Only the weak give in to change.

I totally felt this way when Totino changed from round to square. I get the logistics of shipping, but man, I still want the round pizzas.

I was also initially upset when Snapple got rid of the glass bottles (they were perfect for holding solvents and corrosive liquids) but then I found out the PETG was perfect for 3D printing so I still have utility for them.

You know what they say: if you can't beat'em, join'em show your disapproval by perfectly executing a somersault.

79248cm/s said:

I totally felt this way when Totino changed from round to square. I get the logistics of shipping, but man, I still want the round pizzas.

I was also initially upset when Snapple got rid of the glass bottles (they were perfect for holding solvents and corrosive liquids) but then I found out the PETG was perfect for 3D printing so I still have utility for them.

Ah, I see someone else likes performing freebase extractions on Acacia plants.

ilnarnar said:

Ah, I see someone else likes performing freebase extractions on Acacia plants.

Lol no, I don't do narcotics (I go after narcotics users). My previous career involved occasionally working with explosives (NPE or otherwise) and as such so I have BATFE licencing to manufacture but it was specifically limited from distribution or sale unlike a normal manufacture licence.

Also I make and use a lot of Ed's Red as a gun cleaning solvent because it is a powder solvent that won't touch copper fouling in the bore., so it is perfect for precision rifle shooting. They fit well in those bottles and don't evaporate out, since I prefer to use Hoppe's #9 bottles only for copper solvents.

79248cm/s said:

I totally felt this way when Totino changed from round to square. I get the logistics of shipping, but man, I still want the round pizzas.

I was upset too, then i realized the rectangle pizza fit perfectly in my toaster oven and thus i ended up with an even crispier pizza so i was happy. Also there is a nostalgic feeling of when i was a kid wating rectangle pizzas from school.

Now orr a change i was upset with, mr pibb was discontinued for a while and that was one of my favorites. Then an episode of american dad informed me that it was back but it was pibb xtra now. I was both happy it was back but greatly annoyed it had a stupid name.

Yeah but imagine being a ghost and you have to put up with change in scoiety over generations, hundreds, thousands of years, wachting the rise and fall of trends, the evolution of tech and culuture, only for it to fold back in on itself after civilization collaspe.

Yuyuko broke...

79248cm/s said:

Also I make and use a lot of Ed's Red as a gun cleaning solvent because it is a powder solvent that won't touch copper fouling in the bore.

Now, i'm kinda new to shooting but here i am assuming that the whole point of cleaning your gun is to get rid of fouling because it's bad, for everything. Why leave the copper?

KhorneFlaeks said:

Now, i'm kinda new to shooting but here i am assuming that the whole point of cleaning your gun is to get rid of fouling because it's bad, for everything. Why leave the copper?

@KhorneFlaeks

If you are just shooting general purpose, it doesn't matter. I used to serve as a "sniper" for a PMC (this was back before combat vets started moving enmasse to PMCs, so it was a lot easier for me to get a variety of combat roles [despite primarily being intelligence driven and having never served in the military or undergone a real sniper school], as long as I had knowledge [which I learned from others], and could perform on demand. Although, if things went right, I didn't have to fight.) and we often used to worry about what was called the "cold bore zero" or "fouling shot" (as is more accurate). Those who were not careful enough to recognize the difference between a fouling shot and a normal could potentially mess up their zero.

Based on our data books, we always noticed that the first shot of the day was like 1/4-1/2 MOA low and sometimes slightly towards the direction of the rifling spin. Is it that big of a deal? Not really, but lets say you are shooting where you need to really control your shot to avoid collateral, or like a hostage situation. An instant drop often requires as tight as 1-2" of accuracy, and this can be beyond 100 yards in some situations. Coupled with factors that are difficult to reliably counter such as wind, or range finding errors (back then electronics such as laser rangefinders were not easily available, we used optical devices such as used in landscaping for observation/range finding, or maps to range find, or at worse, the scope reticle.

So it was something we were concerned about but didn't know why, so we just log in our databooks to note the first 1-2 rounds will fly off and to compensate. We had no idea what was going on. Some guys would clean their guns then shoot a few rounds to negate the fouling shots (as the first round of your gun is often the most important in any engagement, especially for precision shooters who rarely will empty their magazine and are not suited for really fighting). It was because of this we started getting a clue that it wasn't the barrel that was heating up, but that when we cleaned the gun, we were removing enough junk from the barrel that the bullet was basically traveling through a different barrel condition. A totally clean barrel down to the metal exposes more of the rifling to grip and spin the bullet, the lack of fouling means the bullet has less resistance than normal and is traveling though a wider diameter space which leads to less velocity due to less pressure, and this in turn leads to the drop and occasional horizontal deflection. I believe this revelation first was discovered from the 6mm benchrest shooters, but I am not certain. It could have also had military origins. Either way, once chronographs became cheap, we all started measuring the velocity of our shots which helped to determine the quality of ammunition, our actual thermal deflection (which we found was more about ambient temperatures heating the cartridge, not about the temperature of the barrel), and velocity became an easy way to guage the life of a barrel as as the bore wears, the velocity will drop due to the enlarged bore. At a certain point the drop in velocity is exponential and this gives you early warning when to swap your barrel so you don't bring a gun that is going to get shot out on you when you are counting on it.

So in order to have a homogeneous barrel condition shot per shot, we don't clean the copper fouling from our barrels anymore. We leave it in there and only clean the fouling in order to prevent its tendency to trap humidity which can cause oxidation of the metal.

Honestly, cleaning a gun is kind of exaggerated. The key is to just make sure fouling is removed from areas that need clearance for the weapon to function (gas port, locking lug recess, bolt bearing surfaces) and the rest is just making sure the gun is lubricated enough (I use full synthetic motor oil because it is cheap and is more reliable in a variety of temperatures from deserts to freezing high altitude conditions than any other gun solvent. Think about it, your car engine undergoes way more stress than a gun, that means the lubricant is uses is much higher performing than a gun). The bore really doesn't have to be cleaned because the act of the bullet obturating and traveling down the barrel scrapes far more crud out the barrel than any cleaning patch could hope to accomplish. The only real purpose of cleaning a barrel is to avoid oxidation (rust), which even then, really isn't a concern unless you are mexican matching components from scrounged ammunition in some 2nd world country, or you plan to store your gun outside or somewhere corrosive. So I store guns copper fouled, but I clean out the powder and run an oily patch through the bore before I store it. Before I use it, I just run several dry patches through to remove the oil (as well as check for bore obstructions) and I am set to go.

If you want more info about shooting, feel free to PM me anytime. It is a topic I love. If you want resources on sniping or long range shooting, there are obviously military manuals but they are horribly outdated, even for their publication. Major John L Plaster (the guy COD Black Ops was loosely based on) has a series of books called "The Ultimate Sniper". Its super cheesy title, but the info in there is actually very well written. Again, pretty outdated stuff, but covers fundamental considerations pretty well, and I wouldn't say anything in the book is necessarily "wrong". Just might be ignoring better options, either because he doesn't want to tell the world about them, or he wasn't aware of them at the time of writing.

There is also a book called Hard Target Interdiction (based on an actual class, SOTIC I think it was called) or something like that, and it is an excellent book about long range shooting and anti-material shooting applications but I believe it is out of print, and it is slightly outdated in some respects. There is a guy on youtube who summarized the main points from the book, I think it is called Sniper 101 or Long Range Shooting 101. Be warned, the original book itself was 1,000 pages long, and the dudes videos were like over 50 hours total. I obviously did not watch them all, so I can't say if he got anything wrong, but he does show himself shooting to a mile with first round hits, so it is clear he at least has a grasp of the fundamentals.

79248cm/s said:
Informative stuff.

I might take you up on that offer one day. Thx for the info, i really appreciate it.