Authors

OK, so if you’re here, you probably own a firearm of your own, or you may be looking for one. Owning a firearm, such as a pistol, is a lot of fun but it’s also a lot of responsibility. One of those responsibilities is the proper care and maintenance of your gun. If you want it to last, taking proper care of it is the key.

Be it rifle, shotgun, or handgun, each has it’s own particular characteristics. Here, we’ll talk about caring for handguns, both revolvers and pistols. Revolvers will generally need less in the way of maintenance, but will still need your TLC from time to time. Take a few minutes to pull that wheelgun out, look it over, and wipe it down if need be. In a similar situation, stainless guns will need less maintenance, but they can and will still rust if not properly cared for.

First off, there is a difference between maintenance and cleaning. One is done to keep the gun ready on an ongoing basis, and preserve it long term (maintenance). The other is cleaning he weapon after use. Both are important, but both hold slightly different roles in the care of your firearm.

Before we get into the specifics about caring for the guns, let’s pause here just briefly to go over where you do your work on them. Select a place that’s clear of clutter, and with a flat surface. Avoid places that have carpet or rugs as they will suck up and eat small pieces.

Most importantly, make sure the gun is empty, and if you need to, remove any and all ammunition from the room. I cannot emphasize this enough. Far too many people have been hurt or injured by someone cleaning an “unloaded” gun. Before you even start doing anything to a weapon you bring into your cleaning area, clear it, check it two or three times, then recheck it. Once you know it’s empty, and visually as well as physically check the chamber, you can begin. This goes back to the standard principle that you should treat every gun as loaded until you check it for yourself. When you sit down to clean or work on your gun, make sure you check to make sure it is empty first.

Read More…

Value means getting more than you paid for, and that’s exactly what you get with Vanguard’s Endeavor ED binoculars. For binoculars with the performance and features they offer, you would typically pay 50% to 500% more.

The MRSP on the Vanguard Endeavor ED 1045 is $499, but I found them on Optics Planet for $399 and on Amazon for $379. Until November 30th there is also a special running from Vanguard that you can get a shooting stick or other accessories free when you buy a pair of these great binocs. The direct link to the promotion is: https://www.vanguardworld.com/index.php/en/os/component/content/article/6-other/137-free-shooting-stick-with-binoculars-purchase.html

The Endeavor provides 10.5 x magnification with 45 mm objective lenses. Typical sport binoculars in this power range have 42 mm lenses. The larger 45 mm objective lenses gather more light with an inconsequential trade-off in weight and size. Compared to the Vanguard ED 10 x 42 binoculars, the 10.5 x 45 add a little more than an ounce in weight and 2 mm (less than eight hundredths of an inch) in width. The added brightness is well worth the minimal weight penalty.

To get the best image quality, binoculars have to basically do two things well: transmit as much light as possible, and focus the image clearly. Glass lenses reflect some of the light from their front surfaces and the inside of their back surfaces, anyplace that glass and air touch. That’s the flash you see if you happen to be in front of someone using binoculars or a telescope. Anti-reflection (AR) lens coatings assist in light transmission and also reduce ghosting and flare. Binoculars designated as AR “Coated” have a single layer of coating on at least some of the lens surfaces. This helps but multiple layers are much more effective. You’ll know if they have multiple layers if they say “Multi Coated.” “Fully Coated” means that all glass to air surfaces are coated, and the very best binoculars have “Fully Multi Coated” lenses, like the Vanguard Endeavor.

The second problem area for light transmission is the prisms. Quality binoculars generally use one of two types of prisms: poro prisms or roof prisms. You can tell if a pair of binoculars uses poro prisms because the objective lenses are wider than the eyepieces; the prisms are mounted side-by-side inside the binoculars.

Roof prisms are mounted in-line, making the binoculars sleeker and more compact, however roof prisms require better coatings and more precise manufacturing than poro prisms, which is why roof prism binoculars typically cost more. The Vanguard Endeavor uses a combination of roof prisms, BaK4 prism glass (which is superior to BaK7 glass used in cheaper binoculars), and special phase coatings, for optimum performance.

Of course, the quality of the lenses is responsible for the quality of the image, and the Endeavor uses ED or extra low dispersion glass which makes the very best lenses. Binoculars with ED lenses actually use a pair of objective lenses, or a lens couplet, in each tube to reduce chromatic dispersion. Chromatic dispersion stems from the fact that the different colors or wavelengths of light which make up white light (think rainbow), focus at slightly different points, creating a slightly fuzzy image. The second lens in the ED couplet corrects the dispersion created by the first lens, resulting in a sharp, clear image with fine detail resolution. That’s important if you’re trying to count the points on a deer at 300 yards or to see anything in low light conditions.

The Endeavor utilizes a magnesium alloy body for lightness and strength, rubber cladding to ensure a secure grip, and is nitrogen purged to eliminate fogging and protect the internals from oxidation. They also incorporate O ring seals to make them waterproof. That doesn’t mean you can take them to 90 feet on your next diving trip. They are guaranteed waterproof to 3.3 feet, which is more than enough to keep the rain out and provide a little insurance in case you drop them in the water at your duck blind.

Read More…

Marching to the beat of your own drummer can be a challenge in the gun world. But over and over again, Kel-Tec CNC, the company we all know for their tiny extremely affordable and reliable pocket pistols, keeps showing up with a new beat, and the guns are some of the most interesting in the entire shooting world.

The Sub 2000 is a folding pistol-caliber polymer carbine, and that is about where standard descriptions run out of gas. At first glance you may try to compare it to a gun you already know, but quickly you realize that it is unlike any other gun you know.

You find yourself saying, “It’s kind of like a … um, no, it’s kind of like nothing.”

The Sub-2000 cocks in the rear, and all of the moving parts of the gun are located in the rear. If you look in the pictures, that whole front barrel assembly swings up from a release in the trigger guard and the entire gun effectively folds in half. It is pretty much a totally unique firearm.

At an MSRP of $409 and a street price well under $400, the Sub-2000 is loaded with features that you wouldn’t expect in such an inexpensive gun. It takes Glock 17 mags in the standard model, but Kel-Tec is also shipping them in Glock 19, Smith & Wesson 59 type, Beretta 92 & 96, and Sig 226 configurations, and the gun is available in both 9mm and .40S&W. The plastic rear sight automatically flips up when you deploy the front of the rifle, and the front sight is a completely adjustable fiber optic. The barrel is 16″, and the weight is only slightly more than a pistol at 4lbs. It fold down to 16″ long.

Read More…

This week we are giving away a choice of two optics from Swarovski Optik – a Z5 riflescope and a 65 HD spotting scope. If you haven’t entered the giveaway, it’s easy. Just “like” Swarovski Optik North America Hunting on Facebook and look for the instructions to enter. The full explanation was emailed earlier in the week and is here. As promised, this is an overview of Swarovski products, and our two giveaway scopes.
Quality is not something you can fake with optics, and learning how to buy quality optics isn’t as hard as you might think. There is a boatload of technology behind great optics: patents, design trials, and research and development, but you really don’t need to know any of that to choose an optic that outperforms the rest of the field.
Read More…

Many of us long for the days when technology didn’t rule our lives, yet we love the convenience of it. It’s the same thing with special muzzleloader seasons for whitetail. The antiquity of the technology is romantic, but better ballistics, better sights, and easier and more consistent components can make a hunt more likely to put a rack on the wall and fill a freezer with meat. The precious time we manage to actually get out into the woods in our busy lives is valuable, and going into the woods with a better gun during muzzleloader season has become the norm instead of the exception.
Read More…

I recently visited the Islands of Hawaii, putting some of my hard earned vacation dollars to work. While there, I noticed something unusual in the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center in downtown Waikiki. It was a billboard ad for a shooting range, of all things, where tourists could rent guns and shoot!
Now I’m from California, and a shooting range is the next thing to an adult book store there, so I was pretty surprised to see the ad, much less in an urban shopping center. Since my interest was piqued, I had to wander up to the top floor to see what’s what.
Read More…

This is what you’ll get in the mail. The Nitesiters come with everything you need. They are easy to move to precisely where you want them. S&W revolver front sight before centering. NiteSiters Website: www.nitesiters.com. Whether it’s self-defense, hunting or target practice, being able to see your sights is a very good thing. For about [...]

Obsession with accuracy drives you to think up some interesting ideas, one of those is Cartridge Overall Length. It is based on the premise that when a bullet is fired from its cartridge case before it engages the rifling, it is inherently unstable, and that in this “freebore,” the bullet can get cockeyed. When you remove as much of that jump as possible by seating the bullet closer to the rifling, it will eliminate this chaotic “freebore” and hit the rifling straighter and more consistently.
The careful hand-loader or re-loader will try to minimize that jump to the rifling as much as possible.
Read More…

I can pretty much promise you that you will not see another review of the Auto Ordnance “Thompson” TA-5 Pistol that suggests you buy one to use as your main tactical carbine, but that is the way I see this gun. If you want an effective close quarters combat carbine in a pistol caliber that hits harder than 9mm, I have not encountered a cleaner and more effective candidate than this in the sub-$2,000 category. At an MSRP of $1,377 and street price substantially less, the TA-5 is a lean, mean fighting machine that eats everything you put through it and shoots into a ragged hole at 25 yards. What else do you need?
Read More…