash, head to the store, and literally walk in the door, hand the guy the money, say “thanks”, grab the box, and walk out. Total time on target: less than 60 seconds.[1]
So, yeah, this happened:
But for $450 it’d be pretty hard to pass up. I’ll function fire it this weekend and then put it back in the box and probably stick it in the rafters or something as a beyond-tertiary backup AR.
The Ruger 556 has a slight ‘bargain’ feel to it with it’s milled front sight tower, but I’d take it over a Palmetto, Delton, Core, or other lower-end AR for the same money. And, yes, that’s green cerakote finish..Model #8504.
1 = Yes, there was no paperwork on this transaction. He simply moves it from his license to my license so there’s no real paperwork like a 4473 or anything for me to deal with. I’ll log it into my my book and then write a 4473 to get it off my books to me as a personal gun.
So that happened…..Redux
Codename: Watergun
A friend came by today to show me something interesting and slightly upsetting:
Ooohhh, thats not right! Nooo…..
It’s a Belgian P35 (or ‘Hipower’ to you), circa 1971, that was retrieved from the waters of Lake Michigan. The lake it is said, never gives up her dead….but guns are a totally different matter. Anyway..it’s mine now.
Condition is about what you’d expect but…the internal surfaces are surprisingly good. Barrel isn’t bad, and the deep pitting is mostly on non-critical surfaces. I think…I might try getting the missing the parts and getting this thing up and running. (And shooting it from a tire with a long string.)
First thing I need to do is make up a spreadhseet of all the parts necessary to make a P35 and then see what I have and what I’m going to have to find. Once thats done, if it proves safe to shoot, I’ll send it off and cerakote the holy crap out of it.
The story, I am told fourth-hand, is that this gun and the mags came out of a diving episode in Lake Michigan a few years ago. The gun ‘had the rust removed’ which, judging by the lack of wire brush marks and the thoroughness, must have been done using electrolysis. The gun was disassembled, apparently, for the process and some parts are clearly missing. I managed to put the recoil assembly together, get it into the slide and , after applying a tablespoon of CLP to the whole mess, got it sliding on to the frame, and then it seemed to cycle by hand just fine. Promising.
It also came with three what-used-to-be magazines. Now, thats a bit odd. See, if someone dropped this thing over the side off the boat doesn’t it seem a bit odd that there’s two spare magazines that fell over with it and made it all the way to the bottom lying next to it? Way I see it, the mags come with the gun for only two reasons: they were all in the same backpack/duffel when it was lost/tossed over the side or it was all on the same Sam Browne of whatever poor schmuck decided to breathe water. The mags will, I think, with new springs and some beadblast be just fine.
So….interesting project that I anticipate will take a year or two to wrap up since I’m going to try and do this with used parts inexpensively sourced off GunBroker and eBay. If it works out, it’ll be a gun with a great story.
