By David E. Petzal

This past weekend, at my shooting club, I helped run an event we call the Running Deer, in which a more or less life-sized deer silhouette travels 30 yards at 12 miles an hour, and the shooters, who are 100 yards away, get five shots at it. A perfect score is a 50; qualifying is 34. There are very few 50s, and there are a great many shooters who dishonor themselves with 20s and lower, but no one shoots a zero.

But by crackey, on this Saturday, there I was, looking at a zero.

[ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal

Some time ago, I wrote about Ryan Breeding, a uniquely talented custom gun maker whose specialty is huge, horrifying rifles to be used on huge, horrifying animals. If you’re looking for a .505 Gibbs done right, Mr. Breeding is the guy to see.

However, he can build them small and light as well. This rifle was made for a woman hunter whose husband wanted to get her something special and, as she stands just a little over 5 feet tall and weighs 114 pounds, a hand cannon was not in order.

Here are the specs: The action is a Granite Mountain reproduction of the wonderful and long-gone G33/40 Mauser, with double square bridges. The blind magazine and all the hardware, including the trigger, and scope bases, are custom made by Breeding. The stock is a piece of Turkish walnut that probably grades out at Strike Me Blind, and because highly figured wood tends to be heavy, the lines of the stock are quite slim. The recoil pad is leather covered. [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal

I’ve whined at you so many times about the enormous advantages of handloading that going over it again would be beating a dead elk. The other side of the coin is that handloading introduces the chance of error into the equation, and can leave you standing there in the wilderness with a useless rifle in your hands. Here are some of the ways in which you can go wrong:

Using a very hot handload, which you worked up in cold weather, in hot weather. Air temperature affects chamber pressures, and a load that was stiff but usable when it was 20 degrees will shoot differently at the least, or blow its primer at the most, when it’s 80 degrees. Say “pressure spike.” Say “My rifle is jammed. Someone please help me”

Brass is expendable, like people, and gets tired, like people, and has to be replaced, like people. Taking old, tired brass on a hunting trip is asking for it. Say “Case head separation.” Say “You mean the nearest gunsmith is 280 miles from here?” Go hunting with new, strong brass. [ Read Full Post ]

By Phil Bourjaily

Last year I blogged about 3-D printing and the possibility that someday soon we could print firearms parts and, possibly, whole guns. That future is arriving: people have already printed plastic AR 15 lowers.*

Defense Distributed, a group that hosts the Wiki Weapon project, is trying to make a whole, functional, printable gun. Their goal is modest: a .22 pistol that will fire at least one shot. Think of it like World War II’s “Liberator Pistol” for the 21st century. They then intend to make the information and plan available anywhere so anyone with a hobby grade 3-D printer can make a public domain pistol. [ Read Full Post ]

By Chad Love

Here you go, guys. She wants a ring. You want a new gun. Buy her the ring. Get the gun. Everyone lives happily ever after...

From this story in USA Today:

A Georgia jewelry store owner has come up with a new way to sell diamonds, WSB-TV reports. Give away free guns with each purchase. "A lot of our customers are hunters, and it just seemed like a great thing to do," Mike Geller, who owns two D. Geller and Son Jewelers, told the station. "It's unbelievable! There's websites that got a million hits about it." Customers who purchase diamonds worth $2,499 or more from the Cobb County stores get free hunting rifles.
[ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal

There used to be a song whose refrain went: “Oh, lay it on the ground, and spread it all around, it’ll make your garden grow.” This could be applied to much of the advice I hear given about guns. The most recent piece which can double as fertilizer comes from a friend who asked me, very worried, if it was all right to use Birchwood-Casey Gun Scrubber on his rifles because the guy at the gun store had told him that “…it would dry out the wood.” This is so addled that it’s worth examining in detail.

But first, I have to say for the record that Birchwood-Casey Gun Scrubber is a gun nut’s best friend, and that right now I have one big can on my workbench and three more in reserve. It is one of the great boons of technology, along with big-screen TV and the Shu mine. But let us examine this statement that it will dry out your wood.

[ Read Full Post ]