cellini's Diaryland Diary

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Dinosaurs!

I am totally psyched right now because both discs of 'Prehistoric Planet' are probably sitting in my mailbox right now from Netflix.

Stuff with dinosaurs just does it for me, ok? Anything with realistic CGI dinosaurs done in a nature documentary style gets my motor running. It's a whole weird sub genre of docu-tainment.

Ida and I watched 2 episodes of this show last year on the Discovery channel and then it was NEVER ON AGAIN. Then I looked madly for it on DVD but it hadn't been released. A few days ago I decided to check again and it's out now and it should be here today and I'm FUCKING STOKED FOR THESE FUCKING DINOSAURS, man.

Two more days until my bonus comes. SO close. So close. I really need a haircut. Badly. In 2 days I can finally get one. Then I'm going to do all kinds of shopping on Saturday. Not frivolous stuff. Things we've desperately needed. A new light fixture for the kitchen to replace the broken one (we've been using a plug-in work light for the last 2 months and it's very ghetto). A couple rolls of chicken wire to keep Alice inside of the damned fence. Stuff like that.

I'm thinking about using a bit of my dividend money this Spring to either buy a new hunting rifle or have a bunch of custom work done on one of my Mausers.

WARNING- EXTENSIVE RIFLE GEEKING BELOW - Do not read it if you find that shit boring.

Option the first would be to get a stainless steel bolt action thirty ought six with iron sights and a high clearance scope mount so I can use the sights as a backup if the scope gets knocked out of zero on a hunt. My current Remington has some sort of matte blued finish that will start to rust when it gets wet. And my hunting rifles and shotguns do in fact get wet since I frequently hunt in hard weather. It shoots well but the rust thing is pissing me off. Stainless would be the way to go.

The fly in that ointment is my desire for iron sights. This whole clean barrel thing is bullshit. If your scope fails then you're just fucked. For the legions of hunters and shooters nowadays who learned to shoot with a scope, this doesn't matter because they can't shoot worth shit with open iron sights any how. I, however, made a point of learning to shoot with old military rifles using only the open iron sights. A scope is a nice enhancement, not a requirement for shots within 100 yards. I can switch mid-hunt to open sights if my scope gets banged up or something. So that's what I want. A serious hunting rifle with both iron sights and a scope.

The thing is that stainless steel hunting rifles with iron sights are pretty rare. All the major manufacturers only put iron sights on safari models designed for hunting in Africa. That's just the convention for an African rifle. People only really hunt Africa during the dry season when rain is mostly a non-issue. So there's little demand for stainless safari rifles. The stainless rifles are mostly Alaskan models. Hunting in Alaska means some serious fucking weather. But all the bolt actions are used for long range stuff and the rifles don't have open sights. For quick shots in heavy brush, they use big bore lever guns with open sights. A lever gun is not what I'm looking for here.

One way or another, I'm probably looking at some custom work. At a minimum, I'd be getting a stainless 700 and having a gunsmith put sights on it. A used 700, because the synthetic stocks Remington is using right now are ugly as fuck. Probably $500 to $600 for the rifle, minimum. Plus probably $100 for the gunsmithing and sights. Probably $50 for the special mount and rings that allow me to see the sights. I have a cheap scope I could use for a while. So I'd be looking at $750, although I could offset that by trading in my current 700 for probably $350 or so. So $400.

If I go the Mauser route, I'd be spending about $150 for a new barrel, $50 for the scope mount and then another $250 or so for various gunsmithing to install the barrel and sights, square the receiver, weld on a turned down bolt handle and drill and tap for the scope mounts. Around $450. And that's if I didn't sell the Remington to pay for part of it. If I did then I'd be looking at a net cost of $100.

Huh. Customizing and rechambering my Mauser might very well be the way to go. More trouble and time, definitely. But the resulting rifle would be more interesting and certainly no new rifle action can top the smoothness of a vintage Mauser.

3:53 p.m. - 2007-11-28

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