Sensitive reactive targets

[Doug Coulter]

I'd bet they did wait...those guys like a prank as much as anyone else does. I've been looking at a lot of WWII footage lately, just studying some history of human craziness. When someone fires one of the big pieces (not even that big) you see the dust jump into the air for quite a distance from it - you know it's brutal to be there. That's some shock wave!

The lies now are so blatant you don't even need much in the way of information to rebut them. If this guy was freaked by an AR - which is the very most gentle rifle I have that's bigger than .22LR...it's obvious he doesn't know diddly about cannons, and IIRC there haven't been bazookas around to know how they feel for a really long time - they're really obsolete. And even then, it's a rocket, unwieldy and almost no recoil - not even that loud til they hit. So, often enough internal inconsistencies require only a bit of critical thought to debunk. Too bad no one teaches that anymore, and even regards it as non-PC and all.

At any rate, I had made up a few tests of binding agents, just sticking together some standard flash to see the effects on how it burned. I tried red gum/ethanol, which is used in one method for corning black powder without a hydraulic press (and the dangers involved) as well as some nitrocellulose dissolved in acetone (Varget). The flash (7:5 KClo4:Al) wasn't hammer sensitive before. After, the red gum, despite being a pretty concentrated solution, just really didn't hold the stuff together well at all. And it was still not drop test sensitive. However the Varget solution, also concentrated, got the result rock hard and it became percussion sensitive - still really numb, though.

As to plain burning when bound, the red gum made a chunk hard to ignite with a torch(!). Burned slower than usual after that.
The Varget version was easy to ignite, and while somewhat slower than without (everything is!) - had more energy and the little chunk flew off like a rocket.

I chose varget as it is closer to pure nitrocellulose than most of the other stuff on my shelf. Bullseye might have been interesting, but it gets gooey when warm - all that nitroglycerin. Useful to have around if you have the odd chest pain, though.

That looks like the binder to use with the "real" stuff. I do want to find one that doesn't need chlorate (perchlorate is a lot safer...), and I'll perhaps try a mix with sulfur sensitizer and perchlorate to see if I can get it sensitive enough.
Phosphorus sesquisulfide would be cool, but I bet hard to get - it's what made strike anywhere matches work.

I also need to test with the abrasives - they added quite a lot of sensitivity to the chlorate mix. But this is not my main track, it's just something I do when there are a few minutes to spare.

[Jerry]

Finally took out my SR-10 (AR-10) that I bought last year and sighted it in when we went out to the desert a couple weeks ago and friends shot it too:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AYJCr_ ... sp=sharing

[Doug Coulter]

Sweet! Now I'll have to go fishing and find the one I lost in that boating accident after the VA governor and house started passing laws to make all ARs illegal. Mine is a different brand which I honestly forget, but it's pretty nice too.
We had put a scope on it and broke it in shooting cinder block targets on the next hill over - about 170 yards. About 3-4 shots to hit one, which for utter beginners with lousy support, I suppose is OK. No one who tried it thought the gun went
different than their shot call.
Recoil surprisingly manageable on mine - it's a really heavy gun. fat barrel. It had one major fault - it really brutalized brass, putting in a big dent halfway up the case, something the dies wouldn't iron out.
I was most of the way though putting all the mods on it that David Tubb did on his before he gave up and essentially converted it into a bolt action with a few custom parts...I could finish it now because I have the right machine tools.
Maybe I should do what he wound up doing - a super easy bolt on one of these actions would be fine - basically just a handle on the existing setup, push-pull, and remove the gas parts.

Once I got good with technique I never got around to finding out just how accurate it could be - by then I was into bolts, and had a Ruger 77 mark II I had gunsmithed extensively - it needed it, and was working with that for .308 freedom seed delivery.
The Ruger was a basket case initially, made around the time Bill was failing, and it showed. It took almost 2 weeks full time for trigger work, stock work, lap the barrel and on and on - but at the end, it would (and still will) punch an aspirin at 100 or more yards every single time.

One of the patrons of this board has a super custom AR10 type, similar flavor, suppressor and all, I'm green with envy, but couldn't afford that and it's even heavier than mine is (Which is saying something. Garands were light!).

Does yours wreck brass? I see you have something like a red dot or low power tac scope on it so you're probably not testing it to it's accuracy limits - these tend to be really good.

[Jerry]

I put a Burris AR-332 on there and it did come with a red dot.

I have not seen any damage to brass, though I dont reload. I picked up a case of old Ethiopian ammo and the stuff seems to shoot good. And cheap!

I was about 50 yards and had no issue keeping them within a 2" group. I need to go to a better range to fine tune it.

I have a Garand too.

[Doug Coulter]

I'd be very surprised if you couldn't keep it well inside 1 moa with good ammo. I've noticed on all the AR platforms I've touched that they all seem to have a lot of freebore (run to the lands), and are variable but kind of harsh on the ammo during loading. The key to super accuracy on all of the ones I've worked with is keeping the TIR very low, and loading long with stiffer neck brass hasn't hurt. Obviously you have to stay inside the magazine length limit.

The Garand is another whole kind of thing...people have made them shoot reallly well, but...a change in weather or exact technique makes that kinda marginal. They were "the best battle implement ever devised" I hear. That's kind of a different application than our fun with stationary targets further out.

[Bob Reite]

The wood stock of an M1 Garand in good condition is beautiful to look at, but the characteristics will change depending on how humid it is. So I prefer synthetic materials if attempting to build a sub MOA tack driver.

[Doug Coulter]

I do have a few hyper-accurate guns with wood stocks, but!
All of them are free floated past the action. All have been heavily gunsmithed, or in fact, are just completely custom builds.
The rules in high power, IIRC, didn't allow that kind of customization at the time people still used Garands, and/or it for sure wasn't considered...adjective of choice - fair, manly, whatever. It "wasn't done" and in the case of that design, it's not even obvious how you would do it. Ditto M14's a little later on. But both were good by iron sight standards - some shooters have really amazed me, but with a scope and support, it's another world. They win the (p)seeing contest, for sure.

My 6 PPC is a from scratch build with a barrel so heavy it wouldn't matter - 1.4" end to end - you're not taking that one hunting. It went from trunk to bags back to trunk at matches, but I quit using it in competition as it got a reputation. If I pulled that thing out, everyone else would leave. It doesn't even seem to care much about loads - like the kitty, "if it fits, I sits".
My Cooiper bro's .223 in bolt - custom build, their serial number 23. That one you can carry, also free floated. Won Hunter Benchrest with that, got a possible. Seriously good stuff.
My Ruger 77 mk 2 was a disaster when I bought it, but a week plus of full time work...now it will reliably make one pretty round hole at 100, and ain't bad out to a few times that if you adjust zeros and pay attention to wind.
I don't know about my AR10, it's never had a good scope and a good shooter at the same time...it seems good, subjectively.
I worked a marlin .22 semiauto over, tried floating the barrel, it got worse - and weird interactions with that magazine tube - and I wound up putting a piece of towel between the barrel and the relieved stock. It's now as good as all the bolts it's been compared to, but I've had Ruger 10-22's out here that eat its lunch, easily (those weren't wood or even remotely stock, though).

One swede I'm working on is well sub-moa with lead bullets now, and I'm not done yet. It's a floated barrel, clunky stock, in hot rod terms, a total sleeper. I've got a few more under construction, since I'd bought all those parts thinking I was going to compete in Class F. Probably not, but I might as well build the guns and sell them before all that stuff rusts.

[Jerry]

A guy at work builds custom M1As on the side and just put together a Garand. He picked up a stock from these guys and says it is great. Eventually he is going to bed it in.

https://www.stockysstocks.com/m1-garand ... k-set.html

My M1 is a korean re-import with the yew wood stock, it really needs to be replaced. Luckily when they reimported this one they only marked the barrel and not the receiver.

[johnf]

Doug
Hope you have not been testing exploding targets in Beirut

[Doug Coulter]

No! I think just going there would be a really bad time.
I found that explanation of the post blast cloud color seriously off, though. Yes, nitric oxides are red - a transparent red - not rust color and very opaque like the cloud there. Seems odd that a lot of dirt would have been on top of the AN as well, or that a building roof would have that much mass. But I don't have an alternate theory, just would point out that the given explanation doesn't fit with what I've seen here.
I've only seen the NO stuff in a small fraction of tannerite shots here and in videos, and here at least, it indicated that the stuff was old, had only been winged instead of hit square on, or something else being marginal - the reaction into nitric oxides isn't the only one.
The "tannerite plus" we tested above - with some potassium perchlorate in the mix - gives pure white smoke (Al2O3) and more of it than plain tannerite - it seems that with the extra oxidizer, the fast reacting flash mix gets the AN to more fully "go", as well as the Al, and it can do it with a lower critical cross section, which is nice - saves money and it's plenty loud enough.

You could see fireworks going in the pre-boom fire in that incident. The fire was exciting enough that a lot of people were filming for the surprise blast. Maybe the fireworks were on the floor above and got involved in the reaction. Several popular components of pyro display pieces, including KClO4, would have added serious zing - and color.

Yeah, with the Garand, it kind of depends what you want it for. I don't do the collector thing, so I don't know what they key on as regards numbers and original stuff. I just like guns that shoot well and reliably. For me, gun control is hitting what you want to hit, and only that, and on the first try.