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The Annoyed Man wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 4:19 pm I was just reviewing this post, and I noticed that your clone doesn’t go up to eleven. Is that by intention, or are they going to warranty that?

Nigel Tufnel lives!

The Annoyed Man wrote: ↑Thu Apr 09, 2020 8:55 am I have also been looking at SB Tactical, although I’ve also been looking at the SBRA3 model for a more minimalist kind of thing. BTW, I noticed that SB Tactical also offers a folding adapter for a lot less money than the LAW unit, but it isn’t for AR platform pistols.

I saw that. It looked like it attached to the rear of the firearm with a rail mount type of attachment plate and then just swings off to the side. Is it ambi? Can you have it move out of the way of your correct-handedness? It didn't look adjustable, but it does look like it'd be super light. But having to buy a SIG MPX or something to hang on the front of it would make it sort of an expensive brace for me.

AndyC wrote: ↑Thu Apr 09, 2020 1:06 pm Well, I got the terrifying part over with - powering up this beast of an amp for the first time.

Totally outside my comfort-zone, but... so far so good. No bangs, pops or burning smells.

And no scorch marks in the amp or or the walls! Woo hoo! I finally had to take a minute to go look up the history of the JCM800: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_JCM800.

The JCM800 amplifiers became a staple of 1980s hard rock and heavy metal bands.... The JCM800 is considered a "hot" amplifier because it has more gain stages than comparable amplifiers, and in "lead" mode (in the "high" input), an extra triode provides extra gain to the pre-amplifier, which "made for one hot rock amp".

The Annoyed Man wrote: ↑Wed Apr 08, 2020 7:44 pm I’ve been thinking for a while of building a pistol lower so that I can travel interstate with my 11.5” SBR upper without all the ATF nonsense. All I need is a buffer tube and brace....and a LAW Tactical folding stock adapter.

When I was browsing Primary Arms for stuff recently, I almost added one of these SB Tactical braces to my cart: https://www.primaryarms.com/sb-tactical ... race-black. Has 5 standard M4-style adjustment positions (when did that become the usual deal for pistol braces?) and I liked that it had a buffer tube already in place and ready to go. Helped a friend with a pistol build a while back and getting the tube in the brace and flush was a pain.

Also liked that the SB has an ambi QD sling socket. On my friend's we put a QD mount on the first available rail position for a single-point sling which worked okay, but it made the sling balance point a little odd and made the pistol's grip and barrel cant inward kind of oddly. Given the way the SBA4 brace is shaped, I'm not exactly certain how it's supposed to be used as a forearm brace but hey, seems a lot of these things have really evolved more toward "stock" than "brace." I hadn't thought about a LAW Tactical folder but I assume that would work just fine. Could make mighty nice traveling companion.

Dangit. Now that I've been talking about it, makes me want to go back and buy one.

I've got zero excuses. The parts I ordered came in long enough ago for them to self-decontaminate from any possible COVID-19 material. In other words, they've just been sitting around long enough for any virus on them to die.

It's amazing how working from home seems to leave me far less time than I expected. Then again, I am hopping over here and elsewhere to post and I didn't do that in the pre-coronapocalypse. I just need to buck-up and set aside a block of time to play the typical "Where's the Pivot Pin" game. I think I have yet to put together an AR lower without launching a pivot pin into the atmosphere. It provides no end of hilarity to my wife that I do that bit of assembly in the second bathroom, in the tub, with the shower curtain pulled, and the toilet seat down...just in case of, you know, ricochets.

AndyC wrote: ↑Tue Apr 07, 2020 5:44 pm I had a week's delay working on my amp waiting for the vacuum-tubes' heater-wires to show up (missing from the kit), but they eventually arrived...

Sweet!! You know that we're absolutely going to have to hear a recording of this thing once you get her ready. You have an old school Strat or something you're going to plug into it?

RPBrown wrote: ↑Tue Mar 24, 2020 7:48 am Now, thats 2 bedrooms @ 168 Square feet each and a 280 square foot sun room. 616 square foot of craft room. Can someone tell me how, 4 years later I barely have enough room in my garage to park my Harley much less get to my tools. I have come to the conclusion that my wife is a hoarder and I guess that makes me an enabler

I feel ya! And your wife's probably not a hoarder. She's just a much better politician than you are.

It's a really strange thing that our collective "stuff" always seems to expand to fill the space we have. I guess unless you have more rooms than you can count. We don't have kids, but when picking houses years ago we opted for a smallish 4 bedroom over a 3 bedroom that was smaller but was much more open, felt a lot more spacious. We didn't need 4 bedrooms (we didn't think), but the cost per sq ft was heavily in favor of it over the 3 and we decided it would have better resale value, too.

Fast forward, and there's no place for me setup a reloading bench inside in the air conditioning. There's the master bedroom which also begrudgingly contains the gun safe, one bedroom that's a home office with desks for each of us, a bedroom that is the wife's "studio," and a spare bedroom that's left as that even though we only use it that way about twice a year. So somehow I managed to get a corner of the master bedroom and a desk in the tiny shared home office. My wife controls all the rest of the floor space.

Wait. She's right behind me, isn't she...

AndyC wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 5:13 pm I'm building a tube-amplifier (guitar) from a kit - I've never done anything like this in my life. I had to make a jig out of scrap wood just to hold it as the chassis constantly needs to be flipped-over....

They call these "hand-wired" amps because there's no printed-circuit board in sight - just these old-style turrets sticking up from an insulated board onto which the caps/resistors/diodes are hand-wired then soldered.

O.K. That's the coolest thing I've seen this year. Seriously.

I think we need to officially dub you Andy "B.B." C as an homage to one of the fathers of the electric guitar, B.B. King.

I had to look at the receipt to find the date, but I've had a Black Rain Ordnance Fallout 15 billet lower in my safe since October 2016. Yeah, I admit I bought a bunch of stuff when it for all the world looked like we'd see Hillary elected.

Out of sight out of mind, but sorting through things in the safe recently, that little lower looked awful lonely. I had some various stuff sitting around like a buffer tube and spring, but needed more if I wanted to fill-in that stripped lower. So I visited a good ol' Texas retailer, Primary Arms.

A plug for Primary Arms in South Houston: I hit their website last Thursday evening and there was the expected banner warning that, due to the coronavirus situation, orders may be significantly delayed. I forged ahead anyway. Got the email confirmation of the order at 7:41 p.m. Thursday. At 9:28 a.m. Friday I got the "Your order has shipped" email! FedEx says they expect to deliver the box this Wednesday. So kudos to the folks at Primary Arms still selling at no-price-gouging prices and even getting the order shipped in less than 14 hours!

I ordered a Rise Armament flat single-stage trigger and a Rise AR lower parts kit, an Ergo grip, and a Magpul CTR stock. Plus I ordered a SIG Romeo 5 RDS, a Strike Industries extended latch charging handle, and a Sons of Liberty BCG...just because I wanted some doodads for the upper I'll be using. Not going to be a high-end build, but it's a good lower and a decent trigger, so I'm hoping it will end up a serviceable midrange sort of rifle. If the box arrives Wednesday, I'll put it together Thursday or Friday.

Rummaging in the safe also had me think about cleaning. With no particular schedule, I usually do a field strip, light clean, and lube of guns that haven't been fired in five or six months. It's just a one-at-a-time thing after a range day when put those guns up after cleaning and think, "Hm. It's been a while since I've shot that one." So now I might take a few hours Saturday or Sunday to pull everything out, clean what hasn't been cleaned or fired in the past three or four months, start an actual clock and record on the cleaning schedule to keep better track, and then reorganize the safe and lockboxes more efficiently. Sounds like a reasonable chore on paper, anyway.

strogg wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 3:11 pm I have a lot of scrap wood, and I will be building some little things for better storage and organization. I'll also be doing some more reloading. And work a bit on my photography hobby. OK that last one is very not firearms related. Hopefully I don't get too stir crazy.

About three times a year I ask myself why I don't reload. My wife has never been super keen on the idea...no room in the garage (besides, Houston summers) and the only place we have to put a bench and equipment is in a corner of a spare bedroom. We very seldom actually use it at all, but that argument doesn't seem to carry any weight.

Wood. Now you've reminded me of something more prepper related than firearms. We've been through a couple of brief periods where we lost water service during hurricanes Ike and Harvey, but not long ago a huge city water main carrying water from Lake Houston blew up. I'm not in the city proper, but a lot of us who aren't learned that our utility districts buy some water from the city. Much of the greater Houston area was under a mandatory boil-water notice for a few days until it was lifted February 29. (A double-whammy with the coronavirus for many area restaurants that had to close at the end of February for two or three days over the water main issue, and now the doors close again less than 4 weeks later.)

That got me to thinking what we'd do if we needed to boil water--assuming the water is still coming into the homes--and the electricity was out (and/or gas, whatever your stove runs on). For the two of us, I lay in 25 gallons of water that I refresh every May, in front of hurricane season, and there's always some in the water heater we could resort to. "AquaPod" bags for the tubs in the bathrooms for washing and flushing. But that would end up at, stretching it, about 2 weeks of potable water. Even with rainwater catch, I don't know that I'd feel comfortable with just filtering and treating with good ol' cheap sodium hypochlorite. I think I'd want to boil it first. The fireplace uses gas logs, but take those out and it can be used with firewood, and then there's the barbeque pit. What I don't have any reasonable source for is the wood. Really all I have is kindling for charcoal. So that boil water situation last month made me think it might not be a bad idea to have at least 1/2 cord of firewood stored in the backyard. Hm...

G.A. Heath wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2020 3:00 pm Work. It seems people need food, ans other items found in grocery stores. We just had our 1st confirmed case of covid-19 in Gaines county. Terry county also has a confirmed case.

Well, like a lot of folks, I'm now working from home online but, living in one of Texas's large blue cities, that saves me over two hours a day on the commute alone. Counting the usual workday lunch and getting dressed and out the door and running misc "nonessential" errands I can't run right now, I figure I'm saving about four hours per day. Add to that about four hours of gym time each week that ain't happening. So I figure that's around 24-28 hours a week that used to be busy, but now isn't.

But I'm still working. We'll see how long that continues. We've already seen Halliburton do some creative furlough stuff with over 3,500 of their employees in Houston, and talking to friends at some midsize and smaller companies, I think a whole lot of layoffs are inevitably coming. And soon. There are a bunch of companies that can't survive the loss of cash flow without extreme measures. The dear wife is in the same boat I am. At least we have fast internet service. She has some honey-dos for me, but there are some other things I decided I could do while at the house...and listening to Fox News almost all day.

A lot of us are finding ourselves with unexpected extra time at home thanks to COVID-19. And I have a feeling that we'll see more and more cities/counties issuing shelter in place type directives.

Thought it would be fun--and add some positivity--to have a place to share any projects or activities or chores related to firearms (and maybe prepping?) that you're planning to accomplish with some extra time around the house. Or at the range, if it's open.

I know those of you with kids at home are probably screaming "Extra time?!" But for the rest of us who might be planning or starting some projects during the Coronapocalypse, what are you working on?