01-28-2016, 02:55 AM
Been a few days of madness at work since we got back.
I did stop by the Glock booth Friday and took a look at the guns with optics. Nothing new really other than factory option aspect. Pretty much the same thing competition shooters have been doing for years with them.
Core rifles is doing a Grendel. Nothing ground breaking, but I do like the design of their billet receiver sets.
Morakniv is releasing a full tang knife. Moras are cheap, plain plastic, or simple wood handled working knives, but they have an excellent reputation for being just that- working knives. Especially if you're willing do a little work cleaning up the edge. I do a little bit of knife making as a hobby, and I'm seriously considering buying a couple of them to strip, reprofile, and make some nice scales for just for grins. Or hopefully they'll release just the blades for knifemakers like they do with their other blade designs.
9mm carbines were all over the place this year, both in rifle and pistol set ups. From the looks of things they're almost all being cut under variance by one manufacturer (this is nothing new in the AR world) with some minor cosmetic differences. I've shot a couple of them in the past, and while they're amusing, and mag interchangeability from Glock pistol to a carbine is usefull, they just don't do much for me overall.
DLC (diamond like coating) bolt carrier groups. This may be a solution looking for a problem, as wearing out a phosphated bolt carrier takes some serious work. I stopped by a both where a guy was demoing how hard the the DLC coating was by scrubbing a screw driver on the carrier. Then just wiping the mark of with his finger. He probably did this hundreds of times over the course of the week, and there wasn't a mark on the carrier. I don't know that there is any advantage to speak of in this application, but as hard and smooth as the stuff seamed to be I'm sure there's something I should be putting it on.
The Howa mini action! I played with a couple of them, and they seem decent for a production level action. Pretty smooth, and fairly tight (for a production gun) bolt fit. I was not blown away by the stocks, but again they seemed perfectly adequate for an off the shelf rifle in the price range they're in. I have one of the Hogue stocks similar to what they're using on my 10-22 which I like just fine, but for some reason it felt flimsy on the Howa. The Hogue's are supposedly not good for bedding as well due to it being hard to get compound to adhere to the plastic inserts. The polymer magazines also felt very light weight, but they're not holding in a ton of spring pressure so its probably a not issue. Mag release was smooth and easy to actuate.
I did try to make a point of looking at chassis rifle stocks that might fit the Howa mini since you guys mentioned it earlier. I don't think I saw any that were ready to go right now, but I'm sure someone will do it soon. I don't know, it's something I want to like, but I just feel kind of "meh" about them in general. I shoot a Savage with a McMillan A3 so the layout with a vertical grip is similar, but there's just something about most of them that just doesn't seem right to me.
Polymer80 has a DIY Glock frame. I don't really like the company following the BS they put their customers through when they launched their AR receivers, but I have wanted to do the same thing with pistol receivers for a while so I'm intrigued.
If there's anything else you guys heard about ask away, if I happen to have seen it I'll let you know what I though if i have an opinion on it.
I did stop by the Glock booth Friday and took a look at the guns with optics. Nothing new really other than factory option aspect. Pretty much the same thing competition shooters have been doing for years with them.
Core rifles is doing a Grendel. Nothing ground breaking, but I do like the design of their billet receiver sets.
Morakniv is releasing a full tang knife. Moras are cheap, plain plastic, or simple wood handled working knives, but they have an excellent reputation for being just that- working knives. Especially if you're willing do a little work cleaning up the edge. I do a little bit of knife making as a hobby, and I'm seriously considering buying a couple of them to strip, reprofile, and make some nice scales for just for grins. Or hopefully they'll release just the blades for knifemakers like they do with their other blade designs.
9mm carbines were all over the place this year, both in rifle and pistol set ups. From the looks of things they're almost all being cut under variance by one manufacturer (this is nothing new in the AR world) with some minor cosmetic differences. I've shot a couple of them in the past, and while they're amusing, and mag interchangeability from Glock pistol to a carbine is usefull, they just don't do much for me overall.
DLC (diamond like coating) bolt carrier groups. This may be a solution looking for a problem, as wearing out a phosphated bolt carrier takes some serious work. I stopped by a both where a guy was demoing how hard the the DLC coating was by scrubbing a screw driver on the carrier. Then just wiping the mark of with his finger. He probably did this hundreds of times over the course of the week, and there wasn't a mark on the carrier. I don't know that there is any advantage to speak of in this application, but as hard and smooth as the stuff seamed to be I'm sure there's something I should be putting it on.
The Howa mini action! I played with a couple of them, and they seem decent for a production level action. Pretty smooth, and fairly tight (for a production gun) bolt fit. I was not blown away by the stocks, but again they seemed perfectly adequate for an off the shelf rifle in the price range they're in. I have one of the Hogue stocks similar to what they're using on my 10-22 which I like just fine, but for some reason it felt flimsy on the Howa. The Hogue's are supposedly not good for bedding as well due to it being hard to get compound to adhere to the plastic inserts. The polymer magazines also felt very light weight, but they're not holding in a ton of spring pressure so its probably a not issue. Mag release was smooth and easy to actuate.
I did try to make a point of looking at chassis rifle stocks that might fit the Howa mini since you guys mentioned it earlier. I don't think I saw any that were ready to go right now, but I'm sure someone will do it soon. I don't know, it's something I want to like, but I just feel kind of "meh" about them in general. I shoot a Savage with a McMillan A3 so the layout with a vertical grip is similar, but there's just something about most of them that just doesn't seem right to me.
Polymer80 has a DIY Glock frame. I don't really like the company following the BS they put their customers through when they launched their AR receivers, but I have wanted to do the same thing with pistol receivers for a while so I'm intrigued.
If there's anything else you guys heard about ask away, if I happen to have seen it I'll let you know what I though if i have an opinion on it.