New toy

[dinny_g]

Makes sense I suppose - shows the level of commitment to owning the guns "the right way" and to maintaining competency and skill level etc...

I guess my mates "Full Time Game Keeper" job was his legitimate reason. The estate he worked was very "Green" ( for tax purposes) so no pesticides and importantly, no poisons or traps for vermin - so that meant shooting everything. Most of the time, when lamping rabbits, a good high powered Air Rifle was sufficient ( and tended not to spook the locals).

He used to get hired for culling jobs in South Africa, Canada, Alaska, Norway so that brough the whole "Travelling with gun" thing into the picture which was a whole other level of bureaucracy

[Nefarious]

brough the whole "Travelling with gun" thing into the picture which was a whole other level of bureaucracy

Travelling isn't anything like the problem I thought it would be. I had assumed that going anywhere near an airport with a gun would be absolutely verboten. Another bizarre quirk of the legal system is that it can be easier to travel with guns than to travel without guns!

A friend told me a story - a few guys were going for a long weekend in rural Italy, and met at the airport. One guy (who happens to be some high flying criminal barrister) arrives carrying his shotgun. WTF the others all say, we're not going shooting. Watch this, says barrister man, as the whole group gets taken down a special channel and essentially VIP'd onto the plane.
When they get to Italy, barrister man puts said shotgun into the left luggage at the airport and leaves it there until their return trip.
And this was at the height of the terrorism on planes scare!
So, for the cost of one piece of "sporting equipment" luggage and three days left luggage, the group of 4 of them got to jump all the check in and security queue and not have to sit with the hoi polii at the boarding gate!

[dinny_g]

- very clever...

[Beany]

Nef will be taking more foreign holidays this year, in short.

[Nefarious]

Thought some of you would like to see my latest race gun build.

This one is for "open" class practical shotgun. Here is how it arrived to me:


It's a Saiga 12. It is essentially an AK chambered in 12 gauge. But this is a kinda special one, in that it is a proper original Russian gun, rather than a copy made under license or an American copy that has to have every piece *slightly* different for "made in the USA" reasons.
It's a slight PITA because since 2012 when Putin invaded Crimea, there's been an embargo on parts. But as it's about as mechanically complicated as a biro, there's very little I can't make from scratch.

Here's how it looks now:


The fore-end is all 3D printed, and has been an utter ball-ache - there are lots of irregular shapes under there, and it needed careful structural design as I only have *one* threaded hole on the gun body to work with.

And yes, I've gone with a laser sight. Usually, they're expensive and not really bright enough for sunny days, but I got this on Wish for £8. It claims to be <5mW, but is probably more like 75mW. Kinda dangerous, but I figure if you're in a position for it to be pointing in your eyes, you've probably got bigger things to worry about

[Gavin]

I can't see the pictures sadly, but I know what an AK47 looks like so I am imagining a big bore version. Have fun

[jamcg]

I could see them yesterday but now they’ve disappeared, wonder if the app you’ve uploaded from has censored them giving its photos of firearms? It did look cool though

[mik]

I can still see the pics. It’s rather cool, but I’m also kinda surprised it’s legal looks very serious!

[Beany]

I expect it's just considered a self loading shotgun with a magazine capacity that's within the restrictions of the firearms cert.

Snagging a proper Ruskie one is pretty neat though - and yeah, Discords image links are rather ephemeral, I'd not recommend using them if you can help it)

[Nefarious]

The law doesn't draw a difference between tube fed and box fed, so yeah, it's the same category as any semi-auto shotgun with more than 2+1 capacity.

And yeah, I see the scary/serious thing. Ultimately, the job of a race gun is the accurately throw as much lead downrange as possible, as quickly as possible, so there are clearly going to be crossovers with military stuff. Lot's of people cerekote in silly colours to make them look less alarming, but personally I don't like the super-soaker look. It'll get a few stickers by the time it actually gets uses in competition, which takes the perceptive edge off a bit.