Tag: accessorize

May 22, 2024 – It’s a Funny Little Gadget

May 22, 2024 /

A few months ago, I was killing time at Walmart. I had dropped my wife off for some medical test and it was a time of night that not many things were open. I walked by the sporting goods counter to try and see what kind of air rifle pellets they kept in stock and I noticed this pen looking device. It turned out to be a ‘speed loader’ for air rifles.

I wasn’t going to buy it there. It annoys me that half of the items are locked up and there is no one in the area. The more these stores like Walmart and Target lock up more and more items, the more likely I am going to buy things online rather than at the store. It is a hassle factor for me that I dislike.

I never knew that anything existed like this. I am less interested in the speed loader function than the ability to portion off a smaller number of pellets. Typically when I am doing my daily practice, I portion out ten pellets into the lid. That is how I know I have done my proper daily routine.

But more so than that, I like the idea of taking these tubes out in the field rather than a whole can. Cans rattle with noise. They are also prone to spilling. I don’t really take my rifles out to the field, but if I did I would take these full of pellets. You can see that they have a pocket clip to keep them quickly accessible and safe.

So, how do they work? So, so. The fat rubber tube on the end has a propensity to block the view of the chamber causing a partial insertion or even miss. These work best on the break action, single shot, spring or piston driven rifles. This is where you break open the barrel and use the device to feed the pellet into the chamber by pushing the orange plunger. I found that I often have to finish the job with my thumb.

Despite the drawbacks, I still like the ability to portion off pellets. The ones that I have pictured here are Crossman. This is not the brand I saw at the store, but they were several dollars cheaper at $7 versus $10. Is this a must have accessory? Definitely not but it definitely satisfies my fully accessorizing obsession disorder.

End Your Programming Routine: No regrets here, they just don’t work as well as I would like. Maybe I should try the other brand too? At $7, they could be garbage and I wouldn’t have lost much. This isn’t the case, they are well made and I can envision use case scenarios where I would be glad I had them. I will keep using them because they fill a role in partialing out my daily allowance and maybe I will get better at using them.

November 19, 2020 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

November 19, 2020 /

Some would say, and I agree with them that the pump action shotgun is the most versatile firearm there is. As with every compromise, none is the ideal solution. It just so happens that this is a pretty good one.

I own several pump action shotguns of different brands and gauges. It used to be back when I was young there were essentially two brands Remington and Mossberg. The Remington 870 was the king of pump action shotguns. The most popular Mossberg 500 came with two barrels: a field barrel of 28 inches and a defense barrel of 18 1/2 inches.

Today Remington’s future is in limbo, Mossberg is going gangbusters and there are a whole lot of clones out there. The clones have interchangeable parts with one brand or the other. That allows you to accessorize by adding or changing your shotgun as you please. Some examples of things that you can change are: barrels, stock, fore end, add a laser, add a light, add an optic or extend the magazine.

I would be remised if I didn’t mention some of the other peripheral details. There are some other brands like Weatherby and Winchester as well as old brands like Ithaca. I am not sure what the situation is with aftermarket support. So, buyer beware in those cases. You might want to ask the seller about those details.

Also, not every shotgun is as easy to accessorize, notice I didn’t use the adjective ‘pump’ here. When you start to get into the foreign brands like Berretta/Benelli or Browning there are some extra barrels available but they are far and few between. Mossberg does a pretty good job of supporting all of their products and offer rifled barrels for their semi-automatic shotguns, but that is it.

I wanted to talk about my experience shopping for used shotguns for a minute. My son and I were looking around this time last year. We went to a very large gun show and I had a difficult time finding an inexpensive and serviceable shotgun for him. In fact, there were not that many to choose from period. We saw a couple and they were old for nearly what we could buy a new one.

Old is not bad but be aware there are a couple potential limitations. If you are not hunting, it probably won’t ever matter but the first limitation might be chamber length. Old shotguns could only chamber 2 3/4″ shells (really old might be 2 1/2″ chambers). Three inch shells are prevalent for waterfowl hunting.

The second is the interchangeable choke feature. Almost all shotguns come with the ability to change chokes. The choke is the mechanical restriction in the barrel dictating how broad the shot pattern will be. That makes your shotgun a turkey gun, a deer gun, a trap gun or a sporting clays gun. Chokes are not 100 percent necessary to change for every situation, my son shoot everything with a full choke. But, they do give a little more advantage when applied in the right circumstance.

In my opinion, if you are going to buy used it needs to have the features above or it needs to be a significant discount because all of those things can be added, but at a cost. If you are buying something specific or rare discount this advice however you are not reading this for education anyway.

I should also add that most what I am talking about has been in twelve gauge. I have noticed that there is lesser aftermarket for Remington in the 20 gauge and even less so with other brands. My dad has a 870 in 16 gauge. Good luck with finding extra barrels or chokes for that. Sometimes finding ammunition is even difficult.

I have found that looking for accessories is best done online. I guess that there is not enough interest in keeping well stocked stores with extra barrels and such. You will often find one thing but maybe not exactly what you want. For instance, there are three types of rifled barrels. One has a scope attached, one has just a mount and one has sights (or neither). They also make one that has sights, but is not rifled. All of them are called ‘slug barrels’. Not everything is equal.

One experience that I had was I bought a Mossberg barrel for my Remington 870. As the barrel heated up, it didn’t have the clearance between the barrel and the forend and the action would get stuck. I had to Dremel out more clearance (this is a good reason to test your gear, it only happened after the second shot).

There is lots more to say about this subject, but this is a pretty good introduction into what to know about accessorizing a pump action shotgun.