Things I wish they made...

I wish Magpul made their .300BLK Pmag in a 20-round configuration.

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #169...

Supersonic .300BLK loads from Sig Sauer and Hornady. In the background is a Sig Rattler with a Surefire M600df Scout light on it.
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Help me, Intarw3bz Kenobi; you're my only hope...

When I had my .300 Whisper Turkish Mauser project done, I had the barrel threaded 1/2"x28, because that's the standard AR muzzle thread. Which is cool and all, but the gun has a .3" hole in it and not a .22" hole, and all the .30 caliber suppressors on the market are threaded for... well, not 1/2"x28, that's for sure.

I don't want to cut and rethread the muzzle. Further, I don't want to buy most of the .30 cal cans out there because they're the size and weight of truck mufflers and you don't need a friggin' AWC Thundertrap to stifle a .300 Whisper, which only emits about as much gas as a mouse fart. Surely someone makes a can intended for the .300 Whisper, and given the round's roots in the AR platform, surely that can is threaded 1/2"x28. I know there are people that read this blog that are hip to the topic.

Help me, lazyweb! Where is this magic can I'm looking for, and how many cereal boxtops will I need to save to get it?

Help a brother out.

Surely somebody who reads this blog has experience running night-vision gear behind a magnifying optic.

Frank James has a super neat-o stealth hog hammer project that has run aground due to problems with groups wandering unpredictably when shooting with the PVS-14. By daylight, the thing shoots like a house afire with just the Zeiss optic, but when he puts the see-in-the-dark gear behind it, point-of-impact heads off for parts unknown.

Is it a basic incompatibility between the magnifying optic and the NOD, or what?

The cost of custom...

Some of the comments on the post below got me to thinking. I've had one custom rifle built so far, and it's a fairly rack-grade, utilitarian piece. When you add it all together...

I got the Mauser (a Turkish tomato stake with a shot out bore) for $35. The gun was stripped to the bare action and the lugs were lapped for free. I paid a friend $200 for the .30 cal Lilja barrel. I paid pretty much cost on a bolt handle, a Timney trigger and a bolt shroud and safety. I paid retail for the Boyd's stock, the recoil pad, Leupold bases & rings, and the Millet scope. Labor for fitting a short-action Savage mag box, welding up the bolt face, custom-fabricating bottom metal, threading the end of the barrel & making a thread protector, cutting the .300 Whisper chamber, and hundred-and-one other things involved in generally putting the whole thing together was done at "Good Buddy" rates (along with which you have to accept "Good Buddy" time; when a working 'smith is doing your gun in his spare time as a favor for a friend, you don't bitch if it takes a couple of years.) The matte bluing job was picked up at employee discount.

And even with all that, my plain-jane, rack-grade, budget Mauser custom came out well over a grand, probably closer to two . And the stock is still unfinished.

Gun show weekend...

There'll be a show at the Expo Center here in town this weekend and, as per usual, I've given up my free time in exchange for an exhibitor's badge.

Since it looks like I won't be buying any .30-caliber cans any time soon, I'll be dragging along Project Whisper and hanging a $750 tag on it just to see if I get any bites. The extra jingle wouldn't hurt, and I could turn a small part of it into a Mauser or an old Smith or some other old relic I'd enjoy more anyhow. (The Leupold doesn't come with it at that price, of course, although the Badger Tac-Latch and ErgoGrip do.) I'm even... and this feels a little whacky, so I may not do it... considering bringing my Delta Elite along. Not to put a price tag on, but just to see what kind of offers it gets. It's got a lot of work in it plus, like, nine or ten extra mags and I'm not dying to part with the thing, but if someone were to offer me Luger-shopping money for it, I'd be sorely tempted.

Anyhow.... Yay! Gun Show Weekend! :)

Boomsticks: An idea...

.300 Whisper .300 Fireball .300 Whisper .300 Fireball

Now that I've got Google's attention, I wonder how low a package deal containing a .300 Fireball upper and a matching can could be priced and still remain profitable? I wonder how many people would be interested?

Discuss amongst yourselves; I'll see if I can't point certain people towards this post if it seems to arouse any interest...

Boomsticks: Gratuitous Gun Pr0n No. 45

Photo by Oleg Volk, who is, in fact, The Man.

So, during the last visit to Oleg's he took photos of my shiny, modern .300 Whisper in addition to all the crusty old antiques I dragged over. The one above is just swoopy looking.

(If you are not a total gun geek, stop reading now.)

The round on the left, by the by, is from Yesteryear Armory here in TN; unfortunately, I'm not sure if they're still in business or not, because their web page has been replaced by a link farm. The ballistics on their loading are interesting. It doesn't claim to be subsonic; according to the box flap, it's pushing that 220gr soft-point at 1,378 fps. Contrast that with the conventional load (if such a term can be applied to .300 Whisper,) from CorBon, which lobs a 220gr VLD OTM-style bullet at a true subsonic 1,075 fps.

Here's the rub: I'll bet the long VLD bullet with its open-tip design is going to have a seriously quick yaw cycle on target, maybe within a couple of inches. On the other hand, that soft-point 220gr was designed to be loaded in .30-'06; is 1375fps enough velocity to cause bullet upset when it hits? Or will it not expand at all? And being that short for its weight, what with the round nose and all, it will be awfully stable and may have a yaw cycle measured in feet. Obviously I am going to have to buy some jello and put these theories to the test myself.

Regarding .300 Whisper and cans: All the .30 caliber cans I see on the market today are steel monstrosities designed to tame the mighty .308, like the Thundertrap. Maybe we could persuade a smaller, feistier manufacturer to come up with a compact 5.56-size can with a .30-cal hole just for .300 Whisper and subsonic .308. I know I'm not the only one out there faced with this dilemma...

Boomsticks: Ever so stoked.

No sooner had I got the OlyArms .300 Whisper upper pinned on my Spike's Tactical lower than I discovered that Cor-Bon had eighty-sixed production of the caliber. How festive. I pestered every wholesaler I could think of; nobody had any back stock. I pestered Cor-Bon direct. No dice.

"Bummed" does not begin to describe my mood. Dies for .300 Whisper... er, .300/221 Fireball are not cheap either. I'll definitely need to score some dies soon, but I was temporarily saved by stumbling into a gun shop today that had not only dies and brass in stock, but hunnerds and hunnerds of rounds of loaded ammo. W00t! Score! (220gr soft points, too!)

Boomsticks: Gratuitous Gun Pr0n No. 40

Christmas in March. W00t!


Look what finally showed up from OlyArms yesterday! After over a year of scheming, the .300 Whisper Project is finally underway. Barrel threading is next.

Boomsticks: Oh, frabjous day!

Guess what's finally en route? My .300 Whisper™ Fireball upper from OlyArms! Since I needed something to park it on, I combined a DPMS parts kit and one of the Spike's Tactical "Infidel"-marked lowers from work with a four-position collapsable stock, an Ergo Grip, and a GG&G receiver end plate sling loop I had at home. Now it's just a matter of anticipating the Big Brown Truck of Happiness showing up. :)

Boomsticks: I seem to have a one-track mind...

Yet more nattering about .300 Whisper.

(If you're not a terminal ballistics geek, this post will probably be as dull as watching paint dry. I won't feel bad if you skip it, but if you've read this far and are of a masochistic bent and wish to read further, I'll try and supply definitions as I go.)


On further reflection, the 220gr loading should make a pretty fair House Gun round. Here's my reasoning:

1) Sure, the bullet is a weak sister compared to rifle cartridges, but think about it: 220 grains, 1040 feet per second, 500+ foot-pounds of energy. Nobody ever accuses the 10mm Auto or .45 Super of anemia, and these numbers would be right at home with either loading.

2) Those 220 grains are in a .308" bullet. That's a lot of sectional density. (Sectional density is mass relative to cross-section.) Sectional density is what makes for penetration in bad guys.

3) The 220gr projectile is of a long-ogive, VLD (Very Low Drag) configuration. This means that it has a long, pointy nose and a center of mass that is well aft. These are the things that cause a bullet to have an early yaw cycle ("tumble", in layman's terminology) on impact. (Basically, this means that the big, long bullet will, almost immediately on impact, yaw through 180°, shedding energy as it does so, and continue on, base-forward, for quite some distance.)

4) Muzzle blast (both noise and flash) out of a 16" carbine, even unsuppressed, is dramatically less for the Whisper than it is for any of the common 5.56 defense loads. This can be important in an enclosed, darkened room.


Discuss amongst yourselves...

Boomsticks: My, what big bullets you have, Grandma...

220 grains of Justice!

Yeah, I'm getting pretty spun up about the .300 Whisper upper idea. Does it show?

Boomsticks: So I've got this freshly-completed AR lower...

...just lying around.

...and a couple of boxes of .300 Whisper ammo sitting on my desk.

...and I'm starting to get some really Dr. Strangegun-esque ideas forming in my head.