Thursday, August 29, 2013

SP4 Bubba

It hit me like an epiphany that there is a reason .mil-oriented Leatherman tools (MUT and OHT) don't have files:
"Dude, I have an AR back home and my dad's a gunsmith. I can totally give your M4 a sweet trigger job..."
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21 comments:

Al T. said...

Totally agree. Had one of my bubbas use Brasso to clean his barrel, wonder of wonders, he didn't clog the gas port. I wouldn't have bet on it though.....

4:50 PM, August 29, 2013
og said...

I usually have either a folding diamond hone or a small Norton India stone in my pocket. Midway has a good assortment of them that are range bag sized. A hard Arkansas and an India stone together will do most light deburring work. Add a 6" Nicholson safe edge smooth mill file and you got most stuff covered.
And KEEP IT AWAY from bubba.

5:36 PM, August 29, 2013
Anonymous said...

I have seen a Cletus Do It Yourself Gunsmitty Course grad turn a G-17 into a G-18. He was just trying to making the trigger "Mo better".

Glock told him they never wanted to see the pistol again.

Gerry

5:59 PM, August 29, 2013
The Great and Powerful Oz said...

My Leatherman Wave has a nice 2 sided file on it. But I suppose it's not a .mil sort of multitool.

6:02 PM, August 29, 2013
Tam said...

The Great And Powerful Oz,

Yes, and my Juice KF4 and Rebar and even my little Style and micra have files, but they are not marketed toward the .mil as a bulk purchaser for general issue.

It's the same thing as "pizza box" NeXT workstations. People got all fluttery over the fact that they didn't have external drives of any sort. Which was because they were intended for institutional purchasers: If the Very Big Corp wanted someone to have software on their machine, then they would install it for you. ;)

6:18 PM, August 29, 2013
Steve Skubinna said...

Tam, I worked in IT and user installed software is a major problem.

And by "major," I mean OMG Freakin' HUGE!!!

Until you've been responsible for keeping a couple hundred workstations running on company business, you have no idea how much havoc the neat new screen saver or the stock ticker applet or (maybe worse of all) IM software can cause.

It makes a file on a pocket tool look innocuous, and is the biggest possible argument for not giving users admin privileges. Anyway, my MUT sits in my toolbox, alongside a nice set of gunsmithing files, so I never even noticed the lack. But now that you've pointed it out, I can see a phalanx of company armorers (I was one, incidentally, over three decades ago) descending upon Leatherman HQ demanding "WTF were you thinking, putting that @!$#% POS file on that tool?"

7:27 PM, August 29, 2013
RHT447 said...

Heh. Bubba indeed. Back in the dark ages when I was an SP4, my MOS was 45B (Small Arms Repair). Spent my tour in the former West Germany assigned to a maintenance company in the mid-seventies.

At one point, my buddy and I were tasked with traveling to customer units in our deuce ‘n a half shop van to inspect and repair weapons on site in their arms rooms. On a regular basis, we would find weapons that had suffered the tender mercies of another infamous EM, one King Kong Muscleman.

One fine day, in the arms room of an artillery battery, we discovered an M-60 on which our hero had managed to snap off the barrel latch lever while in the field, resulting in the loss of the entire latch assembly. The on-the-spot solution was to insert a live M200 M16 blank round into the latch tunnel to retain the barrel assembly in place. Had the MG been fired enough to heat up the barrel, the results would have been umm…exciting. Never missing an opportunity to stir the pot, my buddy and I went up one floor, saluted smartly, and deployed the MG on the battery commander’s desk.

8:20 PM, August 29, 2013
Heath J said...

Never underestimate the creativity of bored grunts.

8:34 PM, August 29, 2013
Steve Skubinna said...

It is impossible to make anything foolproof.

Fools are far too ingenious.

8:43 PM, August 29, 2013
Old NFO said...

Any enlisted in ANY service can screw up an anvil with a rubber hammer... Much less a gun... sigh

8:53 PM, August 29, 2013
B5K said...

@ Old NFO- Lock a Private in an empty bank vault with just 2 bowling balls overnight. Open the vault the next morning, and feign surprise when you discover one bowling ball cracked in half and the other one missing. Ask me how I know this...

9:11 PM, August 29, 2013
Ted N said...

...One sphere will be broken, one will be missing, and one will be pregnant...

9:15 PM, August 29, 2013
Joe in PNG said...

Now if only Bubba could find a Leatherman with a built in Dremmel... he'd be in heaven...

10:33 PM, August 29, 2013
Gewehr98 said...

I still have my USAF-issued Leatherman Wave. It may not have an NSN stamped into it, but they are most definitely .mil. ;-)

3:22 AM, August 30, 2013
Fred said...

The Gerber I was issued has a file. The MUT and the like are too expensive for general issue.

7:22 AM, August 30, 2013
Cormac said...

That kid should be made to sit in the corner and practice intense facepalming...for three or four hours.

10:17 AM, August 30, 2013
rickn8or said...

In the words of one of my old maintenance Master Chiefs: "I'm only scared of two things; a junior officer with a screwdriver and a Personnelman with a hammer."

He was even more eloquent than that when we were five minutes too late with the question "Why is Airman Smith taking a pair of cannon-plug pliers to a Deutsch connector?" (Think of the difference between threaded and bayonet connectors.)

12:18 PM, August 30, 2013
mikee said...

As a mere civilian, I have never tried to file anything on a gun.

Because I have a Vice Grip in my toolbox for those jobs that require finesse.

1:21 PM, August 30, 2013
Robert Fowler said...

Al T. said...
Had one of my bubbas use Brasso to clean his barrel.

I've been working on guns since my USMC days in the 70's and I have never seen that one.

Brasso????
Jesus wept.

3:24 PM, August 30, 2013
Geodkyt said...

Ah, watching privates proud, proud I tell you, when they've "taken their bolt groups down to the chrome".

A-yup. Diligently scrubbed ALL the parkerizing off the outside of teh bolt carrier, AND the bolt. . .

The kid whose selector switch "just broke" during routine cleaning -- never mind the suspiciously rock-like dents and grit embedded in the lever, or the ganked-up trigger group.

A case could be made for replacing the rear take down pin on an M16 with a padlock hasp, and just issuing CLP by the quart to keep lubing the bolt through the ejection port. . .

3:56 PM, August 30, 2013
DaddyBear said...

Actual quote -

Private, I just want an explanation, in plain English, of how you managed to get unleaded gasoline into all of the plainly marked "Diesel Only" generator sets in the company, using only one five gallon jerry can.

1:56 PM, September 16, 2013

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