Cliff R

Thanks. Now I've got to spend the next year or so turning her into a killing machine like Sam was. That little dog was absolutely fearless and never lost a fight with anything around here. Every spring she'd start finding dens of young groundhogs and start piling them up in the yard, usually 1 or 2 a day till she got all of them, then on to another batch.......Cliff

Yep, those just take a glance at them to break, no good stare required! I think those are the ones that are taper ground too using one shank size to make several sizes from. Haven't seen a single set yet where every bit in it's location was correct for size as they often double or triple them up in the same size.....LOL......

I haven't heard or did any research on the good, bad or ugly. I just noticed quite a few different models available and wondering what's the best bang for the buck. Not locked into getting an Eotech, if there is something out there better for the money spent I'd like to know about it...tks....

Thanks. Sadie took her first walk with us this morning, covered about 1/2 mile in the woods behind the house, she stayed right with us, very attentive, and chased a few ground squirrels with the older dogs. She also comes right to us when we called her. Looks like she's going to be a keeper!.......Cliff

Don't really know much about them. I've accumulated enough points at Cabelas and need to use them, and had thoughts of getting some sort of quick acquisition sight. I heard great things about the Eotech's, but my only experience to date has been with Red Dot sights. When I pulled up what models are available there were PLENTY. Just wanted a good recommendation based on real World experience with them, etc....tks......Cliff

Update, new arrival yesterday and already part of the family and doing great. I planned on waiting much longer but we all needed to move on.....Cliff

"Numbered bits are the way to go. Fractional bits don't have the necessary "inbetween" to get the size close enough." +2 I would purchase #1-60 and 61-80 sets if you don't already have them and a couple of good pin vises to hold them. Don't even waste your time with any of the "off-shore" imported crap, they are way too "hard" and those bits, especially in the smaller sizes will break if you stare at them too long. I use precision drill bits every single day, and stick strictly to USA made varieties, usually from HUOT or Norseman. https://www.harryepstein.com/index.php/norseman-60-pc-drill-bit-set.html You can shop around some, but be careful for the "bait and switch" deal as many sellers may try to indicate they are selling good stuff and substitute Chinese crap instead. Another thing that makes the Chinese crap pretty much useless is that they may tip-grind several sizes from larger diameter shanks/flutes, so it's a one time use deal and when you sharpen them the diameter is not longer what you started with (most folks do not know this). You'll have about $60-80 in both sets if you shop around some, well worth the extra cost compared to the imported crap for about $25-30 for the same sets......Cliff

Ya, I have a big empty spot in my heart at the moment. Also lost a long time friend this week. I met Jay in 1978, he had his own business doing the stuff we all love as a full time business. He will surely be missed.....Cliff https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/newswatchman/obituary.aspx?n=jay-d-kegley&pid=193938070&fhid=27539

So yesterday I was ground hog hunting on a fresh cut hay field, and nothing going on (the ground hogs didn't read the play book that morning). Before I loaded up and headed back to the house I picked out a dead tree in another field to the NW of where I was set-up. With the morning sun lighting up the white trunk I just couldn't resist the temptation to throw a couple of rounds at it. I've never shot this rifle much past 300 yards but can't ever remember missing a ground hog with it. It's nothing special, Rock River lower with a PA free floated 16' barreled upper, 5.56 1-7 twist. It's one of their chrome lined hammer forged barrels not the cheaper nitrided stuff. I've got a Nikon 4-16X with AO on it in a Nikon one piece mount. It favors PMC X-Tac and shoots groups under 1" at 100 yards with ease. The distance to the tree is unknown (didn't have my rangefinder with me) but it's out there at least 700yds as it's 250 to the fence and at least another 450 or so into the next field (slightly down hill from my set-up position). Anyhow, nothing scientific here, just laying over a big round bail and picking a spot about 10-12' up on the tree and cranking off three rounds at it. To be perfectly honest at that distance I never even thought I would be able to find any of the rounds. Got to the tree and as expected didn't see any obvious hits. A little closer inspection and I found all three hits really low on the tree, at least 5' below the point of aim but all grouped relatively close together (about 4" group or so). The knife is showing the lowest hit and I'm pointing to the two upper hits. Although a bit crude far as the circumstances go it does show that one can put together a pretty economical combination that makes the grade without using custom hand loads or really big-buck anything.........Cliff

Sometimes we just have certain combo's that fall into our laps that make the grade without having to spend a lot of time/funds on special barrels, triggers, and working up custom hand-loads to get acceptable results down range from them. I've had a few over the years, but more often than not the real "tac-drivers" have required some extra effort on my part to get them punching dime size holes down range at 100 yards or so. Sounds like you've got a winner here for sure.......Cliff

I've been blessed with good dogs over the years. Duchess was a gift from my Daughter back in 2003. She bought a male Min Pin around 2005 and he sired a litter of pups with Duchess in 2007. I kept two of the pups. Sammy was the "runt" of the litter, much smaller than all the rest but grew up a lion at heart. Tougher than nails and a killing machine for mice, rats and just about anything else that wondered onto the property. Being much smaller than all the others she had to "scrap" it out from day one and became the dominant dog around here. She thought she was 100 pounds not 12 and absolutely fearless. She wasn't overly fond of kids or anyone else but me, but never aggressive toward anyone. Every night for the last 12 years she'd jump in bed and dive under the covers with me. She loved being with me every waking moment which proved to be her undoing. The day she was killed I locked her in the house and told Deb I was cutting grass down by the road. Someone let her out and I saw her coming down the hill. I thought I could finish up quickly and head back up but the mower started sliding on the steep hillside. I stopped and retrieved the side-by-side to winch it up the hill. Somewhere in all the commotion I lost track of Sammy and by the time I realized she'd went across the road it was too late. Despite my grief I feel blessed to have had 12 wonderful years with her, she was a great dog in every respect. I think these things hurt so much because of the bond we form with our dogs. There devotion and life long commitment to us is not found in other human beings. They love and serve unconditionally, which makes their passing difficult for us........Cliff

Been a tough week here for sure, I feel like a mule kicked me in the stomach.......tks for the kind words......Cliff

Well, when it rains it pours. Lost my precious Samantha (Sammy) on Sunday. She wondered down to where I was mowing by the road and trotted across to the mail box. I didn't see her till it was too late. She waited (car smart) for a car to pass by then trotted into the road. She didn't see the second car driving like their ass was on fire, no chit at least twice the posted speed limit. I was powerless to do anything, and now she's gone.......Cliff

Good to know. I found a receipt listing them as DPMS LR-308 Rifle Buffer part number 308-BS-11 and DPMS LR-308 Buffer Spring 308-BS-10B. Also found this photo from a range day. I have a photo someplace at 300 yards as well and will put it up here if I can locate it........

I'm up to 4 PA-10 builds at this point with zero function issues with any of them. Among the first was the rifle pictured below. I didn't try to run any of them with the 6 position stock and buffer system PA supplied, all of them got A2 stocks and the buffer/spring shown. I did all this WAY before finding this sight, so pretty much it's like the blind squirrel who found a nut. I've ran half a dozen factory and Military loads thru the one in the pic, which is my personal weapon and taken out West every Fall Elk hunting. It's a 14.7" barrel (released only once by PA far as I know) as I'm been looking for them to do that again and to date haven't seen any made available. I settled on 175 grain Barnes bullets back by 42 grains of Varget (going from memory here) or something close to that. I throws the brass very consistently and no witness marks showing that it needs any shimming or other buffer system or gas feed hole modifications. As far as accuracy goes it's better it's very acceptable for this type of weapon. 100 yard groups will go under an 1" and 300 yard groups fired like I'm hunting with it hover around 3-5" without much effort from me. It doesn't do as well with a some of the commercial ammo, sort of liked Winchester 150 grain soft points but not very fond of some Fusion loads I ran thru it. It actually shot just a tad better with some old 150 grain Sierra bullets I had left over from reloading for my 30-06 back in the 80's-90's pushed by some pretty old IMR-4320 in new Winchester cases, but I settled on the heavier Barnes bullets since it's pretty much a dedicated out West hunting rifle. Just my experience with this platform. I'm not completely sure where I sourced the buffer and buffer spring for the A2 stock conversion but I'll look into that a little further and see if I can find out what they are and where I sourced them from?.........Cliff

"We thought there was one on a pic at our deer camp one time until we figured out it was just a member that had been there all week without a shave and bath." ...........................and he was naked too?......yikes!.........

Did you build the upper from "scratch" and add a barrel you purchased at an Estate sale? If so did you check the chamber to see if a round fully seated them easy to remove before putting it all together? I'm up to 10 builds now and haven't had the first problem one with any barrels we've used. I do have a drawer full of leftover parts figuring out interchange and compatibility issues between different variants. BIG difference between a 308 AR platform and the AR-15 stuff, and the cloudy water is further muddied up if you spend much time on Google. I was in that rut before finding this Forum.......FWIW....Cliff

Sasquatch is always around, but sighting in Ohio are rare. They even have TV shows dedicated to him, even though to date I've never seen one hanging in anyone's deer camp photo's. You'd think at a minimum with all the modern technology available we'd have one an trail cam by now.......LOL

+ or 5 for Anderson lowers. I've got at least half a dozen AR-15 builds using them. Fit and finish is excellent, hard to bitch about the price either. When I first got into AR-15 builds I used Rock River exclusively. At that time they were abundant and not overly expensive but more than most others. As the "black rifle" craze grew more and more varieties were showing up at the gun shows and becoming available at local gun stores so I ventured around a little. Rock River lowers slowly became not only more expensive but not readily available. You'd walk thru an entire gun show and lucky to find one. So I moved to DPMS and then more recently to Anderson. In between all that I tried several cheap ones, including a plastic variety, and wasn't overly impressed with them. At one point early on I wondered if there were really any differences in all the different brand names wondering if I was just wasting a bunch of money buying the higher end stuff. My answer to all that is that every single lower I ever bought, from bottom of the pile to the high end resulted in a perfectly functioning weapon when finished. Never had any issues with any of them after they were completed and really not a lot of problems during the builds, or no show stoppers or major problems to overcome to get a good finished product. Even with that said, I very quickly found out that IF you are selling one that buyers will very quickly throw more money quicker at the better name brands. Build an AR using a Patriot (for example) lower and put it next to a Rock River. Install the exact same uppers. Price them both the same. You'll sell 200 Rock Rivers and the Patriot will still be sitting there!.......Cliff

We've been plagued with disease here for our tomatoes for several years. They advertise some that are "resistant" to the blight, but I can't seem to grow them these days like we used to. They start out great, then turn yellow from the bottom up and die out. A good friend of mine has a "truck patch" that's grown to nearly 20 acres over the past 40 years or so. He did 1000 tomato plants this year, most of the rest is sweet corn. I was over there last night picking up 10 dozen for canning today. I asked him how he keeps the disease down in the tomatoes, he says "plastic", yep, nothing special just minimizing the plants exposure to the soil around it.........Cliff

Canning is easy once you are set-up for it. Not a huge investment either, just some simple items as shown the pic above. The biggest thing is being clean and sanitizing everything. I make up my own recipes and do grape jelly ever Fall as well. Grapes didn't fair so well this year, late frost got most of them.......

A hobby I've had for several years, canning tomatoes and making hot pepper sauce. I put up about 150 pounds of tomatoes every year, or 6-8 milk crates piled full of them. My 4 year old grand daughter is a big help. We do tomato sauce, pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce. I grow my own hot peppers and put up two or three batches of them as well, which makes about 40-50 jelly jars full. Nothing brutally hot, just some good heat that sneaks up on you and lets you know you're alive! This year I blended 4 types together, red chili's (medium heat), Serrano's, pablano's and yellow mild chili's. They are pulverized in the vita-mixer with distilled vinegar and sea salt for about then minutes, then cooked on the stove for about 20 minutes, then in the canning jars another 20 minutes. No exact measurements for the hot sauce but I fill the vita-mixer about 2/3rds to the top with a blend of peppers, then fill it to 3/4 with the distilled vinegar, and about a tablespoon of sea salt......Cliff

Where are the Mythbusters when you need them, full auto vs semi-auto "shootout".....would LOVE to see one.......Cliff

"This has always created discussions, arguments, and outright name calling." +2, 3, 4 and 5. Spent 20 years as a military trained small arms instructor, qualified armorer, factory trained on several weapons, self trained thru years of OJT, even shot on a rifle and pistol team for a while, and still when I overhear (I try to avoid all that chit) discussions about the AR platforms in .223 and 5.56, at gun counters in some store or a gun show where "guru's" on this chit are abundant, there isn't a single time to date any of the folks spouting off all the specifics and arguing the details had a flucking clue as to what they were talking about. "Anyway, tried to cycle some live ammo next, reloads that function fine in both Colts (and fit the case gauge) were really tight/ sticky/ difficult to extract in the Sig barrel, but bulk factory ammo was fine. Range Sunday hopefully." Factory ammo will tend to work better hand cycling them thru than "reloads". Think about that statement for a minute and you woln't need for me to tell you why?.......Cliff

"SS, I have about 40 of these things. ARs. Large and small frame, across MULTIPLE calibers." You've got me beat, I'm just over 20 last time I counted, in just about every configuration, and 5 calibers and wanting to add a few more. I only hand load for the 308, everything else gets factory ammo. I've not ran into any pressure issues and don't expect to. I learned many years ago to stick with slower burning powders and stay off the maximum listed powder charge on the first trip to the range. Pay very close attention to recoil, muzzle blast, function, accuracy, velocity (consistency), and inspect all the fired cases for problems, especially the primers, they are a very good indicator when you are seeing more pressure than the weapon is happy with. When I see signs of pressure, like flattened primers and heavy "crater" at the firing pin impact point, or burning thru, I stop firing those loads and go home and yank the bullets and back things off some, or try a different powder, or powder bullet combination. Haven't seen it mentioned yet but I also give the barrel a GOOD cleaning. They can start to build-up a lot of material, especially higher velocity stuff (some barrels are also a bit "rough" for finish as well) so you want to make sure that isn't adding to the problem..............Cliff