wsimpso1

We understand. The clerk did not. Billski

I wish there were subtitles, so we could get the rest of it.

I got right away the first few photos. Backward sights and mags are funny. And I knew that you cannot stuff the mag in the well backwards, so there had to be some other explanation on that one. But there did not appear to be anything obvious to me in the photo Shawn Knight posted. Cataloging oddities: Old style woodland fatigues and load bearing harness with more recent style railed M4; Mixture of black and camo gear; No headgear - Way to make your noggin into an obvious target; It looks like both an EOTech AND an Aimpoint on top of the reciever, and maybe the Aimpoint is backwards. Good luck getting a decent sight picture... An unoccupied riser rail forward on the top of the handguard - what's that going to hold? Conventional sling instead of a single point or a three point, and he is not using it; Load carrying suspenders with rifle mag carriers while his pants' belt has pistol mags on it. A little odd, but I have seen that; Lefty thigh holster, and something protruding on the right side thigh too, but the knife is on the right suspender. Ambidextrous? Two pistols? It does look like the props guy just went nuts with gear... What else is there? Billski

Way too much mis-information here. My credentials? I spent the first five years after college working for Remington Arms, three of that as an ammo engineer. Fired primers go to the non-ferrous metals recycler along with scrapped cartridge cases. Don't clean it, just recycle it. The lead residues are no biggie for recycling copper alloys. Lead is a regular contaminant from many sources... What reasons exist for destroying live primers? Only one, it has nothing to do with the primers being old. At the current price and availability, it makes no sense to destroy primers unless something serious is wrong with them. Let's go through things that can go wrong... Modern primer explosives (Lead Styphnate based) do not age appreciably unless they are stored at 180F and above, then they will start failing to fire. I have fired 50 year old primers, and they worked fine. Primers for aircraft ejection seats and other pyrotechnics use higher temp materials because a closed fighter cockpit sitting on a ramp gets that hot, but we don't use that kind of stuff in guns. Now if you have mercuric primers (unlikely in the extreme), they will cause cracking in brass, including their own primer cups over many years. Mercuric priming went out in the states before WWII, and some countries were using it after WWII, but I suspect that the last of it is long gone. I have never heard of any mercuric primers supplied for reloading, but it could have happened. Chlorate primed (corrosive) is what was phased out of US commercial ammo between WWI and WWII, and phased out of US military ammo after WWII. You can still get it in some ex-soviet bloc ammo. It lasts just fine too unless temps are way high. I have fired ammo dated 1943 that still met spec. Primers that make ammo with inadequate accuracy - somebody is looking for primers for blasting ammo, blanks, etc. Primers that have an occasional misfire but is otherwise accurate - put them in the ammo you use to shoot groups or do slow fire practice. The one reason to NOT use primers is not age, but what they were exposed to. Ammonia is DEATH to cold formed copper based alloys, Primers and cses qualify... Cartridge brass cracking in British ammo (Boer War, small arms through artillery) was one of the two initiators of the science of failure analysis. Ammo rode in the holds of ships along with horses. The British War department was deep into punishment of the innocent before the true source came to light. If you have any of sources of urine or household solvents in the vicinity of your primers or ammo, or if you have cleaning agent nearby that contains ammonia, you can have this happen. Hoppes #9, Sweet's 7.62, Copper Cutter, they all work by having ammonia in them. Primers and casees should not be anywhere near where you use or have ammonia. Primer cup piercing is the first symptom. The cup has a dirty streak after firing, and there is a little eroded spot on the bolt face or/and on the firing pin tip. Look at the primer with a magnifying glass and see if you can see any perforation of the cup. If your pressures are really high, maybe you could back down your powder charge, or maybe, the primers are now junk. In my shop, that batch hits the bleach and is then recycled as used brass. Oils do NOT deactivate primers. Oils do reduce sensitivity, but so does water. The explosive chemicals are still all there waiting to fire if hit hard enough... WD40 and some Liquid Wrench type lubes have long been rumored to deactivate primers. I do not buy that one - it takes a pretty active oxidizer to kill lead styphnate and barium nitrate and sensol. Those oils are water dispersants not oxidizers. Different chemistry. The arsenals and commercial factories all use the same thing - chlorine bleach. They spray down spills and dunk materials to be scrapped - primer and tracer mix being common - with bleach. It oxidizes the things that can burn much more slowly, and the explosives convert to other things. Off to the brass recycler. I don't want to hear about any of you guys building an open fire to dispose of primers. Primer cups and anvils can fly fast when fired. Then you end up with a fire pit loaded with lead salts. Why bother? Kill them with bleach and recycle them. A friend did find some blasting caps in her dad's farm stuff. For that, I did recommend burning, but we did it differently. They built up a bonfire with the caps between layers of wood near the bottom of the stack, so that there was stuff on top of the caps if they went BANG before they were destroyed by heat. And then, after they lit the fire, they backed way off. No one even heard a bang during the burn... And burn powder? If it is not brown and smelling of acids, find somebody who will use it. If it is turning brown or red and smelling of acid, it is toast. Fertilize the flower beds or the lawn with it. Spread it thin, and don't put it any place where smokers will drop ashes on it for a few days. Bill

Bad Idea. 223 ammo makes a lot more pressure than 40 S&W or 9 mm. For 223, you need the thicker cup to stand the pressures. Now this is not to say that you might load a few rounds and no destroy your firing pin, but for reliable safe ammo, 223 requires rifle primers. Otherwise, you are likely to have trouble due to the primers not being robust enough for rifle pressures. Now, the opposite is not true. All of the small primers I have are small rifle primers, and I load my 40 S&W and the few 45ACP cases with small primer pockets with them, and my M1911 type guns with 17 pound mainsprings light them without failure. Billski

You have good advice so far. The big question you need to answer is what are the nature of the matches you will go to. If the rifle stages are almost all just pistol stages fired with a rifle (common in MI), short and light topped with a red dot is the buzz. If the rifle stages have plate racks at 300 yards, you need a magnified optic, a nice trigger, and a more conventional heft and barrel length. What kind of rifle stages do you have in OK? Billski

For crying out loud, it's the Onion!

I heard one a long time ago - Family name Cox, and they named their little girl Fonda. Sadistic clowns...

One comment about the BDM mags in general: Never take any solvent stronger than water and soap near these mags. They are polycarbonate and WILL crack if exposed to any gun cleaning solvents, alcohols, acetone, etc; Some comments about BDM mags and the Colt conversion: The BDM feed lips interfere with the Colt bolt; BDM mags have no ejector (the ejector is on the left feed lip); BDM mags have no alignment pin between the mag and the adapter (which appears to be needed). Significant mods are needed to make the Colt bolt clear the feed lips and to add an ejector and alignment pin to the mags. All of this is made harder by the fact that solvents in many adhesives cause cracking in the mag... Better to just buy the Ceiner/Atchisson/Whatever designs that work well with the BDM mags. Billski Billski

I bought a Simmons back when Benny was recommending them. It is bright and sharp, holds its zero, it works great on CQB stages at 1.5x, and works acceptably on longer range stuff. In Michigan, we don't see much in the way of stages beyond 100 yards, and it is great for that. Took the rifle to New York State for their practical rifle match a couple years ago, and scored nicely out to 330 m. If you already have it, it is a good scope. If you just gotta have better, yeah, the Weaver and Millet look hot... Billlski

Billy Bullets and Precision both make 150 or 155 moly-poly coated bullets, and they work great in my gun. Billski

I always tell people to run what ya got, figure the rest out later. With a good LTD blaster, you are already in good shape for a pistol. For rifle, your AR works great. One big hint - know your zero and your holdovers. Most stages are close - zero for 50 yards, which should also be a 220 yard zero. Confirm and write out holdovers from 7 to 300 yards. I have seen folks forget that a rifle with high sights will print 2 1/2" low at point blank range, and put a bunch of shots in the hardcover of a 7 yard target with hardcover on everything but the upper box... Likewise to spend a whole magazine on a 300 yard plate rack because it shoots a foot low out there. As benelli chick put it, the shotgun is about the loading. Think on it - A seventeen round stage, with nine in the gun means you have to stuff eight rounds to finish the stage. The pump is not a big hinderance here, but not knowing how to come up with rounds and feed the thing sure does. Billski

My question is why would you want to mess up Clamato with Bud Light? Of course I am one of those guys who likes his beer "chewy". Clamato with Vodka, now that works! Billski

It looked like the pallet was designed as a soft foundation. The music - you don't recognize that voice and guitar from "Sultans of Swing" or "Money for Nothing (I want my MTV)"? The voice and guitar is Mark Knophler and the tunes might be off the album he and Emmylou Harris did. Type "mark knophler calling elvis" in Google and see what you get... Billski

BerKim, I gotta wonder if your buddies are shooting the same batch of 55's. Some shoot great, some don't. Now for why each barrel has its preferences, geez, none of us knows for sure, but every barrel is an individual... And this coming from a guy who worked for Remington as a product engineer. Billski

For dust, I have filter on a box fan in my shop, and I actually pour my media back forth between two pans in front of the fan. I wear a respirator and latex gloves for this operation. The dust comes off and sticks to the filter. I do this after every load of brass. I don't use mineral spirits, but I do use a couple capfulls of automotive antifreeze to charge a new batch of media, and another cap for each batch of shells. The water evaporates, the glycol keeps a tiny bit of liquid in the media, and the small fraction of anticorrosives and waterpump seal lubricants keeps my clean brass from tarnishing. We used a similar set of additiives at Remington (I worked there in the early 1980's) in the final wash and polish of brass prior to loading, and for the same reason. Billski

Choate works fine in mine. The mag follower has cylindrical section that is close to the ID of the mag tube. Mine is orange plastic, and it had rather sharp corners on it that wanted to hang on the joint between the tube and the extension. A little sanding to break the corners and every so slightly crown the cylinder shape (make the ends of the largest diameter cylindrical part slightly smaller than the middle) and it works great. They may have fixed it since then... Billski

Bolens? I figured that I would learn something here... Could find no mention of them on Google. Who sells 'em? I put the Arrendondo pads on my mags, and had to sand the top side down a bit to get them to lock in place. Otherwise they have been working fine. I also have some mags with the basic Para base pads. We shall see how long each type lasts... Bill

I checked my remaining Federal shells, and the caps are sharp cornered just like the photos. And they attract a magnet! Steel! Between the sharp corner and their being steel, I don't doubt that they could generate a notch over time. With the anti-fallout tab bent and reshaped, and the gun fed a diet of shells that don't have a sharp aft corner on the rims, I am hoping that it will resume its reliable ways. That Benelli autoloader is light and it has to recoil to make it work. It kicks! Back to my nice soft recoiling M1100. Billski

Funny this should show up now. A week ago, my normally flawless M1100 had a death jam with Federal ammo in a local match, costing me a bunch of targets and forcing me to shoot a Benelli. Same way too. Shell part way out of the mag, stuck on something. I had to remove the trigger group to clear it, and found a similar notch in the anti-fallout tab. Yeah, that tab is on there to prevent shells from bouncing right out the ejection port instead of being thrust into the chamber. Mine was somewhat bent inward as well as being notched. Since it is only there to prevent the new shell from ejecting, I bent it out a bit, dressed it with a file and then emery cloth. I have yet to test fire it, but it hand cycles fine. I guess that I will skip the Federal ammo from now on. Thanks for the heads up on the rims having a sharp corner. Billski

The weight is OK. The grip frame lost some thickness, and I saved enough weight that I didn't even need to go to a plastic mainspring housing. My funnel is all pared down. For right now, I just need to shoot it in ESP until my hand has recovered enough to go back to CDP. Then, if I decide to cut a funnel from stainless plate and braze it on, it will be pretty small. No, I am not worried over the braze line. It will get hard chrome and KG anyway. I just ordered some Arrendondo nylon pads. We shall see how that goes. Billlski

I don't even know who made it, it came with some of the parts that I ended up building the gun with. It is aluminum alloy, attaches with a long mainspring housing pin and an allen screw.I am tempted to make one an equivalent one out of stainless, braze it on, and adjust its shape until I like it. Clearing the funnel is not a big deal. Getting mag pads that are sturdy and have a little length is. Bill

I am shooting IDPA with my PARA widebody in .40 S&W as an ESP (with suitable loads). The Para base pads don't look like they will last very well with frequent teardowns and all. I have a small mag funnel on the gun. Which aftermarket base pads are durable and are they long enough to work with a mag funnel that fits in "The Box"? I was looking at Arredondo's, but they do look a little thin, and being nylon, I don't expect to be able to glue a thicker pad too easily. Any Thoughts? Thanks in Advance. Billski

I have several reasons to shoot a M1100. My first job out of college was at the old musket mill in Ilion. I am cheap, I shoot less than four or less local matches (and a commensurate amount of practice) with the shotgun a year. And I am a firm believer that only guns with rifling are interesting. I shoot three-gun because it let's me shoot the rifle in practical matches. So, when I got interested in shooting three-gun, I found a M1100 deer gun in the used rack for little bucks, added a long magazine, a DMW easy loader, magnum shell lifter, Williams Fire front sight and ghost ring rear, and slicked up the loading path. It shoots without malfunctions, loads slick and fast, is soft on my recoil wimp shoulder, and has cycled and is waiting for me far faster than the time it takes me to get on the next target. All for very minimal bucks. Every six to eight boxes of shells, I drop the magazine and barrel, wipe the crud from the gas system, clean the bore and chamber, oil everything and reassemble with a new o-ring from Eric. I don't have any patience for guns that don't shoot where they are pointed or that do not just plain work, and this does fine by me. Now, if'n I was burning shotshells like I burn pistol ammo, it might be another story, but for me, the Rem works great. Billski

Chris, I have yet to see a failure in this rule - "If it doesn't shoot 69 Sierra's and 25 grains of 748, then you have a gun problem". I can not vouch for RAM powders, but in my barrels, RL15, RP 7 1/2's, both Sierra and Nosler 77's are hammers. When was the last time you cleaned ALL of the copper and primer ash from the bore and chamber with JB? Some folks get surprised by the amount of copper and ash that a new barrel can capture. How does the throat look? Does the point of impact shift from clean to fouled? And last, is the barrel nut tight? I would not be above putting Final Finish (well, I skip the coarsest two grits, and run the last three) through a barrel if the throat accumulates copper and shoots goofy despite cleaning. As for the sizer producing inconsistent lengths, I have to presume that the incoming brass is all over the place too. I would not be worried over the consistency in headspace as long as the longest ones will chamber easily. You might try a different sizer. Screwing the sizer in further will just shorten the life of your brass, and probably not improve its consistency. Good luck Chris! Billski