by B.B. Pelletier
Announcement: William Davis is this week’s winner of Pyramyd Air’s Big Shot of the Week on their facebook page. He’ll receive a $50 Pyramyd AIR gift card! Congratulations!
Willliam Davis is this week’s Big Shot of the Week. Here he’s showing off his Crosman pistol with shoulder stock. He says he gets one-hole groups with it.
It’s time to advance through the 20th century and look at open sights as they evolved. We now know that by the beginning of the 20th century almost everything that could be done to increase accuracy with open sights had already been done. There were a few nice touches that were added, but most of the hard work had already been done. But that didn’t mean the gun makers were finished. There were always new embellishments that could be added. Yet, some of the sights that were most popular in the 20th century actually got their start in the 19th century.
Buckhorn rear sights
Buckhorn rear sights were actually popularized in the American West in the second half of the 19th century. But they became very trendy around the 1920s, and the trend lasted well into the late 1950s — past the time when they made any real difference to shooting and were more of an adornment that some shooters expected to see. Though they were originally mounted on single-shot muzzleloading rifles, they are perhaps best-known as the sights for Western-style lever guns.
A buckhorn sight is very distinctive.
When you see a full buckhorn rear sight, you instinctively know it was created for some specific purpose, though there’s very little literature that actually explains it. I’ll now go out on a limb and explain the sight as I understand it.
A buckhorn rear sight is a ranging sight. What that means is that it’s a sight that can quickly be “adjusted” to shoot at different ranges without touching the sight. All you do to change the distance is change the sight picture. There are three clear sighting options when you sight through a buckhorn. The sight is nearly always associated with a post-and-bead front sight; and when it isn’t, I suspect someone has changed one of the two sights — either front or rear.
The bead can be held in the small notch at the bottom of the buckhorn for close shots. I would tell you that this is the 50-yard sight picture, but that would be misleading. On some guns, it might be exactly that, while on others the distance will be different. Suffice it to say this is the closest range at which the sight can be used without any adjustment.
When the muzzle is elevated until the front bead appears in the center of the hole described by the arms of the buckhorn (sort of like using a large peep sight), you have the middle range. Again, I can’t tie this to a specific distance without referring to a specific gun. And when the muzzle is elevated so the bead is between the points of the horns at the top, you have the longest range at which the sight can be used without adjustment.
All three ranges are achieved without moving the rear sight — by simply elevating the front post in relation to the buckhorn. That’s the purpose of the buckhorn sight as I understand it. If you have one on a 44/40, the three distances will be different than if you have one on a .22 rimfire. You should bear in mind that when the buckhorn was invented, men typically had just one rifle and they learned it well. It wouldn’t take long to become accustomed to the ranges for which their own rifle was sighted.
Now for the bad news. Most riflemen dislike the buckhorn, finding it crude, obstructive and generally not useful. Townsend Whelen was very outspoken against it. And most shooters who own one simply use the lowest notch for sighting, so the extra capability goes to waste. But it looks very Western, hence my remark about it passing into the realm of a fad.
Semi-buckhorn
Worse than the buckhorn is the semi-buckhorn, which is neither fish nor fowl. It was even more common than the buckhornand appeared on most rimfire rifles of the 1940s and ’50s because of its supposed popularity. It’s not a ranging sight like the buckhorn — just a stylistic form that’s supposed to look cool. It was popular at the same time the semi-beavertail forearm was considered necessary. Nobody asked shooters what they preferred. Companies just attached these sights to their guns and that was what you got– not unlike the fiberoptics of today.
The semi-buckhorn rear sight is just a stylized rear notch with two long arms that add nothing to the functionality.
Fiberoptics
Fiberoptic sights have synthetic or glass tubes that collect light and transmit it to a point at the end of the tubes. The point is oriented toward the shooter’s eye so the fiberoptic tube looks like a bright pinpoint of light. The object is to align the two rear sight dots with the front sight dot so the three appear to be in line. The front dot is usually red or orange and the rear dots are usually green.
It all sounds fine but for one thing. Red is the single color that’s hardest to see for colorblind people, and approximately 14 percent of all men are colorblind in some way and to some degree. Red-green is the most common type of colorblindness. That doesn’t mean these people can’t see the colors red and green, but they have problems seeing all shades of those colors, as well as other colors that are similar. Traffic signals compensate for this by putting yellow into the red and blue into the green, but I’ve seen some fiberoptic tubes that were so dark that I couldn’t tell what color they were. They are always red when that happens, by the way.
The typical fiberoptic front sight is a single red tube like this one from TruGlo.
A common arrangement of a fiberoptic rear sight is to bend one tube so it appears to be two green dots like this one.
The other problem with fiberoptics is they’re so large that they cover a large part of the target. So, aiming precision is lost when the shooter can’t define the aim point any closer than several inches at 50 yards. Good open sights can go down much finer than that, and aperture target sights can go down to tiny fractions of an inch at the same 50 yards.
But many people seem to like fiberoptic sights, and they’re now coming standard on everything, including handguns that they have no business being on. We’ll either have to put up with them as long as the fad lasts or find alternative solutions.
There are still some sights we haven’t looked at yet. One is an optical forerunner of today’s battery-powered dot sight. And the ghost-ring sight is another more recent invention that I know very little about. If any readers are familiar with them, I would love to hear about them. I’ll research them for the report, but I’m hoping the comments will shed more light on the subject — pun intended.
Sight fads. Adjustments. Fear the boy that only has one gun.
I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t shoot many guns with open sights anymore. I shoot quite a few guns with peeps. I just realized after reading this article that most of my shooting is done with scoped guns since nowadays I shoot with the goal of making little tiny groups on paper.
Have to be honest and admit that as far as my shooting goes I’m not sure that I’ve evolved.
I’m not the typical airgunner. I didn’t grow up with a daisy or crosman. I had a rimfire with open sights. It was an unspoken expectation during my youth that if I disappeared for more than an hour with my gun that I should return with meat. Ammo was expensive, time was valuable and more than an hour constituted goofing off which wasn’t tolerated.
Chores consumed most of my time. When I had free time that remington semi auto was always my companion. Bringing home game was the expectation and excuse that allowed me the brief freedom to be by myself.
I lived to take that remington into the field. My prey was rabbits, squirrels, grouse, etc. but I also shot pinecones, rocks, frogs, twigs you name it.
Funny thing is that I don’t recall ever adjusting the sights on that gun. Still own the gun BTW. I can remember many times hunting snowshoe rabbits in the winter learning about holdover by moving the front bead over and beyond the notch based on where the bullet strike was in the snow. When it’s 10 below and you have only one shot you teach yourself quickly.
I got to the point, after many years, that I knew where to put the bead on the post in relation to the rear notch which sometimes meant the bead was well away from the rear notch. Instinct is quirky but I’m not sure I could still do this today even though I still own the gun.
Not sure in all this reminiscing that I’ve made sense so let me put a finer point on these ramblings.
This would not have been possible with fiber optic sights. At least not the fiber optic sights I’ve seen.
I don’t remember adjusting these sights for precision but instead learned holdover, holdunder and kentucky windage. Today, I want open sights, peep sights and scopes to be dead on and from there I will make adjustments for wind and distance. Funny how my memory thinks I was more accurate 40 years ago with open sights. However, 40 years ago I was only interested in a small kill zone vs. very small groups on paper today.
Today I have the luxury of shooting a variety of guns frequently. Nonetheless I think this has made me a less effective marksman since I don’t have an intimate relationship with any of my guns.
I don’t think I evolved as a shooter in the areas that count.
Hope everyone has a geat weekend!
kevin
Kevin:
I enjoyed your post immensely! Your experiences growing up with your Remington 550 were similar to mine ,except that I had the single shot bolt version of the 500 Remington series. When I was a kid my hunting targets were cotton tail rabbits on the snow in the brier patches of Western NY. I wanted the Remington pump .22 real bad but my father bought me the single shot which I hated. It would be 30 years more before I bought one of those pumps for myself. The cheap stamped metal sights on those Remingtons were crude but as you say, we got close and learned where to hold. I shot that gun until a piece of the chamber fell out and it bulged the cases until they split. I then badgered the old man into getting me one of the then new Ruger 10-22’s carbines which I still have. I used the Lyman brand folding semi- buckhorn sights it wore, until my folks bought me a Weaver V-.22 series scope for Christmas one year. I thought I had a laser gun then. I think that BB is right that you have to start a kid with open sights like those on the Bronco or a red ryder. Their eyes are usually good and it teaches them to hold off and make elevation adjustments automatically. They also appreciate the scope and peeps more when they look through them, because by then if they have learned anything ,they know what accuracy can do for their shooting.
Robert,
You never cease to amaze me. Yes, the remington 550 is the model that was my best friend for many years.
Today it’s a pathetic looking thing that wouldn’t fetch $50 in a bidding war but I wouldn’t sell it for any amount of money.
I was raised by grandparents. Hardworking germans. My grandmother was kind and quiet. Fantastic cook and an even better baker. My grandfather was an sob. Spent most of my time in the early years of my life trying to impress him. I can still remember sitting at the kitchen table bragging about a shot I made with that remington 550. He looked at me and said, “When I was your age at that distance we would light stick matches with our .22’s.” Don’t think it was his intention but he shamed me into becoming a better shot with those open sights.
kevin
Kevin :
We have another thing in common besides Remington 500 series guns.My parents were also both of German descent, as were both sets of my grandparents, which is maybe why we are interested in precision so much. You are right about the baking ,my mother who passed away early in my life really knew how to bake! It is interesting that my father who bought me a single shot as a first .22 , bought all my younger siblings repeating .22’s for a first gun after my negative experiences with the Remington. He had initally bought into the popular PC idea that if I had the repeater I wished for, that I would have been tempted to be irresponsible with it. The one different thing I had that you say you didn’t when I was growing up ,was that I did have a crosman air pistol, and my father liked airguns. He brought back one of the first LP-53’s made from Germany back in the mid 1950’s which I kept when he passed away. We also learned to shoot with a Crosman CO2 mod 99 when I was very small and we lived in the city. It’s a good thing that this blog has people like you and the interesting topics this week. I’ve been able to participate and keep sane, as I’ve been trapped home with sick kids all week.
Robert,
Twin sons from different mothers?
My thick german blood is blamed for many of my traits.
Sorry to hear about your sick kids. No fun. Sanity is highly overrated though.
Hopefully you’ll be able to get outside and do some shooting soon. Shooting for me will cleanse and revitalize the spirit.
kevin
Kevin
Thank you for your post(s). It makes me feel much better. I find myself scoping everything I intend to shoot alot. The problem is that I just can’t focus on the front sight or the target will be blurry or invisible. At 40 years old, my sight is just horrible. Scopes allow me to see my target clearly. I do shoot open sights every now and then, for the discipline. Also I have a great deal of respect for BG Farmer who constantly urges open sight shooting. I figure this man knows something I don’t (or has far superior sight than me) But I agree that it adds a good deal of discipline and technique to your shooting. Lately my policy is, if a gun has good open sights, I will leave them there and forgo the scope. Good sights are increasingly rare these days, so most guns get a scope. You seem to own some of the better scopes out there. I would like to indulge in one of these some day.
Best Regards, Kevin
Your posts are golden.
Slinging Lead,
Thanks for the compliments.
It’s still fun for me to plink with open sights. I don’t do it often enough. When I have time to shoot I’m usually testing pellet accuracy and I need a scope for that.
kevin
So could your grandfather really do the match lighting trick? I had a great-grandfather from Germany who sounds like your grandfather. His wife, my great-grandmother, was an excellent cook, but if Big Daddy came home and didn’t like the dinner that she had labored all day to prepare (or maybe was in a bad mood), he would pick up the whole dinner and throw it out in the yard, and she had to clean it up. Everyone went hungry. The word was that they actually had a good marriage, and that this was just the German way. For myself, I think it was outrageous.
Matt61
Wow, this sounds like something out of the 19th century. And a lot of fun! I hope there wasn’t punishment in store for not bringing back the game. I understand that Alvin York the WWI developed his shooting skills because as a boy hunting for game, he would be severely punished for shooting turkeys in the body and destroying meat instead of just shooting the head off.
Matt61
No punishment but questions about what I was really doing. Goofing off was frowned upon.
Never saw him light a match with a gun. Never thought to question him about whether he was lying or not. That would have meant certain death and my burial would have been in a shallow grave 😉
I believe in his younger days he could have lit matches with a rimfire though. I hunted with that man for years and saw some amazing shots. His sister confirmed that when he was young he would kill birds on the fly with his rimfire. Shotgun shells were too expensive so he only hunted with a rimfire as a boy.
He gave me my first shotgun when I was 11 or 12. If Colorado allowed hunting upland game with a rimfire I would have never been given his old 16 gauge. He was a very opinionated and abrasive man and didn’t have any friends because of this. I was his hunting and fishing companion. You need a blocker and a good dog to hunt birds, especially pheasants, effectively. I was both for him. He even called me dog. After the vehicle was loaded with the hunting gear he would call out “come on dog, get in the car.” He was a snap shot with a shotgun. VERY rarely missed.
kevin
Around 1970, my father bought a Weaver Quickpoint for his new custom Argentine Mauser .270. That year, four deer came running across his stand in the woods. It sounded like he had a semi-automatic. He dropped all four of those deer.
At close ranges, that sight is awesome! It uses light shining on a fiber optic rod to produce an orange dot that a prism then projects onto a blue tinted angled screen. When you bring the rifle to your shoulder, the scope just seems to disappear and an orange dot is floating in the air in front of you. The dot is about 6 inches in diameter at 100 yards, but except in real bright light conditions, you can see through it, allowing for pretty good accuracy at those ranges.
The one downside of this sight is that in very low light conditions, the dot disappears. But then, it would likely be very difficult to identify what you were aiming at, so you probably shouldn’t be shooting anyway. I still have it, by the way.
A little more on the Quickpoint. It came in three models; rifle, shotgun and a smaller rim fire. The shotgun model never seemed to catch on, likely most people did not want to drill and tap holes in the side of their shotgun actions .The rim fire was likely a bit expensive for most people to invest in for a .22, so it too did not seem to be popular. They were right pricey at the time.
Soon afterward, the battery powered dot sights came out and the Quickpoint faded out in the dark (I couldn’t resist the pun). I am sure there are some nice ones out there, but I have not looked through one I like.
RR: the Quikpoints were real popular here for awhile as all we could use were shotguns to hunt deer . The most popular shotguns were the Remington 870’s and the Mossberg 500’s with buck barrels of 20″ for the 870, and 24″ for the Mossberg. I know the Remington could be scoped with a Quikpoint and a saddle mount that required no drilling or tapping. It was held on the receiver by bolts that replaced the pins in the receiver that held the guts in the gun. I still have a saddle mount somewhere in my shop for the 870.
I see that there are basic peep sights that are sold as ghost ring sights for the popular Marlin lever actions, but the sight picture they present is no different in my estimation, than what you see when you remove the aperature on your Lyman or Williams peep. You then look through just the treaded hole in the receiver sight’s bridge, and all you see is a faint ring ,or halo around the front sight, which could be a fiber optic one. So just a sight with a bigger aperature and with a catchy lable, something that eastern woods hunters have being doing already for decades.
As I understand it, the Ghost Ring setup is designed for hunters who want a fast acquisition for relatively close shots. As with the peep sight, the human eye will automatically center the front sight in the ring of the rear sight. As Robert said, you get the same effect by removing the aperture from a “real” peep sight, with the added utility of being able to switch back and forth.
Jim
What’s the difference between a ghost ring and a peep sight?
Matt61
Target type receiver/tang peep sights are large flat disks with a small holes. Essentially if you can see the front sight at all, it means your eye is centered on the small hole in the disk, removing one element of sight alignment from the equation — whatever the front sight bead/ring is on, is the point of aim.
Ghost rings are large thin rings that don’t block out much of the target area (good for hunting as you can see things entering/exiting the danger zone). They’re supposed to offer the same eye-centering effect, but without the qualifier — you may be centered in the ring, but your peripheral vision area is so large you may still have to do some conscious centering of the front sight. I believe, based on the name, one should just perceive a fuzzy “ghost” of the ring surrounding the front sight.
Military receiver peep sights are somewhere in-between, though closer to target type. The rings are large enough to visibly block out part of the down-range but not as much as a “holy” disk, and they are far enough forward on the receiver that one still has four points of alignment: target, front sight, peep, eye (the small hole, and rearward position of a target peep essentially means one only has target, front sight, and peep/eye as a unit; even a small misalignment makes it impossible to see the front sight). {I really wish the peeps on my HK-91 and .30 M1 Carbine were about 1.5-2 inches closer to the rear of the receiver}
RidgeRunner,
I forgot about the Quickpoint! Thanks for reminding me. I was thinking of the older Nydar dot sight from the 1930s and ’40s that was pretty much the same thing.
Gotta do more research!
B.B.
Wow, the Nydar sight is amazing, a reflex sight in 1947!
I remember the ads for the Quickpoint in the 70s! In American Rifleman I guess, I was given a short stack of those by a handyman working on the house.
I never knew that buckhorns came full like that. Or more likely, I never really paid any attention to it. I shot with a semi buckhorn on an old bb gun belonging to a friend and didn’t really like it. I always liked the straight notch and post sights better. Like everyone else here that learned with open sights, I learned holdover and Kentucky windage, but I’ve always been a “fiddler” and liked the adjustability of straight notches and post sights. I never did much with peeps either, but I finally got a Williams peep to try out. I haven’t got it mounted on anything yet. All of my guns adore either scoped or the sight won’t fit without some modification, ago it hasn’t gotten done yet. I bought it to put on the Slavia 634, and then found out it won’t tighten up on the narrow CZ dovetail. I can grind some out of the sight to make it fit, but haven’t done so yet…
/Dave
Duskwight,
Once upon a time you hinted that you may want to make your own stock for your duskcombe. Here’s one of the best write ups I’ve seen on making a stock:
http://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9411043/m/4711078031
kevin
kevin
Thanks for the tip, very nice work, great pics and text!
However, err, that’s I would say, for purists with lots of time. I love old-style work, but I’ve got no skill nor patience for that.
I use a bit wider toolset – powered plane, circular saw and drilling/milling machine with different cutters and drills, etc. That simplifies work and makes it way faster and more efficient. I “count” stocks using completely different formulas and proportions, and there’s lots more math involved. Well, master’s experience and skill compensate for that, but math rules for dummies like myself.
Dusckombe stock would be industry, not art. I would take AI AW approach and overall shape with a touch of Mauser SR-93. Well, it all yet has to happen 🙂
duskwight
duskwight,
Understood. Should have assumed you had all the power tools necessary.
kevin
duskwight, perhaps you have seen this how-to on stock building. The two links are for the same information, just in different file formats. Apparently, you don’t need to even log in to look at the library and download files. Howie makes use of an array of tools.
http://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/library/Air_Rifle_Stock_Building_by_howie1a.pdf
http://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/library/Air_Rifle_Stock_Building_by_howie1a.docx
kenhomz
Aaaah, now that looks closer to the way I make stocks. Thank you.
Some funny tools I use – a piece of wooden rolling pin, 27 and 24 mm dia with a lengthwise cut to fasten sandpaper – excellent when it comes to softening and correcting semi-round niches for cylinders. And I’ve got a set of chisels made out of truck engine piston heads, folded steel – I worked as a hammerman on their creation 🙂 nice stuff, cuts beech and even ash like butter when it comes to cutting out angles.
duskwight
BB,
A form of the semi-buckhorn is found on Southern long rifles (especially in Tennessee) way back. I would guess 1820 or so — although the earliest one I can locate a photo of quickly at this moment is an Ambrose Lawing, probably in the 1840’s or 50’s. It can also be used as a ranging sight of sorts, or at least the crude one I’ve made works that way. The one you show is highly stylized, or maybe simply set up for a rimfire (to give it the benefit of a doubt). I suspect it evolved to give quick acquisition and a (relatively) long range zero reference in addition to the notch, and it may be possible that the full buckhorn was a refinement of it rather than vice-versa, as the semi-buckhorn precedes it historically, and many southern rifles went west, long before even the Hawken was fully evolved, much less the cartridge rifles. I really dislike buckhorn sights in use, but the semi buckhorn properly made is at most useful and at least not distracting in the least :).
I’m alive, home, probably cured without follow-up, and have the worst dam’ narcotics/anesthesia headache of my life. You don’t want much more detail, but I can tell you shaving will be weird as they ‘stretched’ a nerve. And my entire right cheek is numb!
Thanks for prayers, good wishes, etc! Reading is painful as the earpiece of my glasses sits on top of the incision and drain :-).
Pete
PeteZ,
Thanks for the good news. Sounds like things are going your way 🙂
Edith
But…. It may be a long time before I can use a rifle again. How do you aim if you don’t know when your cheek is touching the stock? Oh well; in comparison with what could have resulted, I am truly lucky.
No complaints!
Pete, I hope that “a long time” turns out to be relative and that you are shooting even before I can safely do so again.
Ken
Actually, my Dad is one of the 2% whose Bell’s Palsy is incurable, and the side of his face has lost feeling. But he can find a cheek weld okay.
Matt61
Edith, I immediately thought of Uncle Remus and “Song of the South” upon reading your comment to PeteZ. Feeling nostalgic now, I think I’ll see if I can check it out through the library.
Ken
Ken, I hope you can find this book.
Copies of the Disney film have pretty much disappeared, killed by political correctness.
Les
Les, I expect you are correct. Political Correctness works like a bomb, taking out friend as well as foe (something like that, I am rather tired).
Ken
PeteZ
Welcome back and I hope in a few days you’ll feel better than before. Don’t worry too much about the innervation, if the nerve itself is in one piece most times it will come back in no more than 1.5-2 months.
duskwight
Nerves are all intact. My doc is a bit more conservative; he thinks more like 3-6 months for full sensation.
P
PeteZ
Your doc seems to like to make a sure shots, but let’s hope you’ll make him miss by about 2 months 😉 As far as I remember from my own XP about stretched nerve, I had to increase on B6, B9 (folic acid), B12 and E vitamines and seafood – Zinc. And training.
duskwight
DW,
you may be right. Some sensation is already returning in odd parts. And that means they hurt a bit. i’ll let you guess which parts have feeling.
pz
Good to see you’ve made it through your ordeal.
Hoping you get well soon, but don’t push yourself too hard trying.
Les
Good to hear from you, Pete. I have some numbness of my neck but it sounds like yours is more severe. Now that you are hopefully free of the original issue, I do hope you will begin to have some relief from the side effects of the cure.
Ken
Very different kind of numbness. Yours is probably right at the incision site where the scalpel had to go through nerve endings to open you up. Mine is deep seated with, of course something at the incision. Until yesterday I didn’t know you could tell the difference! 🙁
Everyone,
This may sound like spam, but it’s totally legit:
If you like helping other airgunners, you can get paid to do it and earn free products from Pyramyd AIR.
We’re looking for seasoned/knowledgeable/experienced & friendly airgunners who are interested in chatting on Pyramyd Air’s site with customers who are looking for assistance. If this sounds interesting to you & you’d like to learn more, click the following link for the Needle Chat Program for Pyramyd Air:
https://pincushion.needle.com/needlers/register/pyramydair
Please address all questions about this to the above website.
Thanks,
Edith
Well,I just spent 45 minuites filling everything out thoughtfully,hit send……and some page came up
from Needles saying someone screwed up,page not found,and some other attempt at humor.
When I tried going back the “webpage had expired” and everything I wrote vanished! I guess this isn’t the job for me 🙁
Watch me “run a mile” from any Internet moneymaking scheme, God bless BB and Edith, but in my experience the Internet has plenty of ways to work damned hard for $3.
Thankfully, anyone following my boring happenings (and who would, lol) the $25 an hour electronics job I had for a short while turned out to pay a bit over $10 an hour in real-life, and then went away, whew! Now I have some circuit board building work, and in fact tomorrow after selling junque at a flea market I’m shopping for a good soldering iron for modern SMD work. I have a couple-few Weller WTCPT’s which are great for through-hole stuff but SMD soldering is a whole new game and I’m learning it. I’ll likely come home with a Metcal or Hakko system then get working on some boards I have to get done by Monday.
Also, the $120 a month I’m investing in trumpet lessons is paying off, I’m learning under the Claude Gordon system and it’s basically what Shaolin monks would use if they were trumpet players. A month in and I’m already hearing the results. Now, $120 a month sounds high for someone who’s on a pretty low income, but I see it as an investment, a much better one than college ever was! (College was a total loss as far as I’ve been able to figure out. Music or puppetry would have paid off, but electrical engineering, what a loser.)
I’ve looked into a bunch of Internet make-a-buck schemes, and they seem to pay USSR wages, $50 a month or so if you’re hot stuff.
Good job with the trumpet lessons. The $100 a month that my parents spent on my piano lessons was mostly a waste for many years, but I’m looking to make it all good now.
Matt61
Good to hear Matt. Piano is great!
It put it in a whole new perspective for me, comparing trumpet lessons to taking college classes, college was a total loser for me as it’s been for the majority since things started going rotten, basically post-1975 or so. I shudder when I look back on the years I wasted in college, working low-paid jobs and borrowing money for this strange “religion” of having to have a college degree, with no reward on this Earth.
Are you my missing twin or something? My college experience was a lot of fun, and that was about it.
Got my BA degree, but the most money I ever made was working in blue-collar positions.
Political Science grad turned locomotive engineer.
Locomotive engineer turned retired railroader.
Fun time again at last!
Les
Poli Sci would have been much more fun, no calculus, physics, all the hard engineering stuff, and has obviously paid you better because you were smart enough to just get a BA which is basically a glorified HS diploma and then got out of the college racket and got a good honest job where you do something, in your case, steer a train. Do something real like clean horse stalls, dig ditches, be a janitor, etc and the money will come. I wish I’d been as smart as you. Or at least gone into Band in HS and stuck with it come hell or high water, that would have taken quite a bit of smarts and wisdom, far more than I had on tap, apparently.
Frank B,
Bummer! Pyramyd AIR is looking into it.
Edith
PA might offer trumpet lessons? WOW!
Edith,I’m sorry…….I’m normally more patient,what irked me most was that the “error” page was worded so flippantly.It seemed to be by design…..as if it was a joke.That didn’t mesh well with the time I took deliberating whether this was something I was suited for.I didn’t want to waste Pyramyd’s time.I think this concept is a VERY good idea…..new airgun purchases are challenging to the novice,and having a “mentor” to assist is the kind of forward thinking I have come to expect and admire from Pyramyd’s management!
Maybe they need to find that mentor in that scary place called real life? Too bad there aren’t more airgun ranges and airgun clubs in the US. *That’s* what Pyramyd ought to encourage, come up with some sort of postal match system or “Pyramyd AIR Corps” clubs or something, anything.
Frank B.,
I am aware of only 1 other person who has had difficulty submitting an application, and it was related to his browser.
I just did a test registration & finished the app in 5 mins. Perhaps the time you spent filling in all the slots was so extensive that the server may have thought you abandoned the page and that’s why you got the error message. My bank does the same thing. I can be doing something on a page but it boots me off for lack of activity (because I haven’t clicked a link or hit SUBMIT or some other button) & I have to sign in again.
I hope you’ll try again.
Edith
Pete Z
Welcome back. I hope your Doc was darned good. I also hope that you won’t need any of the “extra” treatments. Been there. It sucks.
We are one heck of a bunch here. Too many of us trying to get back behind the trigger again.
twotalon
I spent several days of hard work talking with very knowledgable docs to find out who was best. Uniformly one name and only one came back. Then when I checked him out he was rated in the top 1% of ENT surgeons in the country. And a mutual friend referred me and interceded so I got to see him with a whopping 3 day wait, two of which were Saturday and Sunday.
I count myself really lucky!
Welcome back, Pete!
/Dave
Anybody have any idea whether it is a problem to fill a 2000psi HP tank regulated to 850 psi with CO2?
I don’t think you can do it. Remember, CO2 is a liquid, and the whole point is that it (almost) self regulates the pressure to propel the pellet. Steyr once sold a kit to convert their CO2 pistol to a CA one, IIRC, it required q different tank and fittings.
Generally tanks are fitted out for just one kind of gas for safety reasons. Example: oxygen.
PZ
My one beef with peep sights is that you cannot do the cool ranging holdovers that Elmer Keith describes for his handguns with their open sights. He certainly could make his methods work.
B.B. and Mike U., very amusing about the midges, but I would say this is distinctly different from the nymphs in the dappled greensward that were advertised. 🙂
BG Farmer, interesting about Alexander and Persia. Persia is vilified from the viewpoint of Western history but the fact is that they were much more advanced in ancient times. In the form of the modern Iran-Iraq, they have certainly gone downhill. Interesting to hear that Alexander was a savvy administrator as well as conqueror. I understand that a lot of Roman success was built on the same thing–using the local government to create loyal client states out of conquered territories. We could have taken a few lessons from them in our recent wars I would say.
Matt61
I use buckhorn sights on my Uberti 1873 Short Rifle for Cowboy Action Matches. It is zeroed at 25 yards with the front post in the center of the circle made by the curves of the buckhorn. It’s kind of like using a peep sight. It is very fast. Showing a little more front sight will put you on at 75 yds. I have found that most shooters don’t know you can do this.
Mike
I was checking to see if Monday’s entry had been posted (unlikely as I’m now in EDT, rather than PDT) and just realized…
That example buckhorn sight is a convertible!
It pivots up to become a long range adjustable notch. At first I’d taken that cross-bar to be an elevation adjust slide, but the pivot point is at the wrong end, AND the “slide” has a sight notch in the middle.
I’ll be danged, Wulfraed! That’s just cool! Now I want one!
/Dave
I was just shooting my .22 cal Hatsan Striker 1000s today when the spring ruined the scope that came with the gun and when I took off the scope, I felt handicapped because I use scopes so much these days, so now I’m feeling, before I put a new scope on this gun, I’m gonna train some with it using open sights
Loco,
It’s always a plus to be able to handle open sights. They are at the root of marksmanship.
Welcome to the blog!
B.B.
yup that is very true. Before I went out to Arkansas to compete in the new season of American Airgunner, I actually took the scopes off both my springers at home and practiced shooting at about 40 feet everyday and it helped a lot, but since I got back from Arkansas, I put the scopes back on again. I just got to get use to it again, that’s all.. Thanks for the welcome too by the way, I’ve been reading your blog for a while. I’m an addict when it comes to airgunning haha, even Rossi said “I think this guy loves airguns more than anything in the world” in the second episode haha