A side note....

You'll never find anything personal or political in this blog. Sorry. I have strong views and plenty to talk about, but not here.

This blog is for guns, and guns alone.

Now, to make this a legitimate post...
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I was pondering this move for a long time; finally the time was right. I grabbed a Superior Arms reciever, DPMS parts kit, and a used stock and assembled my very first AR15 lower.

ARs are, as Alston said, "Lego guns". It's simply brilliant and brilliantly simple, allowing me to do what I'd never even seen done before in about 30 minutes, though I goofed a bit and got the hammer spring legs on top of the trigger pin instead of on the floor of the fire control well. Trigger's heavy but smooth, I should look up how to stone the sear contacts without changing the angle or otherwise improve that.

Now, to further things, I don't have an upper. I've nicknamed this rifle 1-2-3, for an obscure reason.... A1 stock, A2 grip, and I want to get an A3 upper. To be more precise, I want an A3 flattop with low front sights a flat gas block, 20" barrel (thin is fine), 1:9 twist. From everything I'm stufying that would allow me to use bullet weights from 40 to ~75 grains, which is just about everything available that I'd run across cheaply. Optics or irons, I haven't decided.

Alternative uppers are available too, of course... pretty much for anything that will fit down the mag well. .22lr, .223, 6.5, 6.8, 7.62x39, 9x19, .40, 10mm, .45, beowulf, .50AE, I've even heard of a 20ga shotgun upper that was determined to be an AOW by the ATF. And it's all interchangeable via two pins and a different magazine. Beautiful.

Well, the system's beautiful, not necessarily my rifle. 1-2-3 is going to be a bit fugly, honestly, but it'll likely be a classic mutt.... wonderful in function and reliability at the expense of looks.

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An additional side note:

I was thinking of the other pistols I had in my collection wondering if I had anything strange or odd enough to inspire a line of thought, since I've been dry the last few days. I've got a Norinco 213... a Tokarev TT30/33 or Tokagypt clone. The hammer to slide contact angle is upright and the hammer's rather heavy, providing an initial resistance to recoil impulse, i.e. the hammer assists with timing.

Why not expand that and hame a hammer design that *determines* timing, perhaps with a gas piston system? The hammer falls and is locked into place until the piston returns and unlocks it, releasing the slide.... it'd be a heavy hammer due to the stresses involved but wouldn't be much weaker than a Beretta toggle, really.