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Sockets and Stacks

Wed, 26 May 2010 23:21:05 -0400

Unless you have been living under a rock, you probably are aware of the impending run-out of IPv4 addresses on the Internet and the need to start moving to IPv6. A lot of the emphasis and guidance to date has been on getting the infrastructure in place to utilize IPv6. But it would be a shame for somebody to spend a lot of time and effort getting their network ready to go native IPv6 only to find out they have a custom network application somewhere that needs tender love and care to make the transition as well.

A few weeks ago I tweeted a link to a presentation by Rino Nucara on programming for IPv6 and what it would take to get an application to listen on IPv6. This presentation covers the ground of socket programming for IPv6, and any programmer doing IPv6 transition work should take a look at it. However, there are some other issues that need to be covered; the tangential issues related to sockets I'll cover here and then hopefully I will be able to get to some of the other more esoteric issues I've discovered in some future blog posts.

OS Support

First and foremost you need to make sure the operating system upon which your application is running can support IPv6. This seems almost a given these days as nearly all current server and desktop operating systems have support for IPv6. However, a lot of applications are now being written for "mobile" devices, some of which do not support IPv6. For example, it is my understanding that Apple's iPod Touch, iPhones, and iPad do not have any support for IPv6.

Beyond the basics of providing a v6 stack, there are further levels of support such as the ability to adequately resolve DNS resources for IPv6, properly obtain IPv6 addresses on IPv6 networks, and providing firewalling and network-address-translation (NAT) services for v6 interfaces. For example, some server applications may rely upon the operating systems port redirection abilities of the NAT facility to allow a non-privileged process to listen on a privileged port, but that capability may not be available for IPv6 as is the case with Redhat and CentOS Linux (though other Linux distributions do have this support).

Configuration

It is quite common for network applications to be configured to listen on specific network interfaces, and often this is done by specifying the IP address associated with the network interface. Depending on the software stack used by the application, it may be necessary for those IP addresses to be rewritten as v6 addresses and depending on the nature of the format of the configuration file or mechanism, it may be necessary to modify the structure or schema of the configuration source. Or it may be necessary for the application to be configured to listen on two or more network interfaces where it may have only been adequate to specify one entry in the past.

Another issue that may surface is the use of loopback addresses. If those addresses, often just 127.0.0.1, are specified in v4 it maybe necessary to specify them in v6 -- again this depends on the software stack used by the application. This may also be true for things like broadcast addresses and other special addresses. One particularly annoying problem here might be addresses that are hardcoded inside the application instead of being configurable options. Should an application be written in such a way, it may be necessary to disabuse the implementer of such a general bad practice.

Frameworks and Application Servers

Some applications employ a non-blocking I/O event or message-passing socket framework in order to make better use of concurrency without taking the penalty related to thread context switching. The addition of an IPv6 interface may upset the balance between listener threads and worker execution paths. Such fine tuning may not be necessary or only require a small amount of work but due diligence is still required.

The good news for web applications is that they generally do not need to be rewritten to accommodate listening on an IPv6 socket. However, the web server on which the application resides might need to be configured to use v6. In most cases this is fairly straight forward. That being said, recent versions of JBoss Application Server assume IPv6 under Linux is forever broken; rectifying the problem is a simple matter of editing the run script even though doing so is far from obvious.

Address String Serialization

The final issue that might require some investigation (that I'll mention in this post) relates to writing out an IPv6 address. Many network server applications log their activity, and generally one of pieces of information that may be logged is the IP address of the client. This usually has no ill effect on the application server, but a log analyzer that comes along after the fact may not recognize the new IPv6 address syntax (e.g. 192.168.0.1 vs. fe80::200:f8ff:fe21:67cf).

And if the application is formulating URLs, such as might be found in dynamically generated web pages, the syntax for v6 addresses is different than for v4 addresses. URLs containing IPv6 addresses in the host portion require that the address be surrounded by square brackets (e.g. http://[fe80::200:f8ff:fe21:67cf]:80) whereas this is not the case for IPv4 (e.g. http://192.168.0.1:80).

Conclusion

Again, read Rino Nucara's presentation on socket programming of IPv6. This will be especially helpful to C/C++ programmers. Then you might want to scan your application code to see if any of the above issues I've mentioned are of concern. In future posts I hope to address issues with applications that query DNS directly and the persistence of IP addresses in databases, but each of those topics is involved and requires a entire blog post of their own.

30 Rounds of Fun

Wed, 19 May 2010 20:58:31 -0400

One of the biggest criticisms of the Mini-14 platform is the lack of available, inexpensive magazines. Unlike AR-15s, there aren’t many after-market manufacturers of magazines for the Mini-14, and until Ruger started selling their steel version it was nearly impossible to find a reliable 30 rounder... and at $50 a pop MSRP ($35 street price) they aren’t inexpensive either. That’s not to say 30 round after-market magazines haven’t been available, its just that most of them are crap and highly unreliable.

In Mini-14 myth and lore, there use to be the Thermold 20 and 30 round magazines. These were polymer mags and considered quite good. However, Thermold quit manufacturing them due to the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994. Personally, I’ve only ever heard of these magazines and never seen one in real life. The ones that do exist go for a high price because a reliable, polymer 20 or 30 capacity magazine is rare. Well, until now.

At the 2010 SHOT show in January, Tapco unveiled a prototype of their polymer 30 round magazine for the Mini-14. Tapco is well known in the Ruger Mini-14 and 10/22 communities for making polymer after-market products that are affordable. The quality of such products is debatable but are no less thought of than other polymer-based after-market accessories. For around $15, these magazines are a lot cheaper than Ruger’s offering, but unlike other Tapco products these magazines don’t seem to be widely available. I was able to find them easy enough though at Patriot Outfitters (below MSRP even).

Taking them out of the box, I was immediately impressed. I had thought that they might feel flimsy and easily flex. But that is not the case. These magazines feel solid, and the walls of the magazine look thicker than one might expect. When seated into the Mini-14 they do not have much play at all. In fact, I’d say they have less play than Ruger’s steel 30 round magazines. And the follower seems to resist tilting, though I’m not expert enough to truly know the real properties of an anti-tilt follower.

Having loaded each magazine to full capacity the night before, I was able to empty them the fun way at the range with no problems. All three of my examples worked perfectly the first time around.

There was one stovepipe ejection jam at round 92, but that occurred when I handed the rifle over to my friend Erika. I don’t know what it is about her, but I think she’s got a gift for jamming auto-loaders. At the same outing, she managed to cause the first ever jam of a Bersa Thunder 380 that belonged to another friend. And I once saw her jam a Glock 34 six times in a row. She’s cursed or something, so I didn’t really give that stovepiped casing much thought.

I’ll likely take them out again for more testing, but from what I’ve seen I think these new Tapco Mini-14 magazines are great. If you have a Mini-14, you should really look into these things.

My Thoughts on the iPad

Sat, 3 Apr 2010 11:59:53 -0400

Here is my prediction about the iPad, having not held one or used one yet. But if it behaves as advertised, it will not only be successful but be a game changer. Coupled with an external keyboard that lives on your desk with a docking station, this device will replace laptops for a large, large percent of the information workers.

And yes, I mean replace. Most information workers do only 5 or 6 things with their laptops: check email, schedule meetings, browse the web, do word processing, use spreadsheets, and create presentations. Those first three things are already possible with the iPhone or iPod Touch and with other smart phones. But the iPad allows for the more screen intensive applications: word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. And this is why Apple has gone out of their way to create iPad specific versions of their iWork suite, which consists of a spreadsheet, word processor, and presentation program. So the iPad is positioned to be the workstation of the typical information worker.

Now you can poo-poo this prediction all you want, but I've got a fairly strong track record when it comes to getting future technology trends correct. In the mid-90's I told my bosses at the company I worked for that Linux would be a major player in the OS market, especially for more sophisticated computing needs (I worked for a building automation and controls company then). They didn't believe me, but I later found out that not four years on they put a Linux product on the market -- which they still have today.

In the early 2000's I predicted (and blogged about) Macs and Mac OS X becoming a platform for many, many power users. Go to any computer conference today and you'll see Macs everywhere. Macs, especially MacBooks, are increasingly popular among everyday users as well. Back around 2003 or so when I worked for a very well-known computer security company, I kept telling my bosses that spam was becoming a big problem on the Internet and that spam management and abatement services would be a big thing. They didn't believe me, and consequently ended up missing the opportunity to be a market leader in that category.

And, of course, I predicted the iPhone would be a success. But that was easy. Anyone predicting its failure was either in denial or being dishonest. For the iPad, I can understand the skepticism. But go ahead... don't believe me. But in five to ten years, we'll see who is right.

Now, you are probably wondering why on Earth this blog post about Apple’s iPad is accompanied by a picture of some fine Walther handguns. Well, it seems yours truly has a geekery affliction of another variety as well. Yesterday I stopped off at the range to sign up for some IDPA matches, and they had one of those new, shiny Walther PK380s. I had actually attempted to buy one of these back in January, but hesitated and it got snatched up. This time I couldn’t let that happen, so the picture above is my new PK380 with its little brother, my Walther P22.

Yes, I will eventually get an iPad. But chances are it wouldn’t happen anytime soon anyway due to back orders.

Hypocrites Of Gun Control: Charlatans, Elitists, and Convicts

Wed, 6 Jan 2010 20:56:17 -0500

When it comes to guns in America, advocates for gun control often present themselves as even-keeled, everyday Americans wishing to strike a balance between the rights of individuals and the safety of the public. But truth be told, the leaders of the gun control movement are a colorful bunch, often duplicitous, some times dangerous, and not all representative the American public.

The difference between the things they say and the things they do can often be downright hinky. Take for instance Josh Sugarmann, executive director and founder of the Violence Policy Center and supporter of the now overturned handgun ban in the District of Columbia. For years, Josh Sugarmann has held a Federal Firearms License in D.C. making it legal for him to buy and sell firearms, the only exemption for civilian handgun possession under the old D.C. handgun ban. There's also Sarah Brady, namesake of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. In 2002, Sarah Brady published a book wherein she described her purchase of a high powered rifle for her son, a hunting rifle that is often mislabeled as a "sniper" rifle by some gun control activists. Brady described in detail the background check conducted by the Delaware gun dealer, pointing out that the dealer was shouting her name over the phone in an effort to embarrass her. While potentially embarrassing, Brady may have broken Delaware law by not also providing the name of her son, the intended recipient of the gift.

Back when the Brady organization was known as Handgun Control Inc., one of its prominent members, Joseph McNamara, wrote a book in which he espoused the idea that only corporate executives and Hollywood celebrities should be allowed to own firearms. This "rights for me but not for thee" elitist attitude isn't just restricted to activists; many anti-gun politicians seem to believe they are uniquely special as well (alright, that's likely not much of a surprize to many people). Former New York Rep. Mario Biaggi stated that only police should have guns, yet he owned two handguns which he had to surrender after becoming a convicted felon. Senator Diane Feinstein has said that if she could muster the votes in Congress she would ban all guns, yet she had one of the few concealed carry permits in the city of San Francisco and testified that she carried when visiting her husband. And Senator Chuck Schumer recently led the effort to defeat national concealed carry reciprocity, yet he currently holds one of the few unrestricted gun permits in New York.

Unlike Schumer and Feinstein, some gun control advocates prefer not to get their own hands dirty. The late Senator Ted Kennedy spent many years legislating for stricter gun control, yet he had a privately-hired armed bodyguard. Michael Moore, whose film Bowling for Columbine criticized American gun culture, also has an armed bodyguard -- who incidentally does not hold a gun permit for New York City, the primary residence of Michael Moore.

And then there's the troubled Million Mom March started by the Brady Campaign. After advocating for taking guns out of the hands of common people, it was discovered that their boisterous spokeswoman, Rosie O'Donnell, had an armed bodyguard. More rights for me but not for thee. Annette Stevens, the president of the Springfield, Illinois, chapter of Million Mom March was found to be in possession of an illegal handgun when her home was searched for drugs by the police. Wait, it gets better. Barbara Graham helped organize the Million Mom March in DC and even spoke at the event in support of DC's then-handgun ban. Just months after the march, she violated that very law, acquiring an illegal handgun to shoot a young man whom she thought had killed her son. She is now serving a 50 year sentence for permanently paralyzing the man who turned out to be innocent of the crime she avenged (police ended up arresting another individual for her sons death).

Violating DC's civilian handgun ban also didn't concern Carl Rowan, a Washington Post columnist who opined that only police should be allowed to possess and carry handguns. In 1988, Rowan shot a teenager with an illegal handgun. The teenager trespassed in Rowan's yard and had been using Rowan's swimming pool. In true elitist fashion, Rowan was never found guilty because authorities lost interest in the case.

You may have noticed a thread of gun control hypocrisy with respect to the District of Columbia. That thread continues with the story of Ben Gelt, son of a noted Denver politician. With the Columbine tragedy as a pretext, Ben Gelt organized a demonstration against the National Rifle Association in hopes of preventing their meeting in Denver. Gelt also met with President Bill Clinton to discuss gun control issues, and even delayed his entrance into college for a year to advocate for stricter gun laws. His college of choice was American University located in DC. Gelt continued with his anti-gun activism in college, sparring with congressmen and appearing with Secretary of State Collin Powell in a Rock the Vote event. One week after his appearance with Secretary Powell, police raided his dorm room and found $15,000 in cash and large quantities of marijuana, opium, Ecstasy and many other illegal drugs. Gelt was charged as a dealer in the illegal drug trade, which is linked to 4 out of 5 gun crimes in the District of Columbia.

This list of hypocrites could go on and on. There is former Congressman Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois who advocated for strict gun control, that is before he was sent to prison. There is current Congressman Bobby Rush of Illinois, also an advocate for stricter gun laws and a former member of a radical sixties group known for holding political protests with guns and charged with killing police officers. And then there are all the aldermen of the city of Chicago, who continue to hold an outright gun ban in their city yet exempt themselves from that ban.

There just seems to be a lack of moral clarity among many anti-gun people. They seem incapable of living by the rules they want to impose on others. And so let us close with an example of one of this nation's newest and perhaps least ethically bound gun controllers, Amy Fisher. She thinks guns are bad. Of course, she probably didn't think so when she pistol whipped and shot Mary Jo Buttafuocco so that she could have Mrs. Buttafuocco's husband all to herself. After serving only seven years in prison, she now goes around telling people that guns are bad... that is when she's not giving those people her sex tape to drive traffic to her Internet porn business.

Perhaps it is not the guns that are bad, but the people who advocate against them. Fight for your Second Amendment rights and your natural right to self-defense, because there are people trying to take those things away from you and they don't play by the rules.

This post has been cross-posted to the Virginia Gun Owners Forum.

Review of Lessons From Armed America

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:50:21 -0500

A review of Lessons from Armed America by Mark Walters and Kathy Jackson.

When it comes to the lawful carrying of a concealed handgun, Massad Ayoob is considered one of the nation's leading writers and instructors on the subject. So what does that say about a book with a forward by Massad Ayoob that can be summarized as, "I should have written this book"? Lessons from Armed America, by Mark Walters and Kathy Jackson, (White Feather Press, 2009) is that book and a must read once one has finished Ayoob's own The Gun Digest Book of Concealed Carry.

The format of the book is what makes it so compelling. Composed of 14 chapters, it interleaves true life stories of ordinary Americans who have had to defend their lives with firearms with followup chapters on instruction relating to the true life incidents.

The stories are taken from Mark Walter's extensive background material accumulated as the writer of "The Ordinary Guy" column in Concealed Carry Magazine. The stories are gripping and range from the attempted mugging that turned around anti-gun legislator Michael DeBose to that of a Navy family's deadly encounter with a serial killer. Walter's even recalls his own hair-raising incident on the streets of Tampa, Florida.

As intense as the true-life stories are, the followup chapters written by Kathy Jackson are packed with information and lessons that can be drawn from each incident. Kathy Jackson is the managing editor of Concealed Carry Magazine and an instructor at the renowned Firearms Academy of Seattle. While no substitute for real training, these chapters cover everything from firearms alternatives to crime statistics to the psychological aftermath of surviving a deadly encounter -- all very useful to any individual making the personal decision to arm themselves for self defense.

At 179 pages of true drama and informational text, Lessons from Armed America is well written, easy to read, and a great resource. In addition to his column in Concealed Carry Magazine, Mark Walters can also be found hosting the Armed American Radio show every Sunday evening.

Federal Intrusion Notice: in the ongoing erosion of public freedoms and the usurpation of individual liberties, the government would like you to know that should you purchase any items from the above links that the author of this content may one day be compensated in a manner that may allow him to purchase a fancy cup of coffee.

Planet LFS and The World Of Tomorrow

Tue, 8 Sep 2009 20:39:33 -0400

I’m practicing my concealed holster draws tonight and my shoulder is getting tired. Actually doing it right by lifting up, pivoting forward, and punching out is hard and tiring... much harder than just swinging the pistol around by flailing your arms.

Anyway, I thought I’d take a break and explain the whole Planet LFS thing you may have noticed if you have visited the front page. For some time now I’ve had two sources of “blogging” or web presence or whatever nonsense you would call talking to brick walls over the Internet: this blog and my shared links via Google’s reader. And then Twitter happened, and suddenly there became three places.

So I decided to do something about it and found Planet, an open source, server-side RSS aggregator designed for embedding the aggregation into a website. Pretty cool stuff.

With that done, I removed the Shard Snark RSS feed from the blog pages here, and now the landing page for this site has the aggregated Planet LFS feed. I have to say that I’m not totally thrilled with iWeb’s RSS Javascript widget, but it does look worlds better than a frame or scollable window.

Locking Up Your Boom Stick

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:36:05 -0400

By now, everybody should know that loaded firearms and unattended children don’t mix. While there are stories of children fending off home invaders with guns, in general it is a pretty good idea to make sure the guns are inaccessible. Of course, the problem is how do you keep loaded firearms away from the curious fingers of wandering kids while making them available for home defense. There is no perfect solution to this problem, and every measure will be a compromise. But unless you live in a really, really bad neighborhood, it is something you should do. So I thought I’d share what I have done and the advice I have received from people with much, much more experience than I.

What Not To Do

First, let’s start with the things you should not do.

1) Do not assume that hanging a firearm above the reach of your children will keep them away from it. Some people think that hanging a gun above a door is good enough to keep it away from children. That’s nuts. My daughter is constantly climbing on things and getting to places I had not imagined. Children are more resourceful than we give them credit.
2) Do not use a trigger lock. Trigger locks are strongly advocated by anti-gunners in the name of safety, but when it comes down to it trigger locks are actually dangerous in the context of loaded firearms. Trigger locks violate the principle of gun safety rule #3 (keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target) because they require you to be messing around inside the trigger guard. And since rule #1 says that all guns are loaded all the time, trigger locks are always a violation of rule #3.
3) Do not assume your safety measures are a substitute for education. You should always instruct your children not to play with any firearm in any place at any time. This is something that every parent should do, regardless of their feelings or use of firearms.

What You Can Do

Almost all firearms sold in the US today come with some sort of locking safety device, usually a magazine cable lock. If you want your firearm at the ready for home defense, these types of locks are probably inadequate. They’ll simply take too much time to remove from the firearm and then require a magazine load.

For pistols and revolvers, a good solution is to use a lock box. These are easy to find, and one of the most popular seems to be the Gun Vault, which has a combination lock that can be actuated by finger tips -- useful for unlocking it at night. No matter the type of lock, conventional wisdom says that it should not be a dial or rotary combination lock as these can be difficult to unlock under pressure -- like the kind of heart-pounding pressure you’d have knowing somebody is rummaging through your house while you’ve been sleeping.

Some people avoid the trouble with locks at night by unlocking them when they go to bed and locking them back up in the morning. I’d say you should think before doing this. You had better be a light sleeper because the last thing you want to do is provide an intruder with a loaded firearm should you not wake if they were to enter your bedroom. The same goes with kids who might get up in the middle of the night.

What I Did

Our primary home defense weapon is a Mosberg 500 Mariner 12 ga. shotgun. This is a fight stopper that I can put in the hands of my wife and say, “If somebody comes through that door, point this at them and pull the trigger.” It’ll make one hell of a racket, but it’ll do the job. But shotguns are big, and cannot be locked up in pistol safes, which can be conveniently placed in nightstand drawers, under the bed, or in armoires.

Instead of trying to lock the entire gun away, I opted for the Life Jacket shotgun chamber lock. This lock keeps the shotgun secure by disallowing the bolt from moving forward and blocking a shell from entering the chamber. A shell can reside on the elevator, so once the lock is taken off, the shotgun is ready with a swift racking of the fore-end. And if a bad guy is in ear shot, that’s a sound that would frighten them. No intruder wants to hear a pump-action shotgun being racked.

To help with unlocking the gun in low light situations, I affixed a NanoLight red LED to the key. If you do this, it is important to use a red LED, as red light helps you keep your night vision better. The NanoLight has a peel-off adhesive on the back which I simply stuck to the key. And naturally, the key is near-by the gun, but not easily found. I hang mine from a nail I placed in the back of my dresser.

With this solution, it is easy to store the shotgun behind a door, under the bed, or in the corner of a closet. However, I opted to keep mine a little more hidden but easy to grab. Using the Gun Grabber, I have the shotgun mounted between the clothes in my closet and elevated above my shoes. It would take some looking about to find it if you did not know it was there.

Though I’m not crazy about what I have to do to have a firearm at the ready should I hear somebody in the house, it does give me piece of mind knowing that my children cannot injure themselves should they disobey my rules about playing with firearms. After all, I know what I was like when I was a kid.

Federal Intrusion Notice: in the ongoing erosion of public freedoms and the usurpation of individual liberties, the government would like you to know that should you purchase any items from the above links that the author of this content may one day be compensated in a manner that may allow him to purchase a fancy cup of coffee.

SB-2099 and HR-45 Scares Are Spam

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:47:27 -0400

It seems that every week Tom Gresham fields a call from somebody asking about either HR-45 or SB-2099, with the caller always stating that one of their friends sent them the email. And every week Tom Gresham has to state that both SB-2099 and HR-45 are of no consequence, and then he goes on to state that these rumors will be circulating around the Internet for the next twenty years because gossip is apparently human nature. (BTW, Gresham’s GunTalk isn’t the only place this pops up... you see it on forums, Twitter, and other podcasts).

Well, the SB-2099 and HR-45 scares circulate due to human nature, but it is about profit and not gossip. Spammers or their like have setup web sites with these scare rumors (and much more) in an attempt to drive people into their advertising infested rumor mills, often with the viewing of their pages making them money. What’s worse is that they’ll present the SB-2099 or HR-45 rumor right along side their advertising, and then they have a button encouraging the up-in-arms reader to “email this to a friend” or “send to Twitter”... and thus, the rumor is re-injected into the series of connected tubes -- this time by somebody with an identity trusted by a group of other people who will likely do the same thing.

If you see somebody mention SB-2099 or HR-45 with a link, don’t click on it. Stop the cycle of clicking right there.

And for those of you who have not heard of either bill, here is the background. HR-45 is a real bill that is for all intents and purposes dead. It is going nowhere. SB-2099 is an out-and-out hoax. It simply doesn’t exist.

Circling Back On Stuff

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:06:39 -0400

Just some thoughts related to stuff I’ve mentioned lately.

The Conceal Carry

As mentioned before, I plan on getting a CCW permit. There are a couple of reasons for doing this, but I have to confess that my interest in this is really knowing that I can pass a firearms proficiency qualification. Or in other words, am I good enough with a gun that the Commonwealth of Virginia will let me carry one around (concealed, that is... open carry in VA doesn’t require a permit).

I decided to pass the proficiency test using my FNH FiveseveN, even though it is highly unlikely I would ever use this gun for concealed carry. It is simply too big, though its weight is very respectable for such a purpuse. Once I actually get a CCW, I’ll purchase another firearm -- probably a SIG P238.

So I went out and got a pistol holster and some magazine holsters and a bunch of B-27 silhouette targets. After doing some practice at home, I went to the range this week and worked on not shooting myself in the foot while shooting at 3 and 7 yard targets. I didn’t do too bad.

One issue I do have is that my elbow is swinging out instead of the proper up/pivot motion. I wouldn’t have noticed except I managed to smack the lane wall once with the pistol. So I’ll have to work on that some more.

Tweeting

I like the tweeting, though I’m going slow on the tweets that I follow. Some are interesting, some just prolific. My friend Ted did suggested I try using Adium with Twitter, but I couldn’t get that to work properly. However, I do find that Tweetie is a really cool Twitter app. And what’s cool is that they have an app for the Mac and the iPhone, but of which are good.

And I have to say I find the whole Twitter eco-system interesting, especially the URL shortening services and image hosting services. I can’t for the life of me figure out how any of these people, including Twitter, make money. Anyway, I might try the image linking stuff this Sunday when I go out to my bosses farm for Plinkapalooza. That’ll be interesting.

More On The Long Gun Mods

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:20:01 -0400

Wow, a couple of posts on this blog and they haven’t been about guns. I must be losing it!

Mini-14 Update

I mentioned before that I was unhappy with the scope mounting on my Mini-14. I was using an ASI Urban Brawler scout rail with an extension to bring the scope back for proper eye relief. That setup allowed me to use the scope or iron sights, depending on cheek weld. And true enough, you could do that if shooting an uncomfortable gun is your idea of fun.

First, while the ASI Urban Brawler looks way cool and has the least cramped sight picture of all the other methods I tried (e.g. the built in “see-through” front rail on the ATI Strikeforce stock, Weaver “see-thru” rings), shooting with irons was still like looking down a pipe. I could see the target directly in front of the gun but little else. Plus, the cheek weld was very uncomfortable.

The other issue with that scout rail is weight. It adds just enough weight to the front-end of the gun to make holding it steady very difficult. My free-standing shot placement was all over the place because I couldn’t keep the damn thing still.

After I could take it no longer, I replaced that scout rail with some Warne Quick Detach scope rings (pictured here). I am much more pleased with this setup, as the scope is in a more normal position. I will admit that I have not removed the scope and refitted it to see if the QD requires re-zeroing the scope. But many people who have these things claim it works. And I’m betting for the purposes of my free-standing rifle shooting ability, I’d never know the difference anyway.

As the ASI Urban Brawler also acts as the hand guard, I had to find a new one. I was tempted into putting the rail/hand guard that comes with the ATI Strikeforce stock, but I’m not wild about it. First, the rail on that is just cheap. But my bigger problem with it is that it uses screws to attach to the stock, making take down and stripping more difficult. Instead, I opted for a Choate hand guard which simply clips to the barrel just like the factory hand guard.

Lynne and I took it to the range the day after I put the new rings on. I simply wanted to see if the rings would hold tight and work so I only brought 50 rounds with me. There’s a lesson there I fail to learn: always bring more ammo than you intend to shoot, in case you intend to shoot more. Last week Erika and I took it back to the range, where I tested it out with Remington UMC, American Eagle, and PMC ammo. I did the best with Remington UMC.

That brings me to another thing I’ve decided about my Mini-14 -- no more Wolf 62 gr ammo. While the rifle can shoot it, the accuracy is lousy. And of course, I don’t care to run into that situation again where an incorrectly sized steel case freezes up my bolt.

The Other Ruger

My 10/22 is where I’ve spent most of my time lately. As mentioned before, I put on a new Blackhawk Axiom R/F stock. I also had a BSA 2x Reddot, but finally replaced that with a Nikon Prostaff fixed 4x scope. That works much better, in my opinion.

One of the issues I did notice was that the solvents I am using to clean this rifle are getting into the screw holes for the scope mount at the top of the receiver. This was possibly causing the screws to work loose and causing the reddot to drift wildly with each shot. I re-attached the scope rail with some Loc-Tite... a solution I don’t like. I’ll have to keep my eye on that rail.

Another issue I have with the 10/22 is that it gets dirty, really dirty. Cleaning all my other firearms is not that big of a deal, but the 10/22 seems to get residue everywhere. Of course, the 10/22 gets fired a whole bunch too. Still, I’m not happy with the amount of cleaning it requires.

In addition to the new scope, I decided to put in a polyurethane bolt buffer and a new bolt release latch. I have to say that the bolt buffer threw me for a loop, as it came with zero instructions. When I pulled it out of the bag, all I had in my hand was a blue, soft-polymer dowel. I thought to myself, “What am I suppose to do with this?” as I could find no obvious place to put it. After pondering things for a bit, I finally realized that it was to take the place of the rear bolt capture pin -- and sure enough, a quick Google search confirmed that.

I can’t actually tell if the bolt buffer is doing anything, but the bolt release latch is great. The standard latch requires either 3 hands or a bit of contortionism to properly operate. Not only is it awkward, but futzing with it to get the bolt closed also takes your attention away from muzzle awareness... not something you should do with a loaded firearm. The one I got from Clark Custom allows the bolt to be released simply by pulling back on the bolt handle -- just as you would find with most other semi-auto rifles.

Of course, Clark Custom ships no instructions with this little piece of metal. Well, I take that back. It does come with a small piece of paper that says, “This product should only be installed by a competent gun smith.” Being that I don’t know any competent gun smiths, I decided to go with an incompetent (and cheap) gun smith -- me and YouTube. As it turns out, it isn’t terribly difficult to do and there is a great YouTube video on how to do it. YouTube has thousands of helpful videos for working on firearms... unfortunately all but three use an obnoxious, even predictable, death metal soundtrack. This particular one has a wind chime soundtrack.

Back to the 10/22... This rifle is still not shooting as well as I’d hope. But I’ll give it time and some more tweaking. Perhaps a carbon-fiber heavy barrel is in my future.

Laser Bore Sight

The picture at the top also shows my new Bushnell laser bore sighter. I got a pretty good deal on it from Amazon, which is still available today. I’m very pleased with it, as it will put me “on-paper” at 25 yards. I resisted these things for some time because I thought they were gimmicky, but my other efforts to zero my scopes were just wasting tons of ammunition. This thing saved me a bunch of time. I recommend it, and the price you can get on Amazon for one of these is about equivalent to a box of ammo -- which you might waste trying to zero a scope the old fashioned way.