Tag Archives: guns

Choate Mini-14 stock

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As you may recall, I picked up a Mini-14GB last month. Fine gun, nothing wrong with it. (The magazine was a different issue.) But…that wooden stock…..

An email to the fine like-minded individuals at Choate for a replacement stock revealed that not only did they have the stock I wanted, it was available in something other than the ubiquitous black – a nice shade of green. Yes please! Arrived today. Thus:For my anticipated needs, I really like rifle furniture that is something other than black. Black just jumps out at you since large pitch black objects are not something you normally see everyday and when you do, well, isn’t your attention drawn to them? This is the reason I went with the green laminate on my Scout rifle and the green laminate on my .22….. I think they blend in with my environment much better than black.

Why get rid of the wood stock? Well, Im not getting rid of it as such…I’ll keep it for some tinkering projects, but if the time comes when leaving the house every morning includes throwing a rifle into the back of the vehicle or slinging it into a scabbard on a motorcycle, getting rained on, dropped, banged around, and generally abused….well, the Choate products are, literally, pretty tough to beat.

The stock itself is deliciously rugged, it took all of a couple minutes to transfer the hardware from the wooden stock to the Choate stock, nothing needed fitting, and although I havent checked it yet, I think it might be a tad lighter.

When I buy gear for the sake of increasing my odds of survival and comfort in the uncertain future, one of the rubrics is durability and survivability – in short, I need things that can withstand abuse or neglect and still perform all or some their function. This is why I’m a huge fan of the Choate replacement stocks for my shotguns. A Mossberg 500 that was buried in mud after Katrina will probably be rusted and need a couple parts replaced, but you could hose off that Choate forend and stock and you’d never know they spent a month under a mountain of wet sewage and sludge. Thats the sort of property that I want my gear to have… I try to take care of my gear, I try not to abuse it, but if the time comes where I have to neglect it and let the chips fall where they may..well..it’s nice to know they’ll hold up juuuuuuuust fine.

Other than a couple factory mags, this concludes my financial expenditures into this gun. I have enough ARs and PTR’s that it would be a strange circumstance indeed that this gun becomes my go-to carbine. But…it is an uncertain world, after all.

Feeding the monkey on my back

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I am a weak, weak man…..

Me: This Glock has been sitting in the case a while.
Him: Make me an offer.[Gun is marked $500. Crazy money.]
Me: Meh..not really my kinda gun. I’d go [$XXX.XX]
Him: Sold.
Me: Dammit. I need to put a bit more english on those lowballs.

This is the second baby Glock I’ve bought in a caliber I don’t want. But…at the price I paid, my goal is to trade it for a 9mm Glock.

So…if any of you people have an interest in a .45 or .357 baby Glock, and have a 17,19,26, or 34 you don’t want (Gen3 preferred)..lemme know.

Ruger Mini-14 magazine followup

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So I had a fairly lousy experience with the aftermarket magazine that came with the Mini-14GB I picked up a few weeks ago. I really shouldnt have been too surprised since the prevailing wisdom is that, currently, there are NO acceptable aftermarket mags. Now, as much as that was a bad experience at the range, paying $30 (dealer cost, mind you) for a factory magazine is an even uglier experience.

Now, an important distinction really needs to be made here. I almost always prefer factory mags (or .gov contract mags) to aftermarket mags for my guns. BUT…for a non-critical gun, or what we can basically call a ‘range toy’, I don’t mind aftermarket magazines. (I mind junk aftermarket mags, but a good aftermarket mag is acceptable.) So, since this Mini-14 isn’t really on my radar for an End Of The World sort of thing, I don’t mind using aftermarket mags if they are good aftermarket mags.

(However, in the name of transparency, I will say that I am going to pick up four factory mags ‘just in case’.)

Anyway…

Over on YouTube there’s a gear/guns channel I watch from time to time that does the sorts of gear evaluations I like – they buy the gear, they test the gear, they beat the gear, the review the gear. They had a video up on the Tapco aftermarket mags and they got great reviews. Ok, let’s get a few and see what they’re offering………

  • Overall Impression
  • Metal reinforcement and lockup
  • Basepad and follower
  • Legacy gear compatability
  • Pricing

Overall Impression

Tapco has been (and somewhat still is) the source of many memes and disdain in the gun community. Their name has even been made into a verb – “Bubba got that SKS and he Tapco’d the hell out of it. Look at all that crap!” But, apparently, they are making a pretty slick Mini-14 magazine.

The Tapco Mini-14 magazine resembles a Magpul PMAG in many ways. The follower is very reminiscent of the Magpul, and the overall ‘feel’ of the polymer/plastic is also very similar.

Metal reinforcement and lockup

These mags are the second generation of Mini-14 mags from Tapco, the first generation did not have a metal reinforcing tab where the engagement/lockup of mag-to-gun took place. As a result, wear and deformation could occur that would cause magazines to seat improperly which, naturally, leads to reliability issues. Case in point: look at this aftermarket metal magazine which it appears could have stood a little heat treating. The post-in-hole lockup area is pushed inward from repeated magazine insertions. As the metal pressed inwards, it made seating the magazine securely more difficult which exacerbated the problem by trying to ‘force’ the mag to seat…which just pushed the metal further inwards.

The Tapco magazine has a steel clip surrounding the front of the magazine to take the wear and resist this sort of issue. Lockup in my particular Mini-14 was good. There was some play, as is to be expected, but it was ‘play’ not ‘slop’. More importantly, there were no reliability issues with feeding. (This can be seen on AK mags, which use a somewhat similar method of magazine retention…there’s usually some play, but nothing that affects function.)

Basepad and follower

The magazine basepad and follower are going to seem familiar to anyone with a bunch of Magpul PMAGs. The followers are very non-tilt and they move smoothly up/down within the magazine body. The basepad is a bit chunky, but has a very easy to manipulate locking mechanism making magazine disassembly a breeze…much easier, IMHO, than GI AR mags.

Legacy gear compatability

A big problem with polymer mags is that, dimensionally, they do not have the same ‘footprint’ as their metal counterparts. For example, a metal Mini-14 mag and the Tapco both hold 30-rounds but the Tapco is longer and a bit wider. This can cause problems in terms of fit in pouches that were designed, ostensibly, for AR mags. ‘Legacy’ gear..those AR pouches you’ve collected over twenty years…may not be the best fit for the bulkier Tapco mag. Modern pouches, though, often have adjustable flaps on them and those help tremendously.

I found that the mags did fit in open-top pouches, although they were a tiny bit snug. In magazine pouches that utilize a flap closure, they did not fit unless the flap was adjustable.

AR mag pouch with a non-adjustable closure flap. Tapco mag is too long to allow flap to close. Fortunately, most mag pouches with flap closures these days are adjustable.

Tactical Tailor stock-mounted mag pouch for AR mags. Note that it has a velcro adjustable closure flap.

This mag pouch can do double-duty …. AR or Mini-14 mag. Or, really, any other similar magazine since the adjustable flap closure provides the ability to accommodate other mags.

Single-mag pouches like this one work fine except the retention straps, though elastic, are a bit too short to accommodate the longer Tapco mag. Left: Metal Mini mag, Center: Tapco mag, Right: GI AR mag. SpecOps magazine pouch.

Double-mag pouch with velcro adjustable flaps holds two Tapco mags with no problem. Heavy ribbing on mags makes withdrawing one mag a little tricky. Pouch: Blackhawk

A possible issue (or non-issue) I noticed is that the Tapco mags have aggressive ribbing on the magazine bodies. You will get a sure grip on the magazine. However, stack two mags together in a pouch and one mag will get a sure grip on the other. If it’s a snug fit for two mags in your mag pouch, expect some ‘rim lock’ as you try to pull one mag out. Again, a single-mag pouch should be fine.

No stripper clip guides on the Tapco mag. Not sure if that’s important to you or not, but sometimes it’s a ‘nice to have’.

So, how’d they shoot? Shot fine. Put about a hundred rounds through them and didn’t have a hiccup. Mags fed fine, locked open on last round, seated and extracted just fine. Certainly a better performance than I got from the no-name aftermarket mag and about the same performance I would expect from a Ruger factory mag.

Pricing

Pricing? Well, retail is for suckers so I usually pay dealer prices. Dealer on these was around $12, so I would expect to see them in the wild around $19.99. For comparison, a Ruger factory mag is, dealer, $29.85. And that’s dealer price.

As I said, this isn’t a run-out-the-door rifle for me, so I’m okay with quality aftermarket mags. But…I wouldn’t feel terribly disadvantaged with these Tapco mags if I got dropped into Katrinaville with a Mini-14 and a dozen of these.

Historically, it has been a bigfoot-hunt to try and find an aftermarket mag for the Mini-14 that was reliable. The only aftermarket mag I ever found that worked perfectly in the Mini-14 platform was the old Eagle 35-rd mags and they haven’t made those since the ’90s. These Tapcos seem to have cleared the bar on a good aftermarket mag finally coming to market. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I ordered a dozen more for myself and think it was a very good purchase.

Boutique or niche items

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Years ago, I had a buddy who thought that, for his needs, the ideal ‘battle rifle’ was a 1941 Johnson. You can go on GunBroker and look up the going rate for a Johnson….I’ll wait.

Kinda makes your eyes water, doesn’t it?

He was adamant that the rifle afforded him all the qualities he wanted in a rifle for the lawless apocalypse he envisioned. And, to be honest, it did. Problem is, he had a rather short-sighted list of qualities he wanted. One of the qualities that he soft-pedaled was affordability and logistics. Break the rear sight on your AR-10 and you can get a new rear sight (or mount a scope) with parts that you can find pretty much in any gun shop. Not so for the Johnson rifle. And affordability-wise, you could get two M1A, three PTR’s, or a couple FALs for what you’d pay for the Johnson.

I was reminded of this today because I took the Ruger Mini-14GB to the range and, unsurprisingly, had problems with the one aftermarket magazine that came with the gun. It didn’t surprise me; my experience with Ruger Mini-14 magazines has been that there are no aftermarket mags that are as reliable except for (in my experience) the old Eagle 35-rd mags that haven’t been made since the last century. In short, unless Magpul cranks out some Mini mags, your only real choice is the expensive factory mags.

Tangent: Tapco, apparently, has evolved a Mini-14 magazine that seems to do a very good job for about half the price of the Ruger factory mag. Might have to try a few.

So, after leaving the range today, I headed over to the local Cabela’s looking for a Ruger factory Mini-14 mag. None. Ok, try Sportsman’s Warehouse. None. And that is, in a nutshell, the problem with niche or ’boutique’ gear: you can’t just find the part or accessory you need as easily as other platforms.

Here’s another example. Years ago Streamlight made a little LED flashlight that I was very impressed with. BUT….it took AAAA batteries. Not AA, not AAA, but AAAA batteries. Good luck finding those in the battery rack at the supermarket.

Sometimes the boutique gear does 100% of what we want whereas the lesser, easily supportable version may only do 85% of what we want. But…when  you cant find a Mini-14 magazine or a set of AAAA batteries, that system is now doing 0% of what you want. I’ll muddle along with 85%.

Does this mean that I’m getting rid of the Mini-14GB? Nope…because the AR’s and AK’s are my ‘grab and run out the door’ guns, and they are a legacy weapons system that has a logistics base that is enormous. The Mini is pretty much just for fun or a waaaaay down the line level of backup rifle. But the experience at the range, and the subsequent experiences at the local gunmarts, kinda demonstrates something that is worth keeping in mind: logistics and support for a piece of gear should factor in to your decision about getting it. (Or keeping it.)

 

My lightweight 30-30

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I was so pleased with the you-cant-kill-it shotgun stock I got from Choate a few weeks back that I ordered four more to dress out a couple current and future boomsticks.

And while we’re on the subject of Choate, I picked up another of the somewhat-difficult-to-find pistol grip stock and forend combos they made. It’s my understanding that Choate didnt plan to make these, they were kind of a slight modification to some M1 Carbine stocks they were running off. (Or some similar story like that…I’ve no doubt I’ll get an email setting me straight on that.)

Anyway…..

I have a 21″ 30-30 barrel for the T/C Contender. For my needs, the .30-30 is a pretty good hunting cartridge in this part of Montana. I rarely shoot more than a hundred yards, and what I was really after was light weight and durability. So..when I found this stock and fitted it out on my .30-30 it was love at first heft.

I should throw it on a scale and see what it weighs.

Hmm. I always figured it was about five pounds. Turns out I’m off by half an ounce. Eh, I’d say with one in the chamber it would be an even five pounds. You gotta admit, five pounds for a rifle in a somewhat-respectable caliber is pretty freaking handy. This thing packs around in the woods like it weighs nothing.

With a shorter barrel, like a 16″, I could see this thing easily remaining below 5#…. maybe even the 4.5# range.

I’ve carried this thing around in the woods for a number of hunting seasons and absolutely love the light weight. Range is a bit limited since I’m sticking to open sights in order to save weight, but it’s easily a hundred-yard gun. I need to swap out that rear sight for a nice peep sight. (hey, there’s your Paratus gift giving idea right there!) Since it’s a single shot gun, I can load any pointed bullet I want in it since flat-nosed bullets in the .30-30 are only there to prevent magazine tube problems.

Anyway, I came across one of the stock sets at the gun show and felt like it needed to return to the house with me. I already have the .30-30 barrel but what I’d really like, and is dang difficult to find, is a carbine length .357 Magnum barrel. That’d be a fun little gun to play with, although a.357 Max might be even more interesting.

Still not learning

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Well, nuts….another gun show where I had the best of intentions and still managed to return to the house with something that made absolutely no sense to purchase….

The fine print:

A little something from the Slick Willy legacy… a ‘restricted’ marking, denoting that this particular boomstick was only to be possessed by Only Ones. Someone at the Mohave Sherriff’s Office is missing a Mini-14GB.

Back in the old days of survivalism, if you wanted a .223 semi-auto rifle your choice was limited to either an AR or a Mini-14. (Yes, you could get an HK93 or an AR-180…..maybe a Valmet …or some other equally obscure gun, but broadly your choices were just between the AR and the Mini.) The Mini-14 was about as accurate as your average AK, but also about as reliable as your average AK. And it was a bit cheaper than the Colt (which was virtually the only outfit making AR’s back then).

The GB models were targeted (so to speak) at law enforcement and, amsuingly, military markets. (Yes, some tiny jerkwater nations did issue the Mini as their primary long arm.) When Bill Ruger decided to start throwing people out of the lifeboat, he yanked the GB models and the ‘high capacity’ mags from the public marketplace. Fortunately, Bill Ruger has left the biological stage of existence and the company has largely undone the damage he wrought and has come out with many awesome products since.

Anyway, the GB was not on my shopping list and I genuinely have no use for it…but it’s kind of a novelty with the police markings and the ‘Restricted’ stamps. And the price was right. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it. I suppose in for a penny, in for a pound….I may as well hunt down a GB folder to put on there and go full A-Team with it. Or I may just pick up a half dozen mags, stick it in a soft case, and use it as a tertiary level ‘just in case’ carbine to store somewhere. Or I may sell it to the first person I can make a hundred bucks off of. Who knows. But, it will definitely go out to the range for a spin.

Choate stuff

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Remember a few weeks back I picked up a bargain 590 that needed just a tad of work? Well, one of the things I wanted to do was replace the gimmicky M-4-style stock with a more solid stock suitable for casual abuse and percussive persuasion. My exact words, in fact, were “Need to contact the guys at Choate and see what they have for a replacement stock/forend.” Well, as it turns out, Choate contacted me.

Some background: I’ve been using various Choate stocks since the late 80’s when they were all the rage in the preparedness (called ‘survivalist’ back then) community. I still recall their ads in gun magazines. I had a stock for my Mini-14 (remember those?), and later came across a really wonderful stock for the Thompson Contender carbine. (I was told that those stocks were kind of an oddball from re-utilizing M1 carbine stocks. Regardless it is the best stock for the TC carbine I’ve ever used in terms of weight, durability, and handiness.)

Anyway. Choate made a shotgun stock that I liked for those times when a wooden stock wasn’t tactical enough or resilient enough. After I got the 590 I thought I’d head over to Choate’s website and pick one up. Turns out they aren’t on the website anymore. But, the fine folks (and fellow like-minded individuals) at Choate managed to score me a stock and forend. You know what was really cool though? The forend even came with the little tool you need to remove those stupid forend nut. Very thoughtful.

Now, you may wonder why I prefer the non-pistol-grip stock in this case. Well, it’s really an ergonomic thing – the tang safety on the Mossberg is a breeze to operate with a ‘traditional’ stock, but with a pistol-grip stock your hand has to do more gymnastics to get to the safety. On the Remington, the safety is easily manipulated with either type of stock, not so on the Mossberg.

By the way, I have no idea what the story is with the coated green barrel. It’s not spraypaint, it’s actually a tiny houndstooth pattern of two shades of green very professionally applied. I’m guessing the barrel was a takeoff from a different gun. I really don’t care, it’s just a little odd looking.

So I disassembled the 590 and slipped on the new stock and forend. Gone was the gimmicky M4 stock and cheesy corncob forend (that still had velcro from where bubba had mounted some NCStar ‘tactical’ Chinese crap) and in its place was some very nice, very durable, very black, and very brutal furniture from our friends at Choate.

Now, thats a happy enough ending to a long story about a Mossberg 590, but the folks at Choate didn’t stop there. You know they make other molded products too, right? Like these ice scrapers. Yeah..ice scrapers. Ok. :::wink wink:::

And then this….monster….

I would like to have been in the office at Choate the day the guys from design came in and said “Hey boss..you know those ice scrapers we make? Well, me and the boys were thinking….”. This baby is definitely going in the pocket of the vehicle door. Yeah, a $3 ice scraper from the plastic bowl next to the register at the local QwikeeMart will scrape ice too, but this BAMF takes it to a whole new level. And…it’s a multitasker. For very particular tasks. How can you not admire that sort of creativity?

Anyway, big thanks to Choate for coming to the rescue on the Mossberg 590.

ETA: Yes, I do..and yes, it is.

Mossberg update

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About six days left on the 10//22 mag deal. A hundred bucks gets you either ten (10) Steel Lips, or fourteen (14) Hot Lips. Letting this deal slide by would be doubleplusunwise.

====================

A few weeks back I came into a marginally bubba’d Mossberg 590A1. Thought it was a good deal except that the magazine tube had a drooling problem. Sent off to Mossberg and the replacement parts arrived today. While I was on their website I picked up a couple extra parts like an ejector and a few other things.

Mossberg makes workhorse shotguns. They aren’t terribly noteworthy for anything other than their affordability and their (usually) reputation for durability. When settling on a pump shotgun I went with the Remington 870 simply for logistics reasons. However, the Mossberg is a more than suitable secondary standard for me. In fact, the really are virtually identical in terms of function and reliability. I’d guess that about 95% of the pumpgun market is covered by these two brands with only the Chinese and Turkish copies filling in the gap. (And, dude, if all you can afford is a Chinese copy of an 870 you relly need to re-evaluate your career path since it only takes less than about $200 to buy a used Mossberg at any gun show or pawn shop.

Punched out the receiver pin, dropped out the trigger group, swapped the parts, popped the trigger group back in, popped the pin back in, and it was all done. Took maybe two minutes, tops. Gotta give Mossberg credit for a grunt-proof design.

So…a quick trip to the range to confirm that everything works and this little guy will replace the 500 sitting in the closet, and the 500 will get relegated to tertiary duty as a beanbag gun or something.

Mossberg blues

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Sometimes a deal thats too good to be true…is.

Case in point, the Mossberg 590A1 I picked up. Took it to the range today. Loaded it up, brought it up to my shoulder, pumped the action and…..a shell popped out of the mag tube, missed the carrier, and landed at my feet. Hmmm.

Apparently, every time I worked the action, the shell lifeter would go down but no shell would be released into it by the magazine. You don’t have to be a genius to figure it’s something with the shell stop tab or shell interrupter.

First things is first…hit YouTube and get a disassembly video. Pulled the gun apart, cleaned everything, light oil, and back together.

Same problem.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. One of the cool things about having redundant backups is that rather than guess what part was giving me trouble, I could simply swap parts from a gun that I knew was functioning perfectly, put them in the trouble gun, and see if that made a difference. I pulled a Mossberg 500 outta storage, disassembled it, pulled out the stop and interrupter, exchanged them, and….joy. But because I had a similar model to swap parts from, I was able to swap parts to find what was the problem part. The alternative was to guess, replace several parts, or hand the thing over to a gunsmith.

A quick trip to Mossberg’s website got me several replacement parts for $30. That puts my basis on the 590A1 to about $165. Still ahead of the game. And, as a plus, I learned how to completely take the bloody thing apart. And I picked up some spare parts.

I’ll take the 590A1 to the range again later this week to confirm function, and when the replacement parts get here I’ll put them in the ‘donor’ 500, function test it, and put it away.

Moral of the story? A handful of 12 ga. dummy snap caps would have tuned me into the situation ALOT earlier.

Triple header

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I bought a bloody 590A1 today and am picking up the Glock tomorrow…why must these people go to the well so often????

:::Text message:::
“..” …Actually, lemme just screencap it:

I already have a Model 12. I bought one a few years back, had the barrel chopped down, and it makes for a handy takedown shotgun that just barely fits in my backpack. But…it’s an old design that features parts that havent been made since they lit Kennedys flame at Arlington. It’s not exactly a primary, secondary, or even tertiary choice for a shotgun. BUT the fact that it takes down is handy.. so I bought one.

This one, which is actually cheaper than the first one I bought, is in pristine condition except for a hairline crack in the stock and some freckling starting to form. 1914 manufacture and it is a strong 90%+. The crack and the slight freckling are all that I can find wrong with it. All the edges are sharp and it’s a gun that looks like it rolled right off the factory floor. Too nice for me to cut down. I’ll take it to the gun show this weekend and see if someone will gimme $300-$350 for it.

But…good grief…July has been a gun heavy month…Win 1200, Win 12, Mossberg 590A1, Ruger AR, Glock .357… I really went overboard this month.