Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

CTD has the HK .30 cleaning kits on sale for $2 ea. Assume a failure rate of 50% just to be safe. Meaning, if you want three kits, buy five…that way if one comes missing a part or something is broken, youre good to go. At $2 each you should probably have at least a dozen. Linkification. While we’re at it, they also still have the ninety-seven cent HK mags. (Reject rate on those was about 6% in my experience…meaning if you order 20, one or two will probably be trashed. Still a fantabulous deal, though.)

I have a few of the cleaning kits already. Bought them a couple years ago at, I think, ten bucks each. Theyre obviously very handy if you have a .30 caliber rifle. Just the thing for wandering around the woods with your .30-30 or PTR-91. One things to add would be a length of caliber-diameter brass rod. Why? Because you cant push a rope. While the little chain-like pull-through is great for pulling a patch through the bore, its going to suck for getting snow out of the muzzle. In cases like that a length of heavy brass rod dropped down the barrel from the breach end is just the ticket.

Speaking of PTR rifles, the buzz in the blogosphere has been that the PTR is less-than-HK-reliable with ammo that uses tar sealant in the case. My experience has been that this is true. The story, as Ive read it, is that PTR ‘improved’ the HK design by making the flutes in the chamber shallower and reducing the number of them. As a result, the tar builds up in those flutes and without the fluted chamber to ease extraction you get failures to eject. The most obvious solution is to simply shoot ammo that isnt tar sealed. However, the guys at PTR must have been getting an inordinate amount of crap from the shooting community because they have now introduced the PTR GI model. This model supposedly addresses those concerns, although PTR is very quiet about it.

I’m not sure I see a real problem here. People who are quick to castigate the PTR for not shooting tar sealed ammo feel that if you cant use all ammo available then the gun is a liability, yet they’ll refuse to shoot steel cased Wolf out of their custom ARs. The surplus .308 that used to be on the market is almost completely gone, so the notion that you are somehow deprived of the ability to shoot ‘cheap, plentiful surplus .308′ is kind of a non-starter. I’m a cheap bastard so I reload all my .308 on the big Dillon 1050. Fired brass, surplus powder, and bulk .308 bullets are all it takes. It duplicates military ball and is mind-numbingly reliable to shoot.

I still say the PTR is the best value for a .308 “battle rifle” on the market today. Mags for a buck, cleaning kits for two bucks, and scads of genuine HK surplus parts and accessories abound.